Monday, May 11, 2020

Another Example of a Trinitarian Apologist Functioning as a Nestorian


I have often argued that, functionally, Trinitarians often are, in their Christology, Nestorian, splitting Jesus into two persons (a human person and a divine person). An example of this comes from a recent debate book between a proponent of Socinian (so-called “Biblical” Unitarianism) and Trinitarianism. The Trinitarian, commenting on the limitation Jesus experienced during mortality, wrote:

By virtue of the human nature in which the Son subsists, he did not know everything, was tempted, was subject to the creator, and suffered and died. I fail to understand how he could therefore fail to qualify as genuinely human. (Christopher M. Date, “Negative Rebuttal,” in Dale Tuggy and Christopher M. Date, Is Jesus Human and Not Divine? A Debate [Essential Christian Debates; Apollo, Pa.: Areopagus, 2020], 91)

In the footnote for the above, we have this shocking admission:

By saying the Son was limited in knowledge and subject to the creator by virtue of his human nature, I in no way mean to imply he no longer is. It is quite reasonable to believe he is forever limited in knowledge and subject to his Father, by virtue of his incarnation. (Ibid., 91 n. 47)

In other words, Jesus, a divine person, will be eternally limited in knowledge and dependent on his knowledge from the person of the Father! I wonder how many Trinitarians will recoil when they read this!


To read a case for Latter-day Saint Christology, be sure to check out Latter-day Saints have Chosen the True, Biblical Jesus