You bring up an interesting point here at the end (among others), Jason. My understanding is that scholarship is nearly unanimous in rejecting both 1st and 2nd Timothy as having been written by Paul, so I’m not certain that either of us can pin an argument either way on that particular scripture.
Granted. I don’t have to have either of the Tim Epistles for the evidential set. But I notice that the theological tensions (and Christological affirmations) found in the other NT canon documents are found here as well.
(Personally I have very little problem believing they are pre-70 docs, and so most likely authentic, if also possibly containing brief glosses by an early commentor–perhaps Timothy himself. But I know plenty of people, even among some conservatives, have a problem accepting them today as genuine, so… I can take or leave them either way. 
)
If I remember right, I don’t think the historical critical issues I was aware of were regarding when they were written. I’d have to go back and review the information to be certain what they were exactly. Apparently Colossians and Ephesians are very much doubted among histo-crit scholars as well.
The main thing I don’t like about the possibility that they’re not authentic is that a couple of the most powerful universalist scriptures are in 1st Timothy.
Ok. I’m going to take another stab at this from the “did Jesus die in every sense of the word possible” angle.
I’m going to suggest that Jesus did actually die spiritually, as well as physically.
When the scripture talks about the penalty for sin in Genesis, it describes death as the penalty. There is some confusion due to the lack of clarity as to which type of death was meant for Adam and Eve, although I think there is enough evidence to at least conclude that spiritual death was at least part of the penalty. Elsewhere in scripture, it describes the wages of sin being death. Again the word can be used of physical or spiritual death. But here we have an additional piece of information; namely that in opposition to this, the free gift is ‘eternal’ (aionion) life. So we seem to have a contrast here between a spiritual life and a spiritual death.
We all still die physically, so if Christ only died physically, then we could not really say in any meaningful sense that he atoned or propitiated for our sin. In order to do that, he had to have died spiritually as well, hence paying our exact penalty for sin; actual separation from God. This is I think sufficiently in evidence from Christ’s last words on the cross in GosMark; My God My God, why have you forsaken me? Again, there is the distinction of himself from God, in addition to supporting the notion of an actual spiritual death. (There is no life of any kind apart from God)
Now, you also mentioned the passage where it refers to Christ’s descent into hades and preaching to the spirits imprisoned. I have heard it argued that this was after, not during the three days in the tomb, in light of some of the considerations above.
How would you solve these difficulties?
This is more of a metaphysical question than a scriptural one, per se; so I’ll be addressing it over in the metaphysical crit thread. (Edited to add: here. The comment preceding that comment, contains links to prior comments in either thread which are topically relevant.)
My answer in this thread regarding the cry from the cross, can be found back here, though.
(I will note in fairness that this doesn’t necessarily preclude Jesus being in fact abandoned by God, if Jesus was not in fact quoting the opening lines of this Psalm. But considering the circumstances, that seems highly improbable.)
To which I will add, that there’s nothing in the Petrine declaration which would indicate Christ’s descent into hades (sheol, the pit, the grave) only happened after Christ’s descent into, y’know, the grave. 
(Although I agree with theologians like Lewis and MacDonald, that it was not once at one time that Christ descends into hell to witness to spirits in bondage, but at all times. Historically, something happens naturally once corresponding to this descent.)
It may be worth considering, though, why the critics you heard this from, thought it was worth interpreting the descent to have happened only after and not during the death-and-entombment of Christ.
Is it because they think it would make no sense and/or would be invalid, for Christ to evangelize those in hades if he himself was at that time abandoned by (or at least separated from) God? (That’s my own guess, but…)
My guess is similar to yours, except that I think part of their point was that Jesus was actually dead in every sense of the word for three days, until raised back to life by the Father.
I wondered if perhaps this was more of a metaphysical question, or at least had elements of both.
Having now addressed the problems more directly over in the metaphysical thread here, I will take a moment to reiterate back here in the scriptural thread something that I previously mentioned in another context.
Namely, GosJohn reports Jesus stating that he resurrects himself (John 2:18-22; 10:17-18); and is emphatically the Resurrection and the Life (John 11:25).
This doesn’t mean the Father doesn’t resurrect Jesus–that’s testified, too, elsewhere. (Rom 10:9, to pull one of many examples off the top of my head.) Nor does it mean that Jesus resurrects Himself by His own unique power; rather He receives power and authority from the Father to be doing so.
It does mean that Jesus has to be still existing, though, in order to resurrect himself (or Himself, either one. For someone to claim that he himself is the resurrection and the life, moreover, is extremely theologically improper within a context of Judaism–unless that person is in fact the one and only Living God Most High by Whom all live and shall live again.)
Ok…Well I think these answers are sufficient to convince me of at least, er, binitarianism.
I remembered something about the critical article or whatever it was, when I was reading through the earlier parts of this thread. It would seem that the critic essentially “won” his argument against trinitarianism by first setting up the straw man that most trinitarians are really modalists (though in his view they evidently don’t realize this).
That’s an unusual line to take, nowadays; I think more critics of trinitarianism tend to read us as tri-theists.
And of course it’s easy for us, when we’re not being careful, to go one or the other way. (Self-critically, I think I have more of a tendency toward modalism myself, than tri-theism or some kind of arianism, for example.)
In fairness I want to add that while there’s nothing in the Petrine statement that directly indicates the descent only happened after the resurrection (and the ascension?), it’s a little unclear as to whether “being put to death truly in the flesh, yet vivified in the spirit” is supposed to be about Christ grammatically or about we who are being led to God by Christ. And the grammatic ambiguity may have been on purpose for poetic linkage, since Christ died concerning sins that He may be leading us (the unjust) to God. We submit to sharing the death of Christ so that we may also share in the life of Christ cooperatively.
(I will also mention incidentally, that the pronoun regarding the spirit “in which being gone to the spirits in jail also He heralds to those once stubborn”, may also be translated “in Whom”. But this, to be fair, cannot be used as primary scriptural testimony to the distinct person of the Holy Spirit; its translation depends on this having been settled otherwise elsewhere.)
Trinitarianism per se is rather more difficult to establish in some ways, not least because most of the scriptural testimony is about the status of Christ per se. Understandably, most of the crits brought up in this thread from local and relatively recent (at the time) arguments against trinitarianism, are about Christ, not about the Spirit. However, it happens that a few of the scriptural references discussed above do involve distinction of the Holy Spirit from both the Father and the Son. (And there’s more of this in the digest, of course. Which by the way I’m in the process of revising and expanding; but I’m also conservatively removing some of the professed testimony to a distinction of the HS as a third person, where I thought it wasn’t fairly clear enough or worse was begging the question.)
If I understand what you mean by the term “tri-theism” correctly, I believe that was the other thing he mentioned. I think he claimed that most trinitarianism, as taught in our churches at least, iss really modalism and that the few who are doctrinally sorted out enough to avoid that, were really tri-theists (again, without realizing it). But from what I’ve seen of your defenses of what you refer to as ortho-trin., I’d say he’s perhaps confusing tri-theism for what you have laid out as the real trinitarian position. However, it may be that he is seeing the same tendency toward the scriptural errors that you’ve just mentioned, but from a “glass half-empty” perspective. He therefore then took the easy way out and used a more plain reading interpretation style to avoid those slippery slopes by attempting to use scripture to deny the “God” status of Jesus, without actually denying his divinity. It would appear that trinitarianism makes at least a functional subordination (if not an ontological) case for why Jesus can be God and still say that the Father is greater.
I agree with you that the most problematic aspect of trinitarianism is convincingly demonstrating the sufficiently distinct personhood of the Holy Spirit, which is why I’m only more or less cautiously convinced of binitarian theism at the moment.
I want to add here, for clarity’s sake, that I know perfectly well that it’s far too simplistic (in an absolute sense) to point to some statement in GosJohn (or wherever) and infer from that statement that Jesus was and is the 2nd Person of the Trinity or that the Holy Spirit is the 3rd Person of the Trinity (personally distinct from the Son and the Father but substantially singular in unity with those persons as one entity.)
Are the texts corrupt in transmission? Is the translation appropriate? Is the context being understood (at any of several or even many levels)? Is the material forged or otherwise fictional? (And would fictionality make a negative difference?) Is the author otherwise reporting accurate memory? Does the author himself correctly understand the implications of what he is saying? (And if so, to what extent? Or if not to some extent, how much does that matter?)
And even if the material is accurate as to what Jesus was teaching and claiming about himself, this might be irrelevant (at best) unless it’s even possible (moreso actually true) for God to exist, in this fashion, and in this relation to the rest of reality. And even if God does exist in a trinitarian orthodox way, in such-n-such relationship (or relationships) to the rest of reality, and even if we could expect God to behave in a particular way toward reality, and even if the narrative matches logical expectations; Jesus might be lying, or insane. (Or merely mistaken??)
So there’s a ton of things to evaluate. 
Which is why there are plenty of ways to be sceptical about the result.
Which I sympathize with sceptics about (whether non-religious or irreligious or religiously non-Christian or even religiously alt-Christian). 
Lots of complexity to the issues, for sure.
I guess if I were to classify myself it would be non-religious alt-Christian. 
Hi Jason. Could you address from the trinitarian perspective the following verses? (CLV)
Joh 17:1 These things speaks Jesus, and lifting His eyes to heaven, He said, “Father, come has the hour. Glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son should be glorifying Thee,
Joh 17:2 according as Thou givest Him authority over all flesh, that everything which Thou hast given to Him, He should be giving it to them, even life eonian.”
Joh 17:3 Now it is eonian life that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Him Whom Thou dost commission, Jesus Christ."
Joh 17:4 I glorify Thee on the earth, finishing the work which Thou hast given Me, that I should be doing it."
Joh 17:5 And now glorify Thou Me, Father, with Thyself, with the glory which I had before the world is with Thee."
Joh 17:6 I manifest Thy name to the men whom Thou givest Me out of the world. Thine they were, and to Me Thou givest them, and Thy word they have kept."
Joh 17:7 Now they know that all, whatever Thou hast given Me, is from Thee,
Joh 17:8 for the declarations which Thou hast given Me, I have given them, and they took them, and know truly that I came out from Thee, and they believe that thou dost commission Me."
I have bolded the portions which I felt were of most relevance to the discussion between ortho-trin and non-trin views.
Why, in vs. 3 in his reference to eonian life, does Jesus make a distinction between knowing the only true God (Father) and Himself, the Son, by using the qualifier “and”? It would seem that it would’ve been simpler to say that eonian life is knowing us, the only true God, if that was really what he meant.
vs. 5 is interesting in that it includes references to both Jesus’ pre-existence, and yet a distinction in glorifying himself (Jesus) with glorifying the Father. Again, in vs. 8, Jesus makes the statement that he came out from the Father, while still maintaining the distinction in identity. Now I know that trinitarians will say that Jesus would obviously make a distinction between himself and the Father since they aren’t the same person, yet these types of statements, particularly in vs. 3, would appear to further indicate that they are truly distinct in kind, even though Jesus makes clear statements about his own pre-existence with the Father, as well as his coming out from the Father.
Certainly! Chapter 17 (and the Final Discourse chapters in general) is very important for systematic theology. Actually, I thought I had already done so early in this thread, but looking back I see that I didn’t; poking around in my files, I see that I had apparently written up commentary on this portion of chp 17 for other purposes at about the same time I was working on the material that would go into this thread, and then just forgot to include it a summary collation here. I’ll have to collate it together (it’s spread out through several entries elsewhere), and present it as an entry later this week.
Thanks for mentioning it, though!–otherwise I might not have remembered that I didn’t include it!
So, regarding GosJohn 17.
The first thing to keep in mind is that orthodox trinitarians actually do marshal verses 1 through 8 (and related verses throughout this chapter, this discourse, this Gospel, and the New Testament) as part of our overall case. As you noted, there is certainly a distinction of the persons being evidenced here; orthodox trinitarians positively affirm this over against the modalists. Again, the Father is declared by Jesus to be the only (or maybe the one) true God; orthodox trinitarians positively affirm this over against various Christian groups who would deny in various ways that the Father is the one true God.
The personal pre-existence of Christ is affirmed by the orthodox, of course–which is sometimes denied by various Christian minority groups, who would at most consider Christ to be some kind of plan or concept prior to his birth. Moreover, Jesus claims to have been sharing the glory with the Father before the kosmos came into existence. In a Jewish context, this would be a ridiculously elevated thing to say: the glory of God is the eternal shekinah, itself tantamount to the very presence of God. It is one thing for God to share the shekinah with derivative creatures within time–such as what God reportedly did in the tabernacle and the temple during OT times before the Diaspora, or such as what Jesus promises toward the end of John 17 (and elsewhere). It is quite another thing for a person to declare that he has been sharing the shekinah with the Father before the kosmos came into existence. That kind of declaration isn’t about recusing to a prior time-before-time, but a shared ontological existence transcendent to the totality of creation at all. (Admittedly, someone could claim this about an entity, or about themselves, and try to be meaning something less than sharing corporate existence at the level of God’s own self-existence. But insofar as Judaism is concerned, they would be making a pretty damned daring, or maybe incompetent, hyperbole by doing so.)
It should also be pointed out that Jesus (and/or maybe the Evangelist, who likes to insert commentary asides) claims that eonian life (zoe eonian) consists not only of knowing the Father, but also in knowing the Son. In other words, I am personally receiving life from God when I am in personal fellowship with God–which is straightforward enough–but then if Jesus isn’t God, it makes no sense for the reception of God’s own life to be dependent on my fellowship with Jesus. (And even less sense for Jesus to be claiming to be the Life!–as he does elsewhere at least twice in GosJohn.)
Jesus is at least being treated (by the author and/or by his own testimony) as co-source, with the Father, of ultimate life: the Prince or even the Author of Life, as St. Peter puts it in his famous first sermon (Acts 3:15). This makes sense if they are somehow both YHWH, the self-existent Who gives life to derivative creation. It doesn’t make sense if Jesus is only a super-angel (Arianism), much less a super-Moses (neo-Arianism).
So, in John 17, we have Jesus affirming, as a distinct person, that the Father is the only true God; and affirming that he himself was pre-existent with the Father sharing the Father’s glory; and affirming (or being affirmed by GosJohn author commentary) that zoe eonian comes through fellowship with himself as well as through fellowship with the Father; while emphasizing that the name of the Father (YHWH) be kept in highest honor: a name that he says the Father has also given to him, the Son.
This comports very well with other material in the Final Discourse which points in the direction of the Son sharing an ontologically primal Shema unity with the Father (as noted in various ways earlier in my comments for this thread), even though the Final Discourse chapters do tend to emphasize the personal distinction of the Son compared to the Father in at least a hierarchical subordination of the Son to the Father. Ditto GosJohn more broadly (as also illustrated in various ways in my previous comments for this thread.)
As a comparison in two different strands of epistolary material: In 1 Cor 8, St. Paul affirms the Shema (there is no God but One–keeping in mind that in Hebrew the word for One would be a compound unity); affirms that there are in fact lesser lords-and-gods than YHWH; absolutely distinguishes between God the Father and those lords-and-gods; absolutely distinguishes between Jesus Christ and those lords-and-gods; affirms that God the Father (the one God compared to those lesser lords-and-gods) is the creator and sustainer of all things; affirms that Jesus Christ (the one Lord compared to those lesser lords-and-gods) is the creator and sustainer of all things; and tacitly affirms (by shifting the application of the one-Lord-title, previously professed of YHWH, to Jesus) that Jesus is a person distinct from God the Father.
The Epistle of Jude treats Jesus Christ as a person distinct from the Father; and affirms him to be our only Lord and Master; while also (in close proximity to both claims) referring to the “Lord” Who saved Israel from Egypt. (Unless standard text-crit principles are actually correct here, in which case the text of Jude most likely originally read that “Jesus” saved Israel from Egypt!)
The basic themes are the same in each strand of canonical tradition, though expressed rather differently.
How important is it that Jesus claims the Father to be the only true God? It would be far more problematic for ortho-trin if Jesus was overtly denying to be the only true God! It would not be strictly a problem for ortho-trin, on the other hand, if Jesus testified that the Father was his only true God. (Which Jesus is not reported saying. That the Father is his God, yes. His only true God, no.)
If that one statement (“it is eonian life that they know Thee, the only true God”) was all we had to go on (not counting other material even in 17:1-8ff), then (by tautology) we would have nothing indicating Jesus claiming (and canonical authors claiming about Jesus) an identity tantamount to also being the one true God. But, to say the very least, we do have other material, including in 17:1-8ff. But also including Johannine material such as 1 John, where Jesus (certainly at 1:2 and arguably at 5:20) is referred to as “Eternal Life”–and thus also “the true God” per v.20! 1 John 5:11-12, relatedly, states that to have Jesus in one’s heart is to have life eonian. Again, the Father is called “the True” at least once in 5:20 (a long verse with a lot of interesting claims), and by grammatic context so is Jesus Christ the Son in the same verse. (Jesus is called “the True” again by the author of RevJohn 3:7.) Indeed, in John 14:6 (earlier in the Final Discourse), Jesus proclaims himself to be the Truth, as well as the Life–while distinguishing himself personally compared to the Father.
So the statement from Jesus in the opening verses of John 17 can be best understood as exemplifying (if less obviously than some other material) the Son, as a distinct Person compared to and subordinate to the Father, sharing the attributes and authority unique (per monotheism) to YHWH alone. And the opening verses fit in well enough with the same exegetical testimony found elsewhere in GosJohn, in Johannine materials, and in other strands of NT testimony (Pauline and “other”. ) But particularly in Johannine material, insofar as some particular thematic thrusts are concerned.
Thanks, Jason.
As always, there is more to this than immediately presents itself on a cursory read through of scripture.
Does this lead to a statement such as… The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit are all the one true God?
I would say yes; although a modalist could say that, too, and mean something rather different.
The paragraph from 1 Corinthians 8:5 (which is probably a kerygma), that I mentioned in comparison with John 17, is an interesting way of trying to get across as many salient points as concisely as possible (although the HS isn’t mentioned there.)
That paragraph itself (minus reference to the HS) is another (somewhat shorter) way of stating this material from the AthCreed:
**So the Father is God,
the Son is God,
and the Holy Ghost is God.
And yet they are not three Gods, but one God.
So likewise the Father is Lord,
the Son Lord,
and the Holy Ghost Lord.
And yet not three Lords, but one Lord.
For as I am compelled by the Christian verity
to acknowledge every Person by Himself to be both God and Lord,
so I am likewise forbidden to say: There be three Gods, or three Lords.**
Even so, the subordinate Son wouldn’t be likely to declare Himself to the Father to be the only true God, or to be His own God compared to the Father. That could be tantamount to rebellion. This is why experienced ortho-trin theologians aren’t troubled by statements from Jesus acknowledging the Father as being the only true God, or as being His own God (as well as our God and our Father). It’s also why I wrote earlier that, strictly speaking, we would have no technical trouble with Jesus even reportedly declaring the Father to be His only true God.
How a trinitarian deals with statements like this, when the trinitarian doesn’t acknowledge hierarchical subordination of the Persons (and some trinitarians don’t), I don’t quite know. The statements might fit well enough into an eglatarian or a dynamic mutual subordination, with the defensive observation that just because the Father is never reported as declaring the Son to be greater than He and to be the Father’s only true God, doesn’t mean this isn’t also true.
The positive and negative shape of the data together, though, systemizes better (I think) for hierarchical subordination.