Category Archives: Unitarianism

2023 Office/Library Tour

Biblical Studies, Blog Stuff, Book Pics, Books (Misc.), Canon, Catholicism, Charismatic Issues, Christology, Church Stuff, Cults/Heretics, Enjoyable Posts, Historical Jesus, Inerrancy/Inspiration, Islam, Language/Translation, Miscellaneous, Movies, New Testament, Old Testament, Oneness Pentecostalism, Patristics, Philosophy, Scripture, Technology, Testimonials, Theology, Trinity, Unitarianism

Last time I posted a tour of my office was during the COVID lockdown of 2020. There have been some changes.

Paul on Mutes

Charismatic Issues, New Testament, Oneness Pentecostalism, Theology, Unitarianism

I just read an article in the May 2014 Focus on the Kingdom (Vol. 16, No. 8) newsletter (which is the newsletter of Unitarian teacher and author Anthony Buzzard) entitled “My Pentecostal Experience” by someone named Kris (the word Colorado follows his/her [?] name after a comma but I’m guess this is where Kris is from and not Kris’ last name).

In the article Kris recounts his/her (?) experience in Apostolic (= Oneness) Pentecostal churches. Kris was made to believe that if he/she did not speak in tongues then he/she was not saved. This is false, of course, but I don’t want to focus on that. I also don’t want to focus on the clearly cultic activities of the churches that Kris spent time in (read the article for yourself and you’ll see what I mean). I did want to ponder one particular statement.

Kris says, “This preacher was also claiming that ‘tongues’ were the initial evidence of receiving the ‘Holy Ghost.’ Despite whatever gibberish these people would utter, it would be taken for an authentic language. However, one cannot claim to have spoken in tongues without having someone verify that what they are speaking is an authentic language. Thus, whenever someone ‘speaks in tongues,’ they are not actually doing so if the language cannot ever be authenticated” (6).

Kris apparently believes that “tongues” are “languages” as in “known languages.” Kris isn’t alone in such a belief. Many people read the events of Acts 2 into Paul’s statements about glossolalia and argue that Paul is speaking of known languages that are likely unknown to the believer speaking them. But Kris goes on to make a statement that made me ponder something I’ve never considered; he/she said, “1 Corinthians 12:30 clearly explains that all do not speak in tongues [languages]” (6).

Paul certainly does say that not all speak in tongues in 1 Corinthians 12:30, or he at least asks, “μὴ πάντες γλώσσαις λαλοῦσιν;” expecting a negative answer. If known languages (even those unknown to the speaker) are in view then I don’t see how this jibes well with what he says elsewhere (e.g., in 1 Cor. 13:1 where he calls them “tongues of angels” or 14:10 where he contrasts them with the “many kinds of voices in the world”).

I think we’re left to conclude that if Paul isn’t talking about inarticulate speech (cf. Rom. 8:26) then he’s talking about mutes. 1 Corinthians 12:30, then, is about people who can’t speak (or I suppose use sign language either since it is a way of expressing thoughts or feelings). Or not. You know, there is a way for the particular Pentecostals Kris dealt with to be wrong and for other Pentecostals to be right. Either way, I think Kris has missed it.

B”H

Thoughts on Dave Barron/Chris Tilling Discussion, Part 1

Christology, Debates, New Testament, Podcast, Theology, Trinity, Unitarianism

Mike Felker emailed me last week and asked if I had listened to the recent discussion between Dave Barron and Chris Tilling on the subject of divine Christology in Paul, and if so, would I be commenting on it on my blog. I hadn’t planned to say anything initially, but after toying around with the headset I got my daughter for her PS3, I thought I  might as well go ahead and record some thoughts. Those thoughts are below.

I’d ask you to forgive me for the scattered nature of my comments and the seeming unpreparedness of them as well. I was going off of my memory of the Theopologetics Podcast, Episode 113, which I listened to almost two weeks ago and didn’t take notes on. I’d also ask forgiveness for the constant nose breathing you’ll hear on the recording. Apparently the mic is more sensitive than I had originally thought!

After listening to the playback I realized that there were a few things that I could have said better or articulated more clearly and there were other things that I had originally wanted to say but had forgotten about in the process of recording. There are also things that I didn’t think to say until after I had gotten done recording. So a part 2 will be forthcoming in which I hope to discuss the role of Deuteronomy in 1 Corinthians 8-10 in a bit more detail. I’d also like to say more about Malachi 2:10. And if I can remember, I’d love to lay out my thoughts about divine agency more thoroughly.

Until then, here’s what I have to say:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/97323218/03_18_2014_ON-BARRON-AND-TILLING-DISCUSSION.mp3″

Quote of the Day

Quotes, Trinity, Unitarianism

Albert McWright:

It is one of the disadvantages to be encountered in this work, that while the evangelical party take only the Scriptures for their guide, Unitarians claim it as a privilege to appeal from the sacred writers to the dictates of unassisted reason. The latter will submit their opinions to the test of Scripture, only when the Scriptures will stand the ordeal of their opinions. Or, to speak with greater propriety, they choose to try rather the Scriptures by their creed, than their creed by the Scriptures. When the language of the evangelists and apostles appears to favor their hypothesis, they are prepared to make the utmost use of its authority; but when the contrary is the case, and the plainest declarations of the sacred writers cannot be transformed into metaphor, allegory, or figurative representation; when the primitive teachers of Christianity obstinately refuse to become Unitarians, or even to be neutral, our opponents are prepared to pronounce against them a sentence of excommunication, and to erase their testimony from the record, as an interpolation, a corruption of the sacred text, or an inconclusive argument.

The Believer’s Defence, 5.

B”H

Thoughts on the White/Navas Debate

Christology, Debates, Trinity, Unitarianism

James White and Patrick Navas took a couple of hours to debate a few texts that have reference to the deity of Christ/doctrine of the Trinity yesterday on the Theopologetics podcast (Part 1 | Part 2). I woke up this morning and listened to the first part of the debate in which White and Navas debated the interpretation of John 12:41 and 1 Corinthians 8:6. Now anyone who knows anything about James White knows that he’s a master debater. The guy has engaged in countless moderated debates with some leading scholars and more times than not he comes out on top. It’s no surprise that he’d win a debate against Navas, all the more since he has truth on his side.

But as ably as he defended the deity of Christ from the texts under consideration, I couldn’t help but feel that he missed a great opportunity to present an even more compelling argument with reference to 1 Corinthians 8:6. White focuses almost exclusively on Paul reformulating the Shema, which is in fact what Paul did, but the myopic focus on linguistic parallels left untreated exactly how the Shema functioned in Deuteronomy; how Paul’s use of it functioned in 1 Corinthians 8-10; and how this bolsters the argument in favor of the deity of Christ. These two sections of Scripture contain some of the most explicit references to exclusive devotion anywhere in the Bible and connecting those dots would have only strengthened White’s case.

If I can find some time later in the day I’ll listen to the second part of the debate but I’m expecting more of the same.

B”H

The Selfless God

Trinity, Unitarianism

My church just celebrated its four year anniversary and to commemorate the occasion we had a number of services and invited a couple of guest preachers. There was a theme to the whole event, which was “From Selfishness to Selflessness: True Servanthood.” On the second night as the guest speaker (Pastor Dwayne Tanner) was preaching I had a thought and jotted it down on a Post-it® that was stuck in the back of my Bible. This is what the note said:

A unitarian god is inherently a selfish god. Before he created anything he was alone. He cared only for himself. The Trinity has always been selfless! The Father, Son, and Spirit have been giving and receiving from all eternity.

This is similar to my thoughts on God as Love, that is, God has to be multi-personal in order to be love since love must be expressed toward another. But Unitarians are fond of pointing out that Jesus said that we should love others as we love ourselves so that must mean that love can exist even if there’s only one person. I disagree with this understanding of what Jesus is saying (after all, he roots the love for others and self in the love of God, but that’s another argument), but let’s grant it for the sake of argument—what’s the result?—a selfish love, not a selfless love. The unitarian god is inherently selfish!

B”H

Unitarian Irony

Trinity, Unitarianism

Unitarians regularly complain that Trinitarians impose Greek metaphysical/ontological categories (i.e., being & person) on ancient Jewish texts and read something into the text that just isn’t there. Then they turn around and say that God is one person. Figure that one out.

Take a brief exchange I had with Anthony Buzzard the other day on Tom Lemke’s blog. Sir Anthony said:

It has been the misguided obsession of philosophy to go beyond the scripture and so to talk of “essence” and “persons” is foreign to Scripture and will always confuse the text, as one language imposed another.

To which I responded:

Funnily enough, you’re the one beholden to Greek philosophical categories in your reading of the Shema. You seem to read it according to metaphysical/ontological categories where it’s talking about God’s being one person. I read it as saying that the LORD is alone Israel’s God over and against idols.

And this is more representative than you might think. I can’t count how many discussions/debates I’ve had with Unitarians where I’ve been trying to talk about what the Scriptures say and all they want to talk about is how the Scriptures were explained by later creeds and councils. That’s a conversation worth having, for sure, but let’s do the exegetical spadework first and then see how the Church came to those later articulations.

B”H

The “Jews Never Believed” Argument

Trinity, Unitarianism

I’ve engaged in a number of conversations with a number of Unitarians of varying stripes (Oneness Pentecostals, Socinians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc.) and many of them have employed the “Jews never believed” argument. They’ll say something like, “Jews never believed in the Trinity,” or “Jews never believed that God could become man.” Two things in response:

  1. Which Jews are we talking about? Pre-exilic or post-exilic? Pharisee, Sadducees, Essenes, or Qumran sectarians? Mastorti or Orthodox? Chassidic, and if so, which ones? Charedi? Chabadniks? What about Reform or Reconstructionist Jews? Or how about Messianic Jews? You get the point.
  2. Assuming that we’re not talking about Messianic Jews (the ones who affirm the Trinity) then wouldn’t whichever group you’re talking about also deny that Jesus is the Messiah? In other words, doesn’t your “Jews never believed” argument get turned right back at you?

“Jews never believed that Jesus was the Messiah,” except, of course, for the ones who did; but then we can say that about the Trinity and Incarnation too, can’t we? Of course we can! It’s right there in the NT, which was written by Jews!

B”H

Paul’s Preformed Traditions

Christology, Quotes, Trinity, Unitarianism

E. Earle Ellis concluded his essay “Preformed Traditions and Pauline Christology” in Christology, Controversy, and Community New Testament Essays on Honour of David R. Catchpole (eds. David G. Horrell and Christopher M. Tuckett; NovTSup 99; Leiden Brill, 2000): 303-20 saying:

In 1 Cor 8:6 also Paul, using a preformed tradition, distinguishes, in binitarian fashion,  deity from deity in terms of “God the Father” and “Lord”. In this respect he stands in the Jewish tradition of what Aubrey Johnson called The One and the Many in the Israelite Conception of God (Cardiff, 1961), i.e. the Old Testament teaching that God is a corporate and not a unitary being. The “oneness” (אחד, Deut 6:4) of God was no more Unitarian than the “oneness” of Adam and Eve (Gen 2:24). Probably Unitarian monotheism was a development in rabbinic Judaism, apparently in reaction to Christianity. In 1 Cor 8:6 and in other passages the Apostle supplies us with the raw material that will later be refined and defined in the church’s doctrine of the Trinity. This deity Christology is not a later development of early Catholicism or even of a pagan-influenced early Christianity. Nor is it limited to the Pauline mission alone. It lies at the beginnings of the church’s confessions,  even in the preformed traditions used by the Apostle Paul. (319-20)

Ellis could have tightened up his language a bit (talking about distinguishing “deity from deity” suggests two deities although he clearly doesn’t mean that) but he makes a valid point about Unitarian monotheism developing in reaction to Christianity. Unitarians often take their theology for granted, but as I pointed out the other day, they seem to be unable to define it without reference to Trinitarianism.

B”H

Trinity as Standard

Random Thoughts, Trinity, Unitarianism

It strikes me that Unitarians seem to consistently define themselves in opposition to Trinitarians. Their theology is consistently compared to ours. The point is always that ours is wrong and theirs is right, but they can’t seem to manage to define themselves apart from us, perhaps they can, but I haven’t seen it. Trinitarians on the other hand don’t seem to have that problem. We define ourselves with reference to Scripture and without regard for competing theological systems. We don’t need to point out what’s wrong with Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness, or Socinian theologies to show what’s right with Trinitarian theology. It would seem strange to have to constantly mention later aberrant theologies in our self-definition. If Unitarianism is the default, then why the constant mention of Trinitarianism? It seems that Trinitarianism is taken as the standard almost axiomatically and then it has to be argued against. This makes sense since all corruptions of the truth have to start with the truth.

B”H