This is the transcript of Restitutio episode 579: Christologies in the 2nd and 3rd Centuries with Dale Tuggy This transcript was auto-generated and only approximates the contents of this episode. Audio file 579 Dale Tuggy - Trinitarian Fool's Gold.mp3 Transcript 00:00 Hey. 00:01 I'm Sean. 00:02 And you are listening to Resta Tudio, a podcast that seeks to recover authentic Christianity and live it out today. 00:12 Have you ever heard of Hippolytus, refutation of all heresies? 00:16 Written not long after 222 AD, this book works through dozens of heresies. 00:22 That is beliefs that the author disagreed with. 00:25 Some scholars have argued against Hippolytus as the author, preferring to call him Pseudohepoitis. But regardless of who wrote the tome, the fact is that this huge book was the mature result of nearly 70 years of Christians cataloguing heresies. 00:40 In each case, the next generation typically included much of what had come before. 00:44 This book is no exception. 00:46 It's a massive tome, totaling more than 400 pages long in the most recent translation by David Litwa. 00:53 In this talk delivered at the 2024 Unitarian Christian Alliance Conference held in Little Rock, AR Doctor Dale Tuggie draws on the refutation of all heresies to catalog the major Christological options that were known to the author in the 3rd century. 01:08 Excluding all the gnostic groups, TUGGY identifies 3 broad groups of Christians who held very different ideas about Christ. 01:17 The dynamic monarchians, the Modalistic monarchians and the logos incarnationists or. 01:23 Use. 01:24 Arlans of today biblical Unitarians, Oneness Believers, and Aryans. 01:30 But what about the Trinity? 01:32 Where was. 01:33 It. 01:33 Why didn't pseudo Hypothes mention three persons and one being? Surely hundreds of millions of Christians who say that the church has always believed in the Trinity from the beginning can't be wrong, can they? 01:47 Listen into this talk to find out. 01:50 Dale Tuggy is an analytic philosopher specializing in Trinity theories. 01:55 He's the author of the Trinity article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, as well as the book what is the Trinity? 02:02 Gives a brief introduction to the various Trinity models and their problems. 02:07 What's more, a month ago a new book came out that he contributed to called one God, three persons 4 views in which he debated various Trinitarian scholars, putting forth his own non Trinitarian view as an alternative. 02:20 Find out more about Tuggy and his work at his blog, trinities.org. 02:25 In what follows, he lays out the various christologies in the period before Nicaea, using the refutation of all heresies as his guide. 02:35 And then he explains quotations by Athenogorus and Milito that modern Trinitarian defenders use to prove that the Trinity was there in the second and third centuries. 02:45 Lastly, he provides evidence for which view he thinks was the majority in the second and third centuries. 02:52 Here now is episode 579 christologies in the second and third centuries with Dale tugging. 03:06 Now suppose that for all of your life, you believe that in 1850s America, people enjoyed the use of gasoline powered automobiles. 03:16 Imagine that your parents and teachers all told you this and everyone you knew believed this, that Americans in 1850, riding around in gasoline powered cars. 03:28 And one day you decide to confirm this for yourself. 03:30 So you go and get a bunch of American books and newspapers from the 1850s, and after a lot of reading you can't find any mention of gas powered cars anywhere. 03:42 You don't find any illustrations like this, and worse, you just don't find the idea of a gas powered car anywhere in those sources. You have now acquired what philosophers call a defeater for your previous belief that Americans had gas powered cars in the 1850s. 04:00 With this new information you have, it is no longer reasonable for you to believe what you've been told. 04:07 Now, maybe you've been told by your parents, pastors, professors that Christians have always worshipped the Trinity. That is the one God understood as Tri personal. 04:17 A few months ago in Windsor, England, I gave a lecture at the UK International UCA conference. 04:24 That focused on writings from around the year 240. Spoiler Alert, there was no idea of a Tri personal God that could be found in those writings, but three other theologies were found in those writings. 04:37 This lecture is a follow up to that one, focusing on sources from the late hundreds to the early 2 hundreds. And as we'll see, these authors also tell us about 3 different mainstream Christian theologies in their time. 04:53 But belief in one God as the Trinity is not to be found there. 04:56 And I'm going to be showing you this using the actual obviously translated words of people from this time. 05:05 So our first witness is the author of a big book called Refutation of All Heresies. Over the years, many scholars have attributed this book to a Roman named Hippolytus or Hippolytus, but this authorship is much disputed. 05:21 Endless scholarship on this. 05:23 I'm just going to call the author of this book, the Refuter. 05:27 And he was a rival Bishop at Rome during the times of Bishops Zephyrinus and Calistus, who the Catholics would tell you were the 2 popes in that era in the early 200 S he's also a Bishop there. 05:41 Not with them. 05:42 He can't stand them and he's going to criticize their views in this book. 05:47 So it's a long catalogue and refutation of heresies, which argues that the heretics are really disciples of various Greek philosophers. 05:57 Now it's not. 05:59 He's just pigeon holing people, but that's his gimmick. 06:03 Not disciples of. 06:04 They're really disciples of Aristotle or. 06:07 And then he tries to cram them into that mold. 06:10 The book is still valuable on various gnostic groups because he he gives some quotations and he tells you what he understands their views to be. 06:18 But I'm not concerned with gnostic groups today, so I'm going to tell you what the Refuter says about non gnostic mainstream Christian. 06:27 So we're going to start the end of the book where the refuter finally gets around to explaining his own views about God and Christ. 06:36 So he writes there is one God, the primal God, who is the single maker and Lord of all. 06:44 With himself, in other words, nothing is as ancient as him. 06:48 He is 1 alone by himself when he willed. He made things that exist and it's clear from numerous passages that for him the one God and the father are one and the same. 07:00 Here's one of them, he says. 07:03 This singular and universal God, first conceived of and fathered a word. 07:09 Like a voice, but the imminent reason of the universe. The father himself is being. That's a platonic term for the ultimate reality. The father himself is being and from being came the offspring, namely the word. 07:25 He says at the very moment that the word was emanated from his father, he became his first born. 07:32 So the refuter here is describing when the inner Lagos or word of God God's reason becomes, so to speak, an outer word. 07:42 Not a sound, but an intelligent agent who God can work through. 07:48 He's describing a version of what modern scholars call a logos or logos theory, or a logos theology. God in eternity had within him his own logos, his reason or thought or wisdom and being too transcendent to create directly. 08:05 When it's time to create, God spoke out this inner word, this logos bringing into existence another, lesser divine being. Some of the logos there is call him a second God and another God. 08:17 And it's this lesser being who, so to speak, gets his hands dirty, making the cosmos. 08:23 The direct maker, although God created through him. 08:27 So the using the term creates ambiguously in one sense, only the logos creator, if that means directly interacting with the cosmos. 08:36 In another sense, only God is the creator. If that means being the ultimate source of the cosmos, this is what logos theorists do. 08:43 Right. This is the view of God and Christ seen in many famous early authors such as Justin Martyr. 08:49 Tertullian, Irenaeus, origin and Novation. 08:54 Except for origin ovation, they have eternal generation instead of God at a particular time. Externalizing this word, bringing into existence this helper. 09:03 Think that. 09:04 That's always been going on, so it didn't happen just before creation. 09:09 Now let's hear the refuter about a rival theology in the one 90s and early 2 hundreds. 09:15 But as we'll see, the refuter is so unsympathetic to these views that he gets them wrong because he's so eager to lump them together with other notorious heretics. 09:26 If there's one thing being on the Internet as a biblical Unitarian has taught me, it's that hostile and unsympathetic people very, very often simply do not understand what I think and why. 09:37 Just don't. 09:38 They just don't care to. 09:40 They don't put enough work, they just come up with some little idea and oh, it's that, right? 09:44 Guy's a rationalist. 09:45 The popular one. 09:47 So he writes about this guy named Theodotus of Byzantium. 09:50 He. 09:52 Says Theodotus introduced a new heresy, but he was drawing on the school of the Gnostics, Cyrenthus Eion. 10:01 New and. 10:02 Wait, what does he mean? 10:03 Let's hear him out. 10:05 Is this heresy? 10:06 So the Refuter says that Theodotus teaches that Jesus was born a human being from a virgin according to the father's will. 10:15 Sounds like the miraculous conception. 10:17 He lived a life common to all people, yet became the most pious. Later at his baptism in the Jordan, he received the Christ who descended from above in the form of a dove. 10:28 Of O, the refuter is telling us that, like some earlier Gnostics, Theodotus holds to what is now called a possessionist Christology. According to a possessionist Christology. 10:41 At first you have the man, Jesus. 10:44 Oh, and also there's this eon, or heavenly being or lesser God called the Christ. 10:50 And when Jesus is baptized, Christ comes down and inhabits or possesses him. 10:55 And this enables. 10:57 Or maybe it's really the two of them together, cooperating to do more than human things. 11:03 But when it's time to be crucified, the Christ flies away and leaves him alone, abandoning Jesus on the cross. 11:10 That moment, Jesus cries out. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? 11:15 They think the God he's talking about is this Christ thing now is. 11:19 Possessing him. 11:21 Yes, sorrentis seems to really have fought this. 11:24 Is this really what Theodotus thinks? 11:27 Notice that the REFUTER has not given us any supporting quotation. 11:33 From Theodotus he just said, hey, this is what I say. 11:36 Thinks. 11:38 That should worry us now. We actually can get a few of theodotuses actual words from a later heresy hunter. 11:49 Epiphanyus was a determined heresy. 11:51 Who was out to bust anyone not adhering to the then new Nicene Orthodoxy, he wrote. 11:57 Sort of encyclopedia of heresies with his refutations called the Panarion or the Medicine chest. 12:05 It's like he's offering us medicines to counteract these terrible diseases. Or these. 12:09 Which are the hair? 12:11 Epiphanyus is not always reliable, but sometimes he relates information that otherwise would have been lost. 12:21 Epiphanius tells us a story not attested anywhere else, that under persecution, Theodotus denied Christ and so out of shame he had to flee from Byzantium to Rome. 12:35 Is that? 12:35 Is that just a nasty rumor? 12:37 Nobody knows, but the scholar David Litwa points out that in the year 193, the Roman Emperor Severus had besieged Theodosius home city of Byzantium, and in 194 the emperor conquered and trashed that city. 12:53 So that would be a very good reason for Theodotus to emigrate from Byzantium to Rome. 12:59 And we get another. 13:01 Unflattering story here. So having portrayed Theodotes as a cowardly Christ denier, he now relates this, Epiphanius says. But as a supposed lame excuse for himself, he invented the following new doctrine that said. 13:17 I didn't deny. 13:18 I denied a man the man, Christ. 13:21 Thereafter, he taught that Christ was a mere man begotten of man's seed. 13:27 OK, that contradicts what the other guy said. Next, as a weak defense for himself. 13:32 Collected whatever text he found useful. 13:35 Alright, so he's just cherry picking the Bible like a fool, but happily for us, this heresy hunter now actually gives us some real quotations from theodotes. 13:47 And I think they're very revealing when you see his actual words. 13:50 Like others, I think that he is a dynamic. 13:54 What we now call a Biblical Unitarian, he doesn't hold the possession of Christology at all. 14:00 So let's hear from the man himself. 14:03 First text, Christ said, but now ye seek to kill me, a man that have told you the truth. You see? He said. 14:12 The Christ is a man. 14:15 OK. Christ is the man. 14:18 Well, then Christ is not going to be the spirit. In addition to the man. 14:22 So it doesn't sound possessionist second text. The law too, said of him, the Lord will raise up unto you a prophet of your brethren, like unto me, hearken to him. 14:33 But Moses was a man, therefore the Christ whom God raised up was this person. But since he was one of them, was a man, just as Moses was a man. 14:45 OK. 14:46 Christ is Christ is raised up from death. 14:49 It's Christ who died. 14:51 No, there's no distinction between the man Jesus and this Christ eon. It's not possessionist. 14:58 3rd text and the gospel itself said to Mary the spirit of the Lord shall come upon thee. 15:04 It did not say the spirit of the Lord shall enter into the. 15:09 So here he seems to be presupposing the truth of the virgin birth, or the miraculous conception as Todd and Luke and Matthew in the 2nd century, some who believed in Jesus pre human existence thought that the spirit in this passage was the pre human Jesus or the log. 15:27 Which I guess enters Mary or and enters into a zygote or a fetus, right? 15:32 What the Angel says to the Mary is. 15:35 The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the most high will over shadow you. 15:40 Therefore, the child to be born will be holy. 15:43 Will be called Son of God. 15:45 OK, so the spirit here is God's power coming down on Mary, not a non physical person entering into her womb. 15:52 The quotation strongly suggests that Theodotus accepts the miraculous conception and also that Jesus was from this time the son of God, that you didn't have to wait to become the son of his baptism or something like that. 16:09 But it keeps going. Jeremiah too said of him. 16:12 He is a man and who will know him. 16:16 Isaiah, too, called him a man for he said a man acquainted with the bearing of infirmity. 16:22 And we know him afflicted with blows and abuse, and he was despised and not esteemed. 16:31 The Holy Apostles in Acts 2 call him a man approved among you by signs and wonders. They did not say God approved. 16:40 A God approved among you by signs and wonders. 16:43 Are you starting to get the point? 16:46 Jesus isn't a God. 16:47 It's not a second eternal divine person of the Trinity. 16:50 A man. That's what Theodotus thinks. 16:54 One more. The apostle Paul called him the mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. 17:02 Christ Jesus, right? 17:04 He's calling the man Christ in that combined title. 17:08 He's not a possessionist, as Pilate said. 17:11 The man. 17:13 It's obvious from this collection of proof text that Theodotus of Byzantium is what we now call a Biblical Unitarian, or what historians have called an ancient dynamic monarchy. 17:24 And by the way, Doctor Thomas Gaston's book Dynamic Monarchianism the earliest Christology has the best chapter by far that I've ever read on theodice views. 17:34 OK, so dynamic monarchianism is the view that the miraculously conceived man Jesus cooperates together with God. 17:43 That's why you see human actions and divine actions. 17:46 God's empowering him. 17:47 God puts his spirit and his logos or his wisdom into Jesus. 17:52 So we've seen two theologies so far described by this refuter writing around the year 222. 17:59 You've got his own logos, theology, and then you've got a dynamic monarchian who he misunderstands to be a sort of gnostic possessionist. 18:09 But the Refuter happily is more accurate about some of his other rivals in Rome around the year 222. 18:17 So he tells us about a slightly earlier teacher who wasn't at Rome named Noetis of Smyrna, and according to the Refuter, some of Noedus students introduced his ideas to the churches in Rome, which caused a serious outbreak of modalism there. 18:34 So Noida says notice he's quoting here. When the father had not been born, he was rightly called Father. 18:43 But when the father deigned to endure birth, he was born and became his own son. 18:49 Not the son of. 18:51 In this way, Noida seems to establish the rule of one monarchia claiming that father and son exist as one in the same OK, he's paraphrasing there at the end. 19:02 So the quote is short, but there does seem to be a quote. He's still paraphrasing. 19:07 The sun according to Neo's, is born not as one being from another, which is what the logos theorists think. 19:15 But as himself from himself, he is nominally called father and son in the alternation of times. 19:22 But he is 1. 19:23 He confessed that he was son to those who saw him on account of his birth and time, but he did not conceal the fact that he was the father from those who could receive him. 19:34 All right. 19:35 He's obviously thinking here of the passage he who has seen me has seen the father. 19:40 Right. The modaless is like because he is the father rather than he's similar to the father reflects him. 19:46 Right, so here's an analogy. Just as one man when younger is called Prince Charles, and when older is called King Charles. So Noida thinks God is at 1st called Father and then that same 1 is later called Son. 20:00 Now the refuter gets. 20:02 He's mocking the idea that it was the father himself who is crucified. 20:07 This is the one who, in his passion was fixed to a tree and committed his spirit to himself. 20:14 He died and did not die and raised himself on the third day. He was buried in a tomb, wounded by a spear and fixed with nails. 20:22 This one is the God and father of the universe they foist upon the masses the darkness of Heraclitus. 20:30 They never. 20:30 This has nothing to do with Heraclitus but Heraclitus believe that there could be contradictory things, basically, and he claims to find this when he's reading noatus of course. 20:41 Itis never mentions Heraclitus as best we can tell. 20:45 So again, he's just pigeon holing them haha. 20:48 Your guy is a disciple, not of Christ, but of some philosopher. 20:52 Yeah, Sue doesn't really fit 9 out of 10 times. There's another, probably more accurate ancient book about noida's views, which is called against noida's. 21:04 Is also been attributed to Hippolytus. 21:07 But most scholars now think this is not the same author as the Refuter. 21:11 So I'm not going to call this guy anything. 21:13 Just going to quote the book. 21:16 This book does seem to be quoting either no itis or his students. 21:21 So one of those says if I confess that Christ is God, then he is the father. If he is God now Christ, who is God suffered. 21:32 Therefore, you see the father suffered for he himself was the father. 21:36 Now the New Testament never says that the father suffered on the cross. 21:40 But they think that's OK because they think the New Testament obviously implies it. 21:44 Here's how an analytic philosopher analyzes this argument. 21:48 Premise. 21:49 Christ just is God, or one and the same. 21:52 Premise. 21:53 Which he didn't bother to state. 21:54 Presupposed. 21:55 The father just says Godfather and God are numerically 1. 22:00 Therefore, Christ, just as the Father, things identical to the same thing, therefore have to be identical to one another. 22:07 So I wanted to really do imply 3. 22:10 Premise 4. 22:12 Suffered. 22:13 The Bible says that. 22:15 Five, therefore, the father suffered that follows from 3:00 and 4:00. If Christ just is the father. If Christ suffered, then that's to say the father suffered. 22:24 So it's a valid. 22:26 There's no mistake in the reasoning, but the problem is premise 1. 22:30 This can't be true in my view according to scripture, because in Scripture the Father and Son simultaneously differ from one another, which we all know rules out being one. 22:43 For instance, in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus prayed at that moment, he wanted to avoid his crucifixion. 22:52 Father did not want Jesus to avoid the crucifixion. For that moment, their wills differed. 23:00 Things which simultaneously differ are two. We all know that one thing can't have and lack the same property at the same time. 23:08 This is why you cannot identify Christ in the Father or Christ in God. 23:15 Now some modulists in history talk about Father, son and spirit, and they seem to think that God always lives it in all three ways. 23:22 Others think he does them one at a time, 1 after the other. 23:26 But no, itis only talks about the father and the son. 23:28 So before Incarnating God is called Father. 23:32 And in Mary's miraculous pregnancy, God comes to control a human body. 23:37 I think his view is that this functions as the soul. 23:40 Functions as the soul of this human body. 23:43 OK. 23:44 Of course. Then, at this time, God has called the Sun and somehow manages to suffer and die on the cross. 23:50 The body is supposed to enable that. That's not very clear. 23:54 So it's what some scholars call a God and a God Christology. But the God here is the father, son, the father, slash son. One of the same. Not a second God that they think that's the one God, not the logos. 24:09 The Refuter also gives us a short quotation from Zephirinas, who was a Bishop in Rome for about 18 years. Later, Catholic tradition considers Zephyrinus to be the Pope at this time. 24:23 Wasn't really the Pope, that's. 24:25 There wasn't 1 Bishop over all of Rome at this time. 24:28 But what's this quotation? 24:31 Zeffirenis is quoted as saying by the Refuter. 24:34 I know one God, Christ Jesus. And besides him, no other who was born and subject to suffering at other times. 24:43 Callistus, who was later after him Pope, persuade him to say the father did not die but the son. 24:50 Now, how can he say? 24:52 The father did not die with the son. If he thinks there's only one God Christ Jesus, who's also the father. 24:57 I mean, his meaning could just be that God did not die when he was the father. 25:02 But only in that later portion of his life when he was called Son. 25:06 Which? OK, that seems to be kind of a picky verbal point, right? 25:10 If I say my dad was born in California, that's true. Even though he wasn't my dad then, it's still true. 25:18 You can talk about someone earlier using a later title. 25:21 But anyway. 25:23 So let's take stock of what we've seen from the refuter. 25:28 He's a logos theorist himself, and he's aware of the dynamic monarchy in Theodotus and people who agreed with him, but he gets them wrong. 25:36 Lumps them together with some Gnostics. He's very aware of Modalistic monarchians, including teachers inspired by Nuadus. 25:45 Such as Zephyrinus and his success. 25:49 I'm not sure the refuter is right about callistas. 25:52 Not sure that Callistus really is a modalistic. 25:54 But anyway this, in his mind is the non gnostic theological landscape. 26:02 Maybe. 26:04 Part of it is gnostic, but these are the views that he knows about. Once you don't include some of the really wild gnostic views. 26:11 Where's the Trinity? Nowhere. 26:14 O this landscape is well known to specialists in the history of this period. 26:18 Many Trinitarians just can't accept. 26:20 There's got to be Trinitarians somewhere here. 26:23 So what apologists do is they pass around lists of short quotations from writers in this period, which sound Trinitarian to them. 26:31 And they get a lot of attention by telling other Trinitarians what they want to hear. 26:36 Yes, mainstream Christianity has always, always been Trinitarian. 26:41 They just, you know, didn't quite have adequate language yet to. 26:44 Express their views that they always held. 26:47 Right, so today, YouTube apologists are an absolute fire hose of misinformation on this topic. 26:53 Now, don't worry. I'm not gonna get political, OK? 26:57 We're coming into election season. 26:58 Not what I'm doing. 26:59 This is an example that'll help you understand the mistake in these apologist reasoning, right? 27:05 So we know what sort of things former President Donald Trump has said right? He'll says I will make America great again. 27:11 There are too many illegal immigrants here and we should raise tariffs on foreign goods. 27:17 Now, what if somebody came up to you and said? 27:19 4 N I've got an interesting thesis for. 27:22 What if I told you that I can prove? 27:25 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, U.S. President from 1933 to 1945. 27:32 What if I can prove that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was in fact a mega Republican? 27:37 He's just as much a Trumpist as Trump himself, and this is what they do. 27:42 They find Franklin Delano Roosevelt saying those three same things. 27:48 Now, would this prove that Roosevelt really was a MAGA Republican? 27:53 I mean at one level it's just an obvious anachronism. 27:56 Like someone who thought that just like wouldn't know history at all. 28:01 But my point is it doesn't show that he's a MAGA Republican at all, even if he in fact said all of those three things. Why? 28:08 Because saying things like that is necessary for being a MAGA Republican. 28:13 But it's not sufficient for being a MAGA Republican. 28:16 You might say those three things. 28:18 And have a totally opposed political philosophy, right? 28:22 Roosevelt, really. 28:23 He was some kind of leftist. 28:26 So you can say similar things whilst holding very different overall views and that is in fact what is going on with these apologists claiming to find early Trinitarians. So Trinitarians like the Catholic Bishop Augustine here, who's in the late 3 hundreds and early 4 hundreds. 28:44 He would say things like Jesus is God. There is a Holy Trinity, father, son and spirit and the pre human Jesus was involved in creation. 28:53 Yeah, those are Trinitarian things to say. 28:56 Guess who else might say? 28:57 How about the father of English? Unitarianism, John Biddle. 29:02 He would say Jesus is God. Then he would immediately point out that Moses was called God and God could be used for beings other than the one God. 29:10 He does talk about a Holy Trinity, but he means it to be God, the son of God and the spirit. 29:17 And he is one of those preexistence guys. 29:19 But does he believe in a triune God? Absolutely not. 29:22 Who else would say things like that? 29:24 Well, trinitarians. 29:26 But so would the famous Subordinationist Unitarian theologian and philosopher Samuel Clark, younger friend of Sir Isaac Newton, who defended that the one God just is the father, starring in his 1712 book. 29:39 Called the scripture doctrine of the Trinity again, for him, the Trinity is God and two other beings. It's not a triune God. 29:48 That's how the earlier authors used it too, right? 29:51 His views in broad outline were similar to the ancient logos theorists. 29:57 So again, today's Trinitarian apologist and theologians search eagerly through the great mass of early Christian writings, which have survived in search of little Trinitarian gold Nuggets, but as the 49ers from the American West would tell you, not everything you dig out of the earth that looks like. 30:14 Really is gold. 30:15 Sometimes you've only managed to dig up to dig up a big pile of fool's gold. 30:21 And so it is. When Trinitarians go mining for Trinity Nuggets in the early sources. 30:26 The Nuggets they find almost always end up being statements by Subordinationist Unitarians. 30:32 Other words, proponents of logos theory. 30:35 Now you may again recall many, many things logos theorists say are all sound like things that later Trinitarians would say too. 30:42 OK. 30:43 So I'm going to go through some of these now. 30:46 One book they appeal to is by the Christian philosopher Athenagoras of Athens, who flourished maybe around the one 60s to one 80s. 30:55 He wrote an apologetic book called Embassy for Christians, or It's also translated a plea for Christians. 31:03 And this was trying to defend the Christian community against the common charges that their atheist cannibals and practice incest, which is what? 31:13 Dirty minds of the Gentiles cooked up. 31:17 Atheist because they deny the Roman gods cannibals because they they eat the body and the blood in their secret meetings and incest because they call each other brother and sister and they greet one another with a holy kiss like Paul says. 31:31 So there's actually a number of sources that defend Christians against these same exact. 31:37 That's the thrust of his book. One translator praises this for its clear exposition of the Trinity, and it's careful avoidance of subordinating the sun. 31:47 And there are a few passages in some translations that sound Trinitarian. 31:53 So we read who would then not be amazed hearing those called atheists who call God father and Son, Holy Spirit, proclaiming their power and unity and their rank and diversity. 32:07 That sounds trinitarian. 32:10 Elsewhere we read we are not atheists when we recognize the maker of the universe and the word proceeding from him as God. 32:21 Yee ha. There's gold in them Gnar hills. Well before you get too excited, let's take a closer look. 32:29 Here's the first. 32:30 Again, this translator has athenagora seemingly referring to all three of them together as God. 32:36 Wished. 32:37 Sounds like something a Trinitarian would do to use the word God to refer to the three of them together. 32:42 But let's look at more of the passage in another, better translation. 32:46 So it says, who then would not be amazed if he heard of men called atheists who bring forward God the Father, God the son, and the Holy Spirit. 32:56 And who proclaim both their power and their unity and their diversity in rank. 33:00 Nor does our teaching concerning the Godhead. 33:03 Really it should be like our theology. Stop there. 33:06 But we also say there is a host of angels and ministers through whom God set in their places through the word that issues from him. 33:15 So he actually uses in the 1st. 33:17 He's using the word God twice, first for the father, the one true God, second for the Lagos. 33:26 He doesn't use it for the Holy Spirit, which is typical for Lagos theorists, and the gist of his argument is don't call us godless. 33:33 We don't have the Roman and Greek gods, but we've got a bunch of divine beings. We got the one true God. 33:39 Got the. 33:40 We got this Holy Spirit and we got a whole bunch of angels. 33:44 Right. So the angels are included in the divinities. 33:48 That's the argument he's. 33:49 It's very similar to an earlier passage by Justin Martyr in a public apology. 33:54 So at any rate, look, there's no mention of a Tri personal God here, nor is there any suggestion that all three of these. 34:02 The first 3 mentioned are equally divine. 34:04 Fact this presupposed that they're not. 34:06 You. 34:08 So here again is the second passage. The translator seems to be suggesting that for Athena Gorus the father and the son here called the word are the same God. That's how this translation makes it sound. 34:20 But there's no reason to take it this way, which is why other translators render it differently. 34:25 So schrodo's translation, the first one seems like it's. 34:28 Nothing in the Greek requires that God here refers to either the sun or to the father and the son together. 34:37 And nothing in the Greek corresponds to his phrase proceeding from him. 34:41 So translated correctly, he's just mentioning God. 34:44 And also this logos. 34:46 O look at the second. 34:47 Translation by Richardson. We are not atheists since we worship God, the creator of this universe and his word alright. 34:54 Objects of worship. 34:56 2nd Revelation 5 Dagnabbit that there's blasted fool's gold. 35:02 OK. 35:03 How about this? 35:04 Does he think the one God is the Trinity? 35:08 We have brought before you a God who is uncreated, eternal, invisible, impassable, who can be apprehended by mind and reason alone, who created, adorned and now rules the universe through the word that issues from him. 35:23 I have given sufficient evidence that we are not atheists on the basis of arguments presenting this God as one meaning the father. 35:32 He has a whole chapter where he argues there couldn't possibly be two of those. 35:37 Father's the one true God, for we think there is also a son of God. 35:41 We have not come to our views on either God the Father or his son, as do the poets who create myths in which they represent the gods is no better than man. 35:49 OK, this passage makes clear that Farathan agreis it's the father. 35:53 Not the Trinity. Who is the one true God. 35:55 In that sense, it's theology is Unitarian. 35:59 Right. More specifically, he's a logos theorist. God creates through his word or son the one that Justin and origin call another God, or a second God, Athena. 36:08 Doesn't use that second God terminology here. 36:12 Mentioning 2 gods isn't really to your advantage when you're bashing for half of the book. Pagan polytheism. 36:19 And then you're going to come around talking about gods in the plural. 36:22 So he doesn't use that language, but he still has similar views of Justin and the others. 36:27 But again, he thinks that in eternity, God has. 36:32 This inner log uses reason. 36:35 And then when it's time to create, he externalizes it. 36:40 And he actually thinks that the reason of God and this being through which God creates are the same. 36:48 Now, if that sounds like nonsense to you, I agree that it is nonsense. 36:53 A property of God can't also be a person. In addition to God, A being in addition to God. But affine, aggress philosophical background makes this plausible to him. 37:05 So he is very platonized in his outlook and this is common for this era. And to him this is just state-of-the-art philosophy, the Platonism of the time. 37:17 And they always have a cosmology that goes kind of like. 37:21 So this is specifically from a very influential Platonist named Numenius, who also influenced Neop. 37:27 Slightly later, numinous would be a contemporary of his he very likely had read numerous so the ultimate reality is God, or they call him the good, and God is simple, immutable. 37:40 They say pure being it doesn't doesn't consist in any sense of becoming. 37:45 So he's utterly. 37:47 Thinks only of himself perfectly and independently. Good, he's. 37:51 Oh, then there's the second God, the Craftsman of the world. 37:55 Who is? 37:57 Who contains the forms that Plato talked? 38:00 Who changes things of many things is very good because of God. 38:04 Of course, he's derivative from God. 38:07 He emanates out of God. 38:09 And there's a he talks about a third God, who somehow splits off from the second God and is the instrument of the second God's creation. 38:17 So he actually has three gods involved in creation is the third one that gets their hands dirty, not the second one, but. 38:25 As you go down the scale, you get less reality and more change and less goodness. 38:31 So the top level thing is the only thing that's perfectly good and good because of itself, and then it somehow kind of gives different degrees of goodness to everything down the chain. 38:43 OK, this is how Platonists think. 38:46 Now, what is my point? 38:50 My point is that someone like athenaus by accepting logos theory, he's always got the logos on the second rung of the ladder. 38:58 So for a Platonist, by definition, that being is going to be less great, and whatever goodness it has, it has because of God. 39:07 Whatever existence it has, it has because of God. 39:10 So the ontological subordination ISM is a feature, not a bug, for somebody who's very platonistic in their philosophical outlook. 39:19 So from this perspective, of course, the logos isn't as divine as the one true God, like that's kind of the whole point. 39:27 He does not. 39:28 Athenagoras does not think that the logos is perfectly good or independent, or unchanging or simple. 39:36 In fact, he just lacks those divine attributes. 39:39 So if you want to say he's a God and he says divine in some sense, OK, but he lacks at least for divine attributes, this idea that the sun has to be fully divine is frankly just a later concern. 39:51 It's a Nicene era concern from the 4th century. 39:56 If you're a glutton for punishment, I'll talk more about this philosophical and theological detail in a book that I'm currently writing, called monotheism, history and heresy. OK. 40:08 Anyway, to summarize Athenagoras. 40:11 He has the one true God being the father. 40:13 He's got this lesser being which lacks some of the divine attributes, but still pre exist as the son or the logos never mentions any triune. 40:23 Is positively. Obviously does not think the second being is equally divine as the first. 40:29 Doesn't really get into the Holy Spirit very much. 40:32 So he's just not Trinitarian, despite the hopes of some Trinitarian scholars that he would be, in the words of this sad 49er Karn Sarnet blasted fool's gold. 40:46 All right, another favorite source for those mining for early Trinitarian Gold is Milito of Sardis. 40:53 He maybe died around 190. 40:56 He was a Bishop, an ascetic and a orator in Asia Minor. 41:01 And he's probably the author of this sermon called on Pasha or on the Passion. 41:06 And they just think this is the awesomest source the Trinitarian apologists. 41:12 And it's really a melodramatic rhetoric, pact performance than it is any kind of piece of theology. 41:20 It's really an appeal to emotion more than an attempt to understand anything. 41:25 You'll get a feel for his rhetoric, so. 41:29 He's talking about the exodus and the, umm, the sacrifice of the Passover lamb and saying that's prefiguring Christ right? For as a son born and as a lamb lead and as a sheep slain and as a man buried, he rose from the dead as God. 41:46 Being by nature, God and man. 41:49 OK, that sounds like something a Trinitarian would say that Jesus is a God and man. Of course, in this time period, most people thought of divinity as coming in degrees and or kind. 41:59 So if you were divine, that's not necessarily divine. The sense that the one true God is divine, like having all the divine attributes. 42:08 He says. 42:09 And this is probably their favorite passage. 42:11 He who hung the earth is hanging. 42:14 He who fix the heavens has been fixed. 42:17 He who fastened the universe has been fastened to a tree. 42:21 The sovereign has been insulted. 42:23 The God has been murdered. 42:26 The King of Israel has been put to death by an Israelite right hand. 42:31 OK, he's trying to stick it to the Jews the whole. 42:34 By the way, that's kind of his whole point in this, but these do sound like things that are Trinitarian would say. 42:42 A recent apologist urges that in this sermon we find a Trinitarian Christology that accords utterly with the symbol of the Council of Chalcedon and teaches Christ to be God himself. 42:55 Interesting that he's a Trinitarian. 42:57 He thinks that's correct thing to say, but yeah, he's going. 43:02 To trinitarian gold. 43:03 Come on. It's got to be. 43:08 Now, scholars debate not whether he's a Trinitarian, but whether or not he's a monolistic monarchian because he says some modalist sounding things. 43:18 Calls Jesus the father at one point, and here he is saying that God was killed on the cross by the Jews. 43:25 But when you really dig into it and there's scholarship that has done this carefully, in fact, Melito is just using a number of titles ambiguously. 43:34 He'll use titles sometimes for God and other times for. 43:38 So the word God, sometimes it's the father, sometimes is the one true God. Sometimes is the Lagos sovereign Lord father. 43:48 This is potentially confusing, but it's consistent with thinking that God and his son are numerically, to which malito clearly. 43:55 Yes. 43:57 In this passage, he writes O Lawless Israel. You did not see God. You did not recognize the Lord. 44:05 You did not know Israel that he is the first born of God who was begotten before the morning star. 44:13 So he's talking about God begetting, externalizing his logos when it was time to create and notice. He's using God in two different senses. 44:22 So when he says it the first time, he's talking about the one who's the first born of God, who's begotten before the morning star. 44:30 When he says God, the second time, he means the one true God. 44:34 OK, is this confusing? 44:37 Yeah. I mean it's a little bit confusing, but it's just another example of logos theory, direct creators. 44:44 The ultimate creator really is the one true God the father. 44:48 So whatever attributes the logos has, he would seem to lack what later theologians call the essential attribute of divine. 44:56 Existing independently of anything else or ultimacy. 45:01 And he would also seemingly lack the non essential attribute of having been the ultimate source of the cosmos, right? If by creator you mean being the ultimate source of the cosmos, the logos is not the creator in that sense, only God is. 45:17 So this Christ is not fully divine. 45:20 He says about the Lagos. 45:22 It is he that made heaven and earth and fashioned man who was in flesh upon a virgin who hung upon a tree who was buried in the earth, who was raised from the dead and went up to the heights of Heaven. Who sits at the father's right. 45:35 Through whom the father did his works from beginning to eternity. 45:39 So the highest God is the father he creates, and then he later governs through his son, and when his son gets killed, he raises his son to his right hand. 45:49 So the father is the ultimate authority he gives. 45:53 The second highest authority under himself to Jesus. It's like the New Testament. This way he's second in command now under God. 46:01 Yeah, he talks about the logos as creator, but again, in the more fundamental sense, it's God who's the creator. 46:08 No mention of a Tri personal God. 46:11 Clear assumptions that the sun is not fully divine and clear assumption that the one God is the father. 46:17 Dad blast it. 46:18 More of that dadgum fool's gold. 46:22 Now we could do this all day with other sources, but we don't have the time. Trinitarian apologists are like gamblers or gold prospectors. 46:29 Springs eternal. 46:31 No matter how many early sources you show them are not Trinitarian, they will just try to find more clinging to their narrative. 46:39 That they've accepted that Christianity was always Trinitarian. 46:43 So then they'll come at you with Ignatius or Theophilus of Antioch. 46:47 O in conclusion, let me give you some clear requirements for being Trinitarian. 46:52 These requirements disqualify any source from about the 1st 300 years of Christian history. 46:58 It shows that they're not Trinitarian, but there's something else you can apply these yourself to any source someone brings up to you if you're willing to go and read the whole book. 47:07 And not just accept their little 2 sentence snippet. 47:11 So the three requirements are the one God and the Trinity have to be 1 and the same. 47:16 The one God is the triune God. You have to think that each person by himself is fully divine, and you have to think that none of those persons is the others, or they they really are. 47:27 There really are numerically distinct, right? 47:30 Now, whether these three commitments are sufficient for being Trinitarian. 47:35 We're going to leave that to them. Let them fight about that. 47:38 Actually are going to disagree about whether these are sufficient, right? 47:41 Some of them would want there to be eternal generation, others others deny eternal generation, for instance. 47:47 Anyway, you got to have at least these 3 to be Trinitarian, right? 47:51 Should agree on. 47:52 Can we not agree on this? 47:53 Trinitarian friends. 47:55 If. 47:55 You think there are other requirements? Fine. 47:57 But you should agree on these they're necessary conditions for being Trinitarian. Trinitarians have always demanded this antimodal clause. 48:06 The three persons really are. 48:08 You can't collapse any two of them and say, oh, that's really one and the same. 48:12 Alright, a modalist always collapses at least two of the three persons. 48:16 So modalists are just not Trinitarians by definition. 48:20 Now, of course, some early authors do accept T3 like origin. 48:26 Who thinks? 48:27 God, that is to say, the father is the greatest reality and the second greatest is the logos. 48:33 Is the Holy Spirit. It says is the greatest creature that God made through the logos. 48:39 Those are the three greatest beings. They get gold, silver and bronze in the greatness Olympics. 48:43 He would accept T3. 48:45 But anyway, he's not a Trinitarian because of the other two reasons. 48:50 Look at T1, you will never find an author in our time period who is committed to the sameness of the one God and the Trinity. 48:57 Early on, they don't even have the word that we translate as Trinity trios in Greek or trinitas in Latin. 49:04 When they get that word starting around 180, they use it like those early modern Unitarians use it as a plural referring term for God. 49:13 Oh, and those also two other beings. 49:16 So the Trinity doesn't mean a triune God when they use the word Trinity. 49:20 It's better translated as triad. 49:22 It's just like a threesome, so it's a collection of three. 49:26 So if your source does not commit to T1, it's not Trinitarian, and that's going to disqualify any author in the late 1 hundreds and early 2 hundreds. 49:37 OK, T2 each of these by himself is fully divine. 49:41 In our time period, if a mainstream Christian theologian agrees with T2, then that person is invariably a modalistic monarchian. 49:52 Right. If Father just is the son, then of course the son has to be fully divine because the father is fully divine, OK? 50:00 Then they're in violation of T3, so they're not tranitarians. 50:04 OK, the rest of them who are not modalist, dynamic monarchians and logos theorists, they always assume the falsity of T2. 50:13 And they almost always say things which imply the falsity of. 50:17 2 So this itself, never mind the other requirements, even just this one thing. 50:22 Out that they're Trinitarian now in a Trinitarian starts picking up historical books. 50:28 Is kind of what they expect to find based on their narrative. 50:32 They expect to see mostly Trinitarians here in green. OK, you've got some of this unfortunate subordinationism rattling around. 50:41 Don't know what those guys were. 50:43 Didn't they get the memo that we're all we all believe in equal divinity? 50:47 But there's going to be some logos. 50:48 And yeah, a few heretics. 50:50 A few modalists and a few dynamic monarchians. 50:54 They think surely, surely God wouldn't allow the mainstream to go astray. 50:59 So even in the one hundreds nearly 200, you should find lots and lots of Trinitarians. If they're not everybody, at least. 51:05 Be a strong majority, right? 51:09 Well, they're in for a shock. 51:12 Because when you see the views that are actually in the sources, such as the refutation of all heresies or the voluminous works of origin, or the voluminous works of Tertullian, you get logos theory. You get motilus and you get dynamic monarchians which we call biblical Unitarians. 51:31 And you don't get any Trinitarians anywhere. 51:33 And that's because in this era, Trinitarianism has yet to be invented. 51:40 And again, it's not just the writings we looked at, it's all of them, right? 51:43 Voluminous writings by Irenaeus and Novation. 51:48 But also even lesser authors like Athenagoras and Molito. 51:52 They're just logos theorists. Now, if you just sort of counting up books, if you add up all the book titles and ask which is the view of the author, you're going to get the impression that basically almost everybody was a logos theorist back then. 52:06 The problem is you're only considering the surviving books, so these are books which the later Trinitarian mainstream allowed to continue to be copied, that they liked enough to continue to copy them every couple generations so they wouldn't just disappear. 52:23 And which they never, you know, confiscated or anything. 52:26 And it was the logos theorists who were adopted as the quote Church fathers. 52:31 Well, some of them were. 52:33 Some of them, like origin, had kind of an unfortunate fate. Later on after their death, but. 52:38 So the Trinitarian mainstream looking back here, the ones that they think sound like them are the logos theorists, and that's why those are all the books we had. 52:46 The. 52:47 The dynamic monarch Ian's. They wrote tons of books and sadly they just didn't get copy enough times and they disappeared. 52:55 Maybe some were even destroyed under persecution. We don't really know. 52:59 OK. 53:00 So this is incredibly a misleading picture when you're just looking at the book titles O what the Lagos theologians tell us, such as origin and Tertullian, innovation and even the refuter. In one spot they tell us that the majority of Christians. 53:17 The less learned bozos who just go around reading the Bible and aren't sophisticated like us. 53:22 Those guys in Greek hoipalloi the many they don't like logos. 53:29 So, logos theorists admit in many places that their view is a minority view in this period. 53:35 Now obviously it appealed to a certain kind of learned, very philosophically influenced Latin or Greek writer. 53:43 But a lot of people in the Pew looked at it and said you got 2 creators. I'm pretty sure it says in the Old Testament that God did it all by himself. 53:52 And I'm pretty sure that when it says God created by his word, that's not supposed to be a literal helper any more than the lady in. 53:59 Proverbs 8 literal helper. 54:01 So they constantly were being objected to with people saying you guys are ditheists you believe in two gods. Well, we believe in one God and one creator. 54:12 We believe in the monarchy, the rule of the one God. 54:16 And that's why they call them dynamic monarchians and modalists. 54:19 So the majority held the other views. For all we know, the distribution could have been more like. 54:24 It could have been majority of dynamic monarchian with some modalistic monarchians and the smallest group would be the logos, the. 54:32 We don't really know because again, we have the books that were allowed to survive by the Trinitarian mainstream. 54:38 But again, we do have the logos theorists telling us that the unwashed masses. 54:45 Of Christians don't accept their views and accuse them of being dye theists, OK? 54:53 So for quite a while, Lagos theory was a minority view for intellectuals, and it sort of claws its way to prominence throughout the two hundreds, they still have pockets of people in the three hundreds, and later who deny Lagos theory, but by the time you get up to. 55:08 Nicaea. 55:09 It's mostly the bishops are different kinds of Lagos theorists that think the Lagos came into existence or it didn't. 55:16 Hmm. 55:17 So a Trinitarian understanding of the one God was very late to the party. 55:21 That's a story for another day, but I can tell you that the first official Trinitarian Creed was promulgated in the year 381. 55:30 The best I can say for these confused and confusing traditions is that at least they killed off most versions of modalistic monarchianism. 55:40 O that's the one good thing I could. 55:42 I mean, Trinitarian Creed's always dump on the modalist and say that's obviously wrong. 55:47 The father was not. 55:48 And you have to distinguish between the father and son. 55:51 Yes, I. 55:52 Father and son are numerically distinct. 55:55 But of course, the one God isn't the Trinity, it's the father. 55:58 What the New Testament demands? 56:01 All. 56:01 And this is what we find in the New Testament, the one true God, as a single self, and more specifically the father. As Paul says, the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 56:13 This is what the dynamic monarchians and the logos theorists agreed on. 56:17 As concerning the one true God, it's this guy today, biblical Unitarians and so-called Aryans agree on this. 56:24 Someday everyone will agree on this, in my view. 56:28 Once Upon a time, there were Christians, but no Trinitarian. 56:33 Someday this will be true again. 56:35 The Lord Jesus Christ will see to it he's not going to continue to let people confuse him together with his and our God. 56:43 Which is really the end result of all the furious speculating on the parts of Trinity and two natures theory for most people in the Pew, Jesus is God. 56:53 Oh, but he's also somebody else. The way he's God, wait, but he's somebody else. 56:57 That's kind of what it comes down to. 56:59 Will be put to an end. 57:01 Both biblical and historical facts support our reforming cause and we need to have both in making our case. 57:07 And beware, there's a lot of noise in recent scholarship. 57:11 Beware of newfangled nonsense, especially in the evangelical publishing realm, about early high Christology and divine identity. When we actually make use of the primary sources and less biased historical. 57:27 Sources we can be sure that the facts are on our. 57:32 And the facts practically make the argument for us. 57:38 That brings this presentation to an end. 57:41 Did you think? 57:42 Come on over to episode 579, christologies in the second and third centuries and leave your questions and feedback there. 57:51 I found this presentation to be particularly helpful. 57:55 And see it as the mature work of someone who has been studying and researching this topic for a long time. 58:04 I hope you enjoyed it. 58:05 Well, with this presentation by Dale Tuckey is the third in a series that we've done on theological presentations looking at. 58:15 Christ is including our first one, which was by Anna Brown. 58:19 Mirror about a man made in the image of God. 58:23 And then last week, Jerry Werewolfly Old Testament Yahweh passages to Jesus. 58:29 And next week, you'll hear from yours truly. My presentation from New Zealand, called an honest evaluation of evidence for the deity of Christ. 58:41 In which I look at the various places in the New Testament where Jesus is called God, which is a fairly difficult thing to do. As it turns out, because depends on who you ask or what translation you consult. 58:56 As to how many times this in fact occurs, so we'll be getting into that a little bit and looking at the evidence for and against the deity of Christ before offering a way of synthesizing all the data together. 59:10 I think is most satisfying. 59:12 So stay tuned for that next. 59:14 I wish you all the best. Hope you're having a great holiday season and as we wrap up the 2024 year here in December, if you have enjoyed this podcast, please share it with others. 59:29 Especially this particular episode, I think this is some information that just needs to get out there. 59:35 People need to hear about what was going on in the 2nd century in the 3rd century and in the 4th century, these three centuries after the New Testament serve as the battle ground for. 59:50 Various Christological positions that competed for adherence, and I know that doctor Tuggy did not get into the Gnostics, but this is another group of Christians, the Gnostics in the Valentinians. 1:00:02 Who were also competing with these other groups and they held a docetic. 1:00:07 The idea that Christ appeared human but was in fact a spiritual being of some sort, often called an eon. 1:00:15 Now if this is all new to you or you are interested in digging deeper, I recommend that you check out the class. 1:00:22 Early church history, which you can find in your podcast app by just looking for episode 481 that starts the. 1:00:31 22 episode series that makes up this class and I would recommend if you're interested in Christology. In particular I do. 1:00:40 I cover a lot of different subjects, but I do make a special effort to bring out anything related to christology's in the second, third and 4th centuries. 1:00:51 As well, especially in the 4th century, I have two or three episodes on that and you can take a look at that. 1:00:58 Also on YouTube you can just look up early church history and then just type my last name, Finnegan, and you'll be able to find the class that way as well. 1:01:07 That's going to be it for. 1:01:09 Thanks everybody for listening. If you'd like to support us, you can do that at restitudio.org. 1:01:14 I'll catch you next week and remember, the truth has nothing to fear.