From the Mail: Trinity and Incarnation

Dr. Vallicella,

Thank you for some exceptionally helpful posts lately! Regarding your point

(1) “Is there a clear scriptural basis for the doctrine of the Trinity?”

It would seem that a part of that question, or perhaps a prior question to it is:

 (1*) “Is there a clear scriptural basis for the doctrine of the Incarnation?”

It was because early Christians came to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was divine/God  that the question of how a divine Christ/God-Christ related to the ‘Father God’ to whom he prayed and in whom the Christians also first believed.  As a theologically-trained former minister, who still tries to keep up with contemporary work on the historical Jesus, I must confess that I fail to see that (1*) is the case, therefore I fail to see that (1) is the case.

 Mark Weldon Whitten, PhD   

Dr. Whitten,

You're welcome.  I appreciate the kind words.  And I take your point.  If there is no scriptural basis for the orthodox Incarnation doctrine, then there there is no such basis for the orthodox Trinity doctrine.  Not being a New Testament scholar, I cannot pronounce upon the truth of the antecedent of the foregoing conditional.  What interests me primarily as a philosopher is the logical connection between the two doctrines and any logical problems to which they give rise. 

It seems to me that the two doctrines are logically distinct in the sense that trinitarianism does not entail incarnationalism.  Argument:  God is a necessary being; he exists in all metaphysically possible worlds.  And he has his tri-unity not accidentally but essentially, i.e., in every possible world in which he exists.  But there are possible worlds in which he does not create.  (Because he creates freely.) Since there are worlds in which God is triune but there is no Incarnation of the Second Person, trinitarianism does not entail incarnationalism.  One can also run the argument temporally:  before God created anything, he was triune.  But before he created anything, there could be no Incarnation.  Therefore, trinitarianism does not entail incarnationalism.

I conclude from this that one is not accurately presenting the doctrine of the Trinity if one refers to Second Person as Jesus.  For in those possible worlds, and at those times, at which God does not create, there is no Jesus but there is the Second Person. 

But incarnationalism is hard to make sense of without God being at least bi-personal.  For if God has no triune or biune structure, and God as a whole incarnates, thereby emptying himself (kenosis) into time, space, and history, and dies on the cross, then God as a whole dies.  One than has literally the death of God.

So although trinitarianism does not require incarnationalism, incarnationalism does seem to require trinitarianism or at least binitarianism.

I am touching upon a labyrinthine tangle of logical and theological issues.  I hope to explore some of  them in subsequent posts.