Robert, I agree. I did not mean to suggest otherwise. I was speaking about a tendency I recognize in ordinary church life, including forms I know.

Tjalling said

Part of why it happens so seldom, I suspect, is that the question is genuinely uncomfortable from the inside. It seems easy for church life to become listening, agreeing, and going home, while what Christ cares about in Matthew 25 remains less central than it should be: feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, visiting the prisoner, caring for the least of these. These are not marginal illustrations.
I also wonder whether grace is sometimes received as reassurance without being allowed to become discipleship. If Christians have to be reminded of this mostly from the outside, something has already gone wrong. I do say that as one of the things that troubles me most from within it.

I think at least some churches and communities consider the practice of the teaching of Mt 25 as the most important focus of their mission.
  

Stephen said

Ideally this would be one of those disputes best conducted amongst believers themselves but as an interested outsider it is a bit surprising how seldom this kind of internal discussion takes place.   Leaving it up to the outsider robs the critique of most of its force.   
  

I think that is fair. 

Part of why it happens so seldom, I suspect, is that the question is genuinely uncomfortable from the inside. It seems easy for church life to become listening, agreeing, and going home, while what Christ cares about in Matthew 25 remains less central than it should be: feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, visiting the prisoner, caring for the least of these. These are not marginal illustrations.

I also wonder whether grace is sometimes received as reassurance without being allowed to become discipleship. If Christians have to be reminded of this mostly from the outside, something has already gone wrong. I do say that as one of the things that troubles me most from within it.

Tjalling said
Stephen, people can go back and forth without end on the historical ledger of Christianity's good and bad effects. The very sharp question, for me, is the one you raised in post 22: if the Christian claims are true, why is the fruit so often obscured among Christians themselves? As a Christian I do not want to dodge that. There are familiar replies one can reach for, but I would rather not reach for one here. If Christ is true, then the ways Christians have obscured him are not a side issue. They are part of the burden Christians have to face.
  

Ideally this would be one of those disputes best conducted amongst believers themselves but as an interested outsider it is a bit surprising how seldom this kind of internal discussion takes place.   Leaving it up to the outsider robs the critique of most of its force.   

White's opening statement does really say it all.

Stephen said
the historical/critical approach is to begin by demonstrating the diverse Christologies present in the NT and tracing the development of the idea of what only much later came to be accepted as orthodox doctrine.  

Indeed.

Not one Christ but many.

I will say I’ve often wondered about the move from Oneness to Trinitarianism.  Although I’m sure more than one person has made the move, the only one who comes to mind is Greg Boyd.

It might be time for me to read ** you do not have permission to see this link ** of his.

** you do not have permission to see this link **

White is a Calvinist apologist.  Smith is a Unitarian apologist.

This "debate" is unsatisfactory on multiple levels but it does provide us a view of what I would regard as a fundamentalist approach and a devout response to that approach.

White is quite honest and open about his presuppositions.  And it's these presuppositions that show the weaknesses in his argument.  From his opening statement-

So does the Bible teach the Trinity? Well, that depends on whether you define the necessary consistent conclusion of the teaching of the entirety of the Christian scriptures as fulfilling the Bible teaching or whether you demand specific terminology to be used for a teaching to be present. So if you look up the word "Trinity", it's not going to be found in the Bible anywhere. So you automatically dismiss it. I am saying that when you believe in Sola Scriptura, scripture is your sole infallible rule of faith and Tota Scriptura, believing in all of scripture that the necessary conclusion is that you will believe in the doctrine of the trinity which means I believe that the Unitarians are either bringing in an external traditional lens tradition that keeps them from seeing that God is described and and Jesus especially is fulfilling things in the New Testament. 

Both men think that the Bible is univocal, speaking with but one voice, though of course they disagree on what that one voice is saying. There might be differences in approach or aspect between the various Biblical writers but they are all seen as essentially collaborators.   This approach to the text must necessarily follow from an acceptance of sola/tota scriptura.  There can be no theological or revelatory progression.  All doctrine must be present entire, right from the beginning.  

This is what is truly frustrating about such debates among various flavors of the faithful.  I would want to examine these beginning propositions.  If we ignore this aspect then the whole "debate" becomes terminally ahistorical.  What they are arguing over is not some abstract idea of Trinitarianism that fell from between the clouds one day in mid-first century Judaea but Nicene Trinitarianism, which became official doctrine after centuries of argument between various groups of Christian believers.  (In conversation with Hellenism of course.)  

This kind of debate winds up getting bogged down in arguments over the interpretation of a string of Bible passages completely divorced of context.  

Sooo... the historical/critical approach is to begin by demonstrating the diverse Christologies present in the NT and tracing the development of the idea of what only much later came to be accepted as orthodox doctrine.  

Way too broad for a single formal debate.   

A good translation is a long and arduous process, even if one knows both languages extremely well. Even if I had the time and patience, there are other works that would probably have a higher priority.

Indeed. If only the academy could agree to learn and work in a single language . . . 

Stephen said
As Dünzl admits, if you follow logic only, Arius definitely had the better case. 

Very true if one posit that human logic is capable of com0rehending ultimate reality, whatever that may or may not be. 

I can never free myself from the perception that Trinitarian theology is largely Word Salad, designed to perform a theological sleight of hand, that works very well as long as you don't consider it too closely. In the end a Divine Mystery, a brilliant solution to a problem Christianity created for itself.

I agree Christianity created the problem, but I'm not convinced the core of the solution is merely superficial sleight-of-hand. Speaking strictly at a natural human level, do we fully understand the interplay of the individual and interpersonal dimensions of personality? We are formed to a very large extent by our relationships with others. But I'm already trending toward an Eastern Orthodox an liberation theology slant toward a communitarian model ...

 addendum:  Sadly it appears that none of Prof Dünzl's other books have been translated.  This is particularly irksome since on the list I see a tome entitled Pneuma : Funktionen des theologischen Begriffs in frühchristlicher Literatur !
Dangit.  Somebody with German get on the stick!

A good translation is a long and arduous process, even if one knows both languages extremely well. Even if I had the time and patience, there are other works that would probably have a higher priority.

~                                                                               ~                                                                              ~  

Since I started this thread I've discovered a terrific book entitled ** you do not have permission to see this link ** written by German Roman Catholic professor of Ancient Church History, Franz Dünzl.  As someone who spent much of their career as an "explainer", in my case translating techno-gleep into plain English for clients and client's desires into programmable and testable requirements, I stand in awe of someone who can navigate so expertly through a subject that is famous for driving students to their knees in whimpering despair.  

"Brief" is correct; the book is a survey, barely 150 pages.  This is definitely the first book on the syllabus for my hypothetical seminar on Christology!   Dünzl begins by admitting his own acceptance of orthodox Catholic doctrine on the Trinity but indicates his is a historical-critical approach which takes as its working methodological assumption that the doctrine of the Trinity was the product of centuries of speculation, interpretation, and a not inconsiderable mixture of politics and cultural conflict.  He is particularly strong on post-Nicene developments (which is where a lot of what is traditionally considered "Nicene" trinitarianism actually sprang). 

Dünzl provides what I think is a helpful clarification of Constantine's motivation for orchestrating the Nicaean Council.  It's easy for we moderns to take the cynical view that Constantine was simply using Christianity to unify his empire, but as Dünzl points out, even though sympathetic to Christianity, Constantine retained a traditional pagan viewpoint towards the establishment of religion.   Christianity was a "cultic" religion, meaning that its task was to safeguard the favor of the deity through prayers and cultic celebrations.  Christianity must support the state, of course, because the prosperity of the empire and the successful rule of the emperor was founded on worship free from internal controversy or disruption.  So within this framework it's entirely possible for Constantine to be both devotee and power politician. 

That latter blended dichotomy certainly played out in the struggle to define the nature of the Trinity.  There were struggles aplenty for both interpretation and power.  And at last it became largely a cultural issue.  We see the origins of the struggle between church and state.  And what ultimately became a split between East and West.  Theologically let me run the risk of oversimplifying.  In the West the question became, how can the One also be the Three? In the East, how can the Three also be the One?   A fascinating story. 

As Dünzl admits, if you follow logic only, Arius definitely had the better case.  I can never free myself from the perception that Trinitarian theology is largely Word Salad, designed to perform a theological sleight of hand, that works very well as long as you don't consider it too closely.   In the end a Divine Mystery, a brilliant solution to a problem Christianity created for itself.  

addendum:  Sadly it appears that none of Prof Dünzl's other books have been translated.  This is particularly irksome since on the list I see a tome entitled Pneuma : Funktionen des theologischen Begriffs in frühchristlicher Literatur !

Dangit.  Somebody with German get on the stick!

I think all of his trinitarian theology boils down to his concept of self-communication. God's self-communication in the course of salvation history is truly a communication of his self. The economic trinity is the immanent trinity. If God communicates himself in a threefold manner (creation, redemption, sanctification), that equally constitutes him as a threefold God, otherwise the self communication would not be a true self communication. 

As to the hypothetical question, what if God hasn't created or redeemed or sanctified, all Rahner will answer is, whatever that God would have been, it would not be the God who has actually communicated himself to us. He won't let himself be pinned down on the metaphysical causal order (is he triune in himself *causally because* he communicates himself in a trifold manner in the economy? Or does he communicate himself as triune in the economy because he is immanently triune? The identity of economic and immanent trinity runs both ways.)

And I think that is where he tries to draw a hard distinction to historical modalism. The modalists think of the modes as something accidental to God--there is one God and he can fulfill different roles in salvation history.

But for Rahner those roles are not accidental roles that God can just step into or not; they define who God is in himself from all eternity. 

Andrew Xian Nyhärt, _The God Who Never Flinched: Reclaiming the Cross as Covenant, Not Appeasement_ (2025), 202pp., on 59
amazon.com/God-Who-Never-Flinched-Appeasement/dp/B0FGP39D8H/
Across nearly every era of Christian history, brilliant minds have wrestled with the mystery of the cross.
Each generation reached for the categories it knew best-- legal, political, philosophical, or anthropological-- and from these materials constructed what we now call atonement theories.
These models have sought to explain how the cross works: what it accomplishes, what problem it solves, what exchange takes place in the economy of salvation.
Yet nearly all of them, for all their sophistication and influence, share a devastating blind spot:
they do not speak of covenant.
...these theories... reflect the cultural assumptions of their times more than the covenantal patterns of the Bible.