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Originally Posted by ChristianTrader  Van Til denied that the paradox (aka apparent contradiction is avoided by 3 in person, 1 in essense). I agree (it just pushes the paradox back a step, nothing is resolved). One can maintain that God is one person and three persons and say that the sense of person is different and maintain that it is all an apparent contradiction.
The point of the term "apparent contradiction" is to say that two propositions are not contradictory, but I do not know how to spell them out so that they cease to look contradictory.
It really just seems that you do not know what the term "apparent contradiction" means or when it is supposed to be used.
CT |
I think you missed the point. If it were as simply as "person" being used in different senses, then Van Til could not say there was an apparent contradiction. You have resolved any appearance of contradiction by saying (as Van Til clearly does not) that is simply a matter of different senses of the term "person". There has to be a sense in which "person" is used in the same sense for both God and the three persons of the Trinity at the same time. Otherwise there is no appearance of contradiction.
And you need to also account that the Doctrine of the Trinity is the product of Scriptural interpretation. If Scripture can not contradict itself, then, as Rev. Winzer pointed out, no correct Scriptural doctrine contradict itself. Van Til insisted in formulating the Doctrine of the Trinity in a explicitly contradictory manner.
Also keep in mind the VT had another issue he was trying to resolve - the Greek problem of "the one and the many". This issue was central to VT's theology and was one of the reasons he insisted on the explicit contradiction of God being both three and one.
VT's apparent contradictions are there because he believed that they could not be resolved. "Person" in different senses resolves the contradiction so it's not what VT was thinking.