Thursday, March 18, 2021

Errol Amey, "A Case for Subordinationism in Modern Apologetics" Part II

(The following is from my friend Errol Amey and is being shared with his permission. Click here to read Part I)

 

A Case for Subordinationism in Modern Apologetics, Part II: In Which a Polemicist for Athanasian/ Constantinopolitan Trinitarianism Forfeits All Credibility.

 

In an attempt to save face after my previous refutations of his arguments, William Albrecht chose to double down on his claim that Bogden Bucur, “would never make these ridiculous arguments” for Justin Martyr, et al., believing in Subordinationism: “You have ripped my friend Dr. Bucur OUT of context.” Let’s consider the fuller context with one of the sections I cited in bold, the section Albrecht cited underlined, and the intervening section in plain text:

 

The problem most often associated with Justin’s trinitarian theology is its subordinationism. Even more troubling is Justin’s view of the Holy Spirit. Erwin R. Goodenough’s observation, that ‘[t]here is no doctrine of Justin more baffling than his doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and no doctrine which has been more differently understood,’ remains as true today as it was in 1923. His writings contain numerous references to ‘the spirit,’ ‘the holy spirit,’ ‘the divine spirit,’ ‘the prophetic spirit,’ ‘the holy prophetic spirit,’ ‘God’s prophetic spirit,’ or ‘the divine, holy, prophetic spirit.’ Nevertheless, Justin offers ‘very few clear ideas about the person and nature of the Prophetic Spirit.’ Even though verdicts about Justin’s pneumatology ‘se mantienen sensiblemente distanciadas,’ especially on the issue of deciding whether pneuma is a personal or impersonal entity in the Apologies and the Dialogue, scholars generally agree that, by contrast to his extensive discussion about the Father and the Son, Justin is quite ‘discreet’ about the Spirit. In the words of André Wartelle, ‘one is tempted to write that Justin has the Spirit intervene only when he cannot do otherwise.’ It has been said, again and again, that Justin’s all-encompassing theory of the seminal Logos precludes the articulation of a robust pneumatology: ‘in strict logic there is no place in Justin’s thought for the person of the Holy Spirit because the logos carries out his functions.’

“This observation, although true to a large extent, is not entirely fair to Justin. As José Pablo Martín has shown, since Justin’s thought is determined by several ‘conceptual schemes’ or ‘systems,’ a study of his christology cannot be reduced to the ‘Logos-scheme,’ but must also take into consideration his extensive speculations about notions such as the angels, the divine δύναμις, or the Messiah as bearer of the Spirit. Similarly, a study of Justins pneumatology cannot be reduced to the observation that the Logos-framework allows almost no place for a theology of the Spirit.”

(Bogdan Gabriel Bucur, Angelomorphic Pneumatology, pp. 140-141, bold and underline added)

 

While Albrecht would have us believe that Bucur’s reference to, “This observation,” etc., was pertaining to his unqualified statement that, “The problem most often associated with Justin’s trinitarian theology is its subordinationism,” it’s clear from the context that Bucur was rather addressing the second and separate issue he had raised, viz., “Even more troubling is Justin’s view of the Holy Spirit,” which issue he had specifically spent the entirety of the paragraph preceding Albrecht’s quotation discussing.

 

Next Albrecht takes to the footnotes to try and salvage his argument, but it’s worth noting first the footnote to the sentence I had cited which he surely must have seen when plotting his retort and in which Bucur tacitly assents to the conclusion of other patristic scholars in not only their recognition of Justin as having taught Subordinationism but so, too, of the ancient scribes making this same observation:

 

“According to Bobichon (Dialogue avec Tryphon, 5), Justin’s subordinationism may in fact explain the very meager manuscript tradition of the Dialog with Trypho.”

(Ibid., pg. 140)

 

A rather glaring omission on Albrecht’s part. And again, Bucur, giving further comment on his statement that, “In reaction most likely to contrary views, Justin insists that Jesus’ baptism was a theophany, which did not create Christ’s identity but revealed it to the world,” he elucidated in the footnotes:

 

“In fact, it is the concern about subordinationist interpretations of the Jordan event that explain why, after being an essential article of faith, the baptism of Jesus was eliminated from fourth-century creeds.”

(Ibid., pg. 150)

 

It is only after these instances, when Bucur has returned to Justin’s “problematic” teachings regarding the Spirit, that we see Albrecht’s appeal to the following footnote:

“It may be that Justin’s reference to the Spirit as ‘third in rank’ is not necessarily subordinationistic, but rather a way of stating that the gifts of the Spirit became available only after the Ascension, that is, chronologically last.”

(Ibid., pg. 152)

 

Behold the emboldened language which Albrecht would have us believe constitutes Bucur’s supposed position in which he, “would never make these ridiculous arguments” for Justin Martyr, et al., believing in Subordinationism: “It may be,” “not necessarily,” and this only in reference to one specific instance out of several which patristic scholars have identified as Subordinationistic teachings by Justin Martyr. No, it is clear that Albrecht was in fact wrong when he merely assumed that one of his favorite patristic scholars would agree with his views on this matter, when in reality Bucur only serves to refute Albrecht.

 

Even worse is Albrecht’s diatribe in response to my refutation of his argument concerning the scholarly commentary, “in the new editions of the translations,” etc.:

“Aaron [sic], you are an AMATEUR. You are making a FOOL of yourself. There are MANY translations of Justin, but there is no critical 2014 EDITION. You continue to SMASH pies in your FACE by pretending to KNOW what you are speaking of.”

 

From the back cover of the same volume I had cited:

“The Oxford Early Christian Texts series presents this new critical edition of the Greek text of the Apologies with introduction, English translation, and textual commentary.” (bold and underline added)

 

All Albrecht would have had to do was check the reference to the Oxford Early Christian Texts series which I had provided and he would have known that he was wrong, but he manifestly values rhetoric over research. He apparently didn’t even know of the existence of this scholarly series until I presented it to him despite the fact that this particular volume was originally published in 2009 and then reprinted in 2014. His argument on this matter as well thus stands refuted; the scholarly commentary in one of the newest editions to have been published does—in fact—readily attest to Justin Martyr’s belief in Subordinationism.

 

Most of the above information was presented to Albrecht on Facebook, which posts he promptly deleted, and I’ve been informed that he didn’t correct any of his false statements after having blocked me. And thus Albrecht’s integrity implodes upon itself, leaving only the empty shell of an apologist serving as an echochamber for his patreon supporters.

 

Yet the problem runs even deeper than this. Albrecht assured me that he understands perfectly well how Subordinationism is defined by scholars: “I’m well aware of the term and I don’t agree with the way you’re defining it. . . . To be able to get on board with Him being eternal God, yet He’s still subordinate; He has all of the attributes that the one true God does have, yet He’s subordinate. That’s really . . . looking for loopholes and really creating your own definition.” And again: “I’ve looked at Arianism. I’ve looked at Subordinationism. . . . At the end of the day, they’re still heresies. One of them is really, really careful at the way they veil their heresy.” I had initially given Albrecht the benefit of the doubt and assumed that such claims were true, and conducted my discussion with him accordingly, but his arguments became increasingly more suspect as he continued to cite Scriptures which, while certainly presenting difficulties for a system such as Arianism, in no wise precluded the principles of Subordinationism as expressed by the patristic scholars I had cited. Indeed, much as he had taken Bucur out of context, so, too, did he take a clip of our initial exchange out of context claiming that his argument for the Spirit being given the moniker of Yahweh in the Old Testament had left me, “speechless,” when in reality it had simply left me disinterested in the conversation due to being the latest in a series of non sequitur tangents. An earlier statement he had made, for instance (and the one which really got me to start questioning his grasp of the subject), was that, “we’re told that Christ is given worship; He’s given latria over and over . . . . he says He’s to be given worship, and only God is given worship, so I don’t see Subordinationism there at all.” You’ll note that none of this conflicts with the patristic scholarship which I cited in my previous article, nor with the following example which I had furnished for Albrecht:

“it was necessary to defend the real distinction between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Such writers as the author of the Contra Noetum, Tertullian and Novatian did so by basing their claims primarily on the traditional Testimonia of the Bible (see Uribarri, Trinidad). Though able to formulate well, even with technical terms (esp. persona), the distinction of the divine persons (distributio), they were less successful in expressing the substantial unity in the distinction, unable to overcome a certain subordinationist tendency (ontological gradation of the persons in the overly close connection of the origin of the Son and the Spirit with the creation).”
(Basil Studer, Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity 3:836)

 

Nor in this scholarly definition:

 

“Subordinationism

“Thus we call the tendency, strong in the theology of the 2nd and 3rd cc., to consider Christ, as Son of God, inferior to the Father. Behind this tendency were gospel statements in which Christ himself stressed this inferiority (Jn 14, 28; Mk 10, 18; 13, 32, etc.) and it was developed esp. by the Logos-Christology. This theology, partly under the influence of middle Platonism, considered Christ, logos and divine wisdom, as the means of liaison and mediation between the Father’s position to him. When the conception of the Trinity was enlarged to include the Holy Spirit, as in Origen, this in turn was considered inferior to the Son. Subordinationist tendencies are evident esp. in theologians like Justin, Tertullian, Origen and Novatian; but even in Irenaeus, to whom trinitarian speculations are alien, commenting on Jn 14, 28, has no difficulty in considering Christ inferior to the Father.”
(Manlio Simonetti, Oxford Encyclopedia of the Early Church 2:797)

 

And the list goes on. The simplest scholarly explanation of Subordinationism, given in a lecture delivered to an audience of laity and from which I drew the explanation I had repeatedly given Albrecht, directly contradicts Albrecht’s recent claim regarding the position: “it means that they argue that the Son and the Holy Ghost are inferior—even though they don’t want to use that term—They’re inferior to the Father. And when it comes to the Holy Spirit, that has got to be via nature.” Such a misunderstanding of this scholastic term can only be the product of relying on sources as dubious as Wikipedia and the like. From the aforementioned lecture:

“The key to having an orthodox, Scriptural understanding of the Trinity is to grasp that there is a difference between three attributes or terms. They are nature, personal attributes and order. . . . The Nicene Creed affirms that the Father and the Son are of the same nature or substance. . . . Personal attributes are something altogether different. Personal attributes refer to the individual characteristics and differences between members of the same class or nature.” Etc.

(David W. Bercot, ‘What the Early Christians Believed About the Trinity,’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpPmXUEK3F8)

 

Albrecht, then, vindicates how Bercot rightly noted in his lecture, “When Christians don’t understand the difference between nature, personal attributes and order, they end up with a very confused understanding of the Trinity. They usually end up getting into heresy even though they are trying to have an orthodox view of the Trinity. They totally misconstrue what the Scriptures teach about the Trinity and if they read the early Christian writings they are baffled by what they read there. . . . In the early Christian understanding there are no problem verses. It fits perfectly the totality of Scripture.” (Ibid.)