The Christological Triad of Dale Tuggy

I appreciated listening to Dale Tuggy's podcast "Apologists on How God Can Die—Part 3." I also enjoyed reading and joining in on the replies for parts 1 and 2.

Tuggy focused on a criticism from a recent blog post by apologist Steve Hays, which criticized Tuggy's recent unitarian criticism of two-nature (divine-human) Christology. For example, Tuggy proposes the following inconsistent triad:

1. Jesus died.
2. Jesus was fully divine.
3. No fully divine being has ever died.

Tuggy supports that his first statement "Jesus died" means something different than "Jesus suffered biological death." Then, he supports that his triad is inconsistent and therefore indicates the inconsistency of two-nature Christology.

Tuggy also mentioned that he was dissatisfied with the clarity of every oppositional reply to his triad. I agree with the dissatisfaction until I wrote this blog post. The ambiguities in Tuggy's triad encouraged me to make careful definitions of (1) an individual human nature and human death; (2) the divine nature; and (3) two-nature Christology. Then, I briefly sift his triad.

First, this paragraph outlines relevant points of an individual human nature and death. I propose some type of substance dualism of the mind. This includes overdetermination of a conscious neurological system and a conscious spirit. Human death is the cessation of human biological life that includes the neurological system; while the postmortem human spirit potentially continues with consciousness and communication. The apostolic church knew little about neurology, but their primary view of human death focused on the cessation of biological life while supporting a potentially conscious intermediate state.

Second, this paragraph outlines relevant points of the divine nature. "The primary attributes of God are inexhaustible love, inexhaustible perception, and inexhaustible force." I quoted this from the abstract for my model of God and time in my 2016 paper "Semiclassical Theism and the Passage of Planck Times." I also support that these divine attributes cohere with my natural law coregency model of the Trinity in my 2016 paper "Identical Legal Entities and theTrinity: Relative-Social Trinitarianism.

Third, I outline relevant points of Christology. "Christ," "the Son of God," and "the second person of the Trinity" are references to the respective divine person who eventually incarnated. The Incarnation was a hypostatic union of an uncreated divine nature and a created human nature. The death of Christ was the biological death of Christ while his human spirit and divine nature continued to exist. I also support a literal descent of Christ into hades in my 2012 Conditional Futurism, chapter 13.

As stated earlier, I disagree with the implications and ambiguities of Tuggy's triad.

First, the statement "Jesus died" implies to me that his biological life ceased to exist while his human spirit and divine nature continued to exist.

Second, the statement "Jesus was fully divine" coheres with belief that the Incarnation was a hypostatic union of an uncreated divine nature and a created human nature.

Third, the statement "No fully divine being has ever died" is false, but no uncreated divine nature has ever ceased to exist.

This is my best effort to date to precisely and coherently address Tuggy's triad. Perhaps more details will unfold in this discussion.

Minor Revisions 4/27/2017
Copyright © 2017 James Edward Goetz