6 comments

1. To begin, let me express a light question and then a couple deeper questions (with more hopefully to come). . .

   Question 1: Ps. 104:3 – “Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters:” Blake touched on this and on blue sky (water). What would be an LDS worldview on this verse? Ps. 148:4 – “Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens.” Same interp?

   And another thought. I would come to the conclusion of a third heaven above the heavens of blue sky and outer space.

   Question 2: Is it fair to peg conservative evangelicals with metaphysical monotheism? I remember when Mark Butler use to say that I believe in a metaphysical, Neoplatonic deity.

   Perhaps Blake has already browsed through John M. Frame’s popular book, The Doctrine of God (P&R Publishing, 2002). I see that Blake makes no nuanced distinction in his FAIR presentation as John would.

   For starters, read pages 225-230. “Note that these arguments [for simplicity of God] do not rule out all complexity within the divine nature. Imagine a distinguishable aspect of God’s nature (such as an attribute or a person of the Trinity) that is no less noble than himself, that cannot be removed from him, that necessarily belongs to him apart from any causal process, that is not the result of a movement from potentiality to actuality. It would not be inconsistent with the doctrine of simplicity for God to have many such aspects. Indeed, since simplicity in this sense does not rule out all multiplicity, it might be less confusing to use the term necessary existence rather than simplicity” (227).

   “But Aquinas sometimes seems to deny any complexity at all in God . . . In reality, God is a being without any multiplicity at all, a simple being for whom any language suggesting complexity, distinctions, or multiplicity, is entirely unsuited.”

   “That is essentially the Neoplatonic view of Plotinus, in which the best name of God is One. Even that name is inadequate, however, since God is utterly beyond the descriptive power of human language. But One is the best name we can come up with, since unity is prior to multiplicity and more noble than multiplicity.”

   “Aquinas argues well for the necessity of God’s being. But his argument for a total absence of multiplicity in God is quite inadequate. A biblical Trinitarian cannot argue, for example, that in every respect unity is prior to multiplicity. Nor can he argue that diversity in God is only apparent, existing only in our own minds. In Scripture, as we shall see, God is both one and many, and the balance of unity and diversity in God insures the balance of unity and diversity within the created world” (227). . . .

   “But if we turn away from the scholastic metaphysics and look to Scripture, we may be able to learn something more” (228).
   “As we shall see later, the triunity of God does not conflict with his simplicity, understood as I have described it. Each of the three persons is “in” the other two (circumincessio), and therefore each exhausts the divine nature, just as every attribute includes the whole divine nature.” . . .

   So the simplicity of God, like all his attributes, sets forth his covenant lordship. It reminds us of the unity of our covenant Lord, and the unity that he brings into our lives as we seek to honor him and him alone. The Christian is not devoted to some abstract philosophical goodness, but to the living Lord of heaven and earth.”

   “To my mind, the biblical approach to this issue is far more edifying and persuasive than scholastic natural theology. In Scripture, there is no compromise with continuum thinking, no compromise of the Trinity, and no compromise of the centrality of God’s covenant lordship” (230).

   Question 3: Who would Blake suggest is the best evangelical proponent of social trinitarianism? And would Blake say that among the evangelical articles he has read, evangelicals might define social trinitarianism differently from one another?

2. Todd: Thanks for the opportunity to respond. With respect to Ps. 104, it is fairly clear that it reflects the world-view common in the ancient Near East. The primordial waters exist above the firmament that God creates to separate the waters below from the waters above. When God creates his palace (which the world he creates is modeled upon) he places his throne amidst these waters.

   With respect to the second question, I believe that many evangelicals in fact adopt a different notion of simplicity than Aquinas (but with less logical rigor and with less reason). However, I would (and do) argue that the idea of the divine persons in the Trinity cannot be truly distinct even given this more modest view of simplicity. BTW my definition of metaphysical monotheism adopts the more modest definition of divine simplicity meaning merely that God has no parts — not the additional claim that there are no conceptual distinctions. So I regard (and argue at length in the third volume of my book) the notion of the Trinity as incoherent in the context of a view that maintains that there are not really really distinct divine beings.

   I believe that Stephen Davis is the best proponent of Social Trinitarianism for evangelicals.

3. Question(s) 4:I am ignorant of Stephen’s writings. Thanks. Today, I finally decided to acquire your third book, Blake. I plan on buying it through Amazon. Does it footnote Davis? And does your book interact any with Robert Letham’s Holy Trinity, a recent book that I have read?

   Question(s) 5:You communicate in your presentation: So what does monotheism mean? Well monotheism means there is only one God. But that’s terribly ambiguous; in what sense is there only one God if you have a Father who is God, a Son who is God, and a Holy Ghost who is God? I think that the- if we argue that people who say that those three are only one simply don’t know how to count very well. I think that’s probably a good argument by the way.

   So based on the scriptural text, who do you think the present English Bible overwhelmingly portrays as the one true God? Or would you say there is ambiguity in the text over exactly which being is the only God?

   [Sidenote – I enjoyed much of Mitt’s speech today in the George Bush library.]

4. Todd: Yes, I cite and interact with Stephen Davis at length in volume 3 regarding his view of the Social Trinity.

   With respect to who the one true God is, it is the Father. To believe in the “one true God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent is life eternal.” It is clear that Paul and the writer(s) of the gospel of John regarded the Father as the true God and Jesus as the one sent to do the will of the one true God. Their unity is not a unity of identity or a unity of substance, but a unity of indwelling life, love and glory — the same oneness, life, love and glory that we have been invited to share.

5. Question 6: Again Blake, thanks for popping in over here with me. So I noticed your critique in the transcript against traditional Christology in regards to the incarnation.

   For this Christmas season, how would you properly summarize LDS belief in incarnational Christology?

6. There are two important facts about Christology in LDS thought. When 1 John 3:1-3 calls us sons of God, it links that meaning with the Son of God who is Christ. Christ becomes what we are that we might be what he is.

   Christ is the pre-existent Word of God who appeared using the name of Yahweh as the one sent to represent and appear in the very glory of God. This Word of God was also the angel of Yahweh, the Son of Man who stands before the throne of God and who delivers the kingdom to his Father at the conclusion of his victory over the enemies of the Kingdom of God.

   Christ emptied himself of the fullness of the divine glory to condescend to become mortal. In becoming mortal, he had the divine power to overcome death. The glory that he had with the Father before the world was given to him again by the Father and those who accepted him and became his disciples joined him in the fullness of the unity and the glory that he enjoyed with the Father.

   The key is that there are not two disparate nature that are so different that they are antithetical or logically incompatible in the same person, Jesus. The two nature theory of christology is not bibical and it is incoherent. Rather, there is a nature that is shared between divine and human beings that can grow through experience and sharing a relationship of loving, indwelling glory and unity with the Father. Christology is thus the story of Christ choosing to give up the fullness of the divine attributes for a time to learn from those things that he suffers in order to learn to succor us more fully so that we can grow to share the fullness of glory in exaltation with Christ in the Father. Christology is about the divine becoming human and the human being Christified.