{"id":132,"date":"2005-03-10T16:32:47","date_gmt":"2005-03-11T00:32:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=115"},"modified":"2005-03-10T16:32:47","modified_gmt":"2005-03-11T00:32:47","slug":"foundationalism-and-thetrinity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2005\/03\/10\/foundationalism-and-thetrinity\/","title":{"rendered":"Foundationalism and theTrinity"},"content":{"rendered":"

My post<\/a> about Nancy Pearcy’s book Total Truth<\/a> led to some good discussion about the limits of logic. In particular, there was some discussion about whether the doctrine of the Trinity is “logical.” To me, the doctrine of the Trinity is a severe test for any kind of foundationalism in which human reason and perception are considered basic.<\/p>\n

It seems to me that the doctrine of the Trinity fails the test of human logic, and therefore should not be considered a legitimate belief by a foundationalist. Of course, as a Christian, I, along with most if not all of my foundationalist Evangelical friends, do believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. So what I’d like to do is explore a bit of my thinking on this, and invite my friends in the blogsphere who’ve been defending at least a “modest” foundationalism to explain how their criteria for truth square with believing the doctrine of the Trinity. (As usual, I don’t claim to know it all here, and I’m in the process of exploring these thoughts myself.)
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\nFirst, a very brief explanation of my understanding of the Trinity. The Westminster Confession of Faith<\/a> describes the Trinity as follows: “[i]n the unity of the Godhead there be three Persons of one substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.” As explained in Millard Erickson’s Christian Theology<\/a>, essential to the doctrine of the Trinity are the ideas of the unity of God (“God is one, not several”) and “the deity of each of the three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” (Erickson, at p. 362.)<\/p>\n

Erickson’s chapter on the Trinity contrasts the orthodox view with historic deviations from it, including views which stressed the unity of God over the separateness of the three persons of the Trinity (these include dynamic monarchianism, in which God is seen as dynamically present in the man Jesus, and modalistic monarchism, in which the three persons of the Trinity are not truly distinct persons but are simply “modes” of how God operates) and views which stressed the distinctions between the persons of the Trinity over the unity of God (including early Orthodox formulations stating God is one “ousia” (essence) in three “hupostaseis” (modes of being). (Erickson, at pp. 358-361.) In contrast to these views, Erickson notes that an orthodox Evangelical view of the Trinity will not empasize one aspect of the Trinity over another. According to another Evangelical theologian, Wayne Grudem (in his Systematic Theology<\/a>), the doctrine can be summarized as follows: “1. God is three persons. 2. Each person is fully God. 3. There is one God.” (Grudem, at p. 231).<\/p>\n

It seems to me that this formulation of the Trinity violates the basic rule of logic that something cannot be “x and not x.” Yet, it also seems to me that it is a correct, orthodox formulation of the doctrine. This suggest to me that human logic is limited as a test for the truthfulness of propositional claims. In fact, not only is logic’s utility limited, in this instance it is unhelpful concerning a central doctrine of our faith.<\/p>\n

Erickson is careful to state that we should not conclude that the doctrine of the Trinity is merely paradoxical. However, he recognizes the point I’ve made here about this doctrine. He says<\/p>\n

“It appears that Tertullian was right in affirming that the doctrine of the Trinity must be divinely revealed, not humanly constructed. It is so absurd from a human standpoint that no one would have invented it. We do not hold the doctrine of the Trinity because it is self-evident or logically cogent. We hold it because God has revealed that this is what he is like.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So I’d like to hear from my “modest foundationalist” friends: how do Christians with foundationalist epistemology justify their belief in the Trinity?<\/p>\n

I can anticipate one answer: because reason tells us scripture is true, and scripture at least implies the doctrine of the Trinity. That reasoning seems circular to me. If reason supports scripture, it must be at least partly because scripture makes logical claims; we can’t conclude a proposition is supported based on the reasonableness of scripture if the proposition in question is illogical.<\/p>\n

My take, at least for now, is that belief in the doctrine of the Trinity makes more sense from a non-foundationalist perspective. We believe it because we presuppose the truthfulness of scripture, because it coheres with our other well justified beliefs, and because our faith community supports the belief. It’s part of our web of beliefs and makes sense in that context.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My post about Nancy Pearcy’s book Total Truth led to some good discussion about the limits of logic. In particular, there was some discussion about whether the doctrine of the Trinity is “logical.” To me, the doctrine of the Trinity is a severe test for any kind of foundationalism in which human reason and perception […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epistemology","category-theology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-28","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}