Category: Trinity

Book Plunge: Jesus Was Not A Trinitarian Chapter 4

Is it hard to find the Trinity in the Bible? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So at the start, Buzzard has a howler here with saying that the best Trinitarian apologetics can do is find a handful of verses in John and a few in Paul, but no place where God is used to refer to the triune God. I wish I was joking, but I am not. Reading most any Christology would disabuse someone of that notion. Buzzard still has a mindset of Western Consumerism that says something needs to be explicitly stated to be believed.

There is also the idea that the pagan notion of Logos was brought into the Gospel of John. It’s much more rooted in the concept of Wisdom in the Old Testament and the Memra of God, which was also His word, in the Jewish targums, which was a sort of paraphrase of their writings. It’s not a shock to see Buzzard jump to heathenism though.

Next a look at some quotes from Alister McGrath:

The casual reader of Scripture will discern a mere two verses in the entire Bible which seem, at first glance, to be capable of a trinitarian interpretation: Matthew 28:19 and 2 Corinthians 13:14 . Both these verses have become deeply rooted in the Christian consciousness… Yet these two verses, taken together or in isolation, can hardly be thought of as constituting a doctrine of the Trinity.

“This is a significant admission.”

The line about an admission is Buzzard’s, but it’s not significant. It’s stating that the whole statement is not found explicitly. That’s the same for many doctrines of Scripture.

The doctrine of the Trinity can be regarded as the outcome of a process of sustained and critical reflection on the pattern of divine activity revealed in Scripture, and continued in Christian experience. This is not to say that Scripture contains a doctrine of the Trinity; rather, Scripture bears witness to a God who demands to be understood in a trinitarian manner. We shall explore the evolution of the doctrine and its distinctive vocabulary in what follows.

To which Buzzard says

There is no doctrine of the Trinity in the Bible, he admits, and yet in its pages, God demands belief in the Trinity.

Make your pick. He’s either being dishonest or ignorant. All McGrath is saying is that the Trinity is not explicitly in Scripture. That is far from saying that it is not in Scripture. Unfortunately, Buzzard doesn’t show any of McGrath’s arguments. I wonder why…..

I find it even more amusing when Tom Harpur is cited later on. Harpur is one who thinks everything is borrowed from paganism and is a journalist. Why is Buzzard using this person as a source?

There is some mention of Murray Harris with his excellent work Jesus as God, but you won’t find in-depth interaction with Harris’s arguments. He also speaks about James White and just says White’s attempts to find the Trinity in the Bible are unconvincing. Again, we are not told what these attempts are so excuse me if this dismissal is, well, unconvincing.

He argues that Hebrews 1: 8 doesn’t work since it would mean God has a God, not explaining how this is a difficulty in Trinitarianism. He doesn’t interact with the last part of that section where the Son is made the agent of creation. He says the Logos in John 1 is not identified with the Son saying the Son only began existing when He appeared in the flesh in John 1:14.

There is also the claim in John 10:33-38 that Jesus refuses the claim He is making Himself equal to God. What Jesus does is a qal wahomer argument in Jewish thinking. We would call it A fortiori. In this, Jesus takes a lesser point and uses it to make a greater point.

Psalm 82 which Jesus references has God saying to wicked people “You are gods.” God then sarcastically says they will die like mere men. Jesus then says “If these wicked people can be called this, how much more can I be called the Son of God?” He doesn’t deny the claim. He intensifies it.

At any rate, this chapter is short because again, Buzzard isn’t giving us more. It’s hard to say a lot when you just say the same thing over and over again.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Jesus Was Not A Trinitarian Chapter 3

Is the Trinity dogma? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In this chapter, we’re again going to not bother dealing with the number of times Buzzard repeats the same Shema and Unitarian arguments ad nauseum. Of course, had he eliminated them, this book would be considerably shorter, thus part of my great regret he didn’t. At any rate, in this chapter, Buzzard wants to pit biblical fact against dogma. That’s fine, but I contend the dogma is only on one side.

So at one point, he cites Karen Armstrong on the Trinity saying the makers of the dogma did not intend for the doctrine to be subjected to reasoned analysis.

It’s hard to believe anyone claiming to be taken seriously on church history could think such a thing. I don’t know what got Armstrong to think such a thing if she is being represented accurately and I don’t know why Buzzard would even believe such a thing. These guys were analyzing every single bit of their theology, but their doctrine of God was one they were going to be careless about?

He also says Gregory of Nazianzus considered three men ought to be one since they shared a common humanity. Unfortunately, this is not quoted at all. It’s my understanding that Gregory was asking why that wouldn’t be the case and was responding to that.

He barely touches Matthew 28:19 and 2 Cor. 13:14 just saying that this doesn’t mean the three are one God. On their own? No. In connection with all the other data we have? They certainly help the case. Buzzard has nothing to say about the Matthew reference referring to the singular name of three different persons.

He also says the word God never refers to all three persons. In the Old Testament, I think this would be far more likely. However, with the New Testament, I think the term God is normally referred to the Father and Lord refers to Jesus. There are exceptions, of course, but this seems to be the general principle. If anything, that God has to be given the explanation of, the Father, regularly shows that some differentiation is going on.

Romans 9:5 and 1 John 5:20 are both mentioned, but they are not interacted with. Instead, right after that, lo and behold, Buzzard references the Shema. It’s getting to the point where Buzzard pointing to the Shema is like Mormons pointing to their testimony relentlessly.

He says that for Jesus to say He was God while presenting His Father as God would lead the people to think there were two Gods. I agree with this. Hence, I think if the Trinity is to be revealed correctly, it has to be done slowly and cautiously. Unfortunately, Buzzard never goes down this route.

Buzzard also says the same thing about if Jesus had said “I am God.” However, he says that Jesus’s dependence on God doesn’t make sense. What would He prefer Jesus to say? “I don’t need the Father for anything. I can do whatever I want!” We certainly wouldn’t have a Trinity then.

Buzzard says Christian Theology speaks of God as He and not it, but does the Trinity consider God to be a person? He references Lewis in Christian Reflections saying that Christianity does not believe God to be a person but a Trinity of persons. Lewis says this saying that it’s the same way a cube is not the same as a square. This does not mean that one cannot use singular pronouns when speaking of God though. Buzzard gives no reason to think we can’t.

He also says that the term Echad used in the Shema refers to a one. Yes, but the word echad also refers to a unity one, just as the man and woman become one flesh, even there are definitely two bodies. He also refers to N.T. Wright and the Christianization of the Shema in 1 Cor. 8:4-6. Buzzard doesn’t reply to the arguments but if anything, pits Paul against Jesus.

This is a quite strange path. Are we going to look at Scripture and say what Jesus says is more valid than Paul if we think all of it is God-breathed? If there is no contradiction, then Paul will fully agree with Jesus. Is this what it takes to avoid the Trinity?

He says something about Psalm 110:1, but that’s largely spoken of in a later chapter.

He returns to Wright and the Shema in 1 Cor. 8 but instead of dealing with Wright’s argument, goes to his talking point again and says that Paul sees God as one person in 1 Tim. 2:5 and in Gal. 3:20. Neither of these say God is one person and he even adds in the word person in Gal. 3:20.

He then returns to Wright and says God and Jesus are not Lord in the same sense. Amusingly, he accuses Wright of begging the question, despite how many times Buzzard trumpets the Shema. If we go with Buzzard, then if there is one Lord, then the Father cannot be Lord. Does Buzzard want to go that route? When he gets to Bauckham saying the same thing, Buzzard says this wouldn’t be done since it would violate the creed and adding a person to the Godhead was unthinkable.

But keep in mind, Wright is the one begging the question.

So once again, Buzzard has pretty much one argument consistently. It doesn’t work no matter how many times he repeats it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

 

Book Plunge: Jesus Was Not A Trinitarian Chapter 2

Who was the God of Jesus? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So we’re continuing our look at Anthony “Have I mentioned the Shema enough” Buzzard’s horrid book. In this second chapter, he’s going to ask who the God of Jesus was. At the start, if you’re an Arian and say Jesus has a God, that’s not going to be a problem to us. Jesus was also a human being who wasn’t an atheist.

So right off, Buzzard tells us that it’s a problem that nowhere in the New Testament does God mean the triune God and that’s a problem. Even if that is true, the response is “So what?” Buzzard doesn’t tell us why this is a problem. If what is being discussed is the relationship between Christ and the Father, then of course we won’t expect the word “Theos” to refer to the Trinity.

He later will say that God is never described as begotten, but Jesus is, which means Jesus had a beginning of His existence. Of course, this entirely begs the question and Buzzard posts this as if no one in church history ever said “Wow. Jesus is begotten! Imagine that!”

Trinitarian relations in understanding have always noted differences in how the persons are. The Son is begotten. The Holy Spirit proceeds. The Orthodox branch of Christianity can disagree with Catholics and Protestants on the filoque, but there is agreement that the Spirit proceeds. Since this is part and parcel of Trinitarian doctrine, it’s hard to see how this is an objection to it.

Here is what the Athanasian Creed says. (Keep in mind Orthodox Churches would disagree with “And the Son” in describing the proceeding of the Holy Spirit, but that is not our focus here.)

The Father was neither made nor created nor begotten; the Son was neither made nor created, but was alone begotten of the Father; the Spirit was neither made nor created, but is proceeding from the Father and the Son.

So here we have something saying the Father is not begotten and saying the Son is and somehow, Buzzard saying the same thing is supposed to be a problem? Also, the writers of the creed didn’t see a problem with the Son being begotten and also being eternal. Either they were all idiots who didn’t recognize a contradiction, or Buzzard is the one who isn’t understanding something. Decisions, decisions….

For those wondering, I view Jesus as begotten in the sense of that which is always in the Father being brought forth from Him. Since God is eternal, this is an eternal activity. The same follows with the Holy Spirit regardless of how many persons in the Trinity were involved.

Continuing in my look, more highlights I have are simply Buzzard making the same claims of Unitarianism over and over. There is a little change when we get to Paul and Buzzard says

Only a very deficient sense of history would permit the impossible notion that Paul believed the God of Israel to have been the Trinitarian God. This is widely admitted.

Unfortunately, Buzzard doesn’t tell us who this is widely admitted by. One wonders what he would think about the things Bart Ehrman would say are widely admitted in New Testament scholarship. There is plenty of scholarship out there anyway that will say Paul did believe in a triune concept of God, but Buzzard is not seriously interacting with that.

He then goes on to quote The New Bible Dictionary.

The Old Testament witness is fundamentally to the oneness of God. In their daily prayer, Jews repeated the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4, 5: “The Lord our God the Lord is one.” In this they confessed the God of Israel to be the transcendent creator without peer or rival. Without the titanic disclosure of the Christ event no one would have taken the Old Testament to affirm anything but the exclusive, i.e., unipersonal monotheism that is the hallmark of Judaism and Islam. Note carefully this candid admission. Reading the Hebrew Bible , on which Jesus was reared and which he affirmed as holy Scripture and which Paul claimed he believed, no one could possibly have imagined God to be more than one divine Person. The Hebrew Bible, says the dictionary, affirmed the unipersonal, non-Trinitarian God. Jesus echoed that affirmation precisely.

First, this can be debated as the intertestamental literature, as pointed out in the Wisdom of Solomon speaks of Wisdom in deified terms. This is not an exception. That being said, is it really a powerful argument to say no one understood it this way until Jesus came?

No, because it’s also true no one understood the Messiah would be born of a virgin (Which I do affirm), grow up among men, live a sinless life, die on a cross as a sacrifice for sins, be buried and raised again bodily in the middle of space and time instead of at the end of the age as would be understood, and would ascend to the right hand of God. Notice in this I didn’t include the deity of Christ since Buzzard wouldn’t agree to that.

So based on Buzzard’s words, since no Jew would have understood that from the Old Testament before, then we should reject it today. That would be nonsense for us. Now that we know the gospel, we can look back and see it there, much like once you know who the criminal is, you can look back on the mystery later and reailze it.

He then quotes someone else who says the Trinity in the New Testament is left implicit and undefined. He says the reader is left to wonder what that means. I could figure it out easily. It means the Trinity is there, but it is not spelled out. It is drawn out from taking the Scripture as a whole and it’s undefined meaning there’s no explicit definition of the Trinity.

He also refers to 1 Cor. 8:4-6. Buzzard is aware of Bauckham’s work, but doesn’t interact with him on this. Bauckham sees this passage as Paul actually putting Jesus in the Shema with the one God being the Father and the one Lord being Jesus. If Bauckham is right, then this totally blows apart Buzzard’s understanding as you have Paul, a devout Jew, seeing Jesus in the divine nature and this early on.

Buzzard later says

Admissions that “language is inadequate” to spell out the Trinity clearly have not prevented the printing of oceans of words attempting to explain the Trinity, using the non-biblical language of Greek philosophy, that the One God of the Bible is three hypostases in one essence, and that the Son of God was, incredibly, “man” but not “a man.” ( Did you know that this is what official Christendom believes?) The Bible nowhere, however, calls God “an essence” and never speaks of “three hypostases.” And any reader of the New Testament should be able to see that Jesus was a man.

This is such a bewildering statement! First, this is what official Christendom believes? Show where. Not just that’s what you think we believe, but show the statement. It doesn’t exist. Finally, we all agree Jesus was a man. Either Buzzard is incredibly ignorant here or he is incredibly dishonest. Neither is good.

He also says Paul had a warning against those trying to define God in terms of philosophy in Colossians 2:8. No. He had a warning against vain philosophy. That’s not the same thing.

So once again, I walk away from Buzzard’s work more convinced. Will anything be remotely persuasive in here? We’ll find out.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

Book Plunge: Jesus Was Not A Trinitarian Chapter 1

What is the foundation of Christology? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I don’t know if this one will be as long as the prologue since Buzzard’s whole argument seems to be to reference Mark 12:29, Deut 6:4, and say “Shema” and “Monotheism” over and over. He does reference Ken Samples talking about the importance of the Shema, which all Trinitarians would agree with. At the same time, he does seem to reference Ken Samples as if Samples would agree with him. He would not. I have interviewed Samples and he is indeed an orthodox Trinitarian.

Buzzard does say there is not a word of such revolutionary changes in the nature of God in the New Testament, but this could also be because the idea of a multiplicity in the Godhead was not unfamiliar to the Jews. There is no interaction with the intertestamental literature thus far that I have seen that did inform the Jewish background of Second Temple Judaism Jesus lived in. ONe such work would be the Wisdom of Solomon where Wisdom is presented in terms reminiscent of that of God in passages like the Exodus. I highly encourage readers to read How God Became Jesus. (Unfortunately, my copy is back in Tennessee.)

Buzzard also writes about how a Calvinist pastor once called him a heretic. This is seen as an unloving attitude, but is it? If the pastor really thinks that, is that not more of a warning to Buzzard? We can say all we want that perhaps the tact wasn’t there, but how are we to assume it was done out of an unloving spirit.

Despite this, the next part talks about him speaking and some older ladies in the church come up after his talk and beg he and his family to repent lest they face eternal hellfire. Whatever you think about the doctrine of Hell, I have no doubt the ladies came from a place of love, but Buzzard is apparently upset about that as well. It could just be that Buzzard doesn’t like to be challenged. He also says they seemed unaware of the Unitarian creed (Assumption again) of Jesus and any knowledge of the history of the development of the doctrine of the Trinity was absent.

Ah yes. If only those stupid old ladies were as informed as Dr. Buzzard is. They should be grateful that he just graces them with his presence.

When we get to the history of the doctrine, he talks about the controversy after Arius and says that the fact that there was such controversy should alert us that there is a problem. There wasn’t any of this with the doctrine of God in the ministry of Jesus. In this, there is a big question unanswered.

Why were Jews at the time upset about the ministry of the early church following in the footsteps of Jesus? What were Jesus and His followers doing that was so shocking? Buzzard has already said it wasn’t their doctrine of God, so what was it? What created such a scandal? Thus far, I have no idea from Buzzard.

Also, when the Arian controversy started, it wasn’t the Trinity that was the new doctrine bringing about chaos. It was Arianism. In other words, had someone not been upsetting the apple cart, there would have been no controversy. Also, as was said before, there were problems in actions on both sides. Buzzard will only give you one side.

He also writes about how the average Englishman (Which Buzzard is) who believes in the Trinity doesn’t often understand it. So what? For one thing, if you fully understand your doctrine of God, you have a pretty small God. One problem comes with the question of asking if Jesus is God.

While He is, when we say this, we are using shorthand. It is a statement that Jesus fully possesses the nature of God in His being. It does not mean that Jesus is the Father. We are speaking of God in a sense of nature.

Buzzard also says Jesus foresaw a time of killing coming in John 16:2. Why does Buzzard need to look to the Arian controversy? That killing started with Stephen and keep in mind, Buzzard can’t say it was over the doctrine of God by his own position, so what was it?

He also says that in Matthew 16 Jesus could have said about His identity “I am God, and upon this rock, I will build my church.” Sure. That would have solved everything. Then the question would be “Are you the Father?” This is why the understanding of the Trinity was a gradual matter. Jesus had to show who He is and He also had to show He is not the Father. He trusted us to work it out.

Buzzard actually knows this because he says the same thing when replying to Witherington. He goes a step further and says that any claim to be the God of Israel would have been nonsensical. No Jew would understand it. First off, if that’s the case, then it’s obvious why Jesus didn’t say it. Second, would it be nonsensical? Buzzard has not told us why. He has just assumed it.

The final section has Buzzard saying that the creed was unitarian and thus if Jesus was said to be God, then there would have to be two gods since God is unipersonal. Thus, Buzzard’s assumption that the Shema is Unitarian, which he has not demonstrated, drives his doctrine. We all agree that if God is unipersonal, then two persons cannot be God. The question is “Is God unipersonal?” I can fully say I agree with the Shema. How could I not? I just don’t agree with Buzzard’s interpretation of it.

We will continue next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Jesus Was Not A Trinitarian

What do I think of Anthony Buzzard’s book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So as one who is interacting a lot with JWs on Facebook, I was looking through my Kindle library to find a book arguing against the Trinity and came across this one. I had read a few years ago a book he co-authored on the Trinity as Christianity’s self-inflicted wound. I figured I would go through this one.

Unfortunately, this book is just awful. If you played a drinking game every time you see the term “Shema” or “Unitarian” or anything of that sort, you would die quickly of alcohol poisoning. Thus far, Buzzard really has one argument and he repeats it over and over and over again.

Let’s look at this first instance.

“In these chapters I return often to the central creed of Jesus, the Shema (Deut. 6: 4; Mark 12: 29). I carry on a running dialogue with many distinguished scholars who have commented on Jesus and his strict monotheism. I propose that a vast amount of Christian literature confirms my thesis that Jesus insisted on this unitarian creed.”

Let’s analyze this. The first sentence has the Shema as the central creed. That’s fine. Every Jew would know the Shema well as the defining statement of monotheism of Israel. However, we have a problem when we get to the second sentence when he talks about Jesus and His strict monotheism.

Question. What is meant by strict monotheism? As a Trinitarian, I contend I am a strict monotheist. Is Buzzard saying that strict monotheism equals Unitarian? Is he stating that Trinitarians aren’t monotheists? He has not said what is meant by this term and is likely packing in some assumptions.

However, the final sentence really clinches that possibility. He makes a statement in the first sentence about this being a creed, in the second about strict monotheism, and then all of a sudden in the last sentence a monotheistic creed has become inextricably a unitarian creed. No argument has been made for this position.

The big problem is that Buzzard consistently does this throughout this book. Mark Twain once said that if you took “And it came to pass” out of the Book of Mormon, you’d have a pamphlet. I wonder what he would say if he read Buzzard’s book where he makes the same argument time and time again.

Looking back at this, this is really a sleight of hand that most readers will not catch. For the sake of argument, Buzzard could be right that the Shema is unitarian. However, he needs to argue that and not just assert it.

He does the same thing again here:

I do not think that the New Testament ever reports Jesus as claiming to be the God of Israel, the one true God. Why then should Jesus’ followers adhere to a belief which Jesus gave no indication of holding? If being a Christian means following Jesus Christ, then a Christian’s first aim would be to share the same view of God as expressed by Jesus. The creed of Jesus would automatically be the creed of his followers. Jesus, as the scriptural records reveal, made it perfectly clear who he believed God to be. But churches have done much to make Jesus’ perception of the identity of God at least bewildering if not incomprehensible.

Look at this. The first part of Jesus’s claims is highly questionable as I will demonstrate in later chapters. However, notice this. At the start, Buzzard says this is his opinion that Jesus never claimed this. Fine. However, then he asks why His followers should hold a belief Jesus gave no indication of holding. There is that switch again. We have gone from opinion to a fact that Jesus gave no indication that He had this opinion of Himself. Then once again, Buzzard points back to the creed, AGAIN.

Later, he says that when the church got power in the time of Constantine, they took to persecuting heretics. There is no mention that the Arians were also doing their own persecution. Why was Athanasius in exile? Why was he falsely accused of crimes? He was accused of murdering the bishop Arsenius.

When the charges were brought, the accusers brought forth a human hand they said belonged to Arsenius. Athanasius had a powerful rebuttal when he brought in Arsenius to the courtroom, alive and well, and showed that he still had two hands. Arians were hardly sugar and spice and everything nice.

Buzzard won’t tell you that. He only tells you about what those evil Trinitarians were doing. He even goes so far as to say that could it be the church held a non-Jewish creed because they were really anti-Semites? Such a statement tells me little about the early church, but it tells me volumes about Buzzard.

So thus far, I hope you’ve seen that this will be an interesting one. We’ll see if we get any interesting arguments sometime and I could possibly do a word search sometime through Kindle to see how many times certain words are overused. Keep an eye out for smuggling in assumptions. It seems to be something Buzzard is proficient at.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Can God Be Tempted?

If Jesus is fully God, how can He be tempted? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I was in a JW discussion group on Facebook recently and one of them shared about how in James, it says that God cannot be tempted, but in Matthew 4, Jesus is tempted. Well, that seems to be a problem. If Jesus is God, how can He be tempted?

Let’s right off say that when someone says Jesus is God, they are using theological shorthand. We are not saying Jesus is the Trinity or Jesus is the Father, something 99% of the arguments in this group are unaware of. We are saying that Jesus fully partakes of the divine substance.

We can say also that Jesus in His deity cannot be tempted, but in His humanity that is a different matter. That would be enough to settle the matter. However, there is another nuance I want to bring to this.

When James talks about temptation, he is talking about temptation from within. Where do our struggles ultimately come from? They come from within because of wrong desires we have within us. James is saying that God is not tempted from within.

In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, in Psalm 105:14 and 77:41 (Psalm 106 and 78 for us), both of them use the exact same word for tempted that James uses to describe what Israel did to God in the wilderness. My opponent in the group had said that temptation is tempted when I tried to explain the different temptations. The problem with this is that if you play that route, then you will have a contradiction. After all, if that is the case, then James is wrong and God was tempted.

James is not wrong. James is saying that the Israelites were trying to get God to do something and God wasn’t having it. It was completely ineffectual. After all, what could you tempt God with anyway? Can you make some kind of threat to Him? Can you offer Him anything that He needs? It’s nonsensical.

If anything, we could even perhaps see a parallel here. Israel tempts God in the wilderness. The devil tempts Jesus in the wilderness. This is not saying Israel is the devil, but both of them were playing roles of tempting the deity. Neither of them were successful.

The problem with anti-Trinitarian arguments like this and so many others is that they are basically lazy arguments. There is no attempt to look and see if anyone in 2,000 years of church history has ever answered such a question before. This is what I largely see from Jehovah’s Witnesses, unfortunately. They don’t know what their opponents believe and most of their arguments are against modalism.

The other sad news is that many Christians are unaware of this and will fall for weak arguments because they were never taught about what is really meant by the doctrine of the Trinity. We need to do better. We have a unique doctrine of a unique God and we need to be able to better defend that and show what a difference it makes.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: The Trinity

What do I think of Gilles Emery’s book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Emery’s book is stated to be a book on Catholic doctrine on the triune God. That being said, the Trinity is a doctrine for all branches of Christianity. If you are Protestant or Orthodox, there is still a lot you can get from this book.

Actually, as I read it, I found myself thinking the book read very much like a Protestant book on the Trinity could read. This is not at all to knock Catholics or imply that they are thinking like Protestants, but I did see the constant emphasis on pointing to Scripture primarily. About the only major difference it looks to me is that Catholics tend to cite more Catholic sources and Protestants tend to cite more Protestant sources. A Protestant like myself would not likely go and cite the Catechism in order to demonstrate the Trinity.

Something else refreshing is that while Emery is writing about deep topics, and sometimes it could be hard to follow, generally, it isn’t. Emery doesn’t come off as if he’s writing to academics. He’s writing to the layman, but at the same time, he is encouraging the layman to go deeper. You will find talk about divine simplicity, for instance, and how that works with the Trinity.

Yet as you are going into these “deeper waters” (couldn’t resist) of the Trinity, Emery takes your hand step by step. This is not a sudden plunge. This is a gradual wading as the Trinity is explained at a steady rate until one gets into the deeper topics. You start with just examining the confessions of the Trinitarian faith and then end with discussing the saving action of the Trinity.

For instance, consider the word God. What does this mean? It is a mistake of groups like the JWs and others to assume that God means Father. The first mistake these groups make is the assumption that God is unipersonal. If you make a one-to-one equivalent of God and Father, you have a problem, but if you realize God is not referring to a person alone but rather speaks of a nature that is fully embraced by a tripersonal being, it fits.

Thus, when we say Jesus is God, it is easy to take that to mean that Jesus is the Trinity or some modalistic sense, but what is really meant is that Jesus is a person who fully possesses the nature of God. The same applies to the Spirit and the Father. This doesn’t mean that there is no difference in relation as the Father is usually seen as the origin and the Son and Spirit exist both because the Father exists as well.

The Trinity is not an easy doctrine to understand, if one can really understand it all as it is more likely to be apprehended. However, with resources like Emery’s, Christians can have a better grasp on it. I recommend this reading not just to Catholics, but to Protestants and to Orthodox as well. The chapters are long, but not too long. A dedicated reader can go through one per day and thus finish the book in a week, a worthwhile investment.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: All That is in God

What do I think about James Dolezal’s book published by Reformation Heritage? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

James Dolezal could be the leading voice in Protestantism on the simplicity of  God and how important it is. What is striking about all of this is that you have someone here saying how important this is and the majority of Protestants I fear have no idea what simplicity is. If you go to most of them and say God is simple, they will be thinking you are talking about God being an easy concept to understand, such as saying 2 + 2 = 4 or something of that sort.

That is not at all what is meant. Dolezal says it is the underlying and inviolable conviction that God does not derive any aspect of His being from outside Himself and is not in any way caused to be. Ultimately, all that is in God, is God. He has no parts. He is not composed. No one puts God together.

Sometimes, some people think that this means that God has no physical body. That is important, to be sure, but that is not the main emphasis of simplicity. It goes beyond that. It means you cannot alter God in anyway and that God does not change and that He is not a composite being at all even in His attributes. God does not have love, for example. God IS love.

Dolezal’s main interaction in the book is with a side of theistic mutualism whereby it is said that God needs to have what is called a real relationship with us or else it isn’t real. God has to be able to experience our love in a sort of real-time scenario and be able to experience rejection from us. Our love has to affect God in some way.

The problem is that classical theism, as especially emphasized in Aquinas, held that God was loving already and the source of joy and that we should pray to Him and seek His blessings. Mutualism has not given us anything new. It has instead taken something away.

Too often, the idea starts out with “Well, I’m a person and this is how I function and God is like that.” God is not like us. He is not like us in anyway. This is putting the cart before the horse. It’s like saying the Mona Lisa is like the copy of the Mona Lisa. No. The copy is like the original. The original is the standard. It is not that God is like us. It is that we are to be like Him.

Consider that Scripture says He’s the Father from whom all fatherhood comes. If someone is a father, it is not that they are a father and God is like that. It’s that God is a Father and they are something like that.

When Aquinas wrote his Summa Theologica on the doctrine of God, he first established that God exists. After that, he went on to describe God and the first doctrine he started with was simplicity. Why? Because if you don’t do that, then all the attributes that are described are seen as parts of God and God is a composite being.

But isn’t God a composite being? What about the Trinity?! It’s odd that today, we say, how can the doctrine of simplicity work with the Trinity? For the early church, it was the opposite. How does the doctrine of the Trinity work with simplicity? When Nicea took place, no one disagreed with simplicity or questioned it. What was questioned was the person of Jesus.

Without simplicity, one statement you can see is that each person is part of God, which is denying the great creeds that indicate that each person is fully God. There is no division of the substance. If there is no simplicity, how is it that God is one also? Why not tritheism?

There is plenty in this book to chew on and I will be pondering it more. If anyone wants to learn about simplicity, I really urge them to read this book. If there was anything I would like more on, it would have been the way this works with the incarnation. It’s not that the Son took on a body, but it does look like an entering into time at one specific point.

However, while God is simple, theology rarely is. We cannot comprehend fully any aspect of the doctrine of God. We can only apprehend. I can say reading this book did leave me in more awe of who God is, something I am sure Dolezal would be pleased with.

Another note along those lines though is that this book is very much Calvinistic. I would have liked to have seen it stated that this is not a Calvinist doctrine, but a Christian one. I do not consider myself Calvinist at all and I hold definitely to simplicity.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Simplicity and The Trinity

Can God be simple and triune? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

When talking about simplicity, I have said that God has no parts. This means that you cannot put A and B and C together and get God. There isn’t anything you can take away from God. We could say that what God is, He is that one something.

As Christians, we certainly don’t want to deny the Trinity. I think the evidence for that is overwhelming. However, while many of us, especially in the Protestant tradition, are good at making the Scriptural case for the Trinity, we sadly don’t often seem to go beyond that to the theology of the Trinity and how that would work with doctrines like simplicity. (Never mind your average churchgoer has never even heard of it.)

Something that we also have to avoid is tri-theism. When we talk about the three persons in God sharing one nature, we don’t mean it like having three different humans together and all those humans share human nature. That is true, but they also don’t exist in a relationship such that they’re bound up with one another. Even if you took a family of three persons, the family can still be separated.

In the Trinity, all the persons subsist within one another. They only differ by their relationship. The Father is the one who begets, the Son the one who is begotten, and the Spirit the one who proceeds. (I know Catholic and Orthodox both disagree on whether the Spirit proceeds from the Father or from the Father and the Son, but all agree He proceeds)

Because of this, we can say one of the aspects of God’s very nature is Trinity. However, the three persons of the Trinity are not three parts put together. If somehow the Son was gone, would we say we only have 66.6% of God left and He has to make up for the lack somehow? Such would imply that each person has their own exist apart from the other and when we get to that, we have tri-theism going on.

The difficulty for us here is that we can’t think of anything else in existence like this, but this should not be a shock. If God is real, why should we expect Him to be like us in this way? Too often, the view of God in modern dialogue is often God who is a superhero.

What do I mean by a superhero God? God is not a being who is not radically different from us, but He is like us except a lot more powerful, smarter, bigger, etc. Take a human and power him up enough and eventually you get to God, which is ironically what the Mormons have. God is also an agent who plays by our rules. God is a being who has to live by the same moral principles we do, as if God were subject to morality.

On that point, let’s be clear that what God does is good, but we cannot say it is moral as if God has an obligation to do something for us. God by virtue of being God and the ground of all being can do things that we cannot. Hence, one of the first questions I ask an atheist in this kind of dialogue is “Who does God owe life to?” The only obligations God has to us are those He has promised to us.”

God is not a superhero. God is someone different from us radically. We have lost often in the church this kind of deep theology. Many of us are ready to get the Trinity off of the bookshelves when it comes time to debate Jehovah’s Witnesses, but then we don’t really think about the doctrine outside of that.

So why do I hold to simplicity and the Trinity? Because the other options lower God and I just prefer to say God has existence (Or rather is existence as that is His nature) in a way greater than I realize and that way is triune. The other options are heretical in some way such as tri-theism, unitarianism, or modalism.

I plan to from here on look at other attributes of God and why they matter.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Decoding Nicea

What do I think of Paul Pavao’s self-published book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

The Council of Nicea and Constantine. These are two subjects where we have a lot of heat and very little light. Look at a work such as The Da Vinci Code and you’ll find nonsense on there such as that the deity of Christ was decided at Nicea by a very close vote. One lady online told me that she abandoned Christianity when she found out the canon was decided at the Council and proceeded to send me a link that said that that was actually a great myth about the Council.

Paul Pavao has a book to help deal with this. A good benefit of his book is at the start, he’s not just trying to tell the facts about Nicea. He wants you to know how the facts are known. As he says:

You don’t have to wonder about what is being said in this book. You can look up every reference I give. There are not any other primary sources. Everything else said about the Council of Nicea that is not from these sources is speculation or wishful thinking.

He does just this. The book is heavily filled with endnotes. He does look at the debate at Nicea and points out it could be more accurately said that it was about what the Son of God was made of, what is His substance. Much was agreed on at the Council, but what was disagreed on was sure substantial.

This book also includes looking at several references in the church fathers to see what they had to say about the deity of Christ before Nicea. It’s easy to see that there were no innovations at the meeting. The appendices are filled with several historical documents as well.

As it goes into church history, there are looks at other questions as well. One such question I liked is the one on the Sabbath, though I wish there had been more on this. The SDA church lists several claims about the RCC supposedly admitting that they changed the date of the Sabbath. Perhaps that was out of the scope of the book though.

There is rather substantial pushback to RCC claims about the Pope. It would be interesting to see some members of the RCC respond to this. I as a Protestant agree with the claims and am skeptical of many of the claims my Catholic and Orthodox friends make about church history.

I also like the response to the idea that Constantine tried to destroy all the Gnostic writings. As Pavao says:

If Constantine was unable to succeed in extinguishing the memory and writings of Arius, just one man, do we really believe that he destroyed all the gnostic writings and there’s no record of his even trying?

What about the canon? Yep. Nothing to do with Nicea. There is an appendix with the canon lists from church history in the back. I do have some pushback here as I don’t think the Muratorian Canon really dates to the time it’s said to date to and is really a forgery.

Pavao also stresses that it’s a shame that Christians got so violent over the question of Nicea. We spent years working on our doctrine, which we should, but we didn’t spend so much time looking at our practice. Sadly, today we are still in the same boat. While we weren’t killing each other, remember the problems from the Inerrancy wars in the past decade? I am not opposed to Christian debate as we should have that, but too often we are ready to shoot our own instead of going after our own common enemies.

That is another great benefit of the book. The work is not only meant to help clear up myths about Nicea, which it does a great job of, but it also is meant to tell us how we should better live as Christians. Not enough study has been done on this topic and definitely not enough practice. What does it matter if we reached the orthodox position at Nicea if we go out instead and live like heathens?

The book is long, but it is worth it. It is also readily readable for the layman. Anyone can pick up this book and understand it. I encourage Christians and skeptics to do so. There are too many myths believed about Nicea.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth.)
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