The ideas that various people reject or cling to, whether they are true or probable or unprovable or demonstrably false, are often in conflict with themselves or the other ideas held to by non-rationalists. Many of these ideas might even be almost totally ignored by the very people who fallaciously believe them or taken for granted. This is usually the case with Trinitarianism. What many people believe about Trinitarianism is unbiblical and more importantly logically impossible inside or outside the context of Christianity, and they seem to casually mention the Trinity here or there without even focusing directly on it for very long, which only means they will not examine their obvious assumptions and contradictions. Still, the ordinary Trinitarianism with all of its Biblical and even purely logical flaws can be one of the false concepts that is defended the most by people I have met.
Not everyone who has done this even identifies with or believed in many tenets of evangelicalism, however. As strange as it is, some people I have talked to have pushed back far more against a non-traditional but both logically possible and Biblically valid version of Trinitarianism while not doing the same with everything from the actual Biblical position on erotic media to capital punishments (for more than just murder) to epistemology (it prescribes commitment rather than belief in the unproven). Even though these other things that they accepted or did not oppose have more to objectively do with how we live and what a person believes about more foundational philosophical issues, for the most part, Trinitarianism was the one they would not easily understand or accept. This is especially ironic given that the Trinity is not even an idea that has almost any impact on anything about one's worldview or life.
The only issue of utmost importance about the Trinity is realizing that any version of it that is logically impossible is false no matter what the Bible says. This issue has two main components. The first of these two things that are of great philosophical significance here is that logical axioms are inherently true regardless of what else is and it is axioms and what follows from them that shape possiblity and necessity, as opposed to anything else, which means anything that contradicts logical axioms like conventional Trinitarianism does is false by default; the second of these two things is that the Bible would be false to some extent if it actually taught Trinitarianism as described by typical evangelicals. The Bible does not teach Trinitarianism as many people conceive of it, and what it does teach about the distinct beings of Yahweh, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is logically possible so that even if the Bible was false, what it says about the "Trinity" could have been true.
In spite of all of this, it really is a challenging thing for some people to just give up one of the least foundational or life-impacting parts of evangelical theology that is not even ultimately part of truly Biblical theology at all. Indeed, the only reason Trinitarianism is anything more than loosely connected to the foundations of philosophy in the way that everything is, as logical axioms govern all things, is that logical axioms and traditional Trinitarianism cannot both be true, and thus the self-evident veracity of logical axioms excludes this kind of Trinitarianism even from being merely possible. There is nothing about Trinitarianism that is unrelated to this which actually had anything to do with the very heart of rationalistic philosophy, Christian theology, or even the more practical aspects of living in light of each of these.
Trinitarianism is hardly the supremely important topic that evangelicals love to treat it as. Only an irrationalist of the caliber of a mainstream evangelical would confuse something so vague and trivial except for its connections to other issues, something that has at best a minimal impact on how one lives compared to almost any other philosophical subject at all, for something grand and utterly foundational. It also takes an irrationalist of this caliber to actually think the Bible clearly teaches conventional Trinitarianism, when it not only teaches the metaphysical distinction between the three members of the "Godhead," but classical Trinitarianism would also not be a doctrine that is clearly put forth anywhere in the entire Bible if its current contents did somehow teach it. Its adherents search for something never found in the Bible as they claim it is both there and "evident"--though most of them can hardly even remember a single chapter of the entire Bible that supposedly supports their assumed conclusion.
Logic, people. It is very fucking helpful.
No comments:
Post a Comment