[Vision2020] Trinity Debate Continues

[Nick Gier]

         Greetings:

I've been at a wedding in Virginia, so I'm still catching up on the 
Vision.  I want to encourage Doug Jones in his creative writing endeavors 
because I don't think he has much future as a 
philosopher/theologian.  Jones' promotion to Senior Fellow in Philosophy 
was premature, because this promotion, presumably the equivalent of a full 
professor, would normally require substantial, peer reviewed scholarly work 
in the discipline.  I'm not aware of any such work.

Doug and I have agreed to restart our Trinity debate.  He thought that I 
did not understand the doctrine very well and I chided him for not reading 
my section on Asian Trinities very well (or at all!).  I read both of the 
books he recommended, and I now know where Jones got the "hermit theology" 
idea that he used against an unsuspecting Forrest Church last 
September.  Roderick T. Leupp, the author that Jones recommends, 
incautiously proposes that "it would not do a great deal of harm if 
monotheist were to be dropped from the Christian vocabulary."  Wow, how's 
that for heresy!

For my part I admit that I did not make a clear enough distinction between 
Eastern Orthodoxy and what I will call the Augustinian-Thomistic 
tradition.  (It's Calvin's tradition as well.) As you will see below, I'm 
more than ever convinced that Jones' position is a Tritheism and not the 
monotheism of Judeo-Christianity.  Jones will have to prove to us that he 
really believes in one Godhead rather than three.

In addition to a revised first salvo of 400 words for Credenda Agenda 
below, you will also find a revised version of my entire essay at 
www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/trinity.htm.  The new material is the last five 
paragraphs of the section "The Trinity in Eastern and Western Christianity."

         Jones' principal thesis is that monism ("all reality is one 
substance") is really bad, and that monistic philosophy has led to the 
worship of power, mass conformity, the loss of humor and irony, and the 
rape of women.  With one fallacious brush, Jones paints all of Asian 
thought and most of Western philosophy as monistic and proposes that his 
Trinitarian thinking somehow corrects all of these maladies.

        I demonstrate that most Asian thought is not monistic and that the 
schools that are, Zen Buddhism and philosophical Daoism, contain dramatic 
examples of nonconformism and a consummate sense of humor and 
irony.  Furthermore, there are fully personalized Trinitarian Godheads in 
Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Religious Daoism, and Hinduism that have produced 
the qualities that Jones admires (including dancing), but which are, 
ironically, mostly missing in the history of Christianity.

        John Calvin defines the Godhead as "one simple essence 
comprehending three persons" and he defends a "unity of [divine] substance" 
against the Arians. Although Jones embraces Reformed theology, he appears 
to reject Calvin's formulation when he wrote that "there is no flat oneness 
that could operate outside the communal aspect of the Trinity."  Jones 
doesn't realize that if divine unity is just the mere togetherness of three 
divine persons, then the only logical result would be a polytheistic 
tritheism.

        Jones sometimes refers to the Greek orthodox tradition for 
inspiration, and it is clear that his view of the Trinity is more in line 
with this tradition. These theologians begin with three divine persons 
whose unity is derived from their shared divinity. While the Greek orthodox 
Trinity does a great job of demonstrating the interrelation of the three 
persons, it does not clearly support the substantial unity of God, the 
central doctrine of Judeo-Christianity.

         When Jones recites the Athanasian creed's "the Godhead of the 
Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one," he can affirm only 
the divinity of each; he cannot claim a substantial divine unity of them 
all. In this formulation "Godhead" can refer only to each of the persons 
individually, not as three persons of the same Godhead, as the Trinity is 
normally understood. Jones' dramatic images of the Father, Son, and Holy 
Spirit frolicking together as children make for great religious literature, 
but it is not Judeo-Christian monotheism. Augustine insisted that the 
Trinity has "a single action and will," so he would find Jones' language 
quite unusual, if not unorthodox.

I hope that Jones does not waste precious words (he limits us to two 
400-word exchanges) on saying that he does not attack monisms in his 
"Spoiled by the Trinity."

Nick Gier