The Trinity and the New Testament – a Counter-Challenge to Dale Tuggy

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-199
Author(s):  
William Hasker
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The Trinity

Dale Tuggy argues that my trinitarian views are in conflict with the theology of the New Testament; the New Testament, rather, is unitarian.  I show several flaws in this argument, and point out the New Testament evidence that eventually led to the formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity.

Christology—a Jewish view

1971 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-200
Author(s):  
Steven Katz
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
The Other ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
The World ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The Trinity

In this paper I would like to discuss what the Old Testament has to say about the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. I take it as agreed that this task is both important and necessary for a real understanding of the New Testament, which by itself, is neither complete, meaningful nor self-authenticating. I do not make any claims to completeness on this crucial topic, but wish only to suggest what I feel are some important points for consideration. I want to discuss the three persons of the Trinity separately, beginning with the Father, then proceeding to the Holy Spirit and then to the Son. My remarks about the Father will be brief. I only wish to make the point that the Old Testament as well as the new Testament is fully aware of God's Fatherhood and alive to the reality that God loves mankind. It is clear that Israel has a special place as indicated by such passages as Exod. 4.22 where God addresses Israel saying: ‘Israel is my first born son.’ Yet at the same time it is basic to an understanding of Old Testament thought that God is the Father of the other nations of the world, though they are not the ‘first born’. This is a cardinal position of Old Testament theology and is based on the belief, given expression in Genesis, that all belongs to and was created by God.

The Trinity between Athens and Jerusalem

2009 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Schwöbel
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
Cappadocian Fathers ◽  
The Trinity

AbstractThis article uncovers the roots of the doctrine of the Trinity in the 'prototrinitarian grammar of discourse on God' of the New Testament and in its Old Testament presuppositions. Contrary to the well-worn thesis of Harnack, it is argued that it was Jerusalem rather than Athens—i.e., the biblical witness rather than Greek metaphysics—that gave rise to the dogma of the Trinity. Greek metaphysics only came in when the early Christians had to express the universality of the truth they claimed for God's self-disclosure through Christ in the Spirit by engaging with Greek philosophy. This was a risky experiment, since it implied a conceptual redefinition that went against the doctrine's original import. It is shown, however, that the crucial link to the biblical witness was re-established by the Cappadocian fathers and subsequently adopted by the Council of Constantinople (381).

Erasmus’s Biblical Project

2016 ◽  
Vol 96 (4) ◽  
pp. 595-635
Author(s):  
Henk Nellen ◽  
Jan Bloemendal
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Greek Text ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Immediate Response

The history of the immediate response on and later reception of Erasmus’s ‘New Testament Project’ is an eventful one. The Project consisted of three innovations in biblical scholarship: the first printed edition of the Greek text of the New Testament, a revised version of the Latin Vulgate, and a philological commentary that accounted for the many textual changes the translator had made. The article discusses the polemics Erasmus’s edition provoked immediately after publication in 1516, and sheds light on the influence his Project exerted in later centuries. Special attention is given to biblical passages that played an important role in the discussions on the doctrine of the Trinity, such as Rom. 9,5; 1 Joh. 5,7–8 (the famous Comma Johanneum), and 1 Tim. 3,16. In questioning these passages as convincing, irrefutable proof-texts of Christ’s divinity, Erasmus made himself vulnerable to accusations of reviving Arianism, an old anti-Trinitarian heresy.

Spirit

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dale B. Martin
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Human Person ◽  
Historical Criticism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Christian View ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The Trinity

When the subject is the Christian view of the holy spirit, it is even more difficult to find an orthodox doctrine of the spirit if the Bible is read only through the method of modern historical criticism. Read historically, the Bible does not teach a doctrine of the trinity, and the Greek word for “spirit,” pneuma, refers to many different things in the New Testament. Moreover, the pneuma was considered in the ancient world to be a material substance, though a rarified and thin form of matter. Yet those ancient notions of pneuma may help us reimagine the Christian holy spirit in new, though not at all unorthodox, ways. The spirit may then become the most corporeal person of the trinity; the most present person of the trinity; or alternatively, the most absent. The various ways the New Testament speaks of pneuma—that of the human person, or the church, of God, of Christ, and even of “this cosmos”—may provoke Christian imagination in new ways once the constraints of modernist methods of interpretation are transcended. Even the gender of the spirit becomes a provocative but fruitful meditation for postmodern Christians.

The Christadelphians and the Doctrine of the Trinity

2003 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-176
Author(s):  
Julian Clementson
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
Popular Language ◽  
The Trinity

This article, by a former Christadelphian, asks how evangelicals can help Christadelphians understand the doctrine of the Trinity. After a brief introduction to the Christadelphian community and a survey of its doctrine of Christ and the Holy Spirit, we evaluate that doctrine with reference to the New Testament and to systematic considerations. We conclude that neither dogmatic formulae nor popular language used to describe the Trinity are helpful to Christadelphians, and that there are more constructive alternatives. We see that both Christadelphians and trinitarians need to compare their faith, not simply with the ancient creeds, but ultimately with the earliest Christian experience implied by the New Testament use of trinitarian language.

God

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dale B. Martin
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Divine Simplicity ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The Trinity

Even if ancient biblical writers did not have the philosophical training to have anticipated later Christian doctrines such as the transcendence or immanence of God, divine simplicity, even the doctrine of the trinity, postmodern Christians should not be constrained by those historical limits from reading the New Testament to arrive at robust, though sometimes complex, theologies of the nature of God and of what it means to say, in the 21st century, “I believe in God.”

Paschal-Eucharistic Soundings: Intimations and Challenges

2011 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 357-369
Author(s):  
Anne Hunt
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
The Self ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Trinity

The founding paschal narrative in the New Testament and the liturgy of the Eucharist continue to afford fresh insights into the mystery of the Trinity. This article first re-visits this mystery as gleaned from these two privileged sources. Having examined the hypostatic traits manifest there in the paschal drama, notably the self-giving, self-surrendering love, which characterizes the trinitarian communion and the receptivity, obedience, and Fatherwardness of the Son, the article proceeds to consider some of the challenges that these trinitarian soundings pose to contemporary theology, in particular, for feminist theologies and the values espoused therein.

Hasker’s Tri-Personal God vs. New Testament Theology

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-177
Author(s):  
Dale Tuggy
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Triune God ◽  
Social Trinity ◽  
The One ◽  
Catholic Tradition ◽  
The Trinity

Hasker’s “social” Trinity theory is subject to considerable philosophical problems (Section II). More importantly, the theory clashes with the clear New Testament teaching that the one God just is the Father alone (Section III). Further, in light of five undeniable facts about the New Testament texts, we can know that the authors of the New Testament thought that the only God was just the Father himself, not the Trinity (Section IV). Hasker can neither deny these facts nor defeat the strong evidence they provide that in affirming a triune God in the late 4th century, catholic tradition departed from apostolic teaching about the one God (Section V).

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