Christ is “the icon of God” (1 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15). But if
Christ is the icon of the Trinity, rather than the Father, we get
problems similar to Arianism. Does Christ represent God naturally (like an
icon) or merely conventionally? If merely conventionally, how can he reveal God?
If I show you a picture of my wife and say, “This is my
wife,” you can read facts about my wife off the picture. If I had an exact
duplicate of my wife, you could read any fact about her off the
duplicate, save the fact that one is the duplicate and one the prototype. If we’re
playing Monopoly and, pointing to the hat, I say “This is my wife,” it may represent
her by convention, but you can’t read facts about my wife off the hat. You can
act as if the hat were blonde, human, female, and so on. But you’d need
some independent way of knowing my wife’s features to know what features to act
as if her representation had. The moral is, natural representations (like the
Nicene Christ) reveal; they provide knowledge. Merely conventional
representations (like the Christ of Arianism, Unitarianism, and DSM) don’t;
they presuppose knowledge.
Since Craig admits that “God” typically refers to the
Father in the NT, he could read “icon of God” as “icon of the Father.” But if,
speaking precisely, the God is really the Trinity, what’s the point of
one part of God revealing a different part? If the God isn’t
the Father, then Christ, as icon of the Father, doesn’t reveal God to
us, which is central to NT theology. (Beau Branson, “Socialist Trinitarianism,”
in One God, Three Persons, Four Views: A Biblical, Theological, and Philosophical
Dialogue on the Doctrine of the Trinity, ed. C. A. McInthosh [Studies in
the Doctrine of God; Eugene, Oreg.: Cascade Books, 2024], 151-52)
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