Skip to content

Dale

Dale Tuggy (PhD Brown 2000) was Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Fredonia from 2000-2018. He now works outside of academia in Middle Tennessee but continues to learn and podcast.

podcast 140 – Pastor J. Dan Gill’s The One

Pastor J. Dan Gill was a third-generation Oneness (aka “Jesus only”) Pentecostal, but he started to notice a disconnect between their ways of talking about Jesus and what we read in the Bible.

10 steps towards getting less confused about the Trinity – #2 Get clear about “God”

What sort of being is “God” supposed to be? Your answer to this will constrain your options when it comes to thinking about the Trinity. The “Trinity” (in the primary sense of the term) is supposed to be none other than the triune God, the tripersonal God of officially catholic traditions since the late 4th century. In other words, the Trinity and God are supposed… Read More »10 steps towards getting less confused about the Trinity – #2 Get clear about “God”

three dancers - click for image credit

An eternal dance of Three?

Perhaps the greatest issue for Social Trinitarians with respect to the Holy Spirit is “his” personhood.

10 steps towards getting less confused about the Trinity – #3 Take the mystery out of appeals to “mystery” – Part 4

For a few of the most serious and clever among us, mystery-mongering dies hard. They will stubbornly resist my previous attack on positive mysterianism about the Trinity, kicking back hard. I knew all along that the Trinity was going to be mysterious. And so now that I’ve discovered one way in which it is mysterious, well, I do celebrate it. You can rub my face… Read More »10 steps towards getting less confused about the Trinity – #3 Take the mystery out of appeals to “mystery” – Part 4

10 steps towards getting less confused about the Trinity – #3 Take the mystery out of appeals to “mystery” – Part 3

Continuing our yarn from last time, imagine that our guru Opi changes his strategy. Now he instead tells his disciples that “Opi is the dopi” means that Opi is eternally the uniquely smartest teacher, and also that eternally, there is a teacher smarter than Opi. Here, he teaches them to believe an apparent contradiction, that eternally, Opi is and is not the smartest teacher. But is… Read More »10 steps towards getting less confused about the Trinity – #3 Take the mystery out of appeals to “mystery” – Part 3

10 steps towards getting less confused about the Trinity – #3 Take the mystery out of appeals to “mystery” – Part 2

Continuing our survey from last time, fifth, sometimes “the Trinity is a mystery” means that the doctrine of the Trinity is unintelligible, or nearly so. Some ancient “church Fathers” hold that the doctrine of the Trinity can’t be literally understood, so that we’re forced to use analogies to describe it, all of which are very bad analogies. But, they seem to think, piling bad analogy upon… Read More »10 steps towards getting less confused about the Trinity – #3 Take the mystery out of appeals to “mystery” – Part 2

Jesus: Not a Cheerleader

Saith the late Christian sage Dallas Willard: The Kingdom Among Us is simply God himself and the spiritual realm of beings over which his will perfectly presides – “as it is in the heavens.” That kingdom is to be sharply contrasted with the kingdom of man: the realm of human life, that tiny part of visible reality where the human will for a time has… Read More »Jesus: Not a Cheerleader