The Christian’s deepest desire is for direct union with God.
Our union with the Father must always be mediated by the Son.
So, if only the Father is God, then the Christian’s deepest desire cannot be fulfilled.
The Christian’s deepest desire can be fulfilled.
So, it is false that only the Father is God.
Hi Dr. Pruss what will be the motivation for four?
ReplyDeleteThe target is Arians. Arians identify as Christians, and hence should accept 4.
ReplyDeleteBut 4 is only true if you have already decided what that desire is. If some Christians want an unmediated vision of the unbegotten essence, that desire could be inordinate, like wanting to cease being a creature. And God can fail to fulfill a disordered desire without Christianity being false. Saying “Arians identify as Christians, hence should accept 4” only works if “Christian” already includes your reading of 1. That's question-begging against the Arian.
DeleteIt seems that the word “direct” is doing all the heavy lifting here. For instance, if you drop “direct,” then 3 doesn't follow. Mediated union with God is still union with God. Marriage, covenant, and knowledge through an image are all real union.
ReplyDeleteThe window for “direct” is pretty narrow, though. If it means “the immediate object of union is a divine person,” then an Arian can just deny that the desire was ever for an unmediated grasp of the Father’s own being. And if “direct” means “no created intermediary,” then the Nicene side doesn’t really have that either. Jesus’s humanity, the sacraments, and the Spirit's mission are still there. You only reach the conclusion by deciding that a divine person doesn’t count as an obstacle, which is already deciding that the Son is God.
I’m also not sure Christians were hoping to get past Jesus in the first place.
There’s also the fact that “direct union with God” is beatific-vision language. Naturally, an Arian will simply say that the deepest proper desire is for whatever union God has actually appointed, e.g. resurrection, adoption, the kingdom, seeing the Father in the face of the Son, etc.
Recall too that Paul’s hope is not that we become the divine essence, but that we become sons in the Son (Gal 4:4-7; Rom 8:14-17). For the Arian, it's the Nicene that needs to explain how it is that we are sons of the Father without becoming what the Son is by nature. So it would appear, then, for the Arian that adoption fits a firstborn creature better than a second unbegotten. And Hebrews has an eternal high priest who “always lives to intercede.” In that case, even Nicene eschatology is also mediated, no?
I don’t think any of this wins, I'm not an Arian. However, the New Testament doesn’t sound embarrassed about using “through-Jesus” language. So what is the meaning of the word “direct” in the argument?