Trinities

Does God's unchangeable plan for his cosmos specify every last event that shall occur in it? Does he unilaterally ordain all that shall come to pass, including your sins? Is all that occurs exactly according to God's secret will, though not in line with his revealed will? This view can be called "theological determinism," and when it is added to some doctrines about election, grace, and salvation, it is often called "Calvinism."

In this episode of the trinities podcast, the first part of my conversation with Dr. Guillaume Bignon, author of Excusing Sinners and Blaming God: A Calvinist Assessment of Determinism, Moral Responsibility, and Divine Involvement in Evil. This book is a sophisticated, argument-packed defense of Calvinism against two sorts of objections commonly given by non-Calvinists (aka "Arminians"): that it takes away our responsibility for our sins, and wrongly blames God. It draws on a lot of recent work in analytic philosophy and in analytic theology, and adds some formidable new arguments to the conversations.

Dr. Bignon discusses his conversation, his commitment to Calvinistic theology, and some differences among Calvinists concerning human freedom and "mystery." Dr. Bignon then defines the important terms of these debates, such as "determinism," "libertarianism," and "compatibilism," and of course "Calvinism." We then discuss the famous passage in Romans 9-10 which Dr. Bignon considers to be the clearest teaching in scripture of Calvinist views on divine sovereignty and human responsibility - claims which in his view make sense only given compatibilism. I briefly challenge that reading of Romans 9, and he responds.

In part 2, next week, Dr. Bignon gives an overview of his many arguments in this book.

Links for this episode:

Do you say that a or the main point of the New Testament is that "Jesus is God," like David Wood, Greg Koukl, J. Warner Wallace, Ravi Zacharias, Robert M. Bowman Jr. or Scot McKnight?

If so, how you evaluate this argument? Do you agree with each premise? Do you agree that each conclusion follows from what went before?

I have argued that this argument is sound, and that all thinking Christians ought to accept it as such, thus accepting its conclusion. The only ways out are denying at least one of the premises: 1, 2, 4, 6, or 8. But 1, 6, and 8 are implied by the Bible, and 2 and 4 seem to be self-evident truths.

With very few exceptions, evangelical apologists who urge that "Jesus is God" have ignored the argument. But now, there is a trickle of responses - and they are by people who do understand the argument. In this episode, I interact with their comments on it. One fusses at the language I use in the argument, while the other urges that it badly begs the question by employing a premise which any (trinitarian) Christian has to deny.

Is he right?

[spp-tweet tweet="Has the Challenge to Jesus is God Apologists been met?"]

Corrections: towards the end I mention NT passages which say or plainly assume that the Father is Jesus's God. I should have said Romans 15:6 (not 15:16) - and I'm not sure how I included Eph 3:13 (only Eph 1:3 and 1:17 are explicit here). Thanks to Jim Seward in the trinities podcast Facebook group for the corrections!

Links for this episode:

In this second half of Dr. Bauckham's 2017 presentation at the Logos conference at the University of St. Andrews, we hear the commenter, theologian Dr. Jeremy Begbie, Dr. Bauckham's reply, and then Q&A time with the philosophers and theologians present. Among others, he fields questions from Drs. Timothy Paul and N.T. Wright. Many tough questions are raised here, and Dr. Bauckham answers some of them, again interacting with the views of Dr. J.R. Daniel Kirk.

In part of this episode Dr. Bauckham says,

There were actually Jewish theological terms for including Jesus in the divine identity, much more clearly than if they'd simply said "Jesus is God" or something of that kind. ..."Jesus is God" could mean three of four different things. Jesus sitting on the cosmic throne of the universe can mean only one thing: he participates in God's unique divinity.

Finally satisfied that I roughly understand what Dr. Bauckham means by "Jesus is included in the divine identity," I comment briefly on his argument that this is what the New Testament authors (especially Paul and the author of the fourth gospel) think about Jesus.

You can find more about the Logos Institute's cutting-edge work on Christian theology in relation to recent analytic theology here.

[spp-tweet tweet="Is saying that the NT "includes Jesus in the divine identity" clearer than saying in the NT "Jesus is God"?"]

Links for this episode:

According to Dr. Richard Bauckham, traditional, Nicene language ought to be replaced by clearer, more contemporary language about God and Jesus. In a long series of publications, he has argued that we should read the New Testament as "including Jesus in the divine identity."

Although this thesis has been criticized as unclear, many evangelical scholars have rushed to embrace this new language, seeing it as equivalent to traditional claims about "the deity of Christ," "high" christology, or that "Jesus is God." Thus, this new interpretive grid has been accepted by various evangelical apologists, theologians, biblical scholars, and by at least one analytic theologian.

In June of 2017 at the Logos Institute of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, Dr. Bauckham gave a talk which seems intended to clarify his theory. It was called "Divine Identity as a Conceptual Tool for Understanding New Testament Christology." In this episode, we hear that entire talk, interspersed with my commentary.

After listening, do you think that he has sufficiently clarified his "divine identity" thesis about New Testament christology? And do you think I'm right in my suggestion here that his views entail that the Father and the Son are something less than selves, something like expressions of the one divine self, who is in his view the triune God?

[spp-tweet tweet="Has Bauckham clarified his christology of divine identity?"]

Links for this episode:

In this episode, goaded by several listeners, I give some of my own thoughts about God and time. For the most part I don't take the time to explain the various competing views.

Without giving a big lecture of philosophies of time, a make a few basic distinctions, and focus on our knowledge of real change.

I'm on the side of those philosophers who advocate Presentism and an "A-theory" approach to time, and on the side of those who believe we have "libertarian" freedom - that sometimes, given all the influences on us and our whole surroundings, there is more than one choice that we can make. This is sometimes called an absolute (as opposed to a merely hypothetical or conditional) ability to do otherwise than we in fact did. For example, you love Coke and Pepsi equally well, but on this occasion you chose Coke. But nothing whatever forced you to chose Coke - you might well, in those very circumstances, have chosen Pepsi. And maybe the soda fountain was low on syrup - so the Coke doesn't taste right, and you regret the choice - you wish you had chosen Pepsi, and of course you know that you could have, back when you were standing in front of both nozzles.

In the last twenty minutes or so, I focus on an interesting incident in Exodus 32, in the aftermath of the Hebrews' fall into idolatry (the Golden Calf incident). On the face of it, this text presents God as literally changing his mind; he was on track to wipe out the Israelites and start over - or at least, he was thinking about it - but after a conversation with Moses, he no longer had that in mind.

Really? How could that happen? I reflect a bit on what it means for their to be a kind of friendship between God and humans, and how this relates to the subject of prayer. But note that clearly, if God even could change his mind, then he is "in time," temporal. In my view, scriptures plainly assume that at various times God is doing X, that he has just done Y, that he is about to do Z, etc.

These subjects of human freedom, time, divine providence, divine foreknowledge, prayer, predestination, and fatalism are huge, and the discussions go back to the 4th c. BCE. Perhaps some time I'll spend couple of months on a series on these themes, going through the long history of Christian discussions of these topics, and doing more justice to the alternatives to my views.

Podcast listeners - are you interested in these topics?

Links for this episode:

Dr. Johannes Grössl is a a Systematic Theologian and Philosopher of Religion at the University of Siegen in Germany.

In this cutting-edge talk he explores four of what he calls in-between views on God and time, discussing work by philosophers including Dean Zimmerman, and William Lane Craig, among others.

Did God wait around for an infinitely long time before creating? Or does he exist in his own undifferentiated time "prior to" creating?

Dr. Grössl takes as his starting point here the Aristotelian idea that time is a measure of change, so that to be in time is to change and vice-versa. As he sees it, the fundamental theological issue here is whether or not God can change - whether or not he is absolutely, essentially, intrinsically immutable in all respects, as mainstream catholic traditions assert.

If I understand him, he disagrees with such strong claims, because God must be able to act in time and to respond to us, and because biblical claims that God is unchanging mean only that God's character is something we can completely rely on, that he can only be faithful to his covenants.

In these charts from his presentation slides, the top, dark line represents God's time, that is, the series of changes he undergoes. This series is distinct from  the series of changes in creation, in the cosmos God has made, and in models 2b and 3, also from (created) time itself.

Links for this episode:

Dr. Ludger Jansen specializes in ontology, metaphysics, and ancient and medieval philosophy. He is on the faculty of  Catholic theology at the Ruhr-University Bochum, and he also teaches at the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Rostock.

In this talk he discusses what, ontologically speaking, is required for God to act, i.e. to perform intentional actions such as creating the cosmos. He argues that these requirements are consistent with God being timeless. Whereas in our case, there is a before, during, and an after for any given action, he argues that this need not be the case with God.

Do you agree?

Links for this episode:

In traditional catholic theologies, the popular view is that God is timeless, that God is not at all "in" time, like we are. In this episode, German philosopher Dr. Ludwig Neidhart defends and tries to establish this view of God as timeless. While his conclusion is old, some of his arguments are new - he invokes the ideas of surfers, the Matrix, and parallel universes. He not only discusses God and time, but suggests an interesting way to think about the relation between God and the cosmos he created.

This talk is interesting to contrast with this one arguing for the opposite conclusion. Which view about God and time better fits with reason? With scripture? With human experience?

Dr. Neidhart  considers about four arguments that God is timeless, arguments which, he explains, vary in their plausibility. While considerations about God's perfection are important, he thinks it is difficult to argue from the Bible to divine timelessness. Towards the end of his talk, he briefly rebuts arguments that the Christian God must be in time (given that he has created a temporal cosmos).

In your view, does he succeed? Does he establish that God is "outside" of time? Why or why not?

Links for this episode:

Dr. Natalja Deng  is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Underwood International College, Yonsei University, Seoul/Incheon, South Korea.

In this talk she presents a portion of a paper in progress on God and time. Dr. Deng first discusses and criticizes recent work on clashing views about divine eternity and God's life, focusing on Stump and Kretzmann, Leftow, Padgett, and McTaggart.

She also discusses this argument for divine temporality, put forth by some who believe in objectively dynamic or "flowing" time (proponents of what are called "A-theories" of time).

In my view, this is a sound argument. But as she explains, some, disliking the conclusion (and perhaps A-theories as well), will simply deny 9. She also discusses a a similar argument which might be endorsed by non-A-theorists, and whether simply being personal implies that God is temporal.

Links for this episode:

In this special episode Dr. Ryan Mullins makes a case that God should be understood as "in" time, and not as timeless, as asserted by traditional catholic theologians ("classical theists").

In classic Protestant fashion, he argues from scripture and reason against certain longstanding theological and philosophical traditions.

Are you convinced? Why or why not?

[spp-tweet tweet="Is God in time, yet not a "prisoner" of time?"]

This is the second talk in our special series from the 2017 workshop on God and time in Bonn, Germany.

Links for this episode: