Kurt Van Gorden's response to Larry
Dear Jeff,
Thank you for sharing “What Does the Trinity Teach?” from Larry. From the outset, I found his work very unimpressive and inept. This essay was loaded with bad reasoning, mistakes, logical fallacies, and they had only a superficial grasp of the Trinity. Although I want to be charitable in looking at the piece, it is difficult because I would have to lay aside critical thinking. That is not a choice.
What I don’t like about this kind of writing is that it saddles the reader who knows the subject with the laborious task of deciphering the author’s work. For example, when I checked his footnotes in this essay, I found the bulk of them were merely from “Googling” on the Internet and not actually reading the books or understanding the articles from which he cut and pasted his quotations. He quoted from one Watchtower magazine, which is a biased, unscholarly, Unitarian source. His only other footnote was an erroneous appeal to the Schofield Bible (Genesis 1:1, where he misspelled Elohim as “Elchim,” whatever that is). And he does not state whether he was using the 1909 or 1917 Scofield Bible or one of the two later revisions, the New Schofield, or the Schofield III.
I’m not too much surprised at his productions, but, seriously, Jeff, I do not have the time to spend reading, replying to, or debating with someone who writes like this. It is too much like grading a paper just getting through it, and I don’t have the time for that. This will be my only response to his writings, and you are welcome to send it to him. As your friend, I will answer your question about what I think of his writing (above) and what he stated about a tract that I wrote. His work is not so much his own as what it is Googling, cutting and pasting from the Internet, which is not research in any regard. It does not interest me any more than posts on social media, which is mostly poorly written opinions that lack writing, critical thinking, and research skills. Should Larry ever get his work published by a reputable book publisher, then I will reconsider responding to him.
Larry’s first line has an inconsistency that he used in the rest of his paper. He had no problem using the term “oneness” in speaking of God’s nature, but he hyphenated “three-ness” several times which reveals a lack of deep reading. Threeness is often used by academic writers when discussing the Trinity, and even his first footnote, from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, used “Threeness” without a hyphenation, so he runs afoul on the terminology of the very works that he cites.
Some years ago, I read the Trinity article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy in its original 2009 form. I also read its 2016 update, so I’m quite familiar with the philosophical debates on the Trinity. Where Larry errs is that this is not a theological or biblical treatise, but just as the title states, it is a philosophical discussion.
By the way, my interest in reading SEP was because at the time I was teaching a series of Bible classes and another instructors was a professor from the philosophy department of a local college. He, being a Christian, helped organize the teaching series. He was writing philosophically on the Trinity, which aligns with the SEP objective, and I was interested in Michael Rea’s quotations in it. Many philosophers who debate the Trinity who are not Christians, but they grasp it well enough to debate it. They are not trying to define theology, but only the question of how a philosopher explains an infinite aspect of God to a finite mind. The Trinity is theological in nature, not philosophical.
Larry’s stated objective in his paper was to “define the doctrine” of the Trinity. Doctrine emerges from the Bible. Doctrine is not defined by philosophy, but by theology. His appeal to a philosophical debate is the wrong venue for his objective.
In his opening paragraph, he states, “…there has been a struggle to define the doctrine of three-ness/oneness with respect to God in a way that does not overemphasize three-ness to the point of teaching polytheism or oneness to the point of teaching Sabellianism.” This is unclearly stated. The threeness spoken of here is personhood, but the oneness, when Trintiarians speak, is of Being, that is, God’s essential true nature is one, undivided. We used oneness in this kind of discussion to mean monotheism.
Oneness, as used by Sabellius is not the same because he used it for God’s person. Sebellius agreed with Trinitarians on monotheism. When he used oneness, it was in relationship to the persons, where Sabellius confused the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit making the one person into three modes (like a father, husband, and son is one person who is viewed three relational ways). Larry muddled what we mean by oneness (monotheism) and threeness by introducing Sebellius who used the word oneness in relationship to God’s persons, not His Being.
Larry’s next premise is, “So, who today asserts that the Trinity teaches polytheism (three gods) or Sabellianism (one person)?” This is where the rest of his paper is erroneous. His opening paragraph committed the logical fallacy of equivocation of terms, where he confused oneness in nature (monotheism) with oneness in person (Sabellius). Therefore, the rest of his paper is flawed with the same logical fallacy. If his first premise is wrong, then all of his following conclusions are equally false because they are based upon a faulty first premise. This sets the wrong footing for his ensuing argument, where he essentially commits the straw man fallacy. He declared something to be the argument (which is not) and then knocks the stuffing out of it (the straw man) and then assumes that he demolished the opposition when he really only defeated his own misinterpretation of the argument instead of the real issue.
The real issue here is that Trinitarians are biblical monotheists, believing in only one God. We also fully embrace everything the Bible states about God’s nature, whether it is His attributes of eternality or omnipotence or His persons as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All of these are self-declarations by God concerning His nature, and we believe that. Now, the question of how we can explain the infinite God to a finite mind becomes philosophical at time, but we do not compromise the integrity of Scripture while doing so. And, I add, that entire subject is missed by Larry. He simply does not want to deal with the biblical statements that support the Trinity but sidesteps that to pursue philosophical debates that matter not for eternity. Still, I will answer a few of his paragraphs, even though the entire paper is a straw man fallacy.
In his fourth paragraph, he attacks the question of “terms” that are “not found in the bible (i.e., person, essence, etc).” What he misses is that we can hold the same discussion and not even use the word “person.” We can use, for example, the “ego,” Greek, for I. There are three “ego” identities in Scripture who use the word “I” of themselves and who also possess the one and same nature that belongs only to God. All three “ego” identities speak in first person about themselves and third person of the others, yet they all hold the same nature as the one true God (monotheism).
I was a bit surprised that he attacked the word “essence,” when it has a Greek equivalent hupostasis in Hebrews 1:3 for “person” or “substance” (Vincent) or “essence” (Vine). This certainly expresses the very essence or substance of God’s nature. And, I add, it is quite amateurish to claim that terms like these are not used in the Bible, when he has not declared what he means by the Bible (English translation? Original languages?). The fact is, there are many terms he uses that are not found in the English translation of the Bible, so it is another straw man argument on top of another, where he attacks a weaker position instead of the central issue. He does the same in the fifth paragraph, with “Being” and “Person.”
In this paragraph he also had a sentence that was difficult to read because something was missing, “The adherents to the doctrine say it is ‘incomprehensible to the mind of man.’ (sic) and a mystery that ‘goes beyond the boundaries of human’ (sic) and that “No man can fully explain the Trinity.” He inserts a period where it does not belong and his quotation “goes beyond the boundaries of human” is and incomplete thought. I had to look at this footnoted source to see if I could make sense of it. When you read the original sentence in context, it makes sense, and the only reason that Larry butchered it is because it was so clearly logical, “The doctrine of the trinity is truly beyond human comprehension or the limits of our finite minds, but it is nevertheless a vital truth of the Bible.”
On page two, Larry wrestles with Karl Barth, but I highly doubt that he has read Barth. I read him forty years ago, when I was 22 years old, and Barth’s systematic theology was massive (Church Dogmatics, 14 volumes). Reading about what Barth said is not the same as reading Barth himself. While I respect Barthian theology only to the degree that he promoted a personal relationship with God in the European liberal-modernist Churches of his time, when they ware apostatizing from truth as tares among the wheat, it was no secret to Evangelical Christians who read Barth that he missed the mark on the Trinity.
He leaned toward Sabellianism in The Doctrine of God, Part 1, and that was why I read it when I was younger. I was writing on Sabellius, modalism, and the Trinity. There has been much published about Barthian modalism and J. Oliver Buswell (while President of Wheaton University) commented on it in his book, A Systematic Theology of the Christian Religion. He quotes Barth from a personal interview where Barth confirmed that his theology leaned modalistic. Barth also leaned toward the heresy of Universalism, but that is another subject.
For Larry to quote Barth as a source without this insight is not good scholarship, because even a small amount of research would have shown that Barth was not orthodox, but rather the father of “Neo-orthodoxy.” Larry does not know what he is talking about and just throws out whatever he finds on the Internet and without any real research. As a matter of fact, had he just read the entire SEP article that he quoted from earlier, he would have seen that Barth was quoted as teaching “modes of Being.” This is why I have little time for someone with such slipshod writings.
He couples Karl Rahner with Barth on his third page, which, again, shows that a little knowledge can be dangerous. I have also read Rahner and he is unquestionably committed to liberal Catholic theology. I have a couple of his books on God in my library. Does Larry really want to lock arms with a Jesuit Priest, Rahner, to renounce Trinitarianism? I guess that he does, which puts him in bad company.
When he quoted Scofield, he really made a mess. The quotation that he attributes to Scofield does not exist. It is purely invented and is not found in the older Scofield study Bible or the New Scofield Reference Bible. You can challenge him to scan an original page of the Scofield Bible with the sentence that he claimed is from Scofield. It just is not there. Then, his “Elchim” is even more baffling. I know where he got this, but if he admits to it, then it shows that his writings are plagiarized, cut and paste jobs, from the Internet, which is dishonest scholarship and deserves no response. That is where the Internet leads cheating students. They cut and paste things from the Internet with pretended “intelligence,” claiming it is their own research and writing when, in fact, they plagiarized some buffoon who did not know what they were talking about either and it easily exposes them as a fraud in their writing. Larry should be ashamed of himself. This is also why I decline your invitation to talk to Larry by phone. He is inept in his shameful plagiarism of others without credit, so what is there to talk about?
Finally, in his conclusion, he states, “My conclusion is that Christendom is responsible for the confusion and lack of clarity.” No, Larry is responsible for his confusion, lack of reading, lack of research, irresponsible writing, and plagiarism—all of which draw him to a false conclusion.
From what I can see, Larry uses a some of the same old rehashed information and tactics from the more sophisticated JWs used toward the end of the last century. I find his writing worse than, say, Fleming, Hurley, Carr, or Stafford. These men do not want to answer the passages that are presented, but they want to jump around when they are confronted with questions or Bible verses that they do not like. In their dance around the text, they don’t actually answer the text.
One of the common ways is if, for example, we presented John 8:58, in its context, where Jesus called Himself God by claiming to be the I AM, then they usually counter it with two bad arguments. First, they will tell you that there are other ways to translate it. Okay, then explain the context that the Jews picked up stones to stone Jesus because he said that he was as old as Abraham? The Old Testament law only allowed stoning for five reasons and the only one of these that they claimed was that He was blaspheming by making Himself equal with God (John 5 and 10 testify to this). Second, they want to dance around the verse by showing that other people who used the words ego eimi and they are not God. Of course, they are not, because that is not the context of what those people were saying. The context of what Jesus was saying is found in John 8:25, which is quite often missed by most readers, “Who are you?”
The question is a question of identity. WHO are you? When He answered that he was the I AM, then they did not like it and tried to stone Him. In all of the other examples where they claim that ego eimi is used by other people, the context was not identity, who they are. Larry and most other JWs do not read these verses in context and then they love piling up out of context quotations from scholars, be it Catholics, liberals, occultists (Greber), or whoever.
Larry does similarly in his limited reading and understanding. It is part of the dance that they dance. They pick a quotation here or there from a Jesuit to a liberal, and hope that we pat them on the back as if they did something good, but quite often this kind of proof-texting gets them in deep trouble, because elsewhere in the same book, they are often refuted. We have seen this in Watchtower extrapolations from Mantey and others. They love to pick the one phrase out of an entire book and claim a victory while they ignore everything else the same author states that destroys their theology. I hope that this answered your inquiry.
Blessings to you, bro.
Kurt
Thank you for sharing “What Does the Trinity Teach?” from Larry. From the outset, I found his work very unimpressive and inept. This essay was loaded with bad reasoning, mistakes, logical fallacies, and they had only a superficial grasp of the Trinity. Although I want to be charitable in looking at the piece, it is difficult because I would have to lay aside critical thinking. That is not a choice.
What I don’t like about this kind of writing is that it saddles the reader who knows the subject with the laborious task of deciphering the author’s work. For example, when I checked his footnotes in this essay, I found the bulk of them were merely from “Googling” on the Internet and not actually reading the books or understanding the articles from which he cut and pasted his quotations. He quoted from one Watchtower magazine, which is a biased, unscholarly, Unitarian source. His only other footnote was an erroneous appeal to the Schofield Bible (Genesis 1:1, where he misspelled Elohim as “Elchim,” whatever that is). And he does not state whether he was using the 1909 or 1917 Scofield Bible or one of the two later revisions, the New Schofield, or the Schofield III.
I’m not too much surprised at his productions, but, seriously, Jeff, I do not have the time to spend reading, replying to, or debating with someone who writes like this. It is too much like grading a paper just getting through it, and I don’t have the time for that. This will be my only response to his writings, and you are welcome to send it to him. As your friend, I will answer your question about what I think of his writing (above) and what he stated about a tract that I wrote. His work is not so much his own as what it is Googling, cutting and pasting from the Internet, which is not research in any regard. It does not interest me any more than posts on social media, which is mostly poorly written opinions that lack writing, critical thinking, and research skills. Should Larry ever get his work published by a reputable book publisher, then I will reconsider responding to him.
Larry’s first line has an inconsistency that he used in the rest of his paper. He had no problem using the term “oneness” in speaking of God’s nature, but he hyphenated “three-ness” several times which reveals a lack of deep reading. Threeness is often used by academic writers when discussing the Trinity, and even his first footnote, from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, used “Threeness” without a hyphenation, so he runs afoul on the terminology of the very works that he cites.
Some years ago, I read the Trinity article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy in its original 2009 form. I also read its 2016 update, so I’m quite familiar with the philosophical debates on the Trinity. Where Larry errs is that this is not a theological or biblical treatise, but just as the title states, it is a philosophical discussion.
By the way, my interest in reading SEP was because at the time I was teaching a series of Bible classes and another instructors was a professor from the philosophy department of a local college. He, being a Christian, helped organize the teaching series. He was writing philosophically on the Trinity, which aligns with the SEP objective, and I was interested in Michael Rea’s quotations in it. Many philosophers who debate the Trinity who are not Christians, but they grasp it well enough to debate it. They are not trying to define theology, but only the question of how a philosopher explains an infinite aspect of God to a finite mind. The Trinity is theological in nature, not philosophical.
Larry’s stated objective in his paper was to “define the doctrine” of the Trinity. Doctrine emerges from the Bible. Doctrine is not defined by philosophy, but by theology. His appeal to a philosophical debate is the wrong venue for his objective.
In his opening paragraph, he states, “…there has been a struggle to define the doctrine of three-ness/oneness with respect to God in a way that does not overemphasize three-ness to the point of teaching polytheism or oneness to the point of teaching Sabellianism.” This is unclearly stated. The threeness spoken of here is personhood, but the oneness, when Trintiarians speak, is of Being, that is, God’s essential true nature is one, undivided. We used oneness in this kind of discussion to mean monotheism.
Oneness, as used by Sabellius is not the same because he used it for God’s person. Sebellius agreed with Trinitarians on monotheism. When he used oneness, it was in relationship to the persons, where Sabellius confused the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit making the one person into three modes (like a father, husband, and son is one person who is viewed three relational ways). Larry muddled what we mean by oneness (monotheism) and threeness by introducing Sebellius who used the word oneness in relationship to God’s persons, not His Being.
Larry’s next premise is, “So, who today asserts that the Trinity teaches polytheism (three gods) or Sabellianism (one person)?” This is where the rest of his paper is erroneous. His opening paragraph committed the logical fallacy of equivocation of terms, where he confused oneness in nature (monotheism) with oneness in person (Sabellius). Therefore, the rest of his paper is flawed with the same logical fallacy. If his first premise is wrong, then all of his following conclusions are equally false because they are based upon a faulty first premise. This sets the wrong footing for his ensuing argument, where he essentially commits the straw man fallacy. He declared something to be the argument (which is not) and then knocks the stuffing out of it (the straw man) and then assumes that he demolished the opposition when he really only defeated his own misinterpretation of the argument instead of the real issue.
The real issue here is that Trinitarians are biblical monotheists, believing in only one God. We also fully embrace everything the Bible states about God’s nature, whether it is His attributes of eternality or omnipotence or His persons as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All of these are self-declarations by God concerning His nature, and we believe that. Now, the question of how we can explain the infinite God to a finite mind becomes philosophical at time, but we do not compromise the integrity of Scripture while doing so. And, I add, that entire subject is missed by Larry. He simply does not want to deal with the biblical statements that support the Trinity but sidesteps that to pursue philosophical debates that matter not for eternity. Still, I will answer a few of his paragraphs, even though the entire paper is a straw man fallacy.
In his fourth paragraph, he attacks the question of “terms” that are “not found in the bible (i.e., person, essence, etc).” What he misses is that we can hold the same discussion and not even use the word “person.” We can use, for example, the “ego,” Greek, for I. There are three “ego” identities in Scripture who use the word “I” of themselves and who also possess the one and same nature that belongs only to God. All three “ego” identities speak in first person about themselves and third person of the others, yet they all hold the same nature as the one true God (monotheism).
I was a bit surprised that he attacked the word “essence,” when it has a Greek equivalent hupostasis in Hebrews 1:3 for “person” or “substance” (Vincent) or “essence” (Vine). This certainly expresses the very essence or substance of God’s nature. And, I add, it is quite amateurish to claim that terms like these are not used in the Bible, when he has not declared what he means by the Bible (English translation? Original languages?). The fact is, there are many terms he uses that are not found in the English translation of the Bible, so it is another straw man argument on top of another, where he attacks a weaker position instead of the central issue. He does the same in the fifth paragraph, with “Being” and “Person.”
In this paragraph he also had a sentence that was difficult to read because something was missing, “The adherents to the doctrine say it is ‘incomprehensible to the mind of man.’ (sic) and a mystery that ‘goes beyond the boundaries of human’ (sic) and that “No man can fully explain the Trinity.” He inserts a period where it does not belong and his quotation “goes beyond the boundaries of human” is and incomplete thought. I had to look at this footnoted source to see if I could make sense of it. When you read the original sentence in context, it makes sense, and the only reason that Larry butchered it is because it was so clearly logical, “The doctrine of the trinity is truly beyond human comprehension or the limits of our finite minds, but it is nevertheless a vital truth of the Bible.”
On page two, Larry wrestles with Karl Barth, but I highly doubt that he has read Barth. I read him forty years ago, when I was 22 years old, and Barth’s systematic theology was massive (Church Dogmatics, 14 volumes). Reading about what Barth said is not the same as reading Barth himself. While I respect Barthian theology only to the degree that he promoted a personal relationship with God in the European liberal-modernist Churches of his time, when they ware apostatizing from truth as tares among the wheat, it was no secret to Evangelical Christians who read Barth that he missed the mark on the Trinity.
He leaned toward Sabellianism in The Doctrine of God, Part 1, and that was why I read it when I was younger. I was writing on Sabellius, modalism, and the Trinity. There has been much published about Barthian modalism and J. Oliver Buswell (while President of Wheaton University) commented on it in his book, A Systematic Theology of the Christian Religion. He quotes Barth from a personal interview where Barth confirmed that his theology leaned modalistic. Barth also leaned toward the heresy of Universalism, but that is another subject.
For Larry to quote Barth as a source without this insight is not good scholarship, because even a small amount of research would have shown that Barth was not orthodox, but rather the father of “Neo-orthodoxy.” Larry does not know what he is talking about and just throws out whatever he finds on the Internet and without any real research. As a matter of fact, had he just read the entire SEP article that he quoted from earlier, he would have seen that Barth was quoted as teaching “modes of Being.” This is why I have little time for someone with such slipshod writings.
He couples Karl Rahner with Barth on his third page, which, again, shows that a little knowledge can be dangerous. I have also read Rahner and he is unquestionably committed to liberal Catholic theology. I have a couple of his books on God in my library. Does Larry really want to lock arms with a Jesuit Priest, Rahner, to renounce Trinitarianism? I guess that he does, which puts him in bad company.
When he quoted Scofield, he really made a mess. The quotation that he attributes to Scofield does not exist. It is purely invented and is not found in the older Scofield study Bible or the New Scofield Reference Bible. You can challenge him to scan an original page of the Scofield Bible with the sentence that he claimed is from Scofield. It just is not there. Then, his “Elchim” is even more baffling. I know where he got this, but if he admits to it, then it shows that his writings are plagiarized, cut and paste jobs, from the Internet, which is dishonest scholarship and deserves no response. That is where the Internet leads cheating students. They cut and paste things from the Internet with pretended “intelligence,” claiming it is their own research and writing when, in fact, they plagiarized some buffoon who did not know what they were talking about either and it easily exposes them as a fraud in their writing. Larry should be ashamed of himself. This is also why I decline your invitation to talk to Larry by phone. He is inept in his shameful plagiarism of others without credit, so what is there to talk about?
Finally, in his conclusion, he states, “My conclusion is that Christendom is responsible for the confusion and lack of clarity.” No, Larry is responsible for his confusion, lack of reading, lack of research, irresponsible writing, and plagiarism—all of which draw him to a false conclusion.
From what I can see, Larry uses a some of the same old rehashed information and tactics from the more sophisticated JWs used toward the end of the last century. I find his writing worse than, say, Fleming, Hurley, Carr, or Stafford. These men do not want to answer the passages that are presented, but they want to jump around when they are confronted with questions or Bible verses that they do not like. In their dance around the text, they don’t actually answer the text.
One of the common ways is if, for example, we presented John 8:58, in its context, where Jesus called Himself God by claiming to be the I AM, then they usually counter it with two bad arguments. First, they will tell you that there are other ways to translate it. Okay, then explain the context that the Jews picked up stones to stone Jesus because he said that he was as old as Abraham? The Old Testament law only allowed stoning for five reasons and the only one of these that they claimed was that He was blaspheming by making Himself equal with God (John 5 and 10 testify to this). Second, they want to dance around the verse by showing that other people who used the words ego eimi and they are not God. Of course, they are not, because that is not the context of what those people were saying. The context of what Jesus was saying is found in John 8:25, which is quite often missed by most readers, “Who are you?”
The question is a question of identity. WHO are you? When He answered that he was the I AM, then they did not like it and tried to stone Him. In all of the other examples where they claim that ego eimi is used by other people, the context was not identity, who they are. Larry and most other JWs do not read these verses in context and then they love piling up out of context quotations from scholars, be it Catholics, liberals, occultists (Greber), or whoever.
Larry does similarly in his limited reading and understanding. It is part of the dance that they dance. They pick a quotation here or there from a Jesuit to a liberal, and hope that we pat them on the back as if they did something good, but quite often this kind of proof-texting gets them in deep trouble, because elsewhere in the same book, they are often refuted. We have seen this in Watchtower extrapolations from Mantey and others. They love to pick the one phrase out of an entire book and claim a victory while they ignore everything else the same author states that destroys their theology. I hope that this answered your inquiry.
Blessings to you, bro.
Kurt