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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.

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

10 steps towards getting less confused about the Trinity – #3 Take the mystery out of appeals to “mystery” – Part 1

Equivocal terms are the enemy of clear thinking. It is common to hear that the Trinity is “a mystery.” But what does “mystery” mean here? Sometimes all that is meant is that the triune God is a great, wonderful, and complicated reality. Call this the honorific sense of “mystery.” It’s not unlike calling a book or movie “profound” or “deep.” The non-trinitarian Christian will agree… Read More »10 steps towards getting less confused about the Trinity – #3 Take the mystery out of appeals to “mystery” – Part 1

Jesus’s Jewish error?

Here is a guest post by Sir Anthony Buzzard. In it, he discuses what many would consider an obvious point, though some ignore or deny it: that the theology of Bible-era Judaism is monotheistic in a way that implies that the one God just is a certain mighty self. In Mark 12, Jesus simply affirms that theology.   It is standard information in all the… Read More »Jesus’s Jewish error?

podcast 128 – Ehrman and Bird on How Jesus Became God – Part 1

In this episode I review the first portion of a recent debate/discussion between Dr. Bart Ehrman and Dr. Michael Bird, held at the at the 2016 Greer-Heard Point Counter Point Forum in February 12-13, 2016 at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.