A Twitter Exchange with Dale Tuggy on Christian Authority

Twitter is the only social media platform that’s found a way to keep me coming back. One major reason is the opportunity to have chats with people I’d otherwise never get an opportunity to interact with.

In this case it’s the prolific host and writer behind Trinities, Dale Tuggy. Trinities is a podcast and blog that focuses on theories about… you guessed it, the Trinity. He is exceedingly qualified on the subject, and even authored the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry.

That being said, this conversation wasn’t about the Trinity. It was about Christian authority.

I’d argue that the problem of the Trinity — which Dr. Tuggy can eloquently articulate in his sleep — is dependent on the problem of Christian authority (i.e., what you think about authority should in large part govern what you think about the Trinity).

I’m pretty convinced Dr. Tuggy is correct.

If the Protestant Bible is your sole, supreme authority for Christian doctrine, then I’m pretty convinced Dr. Tuggy is correct. One shouldn’t be trinitarian, or at minimum shouldn’t use it as a measuring stick for orthodoxy. On the other hand, if that view of authority is wrong, then I think the tables turn.

That being said, I’d like to walk through our conversation about authority, offer a bit more commentary on my responses, and perhaps attempt to read between the lines on his a bit.

I’m going to refer to Dr. Tuggy as just “Tuggy” from here on out. It’s just a bit of shorthand. Forgive me if it ever sounds disrespectful. Definitely not my intention.

The Convo

It all started when another person requested prayer about a big decision:

This prompted a question from Tuggy wondering what her reason was for excluding Protestant Christianity from her decision tree:

I didn’t see a response from her, so I figured I’d throw my hat in the ring and give Tuggy my own unsolicited response:

I do think this is Protestantism’s fundamental flaw.

Most Protestants — aside from Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, and a few others — hold to some form of biblical supremacy over and above all other forms of authority. Because the Bible is not axiomatic (self-interpreting), this practically cashes out to mean one’s interpretation of the Bible is the supreme authority. Who’s to tell you otherwise?

It’s not at all shocking to see thousands of Protestant denominations in this context. The complexity and vagary of the biblical text creates an elaborate interpretive puzzle. So complex that nearly every teaching in Scripture is in some way argued over.

My contention is pretty straight forward. If a particular branch of Christianity has no reasonable mechanism to establish a functional interpretive authority, then it will be technically unable to achieve Christ’s (John 17) and Paul’s (Eph) teaching on unity. It is therefore a fundamentally deficient form of Christianity and unlikely to be the ideal organization of Christ’s Church.

Tuggy didn’t really argue against the main point of my tweet, and continued the conversation with a question:

I thought that was an interesting question, so I attempted to answer as candidly as possible:

While Catholicism and Orthodoxy are decidedly not monolithic, the two share a thousand years of decided dogma via the first seven ecumenical councils, as well as likely historical continuity with the first Christian generation. No restorationist attempt at authority holds a candle to their historical pedigree.

Catholicism and Orthodoxy also represent about 60% of all the world’s Christians, while the estimated 40% within the Protestant branch is made up of hundreds of major independent groups and thousands when smaller groups are included.

Internal disputes often end in the sprouting of a new equally legitimate church or denomination — because who has the authority to stop it or determine heresy?

Again, it seems intuitively obvious that Christ wouldn’t have commissioned an organization with no way to deal with internal disputes. It seems that in fact, he didn’t (see Matthew, Acts, and more). While both Catholicism and Orthodoxy aren’t perfect, Protestantism has proven to take failure to disappointingly new heights. Internal disputes often end in the sprouting of a new equally legitimate church or denomination — because who has the authority to stop it or determine heresy? As I said in the tweet, it’s a flat mess.

It’s so disparate that even calling it “Protestantism”, as if it’s one thing in any serious theological sense, is horribly oversimplified. Its primary shared position is protesting against Catholicism and Orthodoxy, because they are what was left behind.

Tuggy responded:

He’s right. There’s a lot of work to do in remedying the Great Schism. But, it’s a schism… not schisms upon schisms upon schisms (i.e., Protestantism). And I’ll tell you what, I’d feel a lot better about Christianity as a whole if there were basically two groups instead of thousands. Jesus hit the psychological nail on the head about unity being important “so they may believe” (John 17). A hyper fragmented Christianity is hard to believe in.

I was also a bit surprised he admitted that the Bible couldn’t do the trick per se, which led me to my next question:

Christian unity is not something I think we should put on the back burner. Similar to working through other theological issues, this is one I wish our smartest minds, like Tuggy, were actively working on. In practice, it feels like many have relegated to the idea that this degree of diversity isn’t all that bad.

Perhaps it feels unsolvable. Maybe it is unsolvable. But in that sense, wouldn’t the problem of the Trinity fit into the same category?

I’d be very interested for someone with his analytical skills to articulate what sort of radical changes could be made. From my estimation, the solution would likely have to check at least two boxes:

1. Be historically / biblically credible
2. Be practically plausible

I followed up with him hoping for more details about his view on Christian authority:

Not really?! This seems like a vital area to have worked out thoughts.

Here’s how my brain thinks about it. Without having worked out thoughts on how authority works in a given system, how do you feel comfortable about being in a position to speak authoritatively about aspects of that system? If you’re not in a position to speak authoritatively about that system, then shouldn’t you feel a lot less confident about the conclusions drawn from that system?

I suppose some form of an epistemic humility argument is nested in those questions.

I understand this way of thinking in secular fields. Much like Protestantism generally, secularism is every man and woman for themself. The subject matter is also typically less consequential and probabilistic in nature.

Christianity is different. It’s claiming to deal with revelation from God — one time info dumps from the ultimate absolute authority on quite literally everything. Claiming or practically behaving in such a way as to hold the authoritative keys (pun intended) is a really big deal in this context.

I digress. Back to his tweet.

The whole apostolic succession thing being a myth threw me for a bit of a loop, and to be honest, I don’t know enough to thoroughly interact with that narrative assertion. All I know is there are very sophisticated counter-narratives that forcefully argue in the opposite direction of Tuggy. For interested parties, I’ll link to some of those counter-narratives here, here, and here.

I continued to pursue for more clarity:

Ok. So, according to Tuggy, we have a hierarchy. Apostles on top. They can tell the pastors/elders when they’ve screwed up, and justly discipline them if they continue their obstinance.

He also says it’s unclear this hierarchy was supposed to stop (i.e., it’s possible an apostolic-like hierarchy should still be in place?). I agree. At minimum it’s unclear — like almost everything else in the Bible.

Tuggy continued:

I won’t belabor the point I’ve already made repeatedly, but it seems clear to me that significant doctrinal fragmentation has caused a disastrous degree of disunity. My thoughts are that Jesus, Paul, and the other New Testament writers would find that fact scandalous.

I certainly do.

Authority Matters

Much like the girl who started our conversation, I’m likely to decide between Catholicism and Orthodoxy soon.

I’ve been in a holding pattern for about six years examining as much as I can from every angle I can — listening to smart voices within all branches of Christianity.

Dale Tuggy is one of those voices, and I respect him. I hope to have more conversations with him in the future. I learn a lot from him. Ultimately though, he’s failed to convince me to stop believing in the Trinity… because he’s failed to convince me why his voice is one I should be listening to.

Please support the Trinities podcast and blog. You can visit the Patreon page here. I will link two of my favorite episodes with Dr. Timothy Pawl.