Tonight I live-blogged a Trinity Debate between Bruce Ware and Wayne Grudem vs. Tom McCall and Keith Yandell on this question: “Do relations of authority and submission exist eternally among the Persons of the Godhead?”
During the Q&A, I asked a question from Phil Gons, who was watching the debate via live streaming and emailed me the question. I was disappointed in Dr. Yandell’s answer. Basically, he made fun of the question, apparently because it did not compute with his metaphysical system. Frustrating. Phil shares and explains his penetrating question more here and here.
Frankly, every one has a ‘metaphysics’; the question is how it is formed, so we can’t just cull the enterprise with a wave of the hand. Second, this is a debate between, on the one side biblical scholars light on systematic theology and, on the other side, philosophers light on biblical and systematic theology.
This doesn’t have to be the way the debate can be framed. I think both sides played a role less than successful in the long run.
Best.
Pete
Pete, are you saying that Grudem and Ware are “biblical scholars light on systematic theology”? If so, that’s a bold assertion (with which I’d disagree).
Andy,
Are you sure that “it didn’t compute with his metaphysical system”? Maybe he just didn’t hear you.
No, I’m not sure.
1. That’s what it seemed like to me, and numerous people independently suggested to me after the debate that they thought the same thing.
2. If he didn’t hear me, why would he rant like he did?
I’ve heard that he told students the next day in a class at Trinity that he didn’t hear the question. Fair enough. But in that case, it makes his rant even more unjustifiable.
Andy,
I tried to take a look at the video, but they evidently haven’t posted it. However, from where I was sitting, after you sat down, he said several times “I didn’t hear the question” or “read the question again.” However, when you replied to him from your seat you only read Phil’s conclusion and not the entire syllogism. I think this explains why he rather indignantly said, “Why!?” . . . he was genuinely looking for a reason/logic that he never heard.
More to the heart of the issue, it seems to me that if you were unsure of his intentions or his reasons then you should have sought further clarification before giving them a negative interpretation in your post.
Tim,
I don’t think that the the audio or video are available yet online.
1. Immediately after I read the question, Yandell gave the impression that he understood it by, as you say, rather indignantly asking “Why!?” In other words, he made it sound like he understood the question but thought that it was a horrible question. To be honest, I think the way he treated the person who merely read the question (not the person who asked it in the first place) was a bit over the top. A friend of mine joked that he thought Yandell was going to jump over the podium and tackle me! :-)
2. I also used the word “apparently” in the post. That leaves wiggle room for misunderstanding.
3. On the other hand, I may be off since I’m going by my imperfect memory! I wasn’t able to get further clarification from Yandell afterwards, but I did from his partner, Tom McCall, who confirmed my leaning that the impasse was due to differing metaphysics.
Hi Andy, listen, I don’t mean to be pejorative here, but if we are really talking about systematic theologians, you have to raise your hands and admit Grudem is a biblical scholar who wrote a ‘systematic’. What might help is a clarification of what systematics is and what it does, and significantly, the resources it uses. From that, we could then structure how a discussion of this nature could take place. All I am saying is that it can be done another way, which leads me back to the category of ‘systematics’, one I feel, no longer resides in the house of evangelicalism.
Pete, thanks for clarifying. It seems that a fundamental difference here is theological method! I agree, for example, with the methodology presented in this article:
D. A. Carson, “Systematic Theology and Biblical Theology.” Pages 89-104 in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology. Edited by T. Desmond Alexander and Brian S. Rosner. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2000.
Andy, typical Carson: great taxonomy of the current state of affairs. However, I wonder (and this comes back to my original query) if Carson’s descriptive account simply calls for more of the same; that is, it purports the way biblical and systematic are done, for the most part, and acknowledges this to be fine. I am saying there is another way that doesn’t bifurcate the two disciplines, and doesn’t wander into the foreign territory of, even if it happens to be neighbouring, that of philosophy, whether analytic or continental. The kind of approach I am looking for, modeled as it is by a rare coterie of theologians, is one that depends entirely on Scripture for articulation and speaks across church history with a vocabulary rich in resources.
Unfortunately, as this debate indicates, such a conversation seems quite a ways away from what I’m proposing.
Thanks for your time.
As you know Andy, I’m no philosopher, but I don’t actually think that Phil’s argument represents Dr. Yandell’s very well and that is why Dr. Yandell did not understand it. At the risk of making a fool of myself this is how I understood what Dr. Yandell was saying (I welcome a correction to my understanding)…
At least as I understand Dr. Yandell’s perspective there is no such thing as any necessary property that the Son has that the Father does not have (etc. for all combinations and permutations). They are all three bearers of the same properties. I believe the same goes for Sonship because I guess they would say that it is not an eternally necessary property in their view. Grudem and Ware argued that if they are all bearers of the same properties then they are the same entities. But Yandell said you can have three entities that have the same properties and yet they are three distinct entities. He said there is a long philosophical argument for this position that he was not able to give at the debate. I interpret entity bearers to mean that they are three persons, which would mean that Yandell and McCAll need not account for any necessary differences between the three persons of the Trinity, they are simply three different persons bearing exactly the same necessary properties.
Whether possible or not, I think if he understood himself in that way then it more than explains his frustration with the question, it simply does not address his position.
Also, Phil states that Yandell and McCall think all necessary differences are essential differences. But it is Grudem and Ware who indicated that eternal subordination is eternal, necessary and essential. Actually, I don’t know that Ware ever said essential (except when quoting his historical representatives) but Grudem did in a context that made it difficult for me to understand anything but essence-tial. Also, not being a philosopher I have a hard time understanding how something could be eternal, necessary, and essential and not be ontological.
Todd,
As I indicated in my post, I thought Dr. Yandell made statements at the end that indicated that he didn’t reject that Father, Son, and Spirit were appropriate labels for the three persons of the immanent Trinity. My interactions with Tom—and statements he made during the debate—lead me to believe that he does affirm that these are eternal realities and not just arbitrary labels that we read back into the immanent Trinity.
Perhaps that is not what they believe. I’m looking forward to getting the audio and video so I can verify this. However, that’s not really important to the points I was making in my extension of the argument.
If their position is that there are no eternal and necessary differences among the three persons of the Trinity (resolution option #2 in my post), then it has its own set of problems.
First, they break with a long tradition of orthodox interpreters. The church’s best theologians did acknowledge eternal and necessary differences among the persons.
What’s more, not only do they break with the historical doctrine, but they necessarily charge it with a denial of homoousian. For if the Father is eternally and necessarily ingenerate, and the Son is eternally and necessarily generate, etc., then they are of difference essences and every major orthodox theologian was really just an Arian (though he didn’t realize it). That’s a very serious charge, don’t you think?
I think you’re confusing things a little in your final paragraph. You say, “But it is Grudem and Ware who indicated that eternal subordination is eternal, necessary and essential.” Grudem and Ware both vehemently reject the notion that the subordination is essential (i.e., pertaining to essence). Rather, they root the functional differences in the persons’ different personal properties of fatherhood and sonship.
Also, it seems like you are not using “essential” and “ontological” as synonyms. I believe both sides agree that they are synonyms.
For nearly two millennia the church has been affirming necessary and eternal differences in the immanent Trinity that are not predicated of the one divine essence, but rather of the individual personal properties. This is the crucial distinction that the Yandell–McCall argument blurs.
Feinberg helpfully explains, “Being eternally begotten and eternally proceeding are not properties the Son and Spirit have in virtue of being divine, but in virtue of being distinct subsistences of that divine essence. Hence, . . . the conclusion should say, ‘Therefore, God the Son is not the same *person* or *subsistence* as God the Father’” rather than that God the Son is not the same *essence* as God the Father (No One Like Him, 495; emphasis mine).