God, Jesus and the Trinity

A discussion between Larry Hurtado and Anthony Buzzard, reviewed by Dale Tuggy

The following are two episodes of the Trinities podcast that cover and review a discussion from another podcast which you can listen to uninterrupted here. Dr. Tuggy offers some very helpful commentary and other thoughts on the discussion.

Part 1

Part 2

I wish to offer a few thoughts of my own on what was said. Before that, we need to know a little about the host of the Trinities podcast since he was not introduced. Dr. Dale Tuggy is an analytic philosopher in the field of the philosophy of religion out of the State University of New York at Fredonia. He is also a biblical unitarian like Sir Anthony Buzzard. Now on to the episodes.

Hurtado, Buzzard and Tuggy all pretty much agreed with a few differences here and there, some of which were quite important. They all agreed that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is completely unknown to the New Testament. They all agreed that God and Jesus are truly distinct and that Jesus is exalted by God to equal status, even though they are not the same beings. Now to the specific things Hurtado, Buzzard and Tuggy said that stood out to me.

I will start with Buzzard and a particular point he made that really resonated with me. Since he is the founder of a church (Restoration Fellowship), he had very pastoral concerns when it came to the Trinity. I was already not thrilled by the doctrinal primacy the Trinity has in the Church but Buzzard really pointed out to me the serious problems it causes if a church member seriously struggles with or outright does not accept the Trinity. Deep down I already knew it because I have also had to keep my misgivings about the Trinity under wraps in my church setting. If I came out and said I do not accept it, it would cause me a whole lot of trouble. Until Buzzard pointed it out, I had not fully come to terms with how disastrous it is to deny the Trinity for a sincere believer who is orthodox in almost every other respect. The truth is a large number of Christians have major difficulties with it and an even greater number just avoid dealing with it to save themselves the trouble.

When you see things from a pastoral perspective, compounded with the great theological and philosophical difficulties the doctrine presents which even the most learned advocates of it will freely admit, you can appreciate why Buzzard was so passionately polemical throughout much of the discussion. I enjoy a good debate but the question of the Trinity is not just cerebral. It has real world consequences in the life of the Church and its members.

Buzzard also made a quick comment on the evangelistic stumbling block it presents before non-Christian monontheists, like Jews and Muslims. I had been thinking about the opportunity we would have to reach Jews and Muslims if we did not insist on the Trinity. It does not mean they would immediately convert but it would make dialogue with them about the Gospel much easier. Buzzard reminded me of why it is such an impediment to faith in Jesus.

While the podcast was my first full encounter with Buzzard and his particular beliefs, as regular readers of this blog will be aware, I am much more familiar with Dr. Hurtado and I have featured or referenced his work multiple times on this platform. What he said was very similar to what he said in his first appearances on the Trinities podcast which you can find here. He characteristically tried to be far more charitable with the Trinitarian church fathers who formulated the doctrine. Recognising their sincerity is very important even if it does not make them right. He claimed the church fathers worked with the philosophical categories of their day like “person”, “substance” and “essence”, but they are no longer relevant because those categories are no longer in use. Now Hurtado is a scholar of early Christianity so the later patristic period, especially from the 3rd century onwards, as well as philosophy are not his areas of competence. This became very evident when Tuggy offered some very important push back.

Tuggy explained that while Platonism is no longer dominant, there are certain philosophical ideas like substance and essence that never truly go out of fashion in philosophy. He then cited noted Christian philosophers like Tim Paul, Peter van Inwagen and Richard Swinburne among others, who do serious work on trinitarian terms and ideas, applying modern philosophical tools and developments to them to gain a fresh contemporary understanding that is historically consistent with past meanings. While broadly speaking, the ordinary person today is not familiar with Platonism, the philosophical climate in which trinitrarianism sprouted, some metaphysical ideas in the Trinity like essence can still be grasped by the average person. I have to agree with Tuggy the metaphysical categories of the Trinity have not fallen completely out of use but this is not the same as saying they are easy to understand. I think the broader point by Hurtado that they are not all together intuitive categories for the modern mind still stands though.

Another characteristic claim that Hurtado made that Tuggy queried was that there was some confusion in the text that had to be resolved and it just so happened that Trinitarian theology was the best means available to the formulators to resolve that problem. Tuggy remarked that it seemed to be emeritus Professor Hurtado’s generation that tended to think that way. Along with his previous claim that trinitarian categories are no longer understandable, he subtly suggests that people take another approach to understanding the relationship between God, Jesus and the Spirit, probably what he and like minded scholars think the New Testament says.

First of all, Tuggy points out this view is quite unorthodox. While not outright denying the Trinity, they affirm it as the best that the formulators could come up with given their circumstances. While they feel it has many great merits they seem to say you do not have to be totally onboard if you have some difficulties with it because there are very good options available. This attitude of cool ambivalence towards it is something I have also shared. I no longer have that stance because I do not think the doctrine actually gives you that freedom.

Secondly, Tuggy questions the narrative that the Trinity was the best solution available at that time to the problem the New Testament itself presents. He asks whether there was a problem to begin with. I have to agree with Tuggy that the New Testament is sufficiently clear on God, Jesus and the Spirit and how they relate to one another. In fact, it was the work of Hurtado and other NT scholars that helped me see this. Hurtado even repeats the assertion of the late great New Testament scholar Martin Hengel that the first twenty years after Jesus crucifixion were theologically more productive than the next four hundred years. It is not the first time Hurtado has said this and his entire life’s work along with some other Early High Christology Club scholars seem to affirm that. This is not the same as saying the New Testament is simplistic or easy. It is challenging but on this matter it unambiguously communicates what it wants to say regarding this issue. If you pay careful attention to the text, as I have found in my own reading, you will get quite similar results to New Testament experts like Dr. Hurtado.

Now they did not really touch much on preexistence but there I have to strongly disagree with Sir Buzzard and Dr. Tuggy. I agree with Prof. Hurtado that there are texts that indicate preexistence but I do not think, much like Hurtado, that they mean Jesus is the eternal second person of the Holy Trinity. I found it quite interesting that Buzzard and Tuggy some what shied away from New Testament passages that seemed to suggest preexistence or incarnation. As biblical unitarians they think that such beliefs can compromise the full humanity of Jesus, which they jealously guard against. On that same token Buzzard (and I assume to some extent Tuggy) was very excited by Dr. J. Daniel Kirk’s A Man Attested by God which you can find more about here. Kirk pushes against the trend of interpreting Jesus’ extraordinary sayings and activities in the gospels as somehow God incarnate (not that he denies incarnation per se) but rather sees it as Jesus demonstrating what a fully realised human is capable of. I was delightfully challenged by hearing Kirk’s views but I certainly did not come away thinking it is either a divine christology or a human christology but rather a both/and.

In summary, barring the question of preexistence which they did not spend much time on any way, they pretty much agreed on everything they thought the New Testament said about God and Jesus in relation to one another. I think the real heartbeat of the dialogue was the question, given what we know about the New Testament, that the Trinity is absolutely foreign to it, how do you respond to later trinitarian developments and their legacy today? Hurtado was much more diplomatic about the Trinity, even though I think his work does not really lend itself to that stance. Buzzard was very hostile and polemical about it because of at least a mixture of exegetical, theological and pastoral reasons. I assume Tuggy shares similar sentiments with Buzzard but given his demeanor and the fact that he was not directly involved in the dialogue, he was not as animated but he is just as passionate. I can appreciate Hurtado’s attitude since at one point I also had it and I was influenced by him. However, I no longer think the doctrine allows for it. So I personally lean more towards Tuggy and Buzzard, especially after his pastoral remarks as well as the unnecessary evangelistic obstacles it poses.