Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Trinitarians admitting to the Trinity being Irrational and Illogical

 John H. Fish III, a Trinitarian, in an article entitled, “God the Son," wrote the following as an admission of the illogical nature of the Trinity:

Theologically it is correct to say that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. But these statements cannot be reversed. We cannot say God is the Father, because that would omit the Son and the Holy Spirit. Nor can we say God is the Son, or God is the Holy Spirit. (John H. Fish III, "God the Son", Emmaus Journal Volume 12, 2003 (1) (34), Dubuque, IA: Emmaus Bible College).

To transpose this admission from theological to mathematical language, it is the equivalent of saying while 3=1+1+1, 1+1+1 does not equal 3, which is utterly absurd. Also, Fish's claim means one cannot say that any singular person of the Tri-une being is God (e.g., "God is the Father"), notwithstanding passages such as 1 Tim 2:5 and 1 Cor 8:4-6 that predicate "God" upon the person of the Father.

This is echoed by John V. Dahms in his article, "How Reliable is Logic?" (Journal of Evangelical Theology 21/4 [December 1978] 369-80); on p.373, Dahms (another Trinitarian) makes this startling confession (comment in square brackets mine for clarification):

The orthodox doctrine of the incarnation [read: Hypostatic Union] also provides a problem for those who insist that logic is universally applicable. how can there be two natures but only one person, especially if it be remembered that the debate over monothelitism led to the conclusion that the two-natures doctrine implies that Jesus Christ had two wills? That one person can have two wills would seem to be contrary to the law of contradiction. Of course there are "conservatives" who declare that in Christ "there are not two wills, one Divine and one human." One suspects that the law of contradiction has inspired such a judgment, though one wonders whether they are not violating the same law when they continue to affirm that "each nature is complete in itself." Be that as it may, by what logic is it possible for a nature that cannot be tempted to be united with a nature that can be tempted, or for a nature that can grow in favor with God? The Monophysites and the Nestorians had more respect for logic than the orthodox, as did the Docetists and the Ebionites before them, as do those liberals who deny the incarnation today. It is not without some justification that Paul Tillich speaks of the "inescapable contradictions and absurdities into which all attempts to solve the Christological problem in terms of the two-nature theory were driven."


One has to appreciate the intellectual integrity of these Trinitarians to admit to something that Latter-day Saints and other non-Trinitarians have been saying for centuries—what masquerades as “orthodoxy” is nothing short of illogical nonsense. Would that members of groups that hold to the Trinitarian dogma would reconsider their beliefs in light of Scripture and reason and consider the strong biblical and rational case for Latter-day Saint Christology.