Marketing in Confusion: A Response to Dale Tuggy, Part 7: Conclusion

 Picking up from the prior section, we continue examining Dale Tuggy’s claims regarding his argument.

Restating the Arguments

At this point, it would probably serve us well to restate Tuggy’s argument, which is,

1. God just is Yahweh.

2. Yahweh just is the Father.

3. God just is the Father.

4. God just is the Trinity.

5. It is not the case that the Trinity just is the Father.

6. The Trinity just is the Father.

It would also be suitable for me to restate my argument that I have created, based upon the biblical evidence that moves from Old Testament to New, avoiding the heretical pitfalls opened by Tuggy’s, which is,

1. The God of the Old Testament is identified as Yahweh.

2. The Father is identified as Yahweh.

3. Therefore, the Father is Yahweh, the God identified in the Old Testament.

4. The God of the New Testament is identified as Yahweh.

5. The three Persons of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are identified as Yahweh.

6. Therefore Yahweh tri-personal.

Key to my argument is the fact that the New Testament authors necessarily assume Old Testament categories, categories that were well-established and accepted into the first and early second centuries in Jewish theology, so much so that we can say that Christian theology is realized Jewish theology and not a departure from it.

 Furthermore, we must recognize certain Trinitarian convictions, among which are:

• An affirmation of the Father’s deity is not a denial of the Son’s own deity
• An affirmation of the Son’s deity is not a denial of the Father’s own deity
• Ontology is not equivalent to Personhood (What/Who distinction)
• Function does not determine or undermine ontology
• Biblical revelation is the determiner of theology, not the other way around.

That being said, we return to Tuggy’s final appeals in his case against Trinitarian theology.

Grasping at Straws

Tuggy writes, reflecting on his argument,

So, given your commitment to [premise] 1, in order to deny [premise] 3 you must also deny [premise] 2. But in denying 2, you are in the teeth of clear NT theology. God (aka the Father) in the NT is supposed to be Yahweh, the unique God in the OT. That is foundational to understanding the NT.

 As has been noted early on, the main problem with Tuggy’s argument is his unjustified use of the adverb “just” in his premises. That usage betrays, not a commitment to biblical revelation as the final authority, but a prior commitment to his unitarian conclusions. In other words, by his employment of the adverb he is forcing his interlocutor to agree with his premises in order to maintain the orthodox conclusion that the Father is not another God beside the Son, and therefore not Yahweh (Marcionism), or that the Son and the Father are merely time-bound manifestations of Yahweh (an affirmation of modalism), but that the Father alone is Yahweh.

However, that conclusion conflicts with those times that the Son is identified as Yahweh, such as in Mark 1 or John 12, where the Gospel writer clearly makes a connection that demonstrates that the Son is Yahweh, or in those instances that the Spirit is identified as Yahweh. This is why I cannot agree to any of his premises, because the evidence (ie Scripture) tells me that multiple Persons are identified as Yahweh, not “just” the Father. Hence, the employment of the adverb falsifies the second premise and in falsifying that premise it renders his first conclusion, premise 3, unsound. And if any premise is falsified, then I have no reason to “commit to all of [premises] 1-5,” nor do I have “a clear contradiction on [my] hands.”

Mystery of Mysteries, or Misunderstanding Words

The word “mystery”, in English, can be confusing because it is usually taken to imply something that is not easily understood. It is often synonymous with the term enigma, which refers to something being obscure. Similarly, the biblical term, which is almost always transliterated as “mystery” is the term musterion, which has a equally broad range of meanings, most of which have a religious sense to either cultic practice or acts of divine revelation, that is something that God has made known in regard to his will.

 The word “mystery” often implies obscurity or hiddenness when used in English but its use in biblical contexts often implies that it was hidden or obscured but is now visible for anyone to see. For example, in Colossians 1:24-27, the apostle writes,

 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (ESV, emphasis added)

Note that Paul insists that what was once hidden is now revealed because Christ had come and the word of God could be proclaimed to all from whom it had once been hidden.[1] This is to fulfill the escatological will of God.[2] For Paul, who gives us the bulk of our somewhat systematic NT theological thought, “mystery” becomes a near synonym for revelation, meaning that what was once obscure is now made clear to God’s elect.

Once, we did not understand how the various manifestations of Yahweh (Elohim and Adonai) functioned in the economy of God in their relationship to Israel.[3] Now we see in the coming of the Son at the behest of the Father a clearer image of that economy but not an exhaustive one. We see the intent of God in Christ to bring the nations back to himself, but there are elements of that will which are obscured to us.

More than that, we see the Father and Son more clearly because our senses are made alive by the Spirit of God opening the eyes of God’s people so that we can see, what was once hidden from us, and we can see the Spirit now working as well. And while there are aspects that can be seen, it is still obscure, as Millard Erickson has noted,

If God is infinite and we are finite, we will never be fully able to understand him. The fullness of what he is will exceed our powers to grasp. Thus, we cannot expect ever to resolve fully this great mystery. Having said that, however, is it possible that we may at least be able to alleviate the tension somewhat, to make the mystery partially understandable?[4]

He continues by noting that various ways of explaining the unity of God in Trinity have been attempted, either emphasizing the unity over the diversity (resulting in modalism) or the diversity over the unity (resulting in tri-theism).[5] Regarding Tuggy’s claim that denying an argument such as hisnleads to contradiction, Millard notes that a contradiction can only exist if what is being asserted is trying to be understood at the same way and in the same sense, writing,

The doctrine of the Trinity is contradictory only if God is three at the same time as he is one and in the same respect as he is one. The effort of Christian theologians down through the years has been to discern the difference in God being one and also being three. It is therefore not the same as claiming that a particular triangle has four corners.[6]

This means that we (Trinitarians) are fully cognizant of the categorical distinctions that, if ignored, can and do cause contradictions to occur.

What makes Tuggy’s argument so theologically dangerous is that he creates categories that are so narrow, so entrenched, that only one thing can fit into them. “God”, for Tuggy, means one thing and only one thing and wherever that word is used, whenever that word is used it can only mean that one thing, regardless of how the author intends for it to be used. And he proves this by the use of the word “just”.

Conclusion

Throughout this examination I have endeavored to allow Tuggy to speak and attempt to make his case. However, at every turn, it has been shown that he is clumsy to the point of error whether this is with basic logic or with his handling of the evidence.

Tuggy’s unitarianism places him in the worst company of the ancient heretics demonstrated by the fact that his premises leave the door open for those who he would also have to refute because they make contentions that are opposed to his position.

Moreover, Tuggy regularly confuses theories with doctrine. Theories are those things which individual theologians, in their particular historical and philosophical contexts, have undertaken to explain either the relationships or operations of the Persons of God.[7] Doctrine is those things which the theories seek to explain. He does a very good job at representing the particular theories which the ancient theologians taught but does a very poor job understanding the doctrine that those theories were attempting to articulate to particular audiences. Probably the best way to understand the distinction between the two is to understand that doctrine is what we believe, and theory is how we understand what we believe.

Tuggy’s title betrays this confusion: “How trinity theories conflict with the Bible”. Again, theories are not doctrines. Theories have their weaknesses, and it is easy to find those weaknesses when one begins to push against them. In the end though, the doctrine is what remains.

This is why unitarians such as Tuggy are experts at marketing in confusion.

Notes

 1. James D. G. Dunn. The Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon: A Commentary on the Greek Text. William B. Eerdmans Publishing. 1996. p. 119-20

2. Ibid, p. 120

3. The plural is used here only for simplicity in reference to the double manifestation of Yahweh.

4. Millard J. Erickson. Making Sense of the Trinity: 3 Crucial Questions. Baker Academic Publishing. 2000. p. 44

5. Ibid, p. 44-5

6. Ibid, p. 45

7. Ibid, p. 46