Awesome! We're reading pretty much all of those articles right now, plus some stuff on William Lane Craig's trinity monotheism. For my term paper I'll be focusing on Michael Rea's attempts to shed light on the problem of the trinity via the more general problem of material constitution in metaphysics. What do you think of relative identity approaches?
For those not in the know,
relative identity is a controversial philosophical thesis which involves the claim that it's possible for two things to be the same X but not the same Y. Normally we think that either two objects are the same thing (ie, different names for the same thing, like Clark Kent and Superman) or not the same thing at all (ie, different things), but according to relative identity theory there is a sort of middle ground. For example, eight-year-old Julius is the same
person as the middle-aged general, but they are not the same
child (only one of them is a child at all). Another example: the lump of clay that this vase is made of is not the same thing as the vase. The lump of clay existed before the vase did (ie, before it was shaped into the vase) and it may continue to exist after the vase does (I might smash the vase and glue the bits together in a different form). But the lump of clay and the vase are the same collection of atoms.
So some philosophers of religion have used this idea to argue that the persons of the Trinity could be different persons but the same God, in a parallel way. Personally I'm not convinced by this. This is partly because the logic of relative identity is pretty controversial to start with even before you start applying it to God. And it's partly because I don't think the proponents of relative identity Trinitarianism have really shown that it's possible to make sense of relative identity statements in the way that would be required for orthodox Trinitarianism. For example, if the Father and the Son are distinct only in the sense that a vase is distinct from the lump of clay with which it shares precisely the same atoms, I would say that that is modalism.
Warpus has a question.
If Jesus is God, how could he have not known about something?
We discussed that
here. Basically, traditional theology distinguishes between the knowledge Jesus had
as God and the knowledge he had
as man. Roman Catholicism holds that his human knowledge was as perfect as human knowledge can be, but if you accept the distinction in the first place there is nothing stopping you from supposing that while his divine knowledge was perfect his human knowledge was limited. Many theologians today who hold something like the traditional doctrine of the incarnation argue that part of what it meant for God to
become incarnate was for him to choose to limit his knowledge, perhaps by (as it were) temporarily forgetting what he knows as God.
The precise formulation of this church formula is a clear indication that it is a a later addition. The Gospels are full of such "corrections", so I wouldn't attach much value to this specific one. There is, however, no doubt that Jesus felt a very personal relation to the Innamable One, which is evident from his usage of "My Father". Jesus couldn't have considered himself the Son of God, however, since this church doctrine hadn't been formulated yet. But the most clear indication is that it is a Christian formula, and Jesus was a Jew.
I don't believe there is any reason to view the passage in question as a later addition to Matthew's Gospel, although there are certainly reasons to regard it as redactional (ie, written by the author rather than being an authentic saying of Jesus). I take it that's what you mean. In this case I think you are right to claim that Jesus didn't say it, but I don't think that simply stating that it's a Christian formula whereas Jesus was a Jew is a very good reason. You can't be sure of what Jesus could or could not have said purely on the basis that he was a Jew, partly because Judaism was very varied at that time and is still very imperfectly understood, and partly because you can't be so certain about how much Jesus innovated. Paul was a Jew too but that didn't stop him saying an awful lot of stuff that we normally hold to be exclusively Christian. You can't assume
a priori that Jesus didn't do the same thing.
But Jesus was executed as a revolutionary: the one question Pilate asked of him whether or not he was "king of the Jews" - something which the Romans simply would not tolerate. And yes, here I am using the Gospels as a source. (Since Jesus wasn't a Roman citizen, but also not a slave, there are but a few possibilities for which he might have been executed.)
No-one really knows precisely what the charge was that Jesus faced; it's perfectly plausible to suppose that the high priest arrested him simply because he was a trouble-maker and he wanted to crack down on any potential trouble during Passover as quickly as possible. That would be consistent with the Synoptics' suggestion that Jesus' action in the Temple was the immediate occasion of his arrest. That action doesn't seem to have had much to do with any claim to be king of the Jews, but it was certainly an incendiary thing to do during Passover. The Gospels' picture of Jesus going through a hearing before the high priest, followed by a brief hearing before Pilate and a rubber-stamping of the execution order, would be consistent with this. The attribution to Pilate of all that hand-wringing is very probably a Christian invention.
The fact remains that there are no contemporary records of Jesus; even the earliest Gospel writings are some 30 years after the fact. He was, at the time, simply not known enough to deserve reference. (Flavius Josephus also has no mention of him.)
There are actually two references to Jesus in Josephus -
Jewish antiquities 18.3.3 and 20.9.1. The first of these is famous because it gives a lot of information about Jesus, but Josephus could not possibly have written it because it states that he was the Messiah and rose from the dead. So it is generally considered to be a later, Christian interpolation. However, it is very possible - perhaps even probable - that Josephus did mention Jesus here, and that the Christian interpolater has simply expanded an existing reference rather than added one completely out of the blue. The other reference, however, seems to be perfectly authentic.
Quite simple: the notion precedes the doctrine - which first needed to be developed, then agreed upon by religious authorities. (As a sidenote I might mention that Jesus himself had little personal regard for religious authorities.)
I'm still not clear on the distinction - can you give an example of what you mean? What is the "notion" of the Trinity, and what is the "doctrine"?
I don't believe there's any good reason for supposing that Jesus had little regard for religious authorities. There is little relevant material in the Gospels, but what there is presents Jesus as respecting the religious authorities. For example, he is portrayed as being willing to pay the Temple tax.
You are, as far as I can tell. The idea that Jesus advocated revenge is surely ridiculous, in the light of the passages you cite and plenty of others, such as Luke 23:34.
Citing Old Testament passages about God and stating that they also refer to Jesus because Jesus is God is not a very historically literate way of going about things. Someone may
believe that what Nahum says about God is also true about Jesus on these grounds, but you cannot cite that as evidence. It is, incidentally, perfectly possible to think that Jesus was God but to reject the view of God held by certain Old Testament writers; believing in the divinity of Jesus does not commit someone to believing that everything in the Old Testament is true. Finally, the Psalms passage is completely irrelevant since it says only that God will do bad things to bad people, not that he will do so out of a desire for vengeance. He could have all sorts of reasons for doing it.
Another question: What's the difference between "revealed theology" and "natural theology"? I encountered this distinction in reading contemporary stuff on the trinity, but the author assumes that the reader is familiar with the distinction, which I'm not, I'm afraid.
"Revealed theology" is stuff that is known by revelation only, while "natural theology" is stuff that can be known through the exercise of reason. According to Aquinas, for example, you can work out philosophically that God exists by using your reason, but you can never find out that he is a Trinity in this fashion. The only way to know that is through divine revelation.
Other theologians have rejected this sort of thing - Karl Barth famously argued that there can be
no natural theology of any kind, and indeed that the mere attempt to engage in it was sinful and satanically inspired. But he thought that about quite a lot of stuff.
Hey Plotinus! Great thread.
I have a question: Do you know what "open theism" is? If you do, could you tell me whether it's in line with
any major Christian sect or orthodox leaders in history? I've only read about it a little, but I don't think I've seen anything like it before, outside maybe a random individual here or there. (And no, I don't believe in it. I've just recently heard about it a lot)
Yes, "open theism" is the idea that God doesn't know the future and that his actions or decisions can be influenced by other people. I don't really know much more about it. The view goes back at least to Faustus Socinus, the sixteenth-century theologian, who was most famous for denying the Trinity but who also thought that God is inside time and that his omniscience covers only the past, while his will covers only the future. Socinianism was generally regarded as a heresy. More recently, similar views have been much more common; for example, Process Theology was a fashionable movement in the 1970s which also held that God is inside time, but I don't think it's so big today. Richard Swinburne has a very similar view to Socinus. But I don't think there are any major churches that would endorse open theism.
On a related question, do you commonly keep up on 'new' movements in the church today? (Or do you mostly specialize in historical, rather than contemporary, theology?) If so, any opinion on the emergent church movement, at all? Do you think it offers anything really new, or is it just a fad?
I don't really keep up with contemporary theological or ecclesiastical things; they don't interest me so much. And more recently I've been focusing more on philosophy than on theology, and on the early modern period in particular, so I'm less
au fait with contemporary theology than I was ten years ago, say. I hadn't heard of the emergent church movement before you mentioned it here. Looking it up, it strikes me as very similar to the Japanese nonchurch movement, at least in intent. I think that movements similar to these have often appeared in history, but the problem of course is that as soon as such a movement became relatively established, it is effectively a new church, no matter what the original intent was.
