I was watching another conversation involving Dan McClellan, but this time it was with Joshua Sijuwade about the development of the Trinity, and honestly, this conversation clarified the debate much more for me. What Joshua was defending was not the very simplified “layman Trinity” that people usually attack online. He was defending what he called conciliar Trinitarianism, meaning the Trinitarianism articulated in the councils and broadly held throughout the first millennium of Christianity. And what fascinated me is that this model is much more precise than the caricatures people often debate against. Joshua’s point was basically this: According to conciliar Trinitarianism, there is one God, the Father, because there is only one monarchia, one ultimate source or font of divinity. The Son and the Spirit are distinct persons who possess the exact same divinity as the Father, but relationally: - the Father possesses divinity fundamentally - the Son possesses the same divinity by eternal generation/begetting - the Spirit possesses the same divinity by eternal procession. So the distinction is grounded in relation and monarchy, while the unity is grounded in essence. And what struck me is that Dan McClellan basically conceded that this model is much more coherent and much less problematic than the kind of Trinity most laypeople articulate. But then Dan responded by saying that if you stop random Christians on the street, they probably will not explain the Trinity this way. And honestly, I found that completely irrelevant. Laymen misunderstand literally everything. Ask random people to explain: - evolution - quantum mechanics - constitutional law - philosophy of mind. Most people will explain them badly. That says nothing about whether the actual scholarly or authoritative model is coherent. So to me, that objection has no bearing on whether conciliar Trinitarianism itself is philosophically coherent. It is simply a problem of poor catechesis and education among lay Christians.

That is something i wanted to see so badly! Dr. MCclellan and Dr. Sijuwade discussing the Trinity! I have not watched the whole thing yet, but it gotta be interesting no?!. Give it a watch and let's discuss about it. https://youtube.com/watch?v=WLauwRcfgbY&si=PqZEAnz0hp4VFRBg

Barton continues by saying that sometimes a historical observation can point the reader toward a literary question. For example, in Genesis 12:6, the phrase “at that time the Canaanites were in the land” led many early Jewish and Christian scholars to conclude that the chapter could not have been written by Moses, because the phrase seems to presuppose a time after the Canaanites were no longer in the land. I understand the point, but I would still add a small caveat. Even if that phrase is later, it does not automatically follow that the whole chapter is later. It could be a later gloss. And even then, the phrase does not necessarily have to be written after the complete expulsion of the Canaanites; it could perhaps have been written at a time when that expulsion was expected or underway. I am not saying this solves the issue, only that the move needs some care. Barton then says that once the question of Mosaic authorship is raised, the solution has to come through literary analysis. He quotes Wellhausen, saying that the supporters of the Graf hypothesis wanted to place the legal and narrative strata of the Pentateuch in the right historical order, but that the problem itself was literary and had to be solved by literary means, through inner comparison of the sources and correlation with securely transmitted facts of Israel’s history. So history enters the discussion, but the primary emphasis remains literary. The question may be historical, but the answer is literary. I can understand that. I have not read Wellhausen, so I cannot really comment on whether his source divisions or historical correlations were justified. But immediately, when Barton says that Wellhausen correlated each source with a particular period of Israel’s history, I want to know how exactly that was argued. Because as far as I know, the question of how many sources there are, how to divide them, and how to date them is not something everyone has settled. So I cannot comment on the details, but I can at least say that the argument needs to be made carefully.

Barton’s whole point, as I understand him, is that biblical criticism is not primarily born from a historical impulse, but from a literary or hermeneutical one. He keeps insisting that what makes criticism critical is not merely noticing inconsistencies, because harmonizers also notice them. What makes criticism critical is the way one understands the nature of the text: as a finished whole, with its own internal dynamic, logic, and genre. And I agree with that principle in itself. I agree that certain types of texts provide certain types of information. I agree that we cannot just go to every text looking for a simple transcript of events. Every text tells a story in its own way, and to read it well, we need to ask what kind of text it is. Barton even quotes Matthias Flacius Illyricus, who says that in reading a text one must decide whether it is narrative, history, instruction, consolation, accusation, description, speech, and so on. I completely agree with that. But that is exactly why I am struggling with Barton’s use of the principle. Because if genre recognition is the heart of the critical attitude, then what counts as an inconsistency should itself depend on genre. The charge of inconsistency should be the result of a critical reading, not something presupposed before the critical reading. You first identify the genre, then you determine what kind of consistency that genre requires, and only then can you say whether a tension is truly an inconsistency. This is why I find his Proverbs example much stronger than his Gospel or Pentateuch examples. In Proverbs, the so-called contradiction between “answer a fool according to his folly” and “do not answer a fool according to his folly” is not really an inconsistency once you recognize the genre. Proverbs is wisdom literature. It works through maxims, tensions, contextual judgment, and sometimes opposing aphorisms. So harmonizing those verses into one flat rule does misread the genre. There, Barton’s point works.

Barton then continues by examining more closely Augustine’s second strategy for dealing with Gospel discrepancies. This is the approach where Augustine argues that what ultimately matters is the integrity of the truth being communicated, not the exact wording or sequencing of details. In his terms, what matters is not the verba but the res — not the words, but the reality or meaning. The veritatis integritas is what matters most. So differences in wording, sequencing, or detail are not really threatening, because the evangelists are still communicating the same underlying truth. Barton notes that this looks quite close to what many modern readers do with the Gospels. He even connects this to Origen. According to him, Origen argued that some details in John cannot be taken strictly at face value and therefore must be understood allegorically. He also applies narrative criticism to Matthew and finds parts of it unpersuasive if taken as they stand. I’m not familiar enough with Origen to evaluate that directly, so I’m taking Barton’s presentation as it is. At the same time, Barton admits that this approach is somewhat dangerous, because it can lead to a disregard for the text as it stands. Even if it resolves inconsistencies, it risks dissolving the narrative into interpretation. He then shows that this tendency reappears later in the Reformation with Chemnitz, and even earlier with figures like Theodore of Mopsuestia. After that, Barton returns to Augustine’s first strategy when accounts are sufficiently different, they are treated as referring to different events. This reappears in Osiander’s Harmonia Evangelica, where the principle is pushed much further. For Osiander, every detail must be true exactly as stated. So if Matthew and Luke differ, then they must be describing different events. The result is a multiplication of events multiple temple cleansings, multiple similar healings, and so on. Barton describes this as almost comic. He then concludes that, for Osiander, the Gospels become building blocks of a larger harmony. And despite their differences, both Augustine and Osiander share a commitment to an objective harmony they assume that the harmony is already there, and that the reader who sees contradictions is simply mistaken.