Friday, February 26, 2021

Errol Amey on the Robert Gurr/John Yelland Debate

 Last week there was a debate between Robert Gurr and Eastern Orthodox icon lover/idolater, John Yelland:


Debate: The Nature of God



My friend Errol Amey offered the following comments on the debate which I am reproducing with his permission:


 

I

 

John begins with a couple straw-men arguments: "the LDS view of the Father, specifically the idea that He is a created being," and, "Mormonism's teaching of an eternal regression of Gods." The former is contradicted by the Latter-day Saint dogma that the Father is an eternal being, and thus precluding a status of having been "created." The latter statement, as Robert rightly noted, amounts to nothing more than a terse description of a theological speculation (as demonstrated by John's own citation of Brigham Young: "How many Gods there are? I do not know,"etc.) among the Saints—not any dogma of their Church—and a speculation which many of the Saints doubt or outright reject, all of which John is already aware of and consequently it will not do to only address this view as if it's representative of the Saints at large.

 

The idea that the early Christians, "saw Fatherhood as an essential and eternal property of God," contrary to the idea, "that God was not always the Father; that there was a time when God was not the Father," is not compatible with pre-Nicene Christendom, as demonstrated by Tertullian who was anything but a proto-Arian:

 

“For ever since things began to exist upon which the power of a lord could operate, from that moment, by the accession of this power, He both became Lord and received that name. <Nor is this surprising,> for God is also a Father, and God is also a Judge, but He has not always been Father and Judge for the simple reason that He has always been God; for He could not be Father before the Son was, nor Judge before there was sin. Now there was a time when for Him there existed neither sin nor the Son, the former to make God a Judge, and the latter, a Father.”

(Tertullian, ca. 202, Treatise Against Hermogenes 3:4, in Ancient Christian Writers 24:29)

 

John notes that, "the early Church was almost completely unanimous in affirming that God is an unchangeable, immaterial spirit," omitting only that Origen (who John cites in support of his own view) was also a witness to the fact that there were some early Christians who did believe in an anthropomorphic Father:

“The Jews indeed, but also some of our people, supposed that God should be understood as a man, that is, adorned with human members and human appearance. But the philosophers despise these stories as fabulous and formed in the likeness of poetic fictions.”

(Origen, Homilies on Genesis 3:1, in Fathers of the Church 71:89)

 

II

 

The subject of Subordinationism will need a comment devoted just to that subject, which I'll get to on another occasion. In the meantime, we'll start here with a correction to John's comment that, "at the time Irenaeus was writing, the Valentinians were tolerated. He doesn't mention them very much in his books Against the Heresies." This is incorrect; Irenaeus mentions Valentinus himself throughout his series Against the Heresies, from the preface to the first book all the way through his fifth book, and frequently critiques Valentinian teachings. Indeed, Valentinianism was the very controversy which precipitated Irenaeus' composition of this series of book, and it didn't come to be known as "Against the Heresies" for naught: the Valentinians were recognized as heretics and placed squarely outside of the Church not only by Irenaeus but writers well before him, none of this business about the Valentinians supposedly being, "afforded a degree of toleration and flexibility," within the Church; they were a product of pure apostasy.

 

Then John begins a bizarre tangent on seminal fluids and incest. I'll leave it to others to draw their own conclusions on this.

 

John asks Robert, "how do you reconcile [Isaiah to] Mormonism's teaching that there are many Gods besides God and that He is not the first and that He won't be the last?" This was already answered by Origen in the writing which John said he had read; not unique to the Restoration:

“Origen said: ‘Was He God distinct from this God in whose form He was?’

“Heraclides said: ‘Obviously distinct from the other and, while being in the form of the other, distinct from the Creator of all.’

“Origen said: ‘Is it not true, then, that there was a God, the Son of God and only begotten of God, the first born of all creation (Col. 1.15), and that we do not hesitate to speak in one sense of two Gods, and in another sense of one God?’

“Heraclides said: ‘What you say is evident. But we too say that God is the almighty, God without beginning, without end, who encompasses all and is encompassed by nothing, and this Word is the Son of the living God, God and man, through whom all things were made, God according to the Spirit, and man from being born of Mary.’

“Origen said: ‘You don't seem to have answered my question. Explain what you mean, for perhaps I didn't follow you. The Father is God?’

“Heraclides said: ‘Of course.’

“Origen said: ‘The Son is distinct from the Father?’

“Heraclides said: ‘Of course, for how could He be son if He were also father?’

“Origen said: ‘And while being distinct from the Father, the Son is Himself also God?’

“Heraclides said: ‘He is Himself also God.’

“Origen said: ‘And the two Gods become a unity?’

“Heraclides said: ‘Yes.’

“Origen said: ‘We profess two Gods?’

“Heraclides said: ‘Yes, [but] the power is one.’ . . .

“What, then, is the meaning of such sacred texts as: Before me no other god was formed, nor shall there be any other after me (Isa. 43.10), and the text: I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me (Deut. 32.39)? In these texts, one is not to think that the unity refers to the God of the universe in his purity (as the heretics would say) apart from Christ, nor that it refers to Christ apart from God; but we say that it is just as Jesus expresses it: I and the Father are one (John 10.30).’”

(Origen, ca. 246, Dialogue with Heraclides 1-4, in Ancient Christian Writers 54.58-60)

 

Again we see John's claim that, "the early Church Fathers were unanimous in the incorporeality of God—the immateriality of God." The falseness of this claim was demonstrated in my last post by Origen's own admission. It's also worth noting that Origen elsewhere expressed his belief that Melito, the celebrated bishop of Sardis, also held to an anthropomorphic view of the Father.

 

John continues his closing statement with some tangential examples, "[Robert] needs to reconcile the unanimity of belief in the early Church in transubstantiation,"—none of the pre-Nicene Christians believed in transubstantiation; Irenaeus even contradicts it by stating that there are two realities within the Eucharist, both a heavenly and an earthly, as opposed to just one reality—"monogamy,"—the early Christians believed that polygyny had a proper place in it's time during the Old Testament, and Latter-day Saints likewise attest that it is circumstantial which should be obvious given their current practice of strict monogamy—"the perpetual virginity of Mary,"—also not a unanimous belief; Hegesippus and Tertullian both indicated a belief that the brothers of Jesus mentioned in the New Testament were biologically related to Him—"the uniqueness of God,"—which is what we've been discussing—"and so on." I find it doubtful that further examples would be any more valid than the claims already given.

 

III

 

Returning to Subordinationism, John attempts to brush it aside by stating of the Eastern Orthodox, "we do not have a problem with Subordination understood correctly." The problem being that in order to vindicate a supposedly consistent view of the Trinity throughout church history he would in effect have to argue that patristic scholars don't have a "proper" understanding of the pre-Nicene view. Let us consider one of the early writers of whom John claims a compatible view, viz., that of Origen. We already saw in my last post Origen's belief that the Father and Son are in a sense two Gods, which point John struggled to grapple with during the Q&A portion of the exchange. Consider further this primary source:

 

“[Origen said:] God the Father, since he embraces all things, touches each thing that exists, since he bestows on all existence from his own existence; for he is ‘He who is’. [Exodus 3:14] The Son is inferior in relation to the Father, since he touches only things endowed with reason; for he is subordinate to the Father. The Holy Spirit is still lower in degree, pertaining to the saints. So then the power of the Father is superior to the Son and the Holy Spirit, while the Son’s power is greater than the Holy Spirit; and again the power of the Holy Spirit excels all other holy things.”

(Origen, cited by Justinian, Ad Menam, in The Early Christian Fathers, pg. 239)

 

And the scholarly commentary of the translator:

 

“According to the quotation in Justinian, Origen gave here a bold statement of the subordination of the Son and the Holy Spirit. ‘Subordinationism,’ it is true, was pre-Nicene orthodoxy”

(Henry Bettenson, The Early Christian Fathers, pg. 239)

 

That Bettenson specifies Subordinationism as the orthodoxly of the pre-Nicene Church indicates that it was not representative of post-Nicene orthodoxy. This is noted explicitly by another patristic scholar:

 

“Interestingly, in light of later criticisms of Origen for having a ‘subordinationist’ understanding of Christ’s relationship to the Father, putatively inconsistent with equality of the persons of the Trinity proclaimed by post-Nicene orthodoxy, what Origen would consider impious (asebes) is not the belief that Christ is subordinate, but the prospect that he might not be subordinate to the Father.”

(Joseph W. Trigg, Fathers of the Church 141.91)

 

And thus we see that Origen, et al., cannot, in fact, be reconciled to the later view of the Trinity which developed as an overreaction to the Arian heresy. And here is scholarly commentary on statements by Origen even bolder than those cited by Bettenson above:

 

“the Savior said, ‘The Father who sent me is greater than I,’ and ‘although the Savior transcends in his essence, rank, power, divinity . . . , and wisdom, beings that are so great and of such antiquity, nevertheless, he is not comparable with the Father in any way.’ [13.151-152] . . .

“There is, moreover, a clear subordination of the Son to the Father in the Commentary [on John]. ‘The Father exceeds the Savior as much . . . as the Savior himself . . . exceeds the rest.’ [13.151-153] When ‘the Son of Man is glorified in God,’ it is a case of ‘the lesser’ being glorified ‘in the greater.’ [32.363-365] In spite of these subordinationist views, however, Origen rejects the view of those who, ‘in the delusion of glorifying the Father,’ declare ‘that something known by the Father is not known by the Son who refuses to be made equal to the perceptions of the unbegotten God.’ [1.187] It is perhaps in this same vein that one should understand Origen’s assertion that it is on the basis of the unity of the Son’s will with the Father’s that he says, ‘I and the Father are one.’ [13.228]”

(Ronald E. Heine, Fathers of the Church 89.28,34)