384 - podcast 381 – Mainstream Christian Theologies in the year 240: What Trinitarian Apologists Don’t Know
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384 - podcast 381 – Mainstream Christian Theologies in the year 240: What Trinitarian Apologists Don’t Know
In videos like this one and this one, trinitarian apologists continue to push false narratives about the history of mainstream Christian theologies, like these (ordered from least to most plausible):
In this historical presentation, focusing on passages from Tertullian, Origen, and Novatian, I explain the actual early history of mainstream Christian theologies. Each of these three authors is a logos theorist, and I explain how they think God and the Logos (aka “the second god”) differ. “Subordinationism” is a feature, not a bug of these theologies; it is how they stay monotheistic despite positing multiple “divine” beings–only one “god” is strictly speaking a god. Each writer implies that logos theory was in their day a minority view; it seems that logos theories were at first popular among the “elite” and were widely rejected by other Christians. Each of these writers describes Christians who disagree with their Logos speculations. Since Harnack historians have called these Dynamic Monarchians and Modalistic Monarchians. Using the stick figures first deployed here, I explain the differences between these three mainstream Christian theologies, and between each of them and the trinitarian theology that was demanded by the mainstream starting in 381. Finally, I take a stab out outlining the actual early history of Christian theologies, starting with Dynamic Monarchianism and ending with the hegemony of trinitarianism.
Because of the many slides (and stick figures) I recommend the video version:
https://youtu.be/d9W_KjktIdk?feature=shared
Thanksto Brandon Duke for editing the video and to Mark Cain for expertly cleaning up the lecture audio! Finally, my sincerest thanks to the tireless UK International Conference committee whose hard work made this encouraging meeting possible. Watch the UCA blog for an announcement of the next UK international conference!
383 - podcast 380 – Dr. Dustin Smith on Wisdom Christology in the Gospel of John
To understand a book as its author intended, you don’t look to its future, but rather to its past. What has this author read, and what could he presuppose his audience to have read? These other pieces of literature are like tools in the author’s hands.
The biblical book of Proverbs famously features a vivid personification, Lady Wisdom. She pleads with people to seek and find her, and she even appears alongside God when he is creating. As Dr. Dustin Smith explains, this character appears in a number of later ancient Jewish writings in various ways, and can even be described as “incarnate” in certain people. Many of these would have been accessible both to the author of John and his audience.
Paul famously writes that Christ is “the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24). But as James Dunn has observed, this idea of Christ as God’s wisdom is more prominent in John than in any other New Testament book. Drawing on an impressive array of recent scholarship, in Wisdom Christology in the Gospel of John Dr. Dustin Smith argues that “the Johannine Jesus is incarnate Wisdomand that this christological presentation permeates all twenty-one chapters of the Fourth Gospel” (p. 213).
In this new discussion we focus on the basics of “wisdom christology” and on how that idea sheds light on the famous opening to the fourth gospel, John 1:1-18.
382 - podcast 379 – AI and I evaluate my debate with James White
The way to evaluate a debate is to actively chart and compare the arguments made by each side. Debaters call this “flowing” a debate.
I sat down and did this, working carefully all the way through my recent debate with James Whiteon the question “Is Jesus Yahweh?”
In this episode I’ll give you my evaluation of the debate, with an assist from the cutting edge Chat Debate Beta AI. She and I even go so far as to declare a winner!
Do you agree? Why or why not? How would you have argued one side or the other differently
I’ve been interviewed several times about the debate; see the videos below.
381 - podcast 378 – Debate: Is Jesus Yahweh? White vs. Tuggy – Part 2
In this episode: mutual interrogations, closing statements, and audience questions and answers.
Which side put forward the stronger opening case? Which did a better job in rebuttal? What if anything was revealed by the mutual interrogations? What if anything was added by the brief closing statements? And which answers to audience questions did you think were important, and why?
Yoube the judge.
In the next episode I’ll share some of my thoughts about this debate.
380 - podcast 377 – Debate: Is Jesus Yahweh? White vs. Tuggy – Part 1
This episode contains the Pro and Con opening statements and rebuttals from the debate on March 9, 2024 between James White and Dale Tuggy in Houston, Texas. The debate question is “Is Jesus Yahweh?”
Which side makes the stronger opening arguments? Which side does a better job at rebutting the other’s opening arguments?
Because of our many slides, the fully edited video version below is recommended. (However, the above podcast audio-only version above has some groovy Thinking Music in between the segments.)
https://youtu.be/ky2SaHscSIo?si=6NmO6gpnDzrjC1oa
My thanks to the host Pastor and Moderator Evan McClanahan of First Lutheran Houston, James White, the UCA Podcast‘s host and producer Mark Cain, who masterfully cleaned up the source audio, and UCA Board Member Brandon Duke, who produced the video above.
379 - podcast 376 – The Trinity, the Deity of Christ, and the Best Craig – Part 2
This is the final part of my response to some recent podcast episodes by Dr. William Lane Craig here and here.
Dr. Craig accuses me of being disingenuous in claiming that his minimal, so-called “biblical” doctrine consisting of two sentences is not enough to count as a trinitarian theology. I stand by that claim, and point out that it is unclear why Dr. Craig thinks that those sentences say anything about a tripersonal God.
I also discuss his claim that his rival hypothesis, that the New Testament authors assumed those two sentences, explains the 20 facts I build my case on in the forthcoming debate book. I don’t discuss all 20 facts here, but I describe the 5 facts that I presented in the recent book panel session, and point out that Craig’s hypothesis in fact doesn’t explain any of those, in contrast to the hypothesis I call “U,” that the New Testament authors assume that the one God just is the Father and that neither the Son nor the Spirit are fully divine.
In his recent podcast Dr. Craig also seems to suggest that I think there is one doctrine of the Trinity, and that in the debate book I attacked a straw man theology which no trinitarian holds. I point out that both claims are mistaken. I also discuss the two different Trinity theories he has presented, pointing out that one could be true while the other is false.
Finally, I summarize the shortcomings of our recent interactions and I challenge Dr. Craig to a full-length, face to face public debate, suggesting four topics:
The New Testament teaches that the one God is tripersonal. The Gospel According to John teaches that Jesus and the Father are equally divine. The Chalcedonian doctrine of a divine and human Jesus is coherent. The New Testament teaches that Jesus and the Father are equally divine.
378 - podcast 375 – The Trinity, the Deity of Christ, and the Best Craig – Part 1
In this episode I first explain what I mean by “the best Craig” and why in my view we’re not getting that in some recent responses to my arguments. I then respond to some recent podcast episodes by Dr. William Lane Craig here and here, where Craig is not engaging with my arguments, instead dismissing me as a fringe kook who can be safely ignored.
We again revisit what Craig calls “the modern relation of identity” (really: a modern understanding of identity) and I point out what is now an area of agreement about the concept of identity. Yet based on his recent remarks, Craig doesn’t understand what I think about the identity of God and the Father in the New Testament.
I refute his recent allegation that noNew Testament scholar thinks that nowhere in the New Testament is Jesus taught to be fully divine; my counterexample is the famous and influential James Dunn. I then offer a few thoughts on his fallback objection that the vast majority of New Testament scholars would disagree.
Lastly, I respond to his brief argument from divine providence and the fourth gospel. Am I committed to God failingin his promised post-resurrection revelation?
377 - podcast 374 – Book Session Identity Crisis – Part 3
This episode is the final portion of the EPS session devoted to the forthcoming book, One God, Three Persons, Four Views, edited by Dr. Chad McIntosh. You’ll hear the entire Q&A portion of the session, plus my commentary thereupon. Topics include:
Jesus and the “one like a son of man” in Daniel 7 Jesus’ claim in Mark 2 and in Matthew 9 to be authorized to forgive sins the accusation of blasphemy lobbed at Jesus in Mark 14:61-64. the “worship” of Jesus in Matthew 2 and elsewhere how Revelation 1 describes the exalted Jesus in similar terms to the Ancient of Days in Daniel 7 the title “Alpha and Omega” which is used in Revelation for both God and Jesus whether John 15:3 implies that it must have been Godwho died for our sins whether Romans 10:9 shows that in Paul’s view Jesus is Yahweh whether being begotten by God implies being God, and the charge in John 10 that Jesus is “making himself God” John 17:5 and the issue of Jesus’s pre-human existence in the New Testament whether John 12:41 implies that Jesus is Yahweh John 1 and the deity of Christ that the Hebrew echadcan refer to non-simple, complex unities
There is also a question about and some more discussion of Dr. Craig’s controversial claim that it is an anachronism to suppose that New Testament authors could make claims involving the concept of numerical identity. I point out that any normal adult, then or now, can wonder, after twice referring, if they’ve referred to the same thing twice or rather to two things in succession. I also point out that the anti-modalist plank of trinitarian confessions, even ancient ones, employs the concept of same-thing-as when it denies that any “Person” of the Trinity is numerically the same with any of the others (i.e. that all of these are false: f = s, s = h, h = f).
For his part, Dr. Craig asks me if I accept a Socinian account of atonement, and you’ll also hear the humorous end of this panel session, as the editor Dr. McIntosh hands out clever gifts to each of the four authors.
In the final segment I critique some answers Dr. Craig has recently given on his podcast to some listener questions about the Bible and “the Trinity,” also offering my own answers.
1 Chronicles 20:29; Philippians 2:9-11; Romans 5; Matthew 1:23; John 1:1; Mark 12:28-34; Deuteronomy 6:4; Deuteronomy 4:35; John 14:28; John 1:18; John 20:28; John 20:17; John 10:31-36; John 20:30-31; John 14:9; Acts 17:11.
376 - podcast 373 – Book Session Identity Crisis – Part 2
In this second part (part 1 here) you’ll hearthe mutual interrogation portion of the EPS session on book One God, Three Persons, Four Views, with plenty of commentary by me and some extra relevant audio. This portion of the session contains a number of interesting exchanges. Among them:
Hasker (via McIntosh) asks me whether my views entail that God’s spirit has failed to lead the Church into all truth (John 16:13). Branson asks Craig how, if most ancient people lacked the concept of numerical identity, they were able to count. Branson asks me how many saviors (or “saviors”) I think there are. Craig asks me how I could totally miss his point in the book. Craig asks Branson if Branson is committed to the controversial thesis of numerical sameness without identity. I ask Craig how he can talk about a tripersonal god while also saying that “the Trinity” is a plural referring term, not referring to any one, individual thing. I ask Craig how he could possibly show that Jesus “is God” is the second-highest use of the term “God,” where it doesn’t imply being a god. I ask Branson whether creedal orthodoxy, rightly understood, rules in or rules out people who identify the only god with the Trinity (i.e. the triune god).
Craig urges, as he did in part 1, that most ancient people either lacked a concept of numerical identity(represented in modern logics by the symbol =) or at least that they did not have a modern grasp of that concept, so that they could explain it like this. You will hear in this episode how he came to this conviction. In his view this is a simple argument by which to show that any unitarian interpretation of the New Testament (i.e. any one on which the authors hold that the unique God and the Father are one and the same), is an historical anachronism, and so needn’t be taken seriously.
I push backboth in the session and in the commentary here, urging via a thought-experiment and via examination of a couple of New Testament passages (John 7:41-42 and Luke 24:13-35), that ordinary ancient people didhave a concept of same-thing-as or numerical identity.I also show, using some additional conference audio, that Craig is committed to their having that concept by the view he attributes to the authors of Scripture and to the Pre-Nicene “fathers” that God is the creator of absolutely everything else.
375 - podcast 372 – Book Session Identity Crisis – Part 1
In this episode you’ll hear the four opening speeches in a book session at the Evangelical Philosophical Society conference in San Antonio, Texas in November of 2023. The book is One God, Three Persons, Four Views, edited by Chad McIntosh, forthcoming probably deep into 2024. (See UCA podcast #77 for the back story about the book.)
The speakers are the co-authors William Hasker(his paper presented by Dr. McIntosh), Beau Branson, William Lane Craig, and Dale Tuggy. Each one is supposed to explain what is distinctive about his approach to the Trinity. Dr. Hasker presents the basics of his three-self theory, focusing on his claim that the “Persons” really are “centers of consciousness” (selves). Dr. Branson explains his “Monarchical Trinitarianism,” focusing on a number of linguistic distinctions, such as different meanings of “god.” Dr. Craig briefly explains what he claims is a minimal and biblical Trinity theoryand what he claims is an unproblematic model of the doctrine of the Trinity amounts to. He also urges that I have failed to rebut his case that Jesus “is God” (i.e. not identical with God, but rather that he has divine-Person divinity, as opposed to god-divinity). Finally, I present my unitarian Christian view, focusing on five of my twenty facts which favor the thesis that the New Testament authors are unitarian over the thesis that those authors are trinitarian.
I provide an opinionated running commentary on the presentations . . . and a few sound effects.
Next time: interactions between the four panelists, and some extra information about Craig’s claim that the New Testament authors had no concept (or no clear grasp of the concept) of identity, which is how he hopes to refute any understanding of New Testament theology on which the one God and the Father are one and the same.
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