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 Christian philosophers on perfect being theology, tradition in philosophy going back to the great medieval philosopher Anselm of Canterbury (d. 1109), but really, as Leftow has shown, back to Augustine, Plato, and the Christian Bible. First, a great interview (click the thin blue button) with Oxford philosopher Brian Leftow by Robert Lawrence Kuhn, for the PBS should Closer to Truth. I did not know that Leftow was… Read More »Is God Perfect?
Ran across this great opening paragraph from philosopher Brian Leftow today: I’m a philosopher because I am a Christian. To many intellectuals, this probably sounds like saying that I am a dog because I am a cat. Dogs hate cats, and otherwise polite philosophers have said to my face, with vigor, that “Christian philosopher” is a contradiction in terms. Cats are not fond of dogs,… Read More »Brian Leftow: Philosophers and Christians as dogs and cats
Eminent Bible scholar Dr. Craig Keener argues that yes, the man Jesus existed; Jesus is not an entirely fictional character.
Big news, huh? 🙂
I’ve followed this issue from afar from a while, but just can’t get myself to take this point of view (that Jesus never existed) seriously. To anyone very much acquainted with the relevant sources, it is obvious that there was a Jesus – whatever you think about his miracles, his claims, his status as Son of God, etc.
It is so obvious that one of our more important critics of traditional Christianity and the Bible, textual scholar and historian Dr. Bart Ehrman, has recently penned a book refuting Jesus-never-existed claims. See this long interview with fellow scholar Dr. Ben Witherington here. (HT: triablogue)
And here is Ehrman on NPR. And The Huffington Post. And the Washington Post. And Religion Dispatches. (He gets a lot of press!)
Honestly, don’t spend too much time on this – it is at bottom a conspiracy theory. But credit to Ehrman and Keener; if one can muster the energy to take it seriously, it brings out the strength of the evidence for a historical Jesus.
It will be more interesting when he wades into more christological territory, into the matter of the historical Jesus’ self-understanding and public teaching about himself. In the Witherington interview linked above he saysRead More »Jesus: not an entirely fictional character
In this recent video, Sir Anthony makes various relevant points. As I said in part 1 of this series, his linguistic argument against “pre-existence” is not his only one. At 3:11ff he gives a version of the linguistic argument I’ve been criticizing. It seems to me that the title of this video is false. To have been “begotten of God” I think, just means to… Read More »Buzzard’s textual arguments against Jesus’ pre-human existence – Part 4
Do you think that you preexisted your conception? Me neither. True, there are cultures which presuppose this. But most of the human race, including ancient Jews, assumes that getting parented involves getting brought into existence some time between the sexual union and birth. You, the younger human being, exist because of what your parents did. This, I suggest, is the default human assumption. You exist because of them. Abe and Sarah… Read More »Buzzard’s textual arguments against Jesus’ pre-human existence – Part 3
The “word ‘beget’,” he says, “is deprived of its actual meaning.”
Let’s pretend that this shows Jesus at the age of 3 months. Does the New Testament teach that no more than 12 months before, Jesus came into existence (for the first time), that is, in philosopher’s lingo, that he was generated?
Sir Anthony Buzzard has argued that the New Testament teaches exactly that, and explicitly so. There’s been a boiling discussion of this argument by our intrepid commenters on this post.
I think this issue deserves some posts. In the past I’ve never been sure I’ve quite understood his argument, and so have never taken a position on it. I’m going to think through it in this series of posts.
Let us first note that the truth and reasonableness of this humanitarian unitarian christology doesn’t stand or fall with this exegetical argument. There may be other textual, theological, or philosophical reasons to hold that Christ did not exist before his human life, i.e. before his conception. It is clear to me, in fact, that this argument is not Sir Anthony’s only reason for this view. (See e.g. comment #2 in the discussion linked above.)
Second, let’s note that it is a very strong or bold argument. Read More »Buzzard’s textual arguments against Jesus’ pre-human existence – Part 1
An interview about my background, Philosophy, the evolution of my views.
Applying standard predicate logic with quantification to the New Testament.
Should Christians worship only God? Or God and Jesus? Or is it redundant to say that we should worship both God and Jesus? If Jesus isn’t God himself, is it therefore the sin of idolatry to worship Jesus? I address these questions in light of scripture in this screencast version of a talk I gave in Atlanta at the 2012 Theological Conference sponsored by the Atlanta Bible… Read More »Who Should Christians Worship?
Jun-suh had heard rumors that both Kim Il-Sung and then later Kim Jong-Il had died. Jun-suh reasoned that since the Great Leader could not die, some foolish people must have mistaken the economic Leader (Leader as manifested to North Koreans, i.e. Kim Jong-un) for the immanent Leader (which is incomprehensibly great). In himself, he is one Leader but is three men. He has manifested himself as such, and we can trust that the economic Leader is the immanent Leader, and vice-versa. He remembered reading this somewhere, and was firmly convinced of it.
His Leaderology was now highly developed. But his friend Seo-yun made one last try to convince him Read More »A Tale of Three Kims – Part 2
The news came by state radio, state newspaper, and state television. Great Leader Kim Il-Sung had make a startling announcement.
Hereforth, my beloved son Kim Jong-Il is also your Leader.
What did it mean?
“They are really one Leader” said Jun-suh. Look at their portraits. Are they not one man, photographed slightly differently?
“No,” argued Seo-yun; Kim Jong-Il is the son of Great Leader.
“Well, that would make him also a Great Leader, wouldn’t it?” And we all know that there is just Great Leader. We have been taught this all our lives.
Seo-yun countered, raising an eyebrow, “One can’t be one’s own son…” She paused to let the point sink in.
But Jun-suh was unmoved. He pressed his case. “The Great Leader is one. This goes without saying. Our love and loyalty are for him, and him alone. It is him alone we praise at our festivals.”
“Wait… I was at that recent rally… the Great Leader and his son our Leader were both there!”Read More »A Tale of Three Kims – Part 1
Closing statements: Finnegan: 1:48:43- 1:52:12 Only one Yahweh. Jesus does things God says he can’t do, e.g. die. Jesus affirms Shema. In John 10, Jesus uses a concept of “representational deity” – i.e. calling a being who isn’t God “God” because of some likeness to God in some respect(s). Trinity is confusing, post-biblical. But it is a solution to a non-existent problem, namely, of their… Read More »Trinitarian-Unitarian Debates – 1 Bosserman vs. Finnegan, 2008 – Part 5
Bosserman questions Finnegan: 1:36:20 B: Did OT saints understand that the physical Temple would be replaced by Jesus? F: No. B: So does the NT contradict the OT on this? F: Incomplete vs. contradictory claims. B: What about Deut 12? F: Like you, I think it doesn’t predict an unending physical temple. B: Why can’t God then only later reveal himself to be not only one… Read More »Trinitarian-Unitarian Debates – 1 Bosserman vs. Finnegan, 2008 – Part 4
Time for mutual interrogations! This is the best part of this debate.
Finnegan questions Bosserman: 1:24:35 – 1:36:19
Sean Finnegan is an intelligent and well spoken “Biblical Unitarian” Christian. He recently earned an M.A. in Church History from Boston University. He runs the christianmonotheism website, which aggregates work by contemporary Christian unitarians. I was pleased to meet him at a recent conference, at which he gave a fascinating presentation on how many (but not all) “church fathers” rejected the everlasting earthly Kingdom in favor of “going to heaven,” i.e. a non-bodily afterlife.
Here’s a blog post by Sean on the debate I’ll be reviewing below.
Brent Bosserman was at the time of the debate an adjunct professor at Northwest University in Washington state. I believe he’s still there, but can’t find out much about him online. But here’s a long 2007 talk of his, called “Christianity and Trinitarian Worldview.” He talks at the start about his background.
This debate suffers by not having a precisely defined debate question. While Finnegan mostly sticks to the biblical case for his view and against Bosserman’s, Bosserman pulls out a broad brush and tries to compare all-encompassing “worldviews.” This is not a good idea; a debate is finite in time!
The intros are over-long and intrusive here; I’ve skipped you to the actual start. My summaries and commentary follow.
Princeton philosopher Thomas Kelly in a paper on the epistemology of disagreement (i.e. what the reasonable response when we find the people just as smart and informed etc. as us disagree on some important matter):
In principle, we ought to be able to give due weight to the available reasons that support a given view, even in the absence of actual defenders of the view who take those reasons as compelling. But in practice, the case for a view is apt to get short shrift in the absence of any actual defenders. The existence of actual defenders can serve to overcome our blindspots by forcefully reminding us just how formidable the case is for the thesis that they defend… But the case for a given view itself is no stronger in virtue of the fact that that view has actual defenders…
Thomas Kelly, ” The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement,” p. 31 (in pre-print).
At first this reminded me of a proverb I’ve often thought of when reading some catholic theologian who has evidently never put the slightest effort into understanding the overall case for unitarianism:
“The first to speak in court sounds right–until the cross-examination begins.” Proverbs 18:17 (NLT)
But this is actually a different point than Kelly’s. A better courtroom analogy for Kelly’s point is:Read More »Arguing against no one
The “Flying Spaghetti Monster” was born as an inept parody of intelligent design arguments. About this, philosopher William Lane Craig is right on the money. The FSM is more than this, though. It is thought by many village-atheist-type young males (roughly 12-29) to be an oh-so-clever-and-naughty parody of monotheism in general, apart from any design-creation controversies. The thing is, the FSM is not clever – only naughty… Read More »Craig on Flying Spaghetti Monster Mockery
The word is “Therefore…” When you are making a deductive argument, this means that what you are about to say logically follows from (is implied by) what you have just said. That is, if the former part were to be true, what you’re about to say must also be true. A non sequitur (Latin for: “it doesn’t follow”) is an invalid argument, one in which the premises don’t imply… Read More »The Trinity Explained (with Reason)