Sid Hatch, a former Baptist minister and graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary explains his reasons for questioning the Trinity. Ultimately he concluded the bible does not teach that Jesus is “God the Son” but that he is “the Son of God.” In this presentation, he discusses various key texts including John 1.1 and Philippians 2.1-9 among others.
Notes:
- Watch the video of this lecture
- More podcasts on monotheism
- Intro music: “District Four” by Kevin MacLeod. Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
Hi Sean and other listeners. Thanks for sharing this teaching! Sound quality was fine, and Sid came over as a charming communicator. My number one takeaway is the kenosis lesson – I would totally agree that Christ’s humility was the massive backdrop to everything said here including the emptying – very helpful. Less helpful was Sid’s failing to distinguish his more solid textual arguments from the more conjectural (which he is successful in doing at 35:00), such as the Adam comparison, with which I am still not yet 100% comfortable. As some have noted, if the intention was to allude to Adam, why not use the same word used in the LXX for image? This viewpoint makes sense but is not “compelling”, if you know what I mean.
The Logos translation was interesting, but John 1:1 is simply over-analysed and it is difficult to really settle on a definitive translation in my view.
Slightly odd: “What Adam and Eve should have done is quoted Scripture”! Which Scripture was that exactly?!
I also have an issue with the “obeissance”. In some teachings of the messianic fulfilment I find there to be insufficient imagining (such as in the context of Philippians 2 analysis) of quite what a *cosmic” King obeissance might have been. It surely must have been awe-inspiring to imagine a category that was beyond any known existing king, and to such an extent that this obeissance is that same honour that is then handed on to the Father, Creator of the known universe. Understatement for the unitarian cause alert here.
My largest area of disagreement with Hatch, however, is a little later on. He says: “The doctrine of the Trinity can be traced to ancient philosophy, we know that”. I strongly disagree. We should be careful not to confuse the possibility that ancient philosophy (e.g. divine triads) helped confirm and give shape to a trinitarian first-century expression of the Christian mutation of Judaism. On my blog, I have written quite extensively on the development of the first-century baptismal rite, as evidenced in Matthew 28 and the Didache that evidenced a surprisingly early “Triune Hub” that for me situates the trinitarian root outside the clutches of ancient greek philosophy. This was necessary in order to clear up first-century confusion with the other major Jewish apocalypticist of the first century, as evidenced particularly by Luke and Acts.
Hope these comments don’t appear too negative, it was a genuinely interesting and enlightening teaching. Looking forward to meeting you soon, Sean. Blessings. John
“The Logos translation was interesting, but John 1:1 is simply over-analysed and it is difficult to really settle on a definitive translation in my view.”
Can you please elaborate how exactly?
“blog, I have written quite extensively on the development of the first-century baptismal rite, as evidenced in Matthew 28 and the Didache that evidenced a surprisingly early “Triune Hub” that for me situates the trinitarian root outside the clutches of ancient greek philosophy”
Sounds interesting, can you send me a link to the article please?
Hi Shaad,
On John 1, there are myriads of views about the logos there. I have one too, but I almost feel like “why add to the carnage?”
On the Trinity not being rooted in Hellenistic philosophy (but rather being shaped by it), one milestone post for me was http://faithandscripture.blogspot.fr/2017/05/jewish-roots-of-trinity.html
The hermeneutic dimension is explored a bit here: http://faithandscripture.blogspot.fr/search/label/hermeneutics
John the Baptist’s understated role is here (summary of four posts): http://faithandscripture.blogspot.fr/2017/08/it-all-started-with-b-p-t-i-s-m-4-star.html
On Matthean posteriority and/or conflation, which is an important issue on demonstrating Jewish-Christian origins of the Trinity, see Alan Garrow’s excellent analysis on the Synoptic Problem http://www.alangarrow.com/synoptic-problem.html or the more-technical Robert K. MacEwen, Matthean Posteriority: An Exploration of Matthew’s Use of Mark and Luke as a Solution to the Synoptic Problem. Evan Powell’s work on this is also useful available at http://synoptic-problem.com/, even if his work is criticised by MacEwen has insufficiently interacting with the literature.
Thank you sir, i really appreciate it, i’m gonna check them right away and i’m sorry for the late reply