Marketing in Confusion: A Response to Dale Tuggy, Part 5

Following from the previous section, it serves us well to consider Tuggy’s opening statement, because it betrays a tremendous amount of confusion on his part:

In trinitarian tradition, the one God is the Trinity.

Most fascinating is that he provides no source for this claim, either ancient or modern. It is simply asserted as fact. Looking into his book, What Is the Trinity?, we find a similarly broad claim,

When it comes to Christian sources in the first three centuries, we should translate terms like trias and trinitas as “trinity” or “triad.” These English words are naturally read as plural referring terms, picking out Father, Son, and Spirit – whatever precisely those are, and however exactly they’re related to one another. We can then reserve “Trinity” for the one God in three “Persons” which catholic Christianity made mandatory in the last two decades of the fourth century.[1]

What Tuggy doesn’t seem to hide--and subsequently leads his readers to misunderstand--is that words like “trinity” and “triad” do not read as “plural referring terms”, rather they are singular, collective terms like “flock” or “herd” or “crowd”. Furthermore, in discussing the historical use of the terms, which we generally translate as “trinity”, he undermines his argument by his discussion of what has been identified as the earliest surviving usage of the term in reference to God in a work by the early church bishop and apologist Theophilus of Antioch called Ad Autolycum (To Autolycus).[2] 

Theophilus’ use of the term, in Book 2, Chapter 15, Tuggy admits, “doesn’t betray any hint here that he’s introducing a novel term”.[3] In fact, Theophilus seems to echo a sentiment very similar to that of a contemporary, Irenaeus of Lyon, when he writes in Book 1, Chapter 7, that “God by His own word and wisdom made all things”. Compare this with Irenaeus, who writes, in the 5^th chapter of his Demonstration of the Apostolic Teaching, 

…[Since] God is rational, therefore by (the) Word He created the things that were made; and God is Spirit, and by (the) Spirit He adorned all things: as also the prophet says: By the word of the Lord were the heavens established, and by his spirit all their power. Since then the Word establishes, that is to say, gives body and grants the reality of being, and the Spirit gives order and form to the diversity of the powers; rightly and fittingly is the Word called the Son, and the Spirit the Wisdom of God.

This is important because it directly explains Theophilus’ terms, when he writes, about the fourth day of creation, 

In like manner also the three days which were before the luminaries, are types of the Trinity [triados], of God, and His Word, and His wisdom. 

Both of these men, who lived in the second century, are comfortable with terminology that identifies the Father, Son, and Spirit together, not as three deities, but as one God. So when it comes to matters of numerical identity, which Tuggy’s argument is building upon, there is a clear categorical distinction occurring in the minds of these writers wherein the Who of the divine persons is never confused with What they are.

The Problem of Subsidiarity

Tuggy, however, hopes to demonstrate that the belief in God’s triune nature is troublesome by the introduction of a subsidiary argument. As has been demonstrated in the previous sections, his primary argument has to ignore biblical data, and as a result, holds the door open for a number of heresies to file in. This fact required the creation of a revised argument, supplemented with biblical data, to close any such approaches.

Tuggy’s supplementary argument is presented as such:

1. According to any trinitarian theology, the Father and the Trinity will simultaneously (at the same time, or in eternity – take your pick) differ.

2. Things that simultaneously differ are numerically distinct.

3. Therefore, according to any trinitarian theology, the Father and the Trinity are numerically distinct.

About this argument, he writes,

Nothing to find fault with here. My trinitarian friend, you do agree with 1, yes? And can see that the reasoning is valid – that 3 follows from 1 & 2. And 2 (the distinctness of discernibles) is self-evident.

Now, from a knowledgeable, historically, and convictionally Trinitarian position, there is nothing superficially erroneous with this argument. The reason for this is that the Trinitarian has two distinct categories running in his mind at the same time: the category of Who and the category of What.

As has been said before, when a Trinitarian speaks of God, they can mean one of three things, those are:

1. God in Unity (Yahweh).

2. God in Distinction (Father, Son, or Spirit).

3. God in Trinity (a distinct category of being).

Knowledgeable Trinitarians--and most Christians--will often alternate between these meanings in everyday conversations, primarily between the first two, without distinction, while the third category is running parallel. The problem then seems to be when “God” becomes a stand-in term for one of the other Persons, usually the Father, as the New Testament writers usually are prone to do, and so most Christians by and large. 

Trinitarians, by recognizing that the term “God” has at least two uses--first as a categorical term, second as a substitutionary term--naturally alternate between them based upon the contextual clues present in the text. The problem comes when categories get erased.

The reason that Tuggy’s subsidiary argument, at least on its face, isn’t offensive to Trinitarians is that “the Father and the Trinity will simultaneously…differ.” Well, why is this?

Simply put, it’s the distinction between WHO God is by revelation and WHAT God is by nature, the word “God” here doing double-duty both as a class of being and as a distinct species within that larger class, things that have been expounded upon earlier in this series. We know only of the Father because of the tri-unity of the Persons in God via the Son’s revelation of him (John 1:18), and by the acts of the Spirit in regenerating sinners (John 3:5). These are important distinctions that Tuggy, and those like him, just seem either unwilling or unable to make, possibly because they begin with their assumptions and then approach Scripture, rather than approaching Scripture and allowing it to inform their assumptions.

The real issue though is whether or not the premises of Tuggy’s argument are true. However, as has been demonstrated, his premises aren’t even biblical but are open to any number of heretical alignments that undermine the truth of Scripture and the Gospel itself.

This series continues here.

Notes

1. Dale Tuggy. What Is the Trinity?:Thinking about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Self-Published. 2019. p.27 (Kindle) 

2. Ibid, p. 25-6

3. Ibid, p. 26