Your average theologian’s response to recent Rational Reinterpretations.
Let me take four recent books off my shelf by current theologians. Now I’ll search through them to see if they have any reference at all to some of the more important Rational Reconstructions in the last 25 years or so, namely:
Tom Morris’s (1986, 1989) or Richard Swinburne’s [...]
Can’t we all just get along?
One last problem for Resolution through Rational Reconstruction: the new-fangled theory (or if you like, way of understanding the Doctrine) is invariably controversial, in the following sense: it involves metaphysical claims such that some thinkers will consider them false and impossible, and others not.
The more you think about hard stuff, [...]
Whew! That was close!
Many recent Christian philosophers have offered what I call Rational Reconstructions of apparently contradictory doctrines such as the Trinity and the Incarnation. Though I’m presently exploring criticisms of such views, let me emphasize that I don’t see anything wrong with what they’re doing, and I think that people with philosophical skills [...]
Nothing objectionable in there…
One way to deal with an apparently contradictory doctrine in your religion is the response of Restraint. There’s a connection here, with the medieval Catholic doctrine of “implicit faith”, so I thought I’d explore it a little, and in my next post, I’ll apply this to the issue of Restraint in the [...]
Don’t ask me what this doctrine means… I only believe it.
Last time we briefly explored Redirection, the first of our four ways to respond to apparent contradictions in theology.
The response of Restraint is a little more reasonable. This person realizes that a certain way of understanding, say, the doctrine of the Trinity, seems inconsistent. The [...]
The smell of this will get you off the trail…
Last time we briefly distinguished four ways Christians respond to apparent contradictions in theology. Here, we look at what I call Redirection. When confronted with an apparently contradictory doctrine X, the Redirector changes the subject. She says something to direct your attention away from X, or [...]
This chart has been brought to you by the letter “R” and the number “4″.
In this series I’ll describe 4 basic ways Christian thinkers respond to apparent contradictions in theology. I don’t claim these are complete. Maybe ya’ll can help me clarify and add to this scheme.
I’ve been working for a while on what I [...]
3 dodecahedron-shaped statues?
The human idea factory (I think he’ll take that as a compliment ) has again returned to the Trinity:
Alexander Pruss’s Blog: Another analogy for the Trinity?
He imagines a scenario in which three different statues are simultaneously made of the same quantity of material. This scenario, he holds, is logically impossible. Nonetheless, he [...]
Happy Trinity Sunday!
“And the best thing is, we can take these blocks apart!”
In the last post, I introduced the ‘generic view’ of the trinity, namely the claim that Divinity (that which makes the divine persons God/divine) is shared equally by all three persons and so does not belong to any one divine person more than another. In [...]
“Gee Hank, it sure is swell that communism won out.
This house belongs to all of us!”
In the last post, I pointed out some of the problems faced by an Athanasian sort of derivation view. If you found such problems to be decisive, then alternatively you could opt for a generic view. In this post, I [...]
Some famous hippie theology… or maybe ethics. All right, maybe just music and wallowing in chummy feelings.
Alex @ Alexander Pruss’s Blog urges that even non-social trinitarians can make a priori arguments for their trinitarian theology based on the concept of perfection.
I don’t think these sorts of arguments work, as I explain in a comment [...]
“You were filming that?”
In the last post, I explained that for Athanasius’s version of the derivation view, when the Father generates the Son, the Father shares his substance with the Son. That means, I took it, that the Father himself becomes a constituent in the Son, similar to the way that a lump of bronze [...]
Remember Moreland’s and Craig’s Cerberus analogy for the Trinity? (background here, whole series here) Daniel Howard-Snyder objected, come on, that’s clearly three dogs with overlapping bodies, not one dog with three centers of consciousness or with three minds. And they don’t want to say that the Trinity is three overlapping gods, so ditch the analogy [...]
Now Q comes with spring arm action
and dyno bud (optional)!
The Nicene Creed claims that
(Q) The Son is begotten from the substance of the Father.
The term ‘begotten’ is just an older English term for ‘generated’. In the ancient world, ‘generation’ was a technical term for biological reproduction (e.g., when humans make baby humans, when trees make [...]
“I hate wearing this stupid hat.
They didn’t make me a bishop anyways.
At least the cape’s pretty cool.
It’s got St. George’s Cross going on.”
In my last post, I gave some basic definitions for the ‘derivation view’ and the ‘generic view’ of the Trinity, and I said that the historical background for the ‘derivation view’ rests in [...]
– “Daddy, why do trees branch out?”
– “So you can climb in them, Jimmy.”
Patristic scholars tell us that the doctrine of the trinity was really developed in the 4th century. The question is: what exactly is the ‘development’? If you read many of those scholarly big books on patristic theology, you’ll occasionally come across the [...]
I Can’t Stop Loving You - actually, it’s worse than that - I can’t not love you!
Alexander Pruss is an excellent philosophy of religion dude at Baylor. His second PhD dissertation was on possible worlds. Don’t ask me to explain what his first one was on! He’s got about a million original ideas [...]
Mike, reloaded - before the smoke has even cleared.
More from Mike Almeida about a premise in an anti-social-trinitarian-argument argument I’ve been exploring. Also, (sorry Mike - actually, sorry everyone) I continue my cheesy cowboy theme. (But as a native Texan, it’s my sacred right, Pardn’r. )
Here’s a summary in (attempted) ordinary English of his [...]
“Don’t mess with Texan metaphysicans, pardner.”
In a recent series of posts (uno, dos, tres, quatro, cinco), I’ve been chewing on some philosophical arguments that “social” trinitarians have used for their doctrine. Been finding more gristle than meat.
In my latest installment, I was privileged to get some penetrating critical feedback from fellow philosophy of religion bloggers [...]
