Did Jesus’ die as the Father’s shaliach?

This piece is on the subject of agency, in particular about Jesus being sent on his mission as his Father’s agent. That Jesus was sent by his Father to do things that the Father could do - but wanted the Son to do - is common ground for Christian traditions across the board. Thus the Son is 'sent' to 'do his Father's work.' But he is also sent to do his own work: such as dying on the cross.

On the physical level, was Jesus doing things that the Father wouldn't ever be doing? For a crude example, when Jesus is taking a pee after a meal, is he doing so on the Father's behalf? Hardly. 

And - get ready to be confused - where Jesus is acting as a representative of humanity, is that effectively the Father representing humanity with Jesus as his agent to carry it out? That seems a confused proposition, so an unlikely conclusion to draw.

So this isn't simple. The Father isn't wearing sandals to traverse Galilee, the Son is. Would the Father ever?

But there are some things done on the Father's behalf, as the Father's 'agent.' 

So which is which? 

Some commentators explore that 'agent' role. (For example: Christ as Creator (thegospelcoalition.org)) However, that is only half the story, and in fact maybe to degree a misunderstanding. Because virtually in contradiction, you also see commentators say that Father and Son are acting in unity in creation and mission. (For example: God’s Sovereignty in Salvation and the Unity of the Trinity by Steven Lawson (ligonier.org)) On other occasions, the two concepts are woven together and possibly confused. (For example: Is Jesus the Creator? | GotQuestions.org) One is left wondering if people are using the word 'agent' in the same way, as it can mean different things.

So we have two things so far: Jesus as his Father's agent doing his Father's work; but also Jesus as humanity's representative doing his own work. But there's a third thing: Jesus and the Father as joint workers.

And in many situations, rather than agency, the more persuasive reading is that the Father and Son and Spirit are acting jointly. (In my view.) Here's why.

In an agency arrangement with a principal and agent relationship, the idea for practical purposes is that the agent carries out the tasks and the principal does not do so directly. Principal and agent are not co-workers. For example, when a businessman sends a lawyer to negotiate terms of a contract, he leaves the agent to get on with it and not turn up and interfere. He trusts the lawyer whom he sent. If he turns up and starts taking it out of the lawyer's hands, he undermines the process and the agent probably resigns. Turning to the gospels, if the idea were that the Father sends the Son to do a task as agent, then the Father has to be inactive and let the agent do the job on his behalf. That does not seem an adequate description of the Father-Son relationship in the gospels where they are clearly Father and Son acting together at times. For instance, when Jesus says he does only what he sees the Father doing, then they are both clearly active, the Father in heaven and the Son on earth. What is done in heaven is done on earth, as a team. If this were changed to an agent relationship, the Son would say he is doing it and the Father in any practical sense isn't. Instead he says he is doing what he sees the Father doing: co-working in heaven and earth as one. Which means it's not merely agent-principal there. We can add into the mix the idea that perhaps the Father does the heaven side of the job, and sends his Son as agent to do the earth bit of the job for him. That's feasible. But if it's to the exclusion of acting together in unity it can easily become an exegetical mess. 

So while there may be occasions of agency, we must not confuse that with occasions of co-working. I err on the side of thinking that Father, Son and Spirit are co-working, acting together, generally in creation and mission, so the extent of any principal-agent situations shouldn't be over-stated or exaggerated. In fact, a useful comparison is Proverbs 8:27-31 where Wisdom is God's companion at creation, not God's agent. 

An example of being too simplistic would be to misread a verse such as John 6:38 - Christ's words: "For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me." If one is unaware of the scope of Christ's life, one might be misled into thinking that this means everything Christ does is done as an agent. Of course, it doesn't mean that. A child doing the will of his parents is doing what he's told, not necessarily acting on his parents' behalf! Much of the time, this is a child's obedience, not agency per se. It's a bit of a leap from obedience to agency. 

So, over-estimating the significance of the concept of agency (you won't find codified rules of agency in the Law of Moses anyway) can lead to misunderstanding what Christ is doing in some situations. The valid question: when Christ does something, is it joint working; or is he doing what the Father would otherwise do himself (agency); or is he representing humanity? You can only tell in context which of those three things it is. For example:

a) things he does as humanity's representative - e.g. dying.

b) things that are joint work of the Father and the Son - not one doing it on behalf of the other. e.g. sanctifying the saved (1 Thess 5:23; Eph 5:25-26; 2 Thess 2:13). Or indwelling the church (Romans 8:8-9). Or more generally, Jesus doing what he sees the Father also doing: co-working in heaven and earth as one.

c) things he does that the Father would otherwise do (agency) - e.g. healing the sick.

But anti-Trinitarians have made a thing about agency, claiming that it debunks some of the evidence for Jesus being divine. They tend to mention the post-biblical Hebrew word for agent, which is shaliach.

Those are the reasons why I am writing this piece.

The first time I gave any serious thought to the subject of agency was in a secular context about two decades ago working in Whitehall. I was dealing with lawyers and accountants who were representing businesses. Some of the legal stuff was too complicated for the businesses to deal with. So they would enter into a principal and agent arrangement, making an expert lawyer (or auditor) their agent to come to an agreement with government on a range of technicalities. And the person they would come to was me. Usually, I would never get to see the businessman (‘the principal’). I would only get to see his/her agent, who would happen to be the expert lawyer or auditor. An obvious example of an agent to most people is an estate agent. Bear in mind though that not every kind of representative is an agent in English usage.

Some time after this, I saw some Jehovah’s Witnesses in an online debate against Trinitarians using the word shaliach like a playing card to trump some of the Trinitarian arguments for Jesus being true God. It didn’t take long to find out that the word shaliach was being used where they could have just said ‘agent’. That is, God the Father is the principal who sends Jesus; and Jesus goes as his agent/shaliach. This is not actually Bible language, and it was going over some people’s heads. It’s also not actually controversial anyway. Anti-Trinitarians and Trinitarians alike could affirm that Jesus is the shaliach in this arrangement in some situations (where they are not co-workers). But it’s a bit of a scholarly niche as far as biblical studies are concerned. So, for these reasons, you don’t normally hear any mention of it. So why do I think it’s worth writing about now?

Well, I’m recently seeing more anti-Trinitarian use of the word, this time with Unitarians using the word shaliach like a playing card to trump some Trinitarian arguments. This doesn't work, and I want to leave a few words here of explanation. As I hope you'll see, there is room here for discussion and interpretation, but there isn't room for one-sided polemic.

 

WHERE IS IT FROM?

First things first. Is there a formalised law of agency set out in the Law of Moses? The answer is no. That may be surprising as the Law of Moses is pretty extensive. 

Yes when I’ve seen commentators talk about 'the law of agency,' it sounds as if people like us should think it's something we should have learned from the Bible. But, of course, the word shaliach is not there, and neither is a formalised law of agency. 

Nowhere in the Hebrew Bible will you find that particular word, even though you do find the word-group it fits in. That's not a problem in itself, but it means we must search a bit harder. Some Christians who press the point refer to this area as the Jewish law of agency and leave the impression that this is something we should have learned from the Bible. But again, nothing formalised is set out in the Bible. Perhaps the obvious place to look for rulings on “the Jewish law of agency” would be in the Law of Moses, in the Pentateuch, but as said, there’s nothing codified on the surface. You can find narratives where people act out agent roles, but you can't find whatever rules they are following. It took creative work for the rabbis to turn the narratives into something resembling case law later. So it's valid to infer that people are sometimes acting in agent roles in Biblical narratives, but not to over-interpret it in terms of later written rabbinic law, and it's best then not to confound the matter by using an anachronistic term such as shaliach.

So where is it from, the word shaliach and the formalised Jewish law of agency?

It's actually from the Talmud, which only began to be written by rabbis in the 3^rd century CE/AD. Other than Hebrew Scripture, the Talmud is Rabbinic Judaism’s central set of writings and source of religious law. So why is there some law of agency in the Talmud? Well, basically, because it’s needed, of course. Sophisticated societies have situations where one man/woman needs to appoint another man/woman to be their agent to do something, and rules are needed for it to protect the rights of the parties to it, just as we have rules for estate agents. In those early centuries, Roman Law had been building up a body of law on agency, and the Talmud did so too, but with a very different approach.

 

ROMAN LAW AND TALMUDICAL LAW

A word on Roman law first. Much of what scholars know about Roman law on agency is from a 6^th century CE/AD compilation that we call the Digest of Justinian, and it contains a huge amount of collected opinions of Roman jurists spanning centuries. Scholars now are too canny to think that we know exactly what was going on ‘on the ground’ with Roman law though. The Digest is a selection of different Roman legal opinions from different eras, and just because a jurist had an opinion isn’t enough to tell us if legal courts far and wide in the empire were faithfully following such interpretations at a particular time. But it is a mine of information on Roman law.

The Talmud is rather different. It was growing into a body of literature at the same time that Roman imperial law was building up, but the rabbis who wrote it referred back emphatically to the Hebrew Scriptures, especially the Pentateuch, for authority.

At the same time, in the Talmud we can see evidence of awareness of the wider world. For instance, in dealing with the subject of agency, it has this word for a child’s guardian: ‘Epitropos.’ It’s interesting that this is a Greek translation of a Roman term.

The writers of the Talmud knew that a codified law of agency was needed, so that the faithful could carry on business as principals and agents with a seal of rabbinic approval and to protect people’s rights. But how did they manage to extract a divorce law of agency from the Torah when, well, there isn’t such a law there? Through ingenious legal logic. And with an interest in divorce. They observed how Moses gave permission for a certificate of divorce to be given. With an intense focus on the Hebrew words, they concluded that a husband could get an agent to do the job of giving a certificate of divorce to his wife, so that he didn’t have to do it. And that, indeed, both husband and wife could use agents to send and receive the certificate of divorce. They also deduced that a man wanting a wife could get his agent to go and get the marriage contract signed on his behalf. On these findings, the Talmud had a basis to go and build up a body of agency law, with rules for the role of the agent, the shaliach. They also gave very careful consideration to questions such as whether a priest involved in a sacrifice was acting as God’s agent or the people’s agent. Over time a body of law built up, with these issues as foundational to Talmudical law of agency: Paschal Lamb and marriage and divorce; with the whole thing stemming from the law of marriage and divorce initially. The Talmud doesn’t have a specific section all about agency, but it comes up when discussing various subjects. Christians remember: these writings date from hundreds of years after Christ.

But what exactly were the practices of Jewish people in terms of agency before the Talmud was written? There is less certainty. We can’t just read the Talmud backwards through time as if people of earlier times all followed the same rules. We don’t know that. Scholars are increasingly cautious about treating the Talmud as an indicator of the legal situation of earlier times because it is itself the intricate product of specific rabbis who belong to their own time. It is impossible to say that people of earlier centuries would have seen eye to eye with every detail of what the Talmud contains on agency, although the rabbis endeavoured to be faithful to the law of Moses. There are different rabbinic schools of thought on one matter or another. For instance, the Talmud has a tradition that Rabbi Shammai dissented, to a degree, from the view that ‘there is no agency in wrongdoing.’ But then, differences between the Talmud’s law of agency and that found in English law are sharper, albeit there are similarities too.

 

ANTI-TRINITARIAN POLEMICS

How on earth did we get from these matters, which to most Christians are highly obscure, to the sight of some Jehovah’s Witnesses thinking that the concept of shaliach is a trump card against some arguments for the divinity of Jesus? It is rather a stretch. I suspect that little or none of the above is known to the Jehovah’s Witnesses whom I saw mishandling it. In fact, if they don’t know much about the Talmud, they would be wiser just using the English word ‘agent.’ Using a Jewish word does not give a bad argument more force. But they did know that the Talmud’s key legal principle about agency is “A man’s agent is as himself.” (The Talmud is much stronger on this idea from a legal point of view than English law is.) And that is the one thing they latched on to. If the sole thing being cherry-picked is one key principle, then it won’t do for such polemics to claim to use the Jewish law of agency as the touchstone for understanding Jesus’ status as an agent. This is basically using one sentence from the Talmud to understand Jesus, which is unsound. To say that Jesus was acting in accordance with Jewish law is only feasible if we mean that he was acting in accordance with the oral tradition that rabbis taught in his own day, but we don't even know exactly what that oral teaching was. I’ve never even seen these polemics mention that the source for this is the rabbinic Talmud, written long after biblical times. I don’t think they know.

This is perhaps fuelled by Christian commentators speaking in similarly vague terms. For instance, the IVP Bible Background Commentary on the New Testament, commenting on John 5:30, says vaguely “Jesus is thus a faithful shaliach, or agent; Jewish law taught that the man’s agent was as a man himself…” This sort of anachronistic vagueness can help foster as much ignorance as understanding. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I will refer to Jesus as an agent rather than a shaliach for this reason. There was agency in Jesus’ day. We see that in the Parable of the Talents where each servant is given discretion to work out how best to invest their funds to benefit their master. But what we can’t do is to say that Jesus observed the exact same rules of agency as we find in the Talmud.

 

SCOPE OF AGENCY

Another thing the Jehovah’s Witnesses seemed not to acknowledge is that agency is not all encompassing of an agent's personal identity. 

Obviously, the agent doesn’t have to make himself look like the principal. He doesn’t have to dress the same. Indeed, when the agent happens to be a slave, he will probably be dressed differently indeed from the principal. They don’t have to look alike. The agent doesn’t even pretend to be the principal. But he does have to say something like, “I have been sent here to speak to you on behalf of my master.” And the third party in return, for the purposes of the task in hand, has to treat the agent as he would treat the principal. That is all that’s really meant by the words “a man’s agent is as himself.”

Although “a man’s agent is as himself,” this has limits. Taking an example from above, a Jewish man might send his agent to complete a marriage contract for him, but the agent can’t then go to bed with the woman. That would obviously be out of order. It would void the agency contract. Agency therefore does not entitle the agent to all the privileges of the principal. If a woman sends her agent to procure a very nice meal for her, the agent can’t then eat the meal. That would be out of order. It would void the agency contract. The Talmud itself gives examples that illustrate that being an agent has boundaries. (See the paper by Levinthal - details below). This becomes of interest in the study of Jesus as an agent.

The scope of agency in Talmudical law does not stretch infinitely. In practice, it tends to refer to roles in relation to marriage, child welfare, religious ritual, and buying and selling. It is odd to see the word being stretched to include some of the extraordinary matters in the story of Jesus. And bandying about the word shaliach does not necessarily add to our understanding of them. For sure, we cannot assume that all our assumptions about what an agent’s role is will apply here. The Talmud wasn’t written when Jesus was ministering in Judea, and the Talmud in turn is not the same as English law. We can’t be entirely sure what Jesus would have thought are the boundaries of agency.

To take one example. I’ve seen it claimed erroneously that a clear example of the Jewish agency principle - a man’s agent is as the man himself – is found in Jesus’ words in Mark 9:37: “Whoever receives one child like this in My name receives Me.” However, this does not fit the known Jewish law of agency at all, as both parties here represent Jesus. The disciples represent Jesus (“Whoever … in my name”) but the child also represents Jesus (“one child … me”). I really don’t think Jesus is saying “my agent receives my agent” which would mean “I receive myself”! More importantly, in the Talmud a child was not considered competent to be an agent; and an agent also has to be appointed to carry out a task, whereas Jesus is not imagining appointing someone else’s child to any task here. Jesus is speaking rhetorically here, perhaps indicating something profound, but certainly not speaking within the legitimate scope of Talmudical law, and anyone who says that the child representing Jesus is what Jewish shaliach status looks like doesn’t know what they’re talking about. This muddies the waters for the whole verse, and this is not a case where the Talmud can be used to explain the verse. In fact, it looks worse if this is being used to explain that Jesus is an agent. Are we then looking at a situation where sub-agents (disciples) on behalf of an agent (Jesus) are receiving another sub-agent. Would the rabbis of the Talmud even bother to tear this to shreds? This is just one example of why using the Talmud to find agency status in the gospels is hazardous.

In connection with all that, we might ask if Jesus ever heard the phrase 'a man’s agent is as the man himself.' That is an unsafe conclusion due to lack of evidence. When rabbis wrote that phrase centuries later, it was in a context where they needed new laws because the Romans had laws about it, to conduct divorces and business with legal safeguards as the Romans could. 

I've seen a Unitarian appeal to New Testament usage of the Greek word apostolos (i.e. apostle, meaning one who is sent), but this risks mixing up a general missionary call with something different. Apostolos in the New Testament is not really congruent with the role of a business agent or a legal agent carrying out specified actions for specific transactions. (Interestingly, when, at the start of the 17th century AD, people had started translating the Greek New Testament into the Hebrew language, as an interesting exercise - or to evangelise Jews - they sometimes adopted this later word 'shaliach' to translate the earlier word 'apostolos.' Theose translators probably didn't realise they were using a word that didn't exist in Jesus' day. And they probably weren't thinking through the difference between a missionary and a business agent.)

An important point is that an agent is no agent at all unless competent to fulfil the agreed tasks as agreed with the principal. What about creation of the universe in the beginning? It is sometimes said that the Word did this as God's agent, insomuch as nothing was created but 'through' the Word. So let's talk about 'through'.

Prepositions

That is relying too much on the word 'through' as if through necessarily signals 'agent' when the truth is that only sometimes is it used that way. For instance, Romans 11:36 says, "from him and through him and to him." So 'from whom' is not superior to 'through whom.' If this is talking about the Father, then the 'through him' is true of the Father. But it is talking about the Son, then the "from him" is true of the Son. This shows the folly of over-reliance on prepositions. And additionally:

• From him:

1. God (the Father): 'one God, the Father, from whom' (1 Cor 8:6)
2. The Son: 'from his fulness, we have all received' (John 1:16)
3. The Spirit: 'That which is born from the Spirit is spirit' (John 3:6)

• Through him:

      1. God (the Father):  'God is faithful through whom' (1 Cor 1:9)
      2. The Son: 'one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom' (1 Cor 8:6)
      3. The Spirit: 'to one is given through the Spirit' (1 Cor 12:8)

So 'from whom' is not superior to 'through whom.' Sometimes these words are interchangeable. Paul says 'born from woman' (Gal 4:4) and 'born through woman' (1 Cor 11:12).

I owe these remarks about prepositions to St Basil the Great's book On the Holy Spirit. (To really get a grip of these things, it's always good to read more early church writings.)

Tasks

You really couldn't discern from prepositions alone a principal and an agent - it would need better evidence to identify an agent. If you're the agent, you actually have to do the work that's to be done, and no sleeping on the job! An agent is not a passive channel: an agent is the one who does certain tasks directly while the principal doesn't 'physically' do those tasks: that's the point of being sent as an agent. Agency needs to be more than just to being "through," as we really have to think what concrete tasks the "through" is actually signalling. As said, an agent is only an agent insofar as he/she is competent to fulfil the tasks set before him/her. So, if the Word was the "agent" through whom the universe is created, then that means this agent carried out the tasks that the Father otherwise could have done, done by the agent (the Word) instead. The Word did the work, the Word carried out the tasks. But that seems to me a wholly inadequate view of the act of creation, in which we should think of Father, Son and Spirit as co-workers in creation intimately involved together, not a situation of one leaving the 'hands-on' work to another. (I love Graham Kendrick's song-line by the way: "hands, that flung stars into space, to cruel nails surrendered.") They are either co-workers, or they are principal and agent. It's one or the other. You can't be both at the same time in the same task.

So, Father, Son and Spirit are co-workers in creation, unless of course you are one of Jehovah's Witnesses: they believe that the Word is none other than the archangel Michael, that Michael is completely separate from God, and was the agent at creation: this seems to me wholly lacking - how was Michael competent to fulfil the tasks of producing the physical universe? If Michael was not 'hands on' competent in these 'physical' tasks, then his agency is an illusion. An agent is no agent at all unless competent to fulfil the agreed tasks.  

In ordinary human relations, by definition an agent is doing it when the principal isn't: if the human agent is doing it directly, then the human principal isn't doing it directly - so that's agency. That's the point of sending an agent to do the work - so that the human principal wouldn't have to do it directly. So, if we tried to think through Watchtower belief, what tasks did Michael actually do directly that God didn't directly do at creation? In human terms, it's meaningless to say something was done 'through' an agent unless there were actual tasks and the agent directly performed them instead of the principal. The question would be this: what did the angel (Michael) do, such that God didn't? That is the definition of an agent. I just don't see a valid answer to that. But if, as they do, you split God and the Word apart into completely separate beings, then 'agency' turns God into someone who doesn't actually do any of the creating directly, and turns Michael into someone who somehow - how? - can ably carry out the task of creating a universe by himself. Whereas I see it as Father, Son & Spirit acting together, all participating, Jehovah's Witnesses make it principal and agent, with all things made by the agent, but this makes the principal inactive in the tasks. The principal, God, would be only the "legal" creator but would be 'hands on' maker of nothing. Is God really only our maker in a legal sense? That's a problem. 

Perhaps an answer to this double problem will yet be forthcoming from Jehovah's Witnesses.

What more can we say about the case of Jesus being an agent of the Father? Well, those Jehovah’s Witnesses tended to turn their attack on Trinitarian use of the very many astonishing instances where Hebrew Scripture verses about YHWH are turned into verses about Jesus in the Christian Scriptures. So let’s turn to that next.

 

YHWH TEXTS APPLIED TO JESUS

Before we are finished with 'agency,' this is a useful subject to visit: Old Testament YHWH texts applied in the New Testament to Jesus.

A few examples follow, and the first thing that has to be said, as seen above, is that these can’t be dismissed with a wave of the hand by appeal to “the Jewish law”. What matters is to test the Unitarian argument and check if they should confidently dismiss each as merely being about a human agent personally undertaking a specific agreed task directly on behalf of the divine Father. (And I’ve gone for a bunch of out of copyright translations for these six examples.)

 

“for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me [YHWH].” (KJV Isaiah 49:23)

“For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him [Jesus] shall not be ashamed.” (KJV Rom. 10:11)

Here, Paul is not saying that Jesus is fulfilling an agency task. Paul is specifically stating that the scripture about YHWH is about Jesus. This is very clear indeed.

 

NEXT

“But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord [YHWH]…” (KJV Jeremiah 9:24)

“That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord [Jesus].” (KJV 1Cor 1:31)

“But he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord [Jesus].” (KJV 2 Cor 10:17)

Again, Paul is not saying that Jesus is fulfilling an agency task. Paul is specifically saying that the scripture (“as it is written”) is actually about Jesus, where in the Hebrew text it says it is about YHWH.

 

NEXT

‘neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid. Sanctify the Lord [YHWH] of hosts himself; and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread.’ (KJV Isaiah 8:12-13)

‘and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled; but sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord... yet with meekness and fear’ (ASV 1 Peter 3:14-15)

This is not about an agency task, and tends towards ritual meaning and ontological sameness, being about one towards whom the heart is sanctified.

 

NEXT:

‘The table of the Lord [YHWH] is polluted; and the fruit thereof, even his meat, is contemptible.’ (KJV Malachi 1:7,12)

‘ye are not able of the table of the Lord [Jesus] to partake, and of the table of demons.’ (YLT 1 Corinthians 10:17,21)

This matching ritual presence of YHWH and Jesus needs a better explanation than agency, and tends towards ontology.

 

NEXT

‘O taste and see that the Lord [YHWH] is good’ (KJV Psalm 34:8)

‘ye have tasted, that the Lord [Jesus] is sweet’ (Wycliffe 1 Peter 2:3)

Again, this is not about an agency task. It needs another explanation. It is devotional material. The weight of applying to Jesus this and similar material about YHWH tends towards ontology.

 

NEXT

‘those seven; they are the eyes of the Lord [YHWH], which run to and fro through the whole earth.’ (KJV Zechariah 4:10)

‘a Lamb [Jesus] as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.’ (KJV Revelation 5:6)

Again, a different explanation than agency is needed. There is something profoundly ontological in a shared way about YHWH and Jesus both being described as having seven eyes.

I could go on, but the point is made in these six examples. Not all of the application of texts about YHWH to the person of Jesus can be explained away as examples of an agent carrying out a task for a principal.

 

ANGEL OF THE LORD

Just a brief note on an/the Angel of the Lord, which I think is far less significant compared to the above. This is just to say that what we have learned so far about being circumspect about referring to the Jewish law of agency/shaliach again has to apply when speaking about an/the Angel of the Lord. It would be cherry-picking as before to take the rabbinic dictum and apply it retrospectively to something written many centuries earlier. Even if someone wants to explain away some of the very strange biblical appearances of an/the Angel of the Lord as a non-ontological matter of agency, it won’t do to try to argue this by reference to the Talmud’s law of agency or the word shaliach applied anachronistically. Much more work on that needs to be done to make a convincing case that all of the appearances are entirely non-ontological.

 

JESUS

And in the case of Jesus, very surprising things are told. Apart from Hebrew texts about YHWH that become Christian texts about Jesus. More than that, we learn that Jesus breathes out God’s Holy Spirit: but only God can breathe out God’s Holy Spirit. It is not feasible that breathing out God’s breath is a valid role of a human agent, since it is a privilege of God alone, and not delegate-able outside of divinity.

Also, Jesus’ people are a temple in whom he dwells: but only a god has a temple. If he were only human, such would be venturing to do what only God is entitled to do, which would be beyond the powers of a human agent, to put it mildly. Actually, it would be making himself an idol, an entirely sinful thing for a mere human to do, and would void any agency agreement with his Father! A one-size fits all application of the concept of agency won’t do, and certainly lacks explanatory power for such things.

If Jesus and God share the same privileges like this, then a line has been crossed over, into ontological sameness. Throwing the word shaliach at it doesn’t make that conclusion go away. Some Jehovah’s Witnesses would try to dismiss all of this by saying that these are just instances of Jesus being God’s agent, the shaliach. That is, they might try to assert that all of these unusual matters can be explained adequately by saying that Jesus, while being a mere mortal, was merely acting as an agent for God, but that really lacks explanatory power for the kinds of things I’ve mentioned.   

Just as a shaliach doesn’t get to sleep with his principal’s wife, or to eat the principal’s dinner, a mere human agent doesn’t get to be worshipped, or to breathe out God’s own holy breath, or to have a temple to dwell in as divine. There are privileges that a mere human agent doesn’t get. There is a line between the principal and the agent, and there is also a line between divine and human. In the case of Jesus and God, the boundaries between them are hard to see sometimes.

In the name of Jesus

There are plenty of things that don't fit mere agency. For example, the disciples baptised "in the name of Jesus." Why would they baptise in the name of an agent, instead of baptising in the name of the principal? 

As such, it would be no surprise if the disciples had learned to baptise in the name of YHWH, or in the name of the Father. But they don't say that. A mere agent would surely teach them to do so. 

Instead, are they really saying that they baptise in the name of the agent? That would be bizarre. 

Hopefully, you can see how odd that would be if Jesus was merely a stand-in, or an agent. Clearly, Jesus has a status above and beyond agency, otherwise we would only baptise in the name of the Father. We baptise in the name of Jesus, and in so doing, we are the agents, not Jesus.

Summary

In short, some things that Jesus did, he did as his Father’s agent, such as calling his fellow Israelites to repentance. Some things were shared privileges, such as being worshipped, and having their temple to dwell in as divine. And some things were his own prerogative, such as going to the cross. But it would be over-stating the evidence to try to get everything to correspond to the Talmudical law of agency. As such, shaliach is probably not the most apposite word to use. If we must, we could just use the word agent, as Gentile commentators in English with no special wisdom to bring from the Talmud. What it does not provide is a trump card against Christian belief in the Trinity.

As you may well be expecting me to say, I offer up the explanation which I am sure is the satisfactory one. Trinitarians are right. The remarkable things in Scripture about Jesus that I have mentioned above are explained by Jesus being the incarnation of the third 'person' of the Trinity. What was known as the 'Name of Yahweh' in the Hebrew Scriptures, those which tell about Solomon's temple, is now known as Jesus of Nazareth. He is the Name incarnate, the Word incarnate. That is why the Christian Scriptures are so comfortable applying YHWH verses to Jesus, both where it is actually to do with agency and where it isn't.

With all that done, I thought I’d finish with a few thoughts comparing Jesus’ life with Talmudic wisdom on agency.

 

DID JESUS DIE AS A SHALIACH FOR THE FATHER?

A bit of a thought experiment. If we could confidently apply Talmudical law back in time to Jesus, what could we say about him? What observations might we make?

This is where I turn now to the question that heads this article. The answer is: no, Jesus did not die as a shaliach for the Father. I mention this to introduce the point that not everything Jesus did was as an agent (if we suppose that we can use the Talmud as some kind of guide, in the absence of much else to go on). I am confident about this one because the Talmud notes the obvious: if someone could not do an act himself, then he can’t appoint an agent to do it in his place either. If the Father cannot die, then Jesus cannot die as his agent. Jesus did this in his own capacity, on his own decision. One cannot draw a broad brush over the whole of Jesus’ life therefore and put everything down to being his Father’s agent. (There's also the matter of being co-workers.)

Another bit of Talmudic wisdom is that if an agent goes beyond and outside the principal’s instructions, then those extra actions are void in terms of agency. The agent has to bear responsibility for them. When Jesus says he acts only as far as he sees his Father acting likewise, he is effectively acting like someone staying within the terms of an agency agreement. When Satan tempts Jesus, Satan is effectively trying to take Jesus beyond. If Jesus turned the stones to bread for instance, the narrative gives the impression that this is beyond what Jesus thought the Father wanted of him. So he declines to do so, citing Scripture to make the point. When Satan offers Jesus the kingdoms of the world, to accept this from Satan would be sinful, contrary to the Jewish religion. It would be impossible for a sinful act to be a valid act of an agent according to the Talmud, and here again Jesus turns the suggestion down. He knows it is outside the scope of what his Father wants.

One thing that is required of agency is that everything benefits the principal and does not bring the principal any loss. You might have your own ideas about how Jesus benefitted the Father, but one that occurs to me is that he always brought his Father glory.

Anyway, I’ll leave these reflections there for now, so here is my final thought on this. One thing we have seen is that in different times and places there were different moments for deciding the meaning of agency, but there are similarities too. Not the least of which is that there is always work for lawyers and accountants.

 

Further reading:

Levinthal, Israel Herbert, "The Jewish Law of Agency" in The Jewish Quarterly Review 13, 2 (1922): 117–191.

Simmons, L. M., "The Talmudical Law of Agency" in The Jewish Quarterly Review 8, 4 (1896): 614–631.

1 Thessalonians 2:14-16: authentic or interpolation?

The authenticity of 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16 is challenged by some on surprising grounds – mostly because some scholars have a preconceived idea of what Paul can say and they can’t fit this into their view, and what Paul says seems historically premature. There are fundamental flaws in that. But what are those sceptical of the passage surprised by? Simply that Paul is condemning towards the Jews he is talking about, whereas he writes elsewhere more optimistically about Jews in general, and it seems premature for Paul in the 50s of the first century to talk about God's wrath having happened, if we presuppose that the only wrath that happened to the Jews in the first century is the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD. That’s the critics' argument, the “it doesn’t sound like Paul to us, and it’s premature” argument. 

Here’s why it falls apart. First look at the passage:

For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of God’s churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own people the same things those churches suffered from the Jews who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to everyone in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last.

The first problem critics have to admit is that the disputed passage is actually always there, found in every ancient manuscript where it should be found. There are no manuscripts where it goes missing in action. When there are zero manuscript variations to that effect, the objection is immediately relegated to being speculative. It therefore needs stronger evidence on other counts. That is, there is no knock-out punch here, so the argument for interpolation aims to win the bout on points.

The second problem, a clear weakness for a speculative argument, is that critics have nothing else written by Paul in the same place at the same time  on the same theme to compare it to. Pauline scholars sometimes stray into an error of conflating several works by Paul written several years apart at different stages of his life into one theological lump, harmonising it, turning it a single body of harmonised systematic theology. That is a heinous error in handling historical material. Paul’s definitive classic optimistic argument about the Jews being saved was written to the Roman Christians perhaps as much as a decade after his letter to the Thessalonian Christians. To prop up such historical method, you have to assume that Paul had no development in his thinking and no life experiences to affect his view at any moment over that long period. This is not true to human nature. It’s highly improbable. Every scholar in history or theology develops their views over time, and what one writes ten years apart can be substantially different in its development. In fact it almost certainly will be unless one has become a fossil. Speculation built on such method is not likely to be sound speculation.

The third problem for critics of this passage is that it doesn’t quite do what they tend to claim. It does not condemn Jews generally. It condemns the ones in Judea who have hounded Christians such as Paul.

The fourth problem for critics is that to assume that this refers to 70AD, they also have to assume that there is no other kind of wrath that Paul could be talking about. That’s a big hurdle to overcome for any speculation. To pursue that, you have to determine what divine wrath looked like theologically to Paul. (The author Paul is as vague as can be here. He refers to nothing concrete, so a scholar will widen the net for clues.) So, for a start, you have to look at what Paul means by ‘wrath’ elsewhere, and again you are making the hazardous leap into assuming that what Paul means by ‘wrath’ at different times of his life doesn’t much change. So speculation has chasms to cross. But if we were to take one example, here's one that doesn’t help the critics’ case at all. For a start, the only undisputed Pauline letter (going here only with undisputed ones) that uses the same Greek word for ‘wrath’ is, lo and behold, Romans, written probably a decade or so later. But what does this evidence base suggest? There are three uses of the word in Romans, Two of these are vague warnings of future doom, so they are of little help (Romans 2:8; 12:19). That leaves only Romans 1:18, and read in context it is clear what divine wrath is in Paul’s Jewish-Christian perspective: it looks like alienation from God and moral collapse – scholars have long known that this is how Paul thinks about wrath. God gives people over to their own rebellion against him and gives up on them. Theologically, that is divine wrath as Paul sees it in Romans. Is there anything like that in 1 Thessalonians 2:14-1?. There certainly is: it’s that some Judeans have become rebels against Jesus, against Paul, against God in his view. Paul is telling the Thessalonians that some Judeans (note, Judeans, not all Jews) who had hounded him out of Judea have fallen over a moral cliff-edge. That for Paul is precisely what divine wrath looks like in present times – your own rebellion is your own moral collapse. Speculation that the passage refers to 70AD is understandable speculation, but it ignores what wrath actually looks like to Paul: “They displease God.” To Paul, to displease God would be self-destruction, as he believed that to please God is life itself.

The fifth and related problem for critics is that to understand a passage, you can’t just look at it theologically, you have it look at it narratively. Could Paul really think such judgmental things of these Jews in Judea, and not be more optimistic for them, like he is for Jews more generally in his reflections a decade later? The narrative explanation is simple: “the Jews who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out.” It is difficult to deny Paul the right to be negative towards such people, and easy to understand why he would think that their condemnation, their alienation from God, is complete. In fact, even in Romans, there is a hint of condemnation for some of the Jews: “not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children.”

In conclusion, if you are going to speculate that 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16 is not authentic, but is an interpolation, then you have to overcome problems that collectively seem insurmountable.

The final nail in the coffin for this speculation is the undesigned coincidence between those verses and Acts 17:5-8. (See Hidden in Plain View by Lydia McGrew, Ohio: DeWard, 2017. pg 148, 152-154.)

Quirinius? Census? Is Luke 2:1 anachronistic?

Here is a question that is sometimes raised for dating Luke’s Gospel or Luke's competence as a historian.

The NIV translation of the Bible, among some others, takes the liberty of translating Luke 2:1 to the effect that a “census” was conducted across the Roman Empire around the time of Jesus' birth. But did that really happen? And are there any implications if it never happened?

If we think that Luke 2:1 is claiming a "census" took place, then there could be implications for dating Luke’s Gospel. Here’s why. While there is a historical record of an Empire-wide census - counting people and property - in 74AD, there isn’t one for the time Luke is talking about, unless you are basically talking about Quirinius' 6AD undertaking instead. (In the era of Luke 2:1, the Emperor Augustus was counting everything and anything he could get away with, but not necessarily an empire-wide census of people and property covering Judea.) Where could Luke have got the idea of such a "census" in Herod's reign from (if he meant that)? Would it mean (the critics' view) that the 74AD Roman census gave Luke the idea of imagining a massive census in the year of Jesus’ birth? Well, if so, that means that Luke wrote his Gospel sometime post-74AD. That is a reason why some scholars use Luke 2:1 to date the gospel after 70AD. But there is already a heap of ‘ifs’ here. Let’s step back and unpick the overlapping issues. 

The devil is in the detail, and especially the assumptions of translators. In Luke 2:1, the specific Greek words matter. Firstly, whichever way you choose to read it, Luke says there was more than one registration. There are two main options about that. Option A: Luke could be saying that 6AD was the "first" of more than one registration under Quirinius - which is odd because neither Luke nor Josephus ever claims that Quirinius had a second one after 6AD. Or option B: Luke is saying that the one around Jesus' birth was the one "before" the 6AD Qurinius one, but fewer scholars like the translation "before". Either way, we ought to have some sense of why Luke undoubtedly thought there was more than one registration, but I can't resolve that in this post. What would be interesting to develop further is that when Luke talks about the registration in the nativity story, it is here that we find the word translated "first"; whereas when Gamaliel refers to a registration, it is not claimed to be the first. This word "first" is plausibly how Luke distinguishes between the two. 

Secondly, my focus here: these words report a decree to REGISTER i.e. “apographesthai” (not literally the word “census”, and there are alternative meanings - see below), to register ALL THE WORLD i.e. “pasan ten oikoumenen” (not literally “the Roman Empire”). That’s all we have to go on within the verse: "to register all the world". Everything else is interpretation. Let’s break this down, because there are reasons to think "census" is a mistranslation, and it wouldn't be the first time that an exegetical problem has been thrown up by a mistranslation or a misunderstanding.

• “REGISTER”
Simply following the traditions of some translators, and their assumptions about what “register” means, is problematic. Clearly, we can’t absolutely assume without evidence that “register” here means “census” (NIV) - certainly not in the modern sense of a head count or in the ancient sense of mustering an army; nor can we absolutely assume it means “pay taxes” (KJV); or “register loyalty to Augustus” (see this suggestion which I think needs more attention). Census, taxation and loyalty oath are all within the range of activities covered by "register." Perhaps the safest translation is to leave it ambiguous as “register”, admitting that we can’t confirm what was meant by Luke to have been registered around the time of Jesus' birth. 

For the purpose of this post, it ultimately has little bearing as it is an inconclusive translation. Even if we were to suppose that Luke made an error in Luke 2:1, writing some decades later, nothing about dating Luke-Acts pre- or post-70AD is determined by it. That is, an error in dating the registration could be made by a writer before or after 70AD.

But, as said, a date after 70AD will be often be suggested by those who hold that "register" means "census," and this is because the best external explanation for anyone writing "census" is found post-74AD.

So, the issue of dating can be influenced by assumptions of what this "registration" actually was. 

There is another reason why some assume that Luke means "census". Luke uses the same word "register" when talking about the 6AD one (Acts 5:37), but this does not mean that Luke is using such a generic word to mean the exact same kind of thing with laser-sharp certainty. Here I need to expand on the suggestion of an error by Luke himself, as to his placing of Quirinius. In Acts 5:37, Luke a second time refers to a "registration" but which he now associates with Judas the Galilean's troubles (one which historian Josephus happens to uniquely connect with a tax-related registration in 6AD, when Quirinius held an office). Whereas in Luke 2:1, a "registration" is associated with an earlier time - Herod's era (which Luke uniquely connects with Quirinius having some kind of governing influence). Why be certain as to why he gives the same meaning to the generic word "registration" each time?

That's two registrations connected separately by the two authors with Quirinius, unless Luke has awkwardly messed about with a single one (but why then does he clearly say there were two?). As hinted above, anyone who tries to say that both Josephus and Luke are correct usually has to either translate the Luke 2:1 registration as the one "before" Quirinius' registration; either that or calculate that Luke's two registrations where in two periods with Quirinius having some kind of official role in Judea in both periods. If we don't want to leap to the conclusion that either Josephus or Luke is wrong. That is one of the reasons for not leaping to the conclusion that they are all one and the same 'registration', especially as Luke unquestionably indicates there was more than one registration, and he pins one of them to the era of Herod who died in 4BC, and the other to Judas the Galilean's antics which Josephus effectively dates to 6AD. You can see why some people think one of those authors made a mistake (usually pointing the finger at Luke, not Josephus, because they can see that Luke knows about the 6AD census and could muddle things). And this is why some factor this into their thinking about dating Luke's Gospel late (after 74AD). Bear with me here.

For my part, I don't think Luke is muddled, in light of two loose ends that leave some awkwardness for the argument that Luke is conflating together two different moments in time. Firstly, that he clearly says there were two registrations. Secondly, the loose end that his colourfully detailed story of the birth of Christ (Luke 2) does not have any trace of Judas the Galilean's revolt in the background, which it surely should do if Luke has the 6AD census revolt in his mind. It would add colour to the story of Joseph and Mary's journey to Bethlehem. For that reason, I don't see that Luke thought that these two events - the birth and the 6AD census revolt - coincide in time. In that light, he cannot be placing them under the same "registration," in his mind. If Luke had included any trace of Judas the Galilean's revolt in the nativity story, then yes, we could then say that we know he made the error. But he doesn't. Luke's terse mention of Judas the Galilean (Acts 5:37) omitted mention of Quirinius and a registration, but he must have known that Judas' revolt was about that registration. So that does suggest that Luke is conscious of these being his two registrations: in separate moments in time, the story of the birth and the story of the revolt. He was probably conscious that he was referring, or alluding, to a registration in each of those separate stories. Thus, in his mind, two registrations are clearly on the table, so perhaps the first being a loyalty oath, and the second the 6AD tax-related census. Of course, even with a two-registration solution, there still has to be  a satisfactory explanation for what connects Quirinius' name in each case. The explanation for 6AD being under Quirinius is supplied directly by Josephus. The explanation for one under Herod is dependent on Luke and needs a bit of reasoning that is somewhat difficult as explained here.

Let's get back to the crucial issue of translation, and how that at least helps to see what the evidence is. We've seen a range of possible meanings for "registration." Now let's look at...

• “ALL THE WORLD” 
The Greek word for ‘world’ here is oikoumenen. We can’t absolutely assume it means “the whole geographic world”, and similarly we can’t absolutely assume the NIV’s interpretation that it means all of “the Roman Empire”, or that it just means “all Judea”. The question is, whose “oikoumenen” is it in Luke’s mind, given that the only illustrative example he gives merely takes a single couple to Bethlehem? The safest translation is perhaps just “world”, admitting that we can’t nail down whose “world” is intended. But clearly, at least, Luke would not intend the literal whole physical world because he will have known that that went beyond Caesar’s jurisdiction. 

CONCLUSION: All we are strictly left with as an accurate translation is “register all the world”. That’s how I would translate it, with a footnote to say that we don’t know what that means; and mentioning the notable suggestions of translators and exegetes. The ESV translates it more or less the same way: "In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered."

If there are three options for what "registration" means, and "census” is probably an anachronistic one, we need a good rationale for why we would select that in this specific case (NIV translators ought to take note!).

In short, if we were to start from the presumption that Luke has made a mistake, we would have to choose which mistake, and there are different ways of cutting the cookie: e.g. a pre- or post-70AD mistake due to Luke misapplying an awareness of Imperial oaths or tax collection; or a post-74AD mistake of Luke misapplying an awareness of an Empire-wide census. 

My tentative conclusion would be that this registration is to do with making a loyalty oath to Augustus, as the best fit with the text and the historical period (with people being registered for this purpose in Judea and probably wider afield). If it is about an oath to Augustus, then Luke may be correct about it having happened. We know that this was a practice in the era of Jesus' birth. On that basis, I lean towards that, but I wouldn't press that too firmly. 

A critic might still think, even if it is about an oath, that it is a mistake made by Luke pre- or post-70AD, but there would be no certain way of knowing which. So that does not help to date this gospel anyway. 

I don’t think we can date Luke’s gospel from Luke 2:1 – we might try to, but we shouldn’t press our conclusions about it too firmly into service, when no-one can be sure of the correct translation and meaning of it. 

Jesus, paradox, and John's Gospel

How can something be hidden and un-hidden at the same time, clear to children and unclear to the better educated? How is it that something which Jesus’ disciples can hear is in a sense completely un-hearable to others at the same time? To some people this may be a contradiction. To others, it’s a paradox that is only explained by an underlying truth.

For instance…

When Jesus says his words are for those who have ears to hear, he is answering his disciples’ question of why his words go misunderstood. It’s the sort of enigmatic reply that Jesus is known for. Even the phrase “for those who have ears to hear” is curious. It’s a humorous word picture, not a statement of philosophy. Some people who have ears are like people who don’t have ears, Jesus is saying, and therefore they are like a deaf person even if they heard every word he said. Confused?

I’m going to talk about the Trinity. Many people would run a mile at the thought. Discussion of the Trinity has been appropriated by philosophers for well over a thousand years. In my book on the Trinity, I take the subject out of the realms of philosophy and into the world of semitic thought, a world of word-pictures rather than logic statements, where thoughts are often conveyed in narratives and images without explanatory notes.

What's explicit about pictures?

It’s not an easy thing for many in the west to get their heads around this. Western intellectual thinking long long ago had a paradigm shift that separated it from semitic ways of thinking. Valid in its own way, western rationalism serves many useful and important purposes. But it can be tone deaf to the music of the Bible. How do we attune our ears to the world of semitic thought? It’s not just a different way of seeing, but more like different eyes to see with. It’s not just different ways of hearing, but in Jesus’ word-picture, a matter of having ears at all. It’s not irrational, but it is different.

Let me make an analogy that people in the west can understand more readily. Ikea furniture instructions. The sort of instructions that come with pictures and without words. Because they are sold in different countries that speak in different tongues. Ikea know that a picture of a plank and a screw means the same everywhere, and it is most efficient for them to sell their product with universal pictures rather than multiple translations. But what happens when you take it home and try to put it together? One person will be in a state of frustration complaining to a partner that “the pictures are not very explicit,” only to be told annoyingly by their partner, “yes, they are.” The partner will, to their irritation, say, “Look the pictures show you that this size screw goes into this size plank on this side.” And the first person moans again, “That’s not explicit to me,” and the second person just doesn’t understand why the pictures are not clear and explicit to the first person. And it's frustrating at times because Ikea have decided that explicit images are more valuable than explicit statements. I'm using the two different meanings of the word explicit: visually clear and not hidden; or verbally explanatory to remove doubt as to meaning.

The first person might have been happier if Ikea furniture came with well-written verbal instructions alongside the pictures. Because that is some people’s key idea of explicit. But not everyone's. Ikea believe the diagrams are explicit (tested by people's ability to readily follow and understand them).

Another example. Which is more explicit for a child reading a Janet and John book, the picture of the red ball in the air, or the statement – here in the English language - that “the red ball is in the air”? To the child, of course, the image is clear and explicit and sufficiently so, but the English adult wants the child to learn the explicit statement in the English language. It is possible to be verbally clear and explicit only because it has a clear and explicit image first. But, as we become more educated, we forget that the image is clear and explicit, because verbal reasoning becomes dominant over the visual in Western thought. In fact, part of the problem is that we use the word explicit in the two different senses of the word, and we have a view as to which is more important, a bias for the verbal over the visual. 

So much so that if you ask an adult in Britain what it means to be speak of an explicit image, their brain will reach for a qualifier: e.g. “Do you mean sexually explicit images?” (Meaning that there are body parts that are not hidden.) Or we might think of explicit violence in a movie. But change the context, and the language is used casually. The Ikea image is “not very explicit,” but the television footage of a footballer committing a foul in the penalty area “is pretty explicit.” We know the conversation: the foul tackle is pretty explicit in the TV pictures, but not from where the referee was standing at the time. Eyes to see, ears to hear. We still know an explicit picture when we see one. Basically, explicit means that the object, the ball in the air for instance, is fully in view and not hidden. This is rather different from what a philosopher defines as “explicit,” which means that a verbal statement is clearly explained beyond doubt. And the historic problem with understanding the Trinity is connected to the fact that discussion of it has been appropriated by the intellectual verbal discipline of philosophy, and it is hard for Western philosophers to stomach the idea of their discipline ever being subordinate to the word-pictures and narratives of Scripture. It's a bit like the dichotomy between a silent movie and a talkie - in the early days, many critics thought silent movies the superior art form, communicating truth through explicit and implicit imagery, whereas most films later came to be dominated by dialogue. (The rise of CGI has shifted the balance back a bit.)

Jesus claims that there are things that are explicitly clear to children and simultaneously hidden from adults. Contradiction or paradox? 

Another way of Jesus putting it: there are things that are straightforwardly knowable but only to those “who have ears to hear.” Contradiction or paradox? 

It’s paradox in the sense of an apparent contradiction that leads to underlying truth. An image is only clear and explicit to your understanding if you can focus your eyes on it. Jesus is saying that his words are misunderstood only if your ears are not attuned to them.

There is a terrific youtube channel which analyses Beatles recordings to observe oddities that listeners have probably never noticed, with the premise that once you hear this, you can’t unhear it. That’s a great way of putting it. My book on the Trinity does something similar. As I said, in my book I take the subject out of the realms of philosophy and into the world of semitic thought, a world of word-pictures rather than logic statements, where thoughts are often conveyed in narratives and images without explanatory notes. Pictures that, once you see them, you can't see them.

The temple word-picture

I show for example the picture of a triune God in 2 Chronicles 5-7. There we have the word-picture and narrative of God in heaven listening to prayer whilst God's Name resides in his earthly temple and God's Glory fills that temple. I show it to people and we find that once you see it, you can’t un-see it. Being Western thinkers, we can be immediately tempted to try to appropriate it hastily back into the language of philosophy and wrestle with questions such as, where are statements about “being” and “persons,” but the point of my book is to retrieve it back to semitic thought until we have grasped it. The force of explicit propositional statements and the force of explicit word-pictures can amount to two different things. 

The place to start understanding the Trinity is the word-pictures and narratives of semitic thought.  Borrowing the language of science for a moment, we make our observations first. We look at the word-pictures first. We can posit our logic theories afterwards. But we can’t start with abstract theories and project them back onto the Bible. That is precisely not the way to read the Bible at all. That is not letting the Bible speak to us. Remember how the Ikea pictures are clear and explicit in meaning to one pair of eyes and not to another. Remember how the footballer’s foul tackle is explicit in the TV pictures but yet was not from where the referee was standing at the time: once you see it, you can't un-see it.

When Jesus spoke in paradoxes, he did so to makes us think, but not to make us only abstract thinkers. He did so to make us ask, why are we not hearing what others can hear? Why are we not seeing what others can see and understand clearly and explicitly? The ball is in the air and not at all hidden. We can’t solve the problem by being Western rationalists. Other worldviews are available, worldviews communicated in word-pictures and narratives.

Paradoxes in John

Another example. John’s Gospel is a tour de force of paradoxes. John wants to make us think, but not merely to make us abstract thinkers. That’s why he communicates his paradoxes in word-pictures and narrative. Here is an example.

This is by way of a meditation on John chapter 20. Here Jesus says, the Father is “my God, and your God” and later Thomas calls Jesus “my Lord and my God”.

That’s a thought-provoking contrast, but that’s not all. In this chapter, Jesus tells Mary not to touch him and this is when Jesus says to her that the Father is “my God, and your God”; and a few verses later Jesus tells Thomas to touch him, and this is when Thomas calls Jesus “My Lord and my God”. It’s a striking juxtaposition. Here are the verses from John 20:

John 20:17, 27-29: ‘Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not;

for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God…

Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side:

and be not faithless, but believing. And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.

Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.’ (KJV – out of copyright!)

 

This is surely a deliberate contrast - what do we learn from it?:

- Jesus’ first command, not to touch him,

when Jesus says to Mary that the Father is

“my God, and your God”;

and then

- Jesus’ second command, to touch him,

when Thomas calls Jesus,

“My Lord and my God.”

 

The way John relates the resurrection narrative is surely intended to make us think about these two moments together.

The first excerpt emphasises Jesus’ humanity in relationship to the Father - before and after the resurrection the human Jesus has a God, the Father. This is as a Christian expects, for Jesus “had to be made like his brothers in every way” (Hebrews 2:14, 17). We, who are flesh and bone, have a God to worship and so therefore must the flesh and bone Jesus.

The second excerpt presents his humanity (ie ‘touch me’) and his divinity {‘my Lord and my God’ says Thomas to him}. Contradiction or paradox?

John’s gospel climaxes as foreshadowed in the prologue: the divine Word made flesh (John 1:1, 14). In his humanity Jesus is a flesh and bone man (John 1:14) whose God is the Father (John 20:17); at the same time, Jesus in his divinity (John 1:1) is ‘my God’ (John 20:28). So Jesus is Thomas' God. 

(And yes, this leads to worship. Notice how in Rev 5:13-14 the Lamb is worshipped. Some may doubt this, but then note in this context Rev 14:4 regarding 'first fruits' to Christ. This is worship. See how this fits with Rev 20:6: 'priests of Christ and God.' (See also Rom 16:5 on first fruits.) Priests of Christ and God bring first-fruits to Christ and God in worship.)

John loves paradox. It’s signalled in Jesus’ contradictory instructions to touch him and not to touch him, and it goes a step deeper with Jesus speaking of “my God” and being hailed by Thomas as “my God.” It’s not a contradiction, but a deliberate paradox to open our eyes and ears to underlying truth.

And again...

Here’s another way of communicating about these verses about Jesus.

The prologue: John 1:1 presents Jesus as ‘god’ without the definite article in the Greek, saying “and the word was god” (most translations, which a minority would translate as “a god”); and the narrative climaxes in John 20:28 when the Greek unambiguously supplies the definite article, with Thomas calling Jesus “the god of me” (that is, to translate the Greek literally). This verse is normally translated in English as “my God”, not as “the God of me”, obscuring the fact that the definite article (“the”) is unambiguously supplied in the Greek, declaring Jesus as “the God”.

Here in the climax of the narrative any lingering questions from John 1:1 about Jesus’ divinity are answered. He is “the God of me”.

Only the incarnate Son could be “my God” to Thomas, and yet at the same time speak of the Father as “my God.” Therefore to myself writing this post, both the Father and the Son are “my God.” That’s the message to me of John chapter 20. Does it resolve all the philosophical questions we might ask about it? Absolutely not. Is it communicating in semitic thought, in narrative and word pictures? Yes, absolutely. To begin to understand, then, philosophy had to be subordinate to the word-pictures and narrative.

Food for thought

I hope this meditation gives you a chance to think how you might look to Jesus and call him “the Lord of me and the God of me,” the divine Word made flesh.

What I’ve written here is bound to offend some people. Why? The answer is in narrative:

And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the son of David; they were sore displeased,

And said unto him, Hearest thou what these say? And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise? (Matthew 21:15-16 KJV)

Sometimes hard to take for those of us with an extensive Western education, but Paul wrote: “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise” (1 Cor 1:27). Contradiction or paradox? You decide. John Lennon once, commenting on how musicologists were analysing Beatles' songs, said that intellectuals have proven that you can be a genius and not have a clue what's going on. In my life, I often come back to that. 

Review by Eddie Arthur of my book 'God in 3D'

Review by Eddie Arthur of my book God in 3D: Finding the Trinity in the Bible and the Church Fathers

Reproduced here with permission  

Books I Have Read: God in 3D

The thing about this book is that it is completely novel. You won’t find discussion of persons, essences or hypostases. It takes an approach to the Trinity which is rooted in Biblical theology rather than in dogmatics.

I’ve read a lot of books on the Trinity over the years, but nothing quite like God in 3D: Finding the Trinity in The Bible and the Church Fathers by Colin Green. It’s a fascinating book built around the central, simple theme that the Old Testament description of the Temple contains basic threads that point to the triune nature of God, which is more fully revealed in the New Testament.

The book is a medium format paperback of just over 250 pages. The style is probably best described as academic-light. It is aimed at a general readership, and there is a light smattering of footnotes and a good bibliography. Unfortunately, it will set you back about £20 for a paperback at and even the Kindle version is not cheap (don’t even think about buying the hardback).

"This is a journey to discover how the first Christians were primed by the temple stories of the Old Testament and prepared by Jesus to understand the three-in-one God – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit." (p. 1)

"You don’t need to have had any special training. This book is for the train or untrained reader alike, for anyone who wants to understand the Trinity, and for anyone who may have doubts about understanding it." (p. 2)

It is difficult, nay impossible, in a short review to give a detailed overview of the argument of a book like this one. The central theme is that when the Old Testament speaks of God’s Name and His Glory dwelling in the Temple, these point to the Son and the Spirit, who while the transcendent God (the Father ) dwells in heaven. I will admit that I didn’t find the first chapter which introduced this topic very convincing. However, there is an appendix which outlines the academic case for the argument which I found very helpful. I would suggest reading this appendix either before or immediately after, reading the first chapter.

Having set out his case, the author goes on to demonstrate how the themes of the book are present through the New Testament and on into the writings of the Fathers. There is an important chapter on discipleship, a theme which distressingly is often missing from popular books on the Trinity. This chapter has helpful suggestions on prayer, reading the Bible, the Lord’s supper and the communal life of the church.

The thing about this book is that it is completely novel. You won’t find discussion of persons, essences or hypostases. It takes an approach to the Trinity which is rooted in Biblical theology rather than in dogmatics. I will leave it to the systematic theologians to discuss the merits or demerits of this approach. From my point of view, it presents a welcome alternative to some of the of the Trinitarian literature that I have read. It made me think and reflect on my own practice, rather than wrack my brains trying to understand what was going on – and that’s never a bad thing.

Who should read this book? I wouldn’t give it to someone who had never really thought about the Trinity, I’d offer someone like that Delighting in the Trinity by Tim Chester. However, for someone who has read a little theology and wants to know more, this would be an excellent follow up book to some of the basics. If only it didn’t cost so much.

I was provided with a review copy of this book by the author, but I have tried not to let this generosity influence my review. If I thought it was a stinker, I would have said so.

This review was originally posted at: https://www.kouya.net/?p=11062

Book review: Dale Tuggy’s ‘Trinity,’ independently published 2013

 

Dale Tuggy’s book began life as an encyclopaedia article on the Stanford website. It is rather like the curate’s egg - good in parts. As for what it sets out to do, Tuggy writes: ‘This article surveys these recent “rational reconstructions” of the Trinity doctrine, which centrally employs [sic] concepts from contemporary analytic metaphysics, logic, and epistemology‘ (pg 1). This is an interesting endeavour, given that recent “rational reconstructions” are a rather niche area, and a good summary is to be welcomed.

Nonetheless, its survey falls a bit short of that aim for reasons I’ll explain. The key part of such a book is its review of what other scholars have written on the subject, and we find mixed results. There are two main flaws. One flaw is erroneous readings of other scholars’ work. I will give three examples of this.

First example: Tuggy’s paraphrase of James Anderson. (This example refers to James Anderson, Paradox in Christian Theology: An Analysis of its Presence, Character and Epistemic Status, Paternoster, 2007.) Tuggy writes: “Orthodox belief about the Trinity, Anderson holds, involves one in believing for example, that Jesus is identical to God, the Father is identical to God, and that Jesus and the Father are not identical” (Tuggy pg 47). Tuggy’s citation is pages 11-59 of Anderson’s book. On checking, I can’t see Anderson say that. Perhaps Tuggy has in mind what Anderson writes on pg 30, but if so it is an erroneous paraphrase of this: “the Father is identical with, not distinct from, the one divine ousia (essence, substance, Godhead); likewise for the Son and Spirit.” It is frustrating when checking a source reveals something different from what is claimed. Saying “identical” to “God” (as a count noun) is, I’m sure, not what Anderson meant by saying “identical with… the one divine ousia.” This is a serious difference.

Second example: Tuggy claims that “Augustine’s mediaeval successors all reject three-self approaches to the Trinity.” (One- and three-self theories are central to the book, as I’ll explain.) Tuggy’s citation for this is Richard Cross’s article in Rethinking Trinitarian Theology: Disputed Questions and Contemporary Issues in Trinitarian Theology, T&T Clark, 2012.) Tuggy cites pages 26-27 of it. However, turning to it we find that it doesn’t refer to “three-self” anything. Rather, Cross’s book does say this: “Medieval views of the Trinity are all clearly in the so-called ‘Latin’ camp” (Cross, pg 27). Tuggy imposes his ‘one/three-self’ framework, categorising the ‘Latin camp’ as 'one-self', as if these were equivalent – and he does not make it clear that this is his take on Cross, not really what Cross is saying.  

Third example: Tuggy seems to attribute to Richard Cross (Duns Scotus, Oxford University Press, 1999, page 69) this thought - Tuggy writes: “The persons, as it were, partially but don’t entirely “overlap”, as each is also partly composed of a unique personal property…” So, Tuggy. But this is not what Cross is saying. Indeed my suspicions were alerted by Tuggy’s peculiar talk of a person “partly composed of a… property.” What Cross actually writes is this: “What Scotus means is that the Father is not a part of the Son; not being the Father is a necessary property of the Son. (It is not a necessary property of the divine essence; hence the Father is formally distinct from the divine essence, but really distinct [in the relevant sense] from the Son.)” (Cross, pg 69). Contrary to Tuggy, Cross is not saying a divine person being “partly composed of a… property” - again, a serious difference. (Curiously, such is the sort of thing some Unitarians say pejoratively when talking about the doctrine of the Trinity, and Tuggy is a Unitarian.)

To be clear, the only citations that I cross-checked were those three, and all three are erroneous readings of those scholars. Why? It's troubling.

I said two main flaws, and the other is to do with how Tuggy uses a one/three-self idea. The thing is, that part of his book/encyclopaedia article is meant to be a literature review of writers’ ideas. But the writers he covers have largely not considered the sort of one/three-self framework Tuggy writes about. But his literature review gives the impression of centuries’ old ‘one/three-self’ debate and of such authors participating in it. To show why this is problematic, a bit more detail.

Tuggy centre-stages the idea of a “one-self God.” He claims, “God in the Bible is always portrayed as a great self” (pg 4). This may well strike the reader as odd. It’s not a Bible phrase, let alone "always." It’s also not something you usually hear people describing the God of the Bible as: "a great self"! No sirree. He quotes Brian Leftow using the term “one-self” for God (pg 8) and Swinburne. That’s it. And yet Tuggy’s literature review features much talk of a “one-self Trinity” and a “three-self Trinity” in a way that the literature he reviews doesn’t generally correspond to. Theologians through history who never classified their work in this way are nevertheless assigned to these categories by Tuggy, and the paradigm for this is his definition of 'self,' which is not one of theological depth or nuance. (I hope he wouldn't mind me saying that. It's not meant as a criticism.) So let’s see how this second main flaw plays out. (Curiously. Francis Joseph Hall (1857–1932) doesn’t get a mention or a bibliography entry. Hall, however, brings a theological nuance to ‘self’ that Tuggy might have wanted to visit.) 

So, under his classification of “one-self” Trinity theory: Tuggy claims that Barth and Rahner “endorse one-self Trinity theories” (pg 6) even though Barth scholars, for example, will be wondering when Barth ever did “endorse” such a thing (is it really appropriate to re-frame Barth’s divine self and modes this way?); also Leftow; and “Augustine is arguably a one-self trinitarian” (pg 90). Tuggy rather imposes his taxonomy on Augustine: “One must say “three persons”, but for Augustine these are not three selves” (pg 91). I’m pretty sure that question was never even put to Augustine. If it were possible to time travel, Augustine would no doubt not rely on Tuggy’s definition of ‘self’ anyway for the purposes of theology, but would draw up a definition and come to any conclusions on that basis under his own control. (I mention Tuggy’s ‘self’ definition further below.)

Unfortunately, what Tuggy is doing is veering off from the regular job of a literature review, which should actually be allowing authors to speak clearly, not to awkwardly squidge them into categories they didn’t choose for themselves. Some taxonomy may be inevitable, but not done like this. It becomes apparent why some of Tuggy’s citations give entirely the wrong impression of what other scholars have said - see my three examples above – it’s because Tuggy is pressing them into service to do something other than a literature review normally would.

Under his classification of “three-self Trinity theory” (a.k.a Constitution Trinitarianism – pg 21) Tuggy lists, for instance, Rea and Brower, Stephen T. Davis, and Hasker. Again, is this really the task of a literature review?

Tuggy’s definition then: “A self is being which is in principle capable of knowledge, intentional action, and interpersonal relationships. A god is commonly understood to be a sort of extraordinary self” (pg 3). A common understanding? Common among whom? (Besides, the term “self” seems rather limiting to me as a descriptor for a transcendent God. It seems to define the individual by their ability to do something instead of by any spiritual barometer.) It seems that what Tuggy is trying to do is to persuade us that ‘self’ should be central to our discourse by presenting it as if it has already been central to our discourse for a long time, which is questionable to put it mildly. I'd add that Tuggy's definition of 'self' defaults to a basically secular one, rather than an intrinsically Christian one - more on that below. 

With so many problems, it would be difficult to conclude that this is a successful literature review. Where does that leave this book? To recap, Tuggy’s book sets out to review recent philosophical discussions about the Trinity, particularly novel and experimental thought (a brave endeavour to review it). It is thought-games that philosophers play, a cat and mouse game of whether Unitarians or Trinitarians (and which ones) can erect a better philosophical framework of words and logic to explain or dismiss theories about the Trinity. But like Tom and Jerry, the fight always has another day. A lot of theologians are averse to the experimental approach to the doctrine as unnecessary and risking unorthodoxy, and so this sort of material is simply not in view across a wide range of published work on the Trinity.

This short book is written as a history spanning centuries, and it necessarily does so in a concise way, and it can’t be expected to be comprehensive. If you were hoping to find the likes of Moltmann or Pinnock given a mention here, you’ll be disappointed.  The emphasis though is on new experimental suggestions about the Trinity.

A note of caution: the reader needs to know, before reading this book, the basics of the doctrine of the Trinity, or otherwise could be left with quite the wrong impression of what it is. One would expect accuracy from Tuggy who has decades of study behind him. And yet one finds this on page 1 about the traditional doctrine of the Trinity:

“The guiding principle has been the creedal declaration that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit of the New Testament are consubstantial… this is understood to mean that all three named individuals are divine.”

Individuals? Understood as 'individuals' by whom? Not by everyone of course. Not by many at all. Rather than a traditional creedal definition, it is instead a rather extreme expression of Social Trinitarianism as espoused by Richard Swinburne. (See Richard Swinburne, The Christian God. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. pg 27.) Tuggy erroneously starts his book off with this problematic claim about a "creedal declaration" as if it were a well known historical tradition, which it is far from being. Individuals indeed! Yet Tuggy writes of its “imperial enforcement towards the end of the fourth century” (pg 1). This aberration at the top of his article/book is further compounded when Tuggy doubles down on it and claims that “the doctrine of the Trinity as explained at the top of the main entry” was “clearly and fully asserted” around the end of the Arian controversy (pg 72). No, I can’t find any council clearly and fully asserting “three divine individuals” and the fault isn’t mine here. Does Tuggy know what is actually traditional and orthodox? Of course he does, but he claims something different, which is troubling. 

On pg 25 this goes further: “Richard Swinburne… argues that it is uncharitable to read the ecumenical councils’ claim that “there is only one God” as asserting that there’s only one divine individual, as that would contradict their commitment to there being three divine individuals.”

Why leave the impression that the historic councils committed to “three divine individuals”? They did not use this language, and language is key. Swinburne uses this phrase (quoted on pg 26). The councils didn’t, and it is wrong to leave the impression that they did. I don’t think it would have taken the councils very much time to dismiss the term out of hand! (James Anderson points out that a reading like this diverges from the Church Fathers’ intentions. See Anderson, 2007, pg 42-43.)

So the book goes askew on page 1, and throws the tracks just as the train is leaving the station. It would be easy for the unaware reader to be thrown with it, not realising that Tuggy is reading in a sometimes idiosyncratic way, to put it politely. The destination, for Tuggy, is to conclude that the doctrine of the Trinity is fundamentally flawed and cannot be saved by modern experimental thought. It’s an idiosyncratic approach to a review of others' theology.

Oddly, when Tuggy does refer to something traditional and orthodox, he claims it is a modern interpretation attributable to Bohn! – “Bohn argues that orthodoxy, by the standards of the New Testament or the “Athanasian” Creed, requires that the persons of the Trinity be distinct… but not that any is identical to the one God” (pg 40). I don’t see anything novel in that.

It seems at times that the term ‘self’ is used by Tuggy in a way that mischaracterises the doctrine of the Trinity too. Thus: “Trinitarians hold this revelation of the one God as a great self… if these divine persons are selves, then the claim is that there are three divine selves, which is to say, three gods” (pg 3). No Trinitarian who really knows what they are talking about ever made any such claim to the best of my knowledge. It’s a caricature of extreme Social Trinitarians and it’s being used to smear all Trinitarianism. I would be embarrassed to write something that gave the wrong impression so badly. Tuggy’s usage of the words “individuals” and “self” often clutters the book with confusion about the subject at hand. Sometimes, it is difficult to resist the impression that this is polemics from the Unitarian camp: “We literally can’t believe what is expressed Trinitarian language, if we don’t grasp the meaning of it” (pg 46). It doesn’t help if an inability to make sense of a doctrine arises from one’s own presentation of it. (I'm also mystified as to how a seemingly subjective "We literally can’t believe" statement is in an encyclopaedia entry on a university website.) 

A niche subject that appears in philosophical literature is relative identity theory/ies. This is an idea only of the last century or so. But Tuggy’s use seems off-centre (pg 13-14), more or less as a way of arriving at the formal logic conundrum below. Tuggy depends on use of the count noun ‘God’ to promote a well-trodden Unitarian argument against the Trinity, and he claims that Trinitarians (e.g. Leftow – see pg 10) fail to provide a good response to this:

 1. the Father = God

 2. the Son = God

 3. God = God

 4. the Father = the Son (from 1-3)

Knowledgeable Trinitarians will wince at the un-nuanced travesty that this argument amounts to. The somewhat artificial problem is avoided merely by replacing ‘God’ with the word ‘divine’ and explaining what is meant by the word divine, as done by many intelligent orthodox Trinitarians. Once this is done, there is no need for 4 to follow 1-3 at all. (See his examples on pg 10, 16.) Tuggy also uses ‘being/beings’ as a count noun to the same effect. It’s an exercise in constructing problematic verbal frameworks. The problem is an artificial philosophical one, though much discussed in the literature. But instead of “being,” we could easily offer something like “existence-havers” or “existers” and the problem falls away. A lot of these knots are ones that Trinitarian debates tied in the first place, and one sometimes senses the Unitarian’s glee at seeing Trinitarian dialectic wrestling over self-made problems.

This is not a book about things written in the Bible. (You don’t need the fingers of one hand to count the Bible verses cited in this book). And don’t expect to find here any exploration of biblical semitic thought. This is a book of western philosophy, a realm which creates its own thought-worlds, and in particular it is a review only of a niche area of it. (It doesn’t acknowledge the existence of non-western worldviews, which is not unusual for this kind of book.) Trinitarianism has both semitic and western developments. Which brings me to ‘mystery,’ an idea that Tuggy covers. In Tuggy’s way of looking at it, Trinitarians use the label ‘mystery’ where a thing about God is held to be true without a fool-proof logic formula for it. Tuggy’s acid test for verifying a doctrine seems to be possessing a flawless logic formula, and he is hardly sympathetic to Trinitarian mystery. Eventually in this book, the thought peeps through that actually anyone’s belief in God at some point encounters mystery (pg 105). In the logic-driven west, we all draw a line in the sand somewhere on the mystery spectrum. The difference is where each of us does so, and Tuggy draws a line against the Trinity.

On mystery, Tuggy does acknowledge without proposing a reply the argument that there are real mysteries: “Sometimes an analogy with recent physics is offered: if we find mysteries (i.e., apparent contradictions) there, such as light appearing to be both a particle and wave, why should we be shocked to find them in theology? (van Inwagen 1995, 224-7)” (Tuggy pg 47). (In drawing attention to this, this is not to say that we should place too much store in analogies from creation.) There is a good deal in Tuggy's book on mystery – he uses the philosophers' word ‘mysterian’ signifying the the human brain is not sufficiently equipped to understand some things – and it is interesting to read other scholars' responses to Tuggy on it. It’s also worth noting that there are scholars who maintain that the doctrine of the Trinity is possible and intelligible to the human mind, although Tuggy gives more attention to the mysterian human problem. 

Sometimes when I read what Tuggy writes about the history of the church, the historian in me quietly sighs. His description about the late second century:

‘a “catholic” movement, a bishop-led, developing organization which, at least from the late second century… [was] out-competing many gnostic and quasi-Jewish groups’ (pg 80-81).

He doesn’t qualify what he means by ‘organization’ or ‘quasi-Jewish’ and doesn't explain what he means by the scare quotes around 'catholic.' Another example – Tuggy says that:

‘No theologian in the first three Christian centuries was a trinitarian in the sense of a [sic] believing that the one God is tripersonal’ (pg 81).

Well, that’s a bit too bold. How about Tertullian, On Modesty, XXI, 16? Or particularly Cyprian’s Epistle 72 to Jubaianus?

Now, some notes on the edition. References are in the text, not in footnotes or endnotes, and sometimes a book is unhelpfully cited without page numbers, e.g. ‘Holmes 2012’ – see Tuggy pg 24. There is a bibliography, but due to a fault by someone (Amazon printed on demand, so maybe them) the bibliography skips straight from M to R. So, for example, Pruss is missing from it. The book is also littered with typos and poor drafting: “the the” is not untypical. We read of ‘Trinitians’ and ‘Trinitarinas.’ Persons become ‘Perons,’ and we meet ‘Gregory of Naziansus.’ I could go on. It is difficult to believe that this article/book went through much, if any, independent editing, let alone peer review. Given that it first appeared on the Stanford website as an online encyclopaedia entry, it’s perplexing in its faults.

On a personal note, I prefer to see what semitic thought portrays, and to see if western philosophy can catch up. Nonetheless there is much to enjoy in this book, and the most enjoyable part for me was its history of Unitarian movements from the 16^th century onwards, although it seems slightly odd that around 15% of a book titled ‘Trinity’ is devoted to a short history of Unitarianism. (And I don't mean to say that this is simply due to Tuggy being a Unitarian who sometimes criticises Trinitarian positions. Only Tuggy can confirm whether that forms a part of his motivation in any case.) And if I take one main thing from this book, it is a desire to read Duns Scotus. But if a serious reader wants an introduction to historic and recent Trinitarian philosophical ideas, a better book than this would be *An Introduction to the Trinity* by Declan Marmion and Rik Van Nieuwenhove (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Finally, back to definitions of 'self.' I can't resist mentioning that an article by Eric Olson found on the Stanford website says this on "self":

"‘Self’ is sometimes synonymous with ‘person’, but often means something different: a sort of unchanging, immaterial subject of consciousness, for instance (as in the phrase ‘the myth of the self’). The term is often used without any clear meaning and shall be avoided here."

It seems somewhat ironic, and potentially problematic for Tuggy's theme. (The article is on 'personal identity' and can be found here.) I do wonder if Tuggy's philosophy is over-relying on the Enlightenment's stable idea of "person," which would be questionable in the wake of the instability brought to the concept of person by structuralism and post-structuralism. Also problematic, some philosophers have noted how ideas of “self” are called into question by the experience of conjoined twins – read here. The medical condition of split-brain syndrome is also challenging to concepts of the self - watch here. It is increasingly unlikely that “self” is a satisfactory category for our debate. 

As I said, Tuggy's definition of 'self' is basically a secular one, rather than an intrinsically Christian one. For a different Christian approach to the question of what is a human 'person,' I highly recommend the article here. It argues that to be a human person is to be "known and loved - first of all by God himself, and secondly by other human beings". A Christian definition of a human "person" might in the end not be able to go far beyond something like "one made in the image of God who is known personally to the Creator," but that is an opinion for another day.

Disclaimer 1: philosophy is not my area of research and training and I am more than happy to be corrected on anything I’ve said above, and to make corrections.

Disclaimer 2: Tuggy’s online version of the article had a substantive revision on November 20th 2020, which I have not had time to compare with the book version, except to check that it still has the delightful typo ‘trinitarinas’ and the non-objective "We literally can't believe" statement.)

 

Scholars engaging with Tuggy

Some online posts that may be of interest, to see scholars engaging with Tuggy on some of these points:

Edward Feser touches on the theme of ‘self’ - Edward Feser: Dude, where’s my Being?

Edward Feser on God as “being” - Edward Feser: Present perfect

Aidan Kimel critical of extreme Social Trinitarianism and engaging with Hall - Father, Son, Spirit as Divine Selves | Eclectic Orthodoxy (wordpress.com)

Other reading

George Plasterer on how Barth uses his concept of the divine self - Barth on the Trinity | Karl Barth: Church Dogmatics