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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.

Dealing with Apparent Contradictions: Part 1 – the four R’s (Dale)

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 call “mysterianism”, and a main purpose of mine here is to locate this defense strategy and contrast it with others. (Mysterianism is a kind of Resistance.)

Above is my basic division. Future posts will give more detail, but here’s a brief illustration of each sort of response.

Objector/puzzled fellow believer/one’s intellectual conscience: “Huh? Isn’t X inconsistent?”Read More »Dealing with Apparent Contradictions: Part 1 – the four R’s (Dale)

on believing what you don’t at all understand

Whoever says he believes what he does not at all understand, knows not what belief is, knows also not what he believes; and therefore, he believes in fact nothing, but it only seems to him [he believes]… Certainly nobody can believe something other than what he considers true… If reason is not necessary to grasp the articles of faith, then consequently it follows that the… Read More »on believing what you don’t at all understand

Is Allah God? Goofus and Gallant, Grok and Sophie

Is Allah God? Are Christians and Muslims talking about (numerically) the same God? We’ve previously linked and joined in with discussions with Jeremy Pierce and with Kevin Corcoran. To further the discussion, I present a tale to explain why it may matter less than you think whether or not the words”God” (used by Christians) and “Allah” (used by Muslims) refer to the same being. A… Read More »Is Allah God? Goofus and Gallant, Grok and Sophie

Corcoran on the God of Muslims and the God of Christians

A continuing theme in the Christian blogosphere, which we discussed before (God = Allah?) – now Calvin College philosopher Kevin Corcoran, on his blog Holy Skin and Bone, asks: Is the God of Christians the God of Muslims Too? Corcoran answers a firm “yes”, and sort of scolds evangelicals who say “no”. He also summarizes an interesting recent incident that prompted his post – check… Read More »Corcoran on the God of Muslims and the God of Christians

Linkage: Bloggers Anonymous, and six ways to avoid it (Dale)

This one goes out to our friend Bill, a.k.a. the Maverick Philosopher, a.k.a. blogger on sabbatical.

It’s going to be long month! 🙂 “Just one little post, one little post!”

Seriously, I completely understand Bill’spain. Blogging can prevent one from following up on and developing ideas all the way through – as in all the way through to publication. I would like to find a way to have blogging feed and encourage my more serious writing. How might that actually work though? This is what I’ve determined so far.Read More »Linkage: Bloggers Anonymous, and six ways to avoid it (Dale)

Pruss on a triple statue analogy for the Trinity

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 says: “This analogy seems to work moderately well as an… Read More »Pruss on a triple statue analogy for the Trinity

Baptism in the NAME

“Father, Son, Holy Spirit”? Or “Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier”? The editors of the flagship magazine of American evangelicalism weigh in here: Blessed Be the Name of the Lord | Christianity Today While I share the editors’ irritation with politically correct revision of liturgical and theological language, I think their reasoning in this opinion piece is poor. (Read their editorial, then see if you agree.) For one… Read More »Baptism in the NAME

Congratulations to Joseph

I’ll be the worm in the duncecap. JT and Scott can fight over who is which jellybean. Congratulations to trinities contributor Joseph Jedwab, who is in the process of finishing his PhD at Oxford, under Richard Swinburne. It’s been a good spring for Joseph. First, he lands a prestigious post-doc at Notre Dame’s Center for Philosophy of Religion. Then, he lands a job at Kutztown… Read More »Congratulations to Joseph

your most important Trinity questions wikified

Hi Everybody?
Trinity? Suuuure – I know all about those things!

I’ve always been interested in not only what intellectuals think about the Trinity, but also about what ordinary Christians think. Thus, this is an interesting find – five helpful wikites step in to wiki-answer the following important questions:

WikiAnswers – What is the trinity and could you be a Christian and not believe in the trinity

I’ll save you some trouble, distilling the answers down into 80-proof folk-wisdom, taking the second question first. Read More »your most important Trinity questions wikified

BBC Radio Discussion & an Australian magazine on Nicea

What’s up with that weird Angel/bird/snake thing? Is that supposed to be Arius? At BBC – Radio 4 In Our Time – The Nicene Creed – A somewhat gassy and academic but nonetheless listenable discussion. Here’s the Real Audio file link. (I thought I listened to this in another audio format, but I can’t find any such files at the moment.) Then we’ve got “Great… Read More »BBC Radio Discussion & an Australian magazine on Nicea

Smith on Rea and Murray on philosophical theology

Here: Logic Matters: Philosophy of Religion 3: The Trinity Philosopher/blogger/Analysis editor Peter Smith of Cambridge discusses his reading of this book by Rea and Murray, which I’ve been looking forward to seeing. He’s, um, not terribly sympathetic, and tends towards a harsh and dismissive tone. But, he does (I assume, accurately) summarize their conclusions, and their main lines of argument. So the reviews are at… Read More »Smith on Rea and Murray on philosophical theology

Pruss on Latin Trinitarian Perfect Being Theology

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 there, but check it out – Alex is always worth a read, and maybe I’m all wet.

conjoined twins

The Cerberus analogy revisited

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 already. The discussion degenerated into pointing at pictures and saying… Read More »The Cerberus analogy revisited

The Importance of Nicea

Not sure what it’s doing on LiveScience.com, but it’s a decent article. We covered this in more theological detail some time back. Update: and there is now an episode of the trinities podcast devoted to the theological significance of the Council of Nicea in 325.

Pruss on essentially loving beings

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 on almost as many topics, a lot of which get posted at his creatively-titled blog, Alexander Pruss’s Blog 🙂 as well as at The Prosblogion.

He recently weighed in (comments #8-9) on my attempted argument against social trinitarian arguments. Here are the most relevant bits:Read More »Pruss on essentially loving beings

Linkage: Impossible World Site and Blog (Dale)

Check it out: a whole site and blog devoted to art featuring impossible objects! I can’t help but think that the picture above had a trinitarian inspiration: according to the babelfish, it means “You must in such a way live”. (German speaking readers – feel free to correct the translation.) I read this as addressed to the Trinity. If so, this pic would be an… Read More »Linkage: Impossible World Site and Blog (Dale)

modal shootout on the greatest possible being – Part 2


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 thoughtful post on infinitely increasing properties @ his PhilRel Blog, followed by my response, which I posted to his comments section.

  • My premise he’s commenting on: 6. If some great-making properties are infinitely increasable, then the concept of a Greatest Possible Being is the concept of an impossible being. (compare: highest possible integer)
  • But what in tarnation, he asks, is an “infinitely increasable property”?Read More »modal shootout on the greatest possible being – Part 2

modal shootout on greatest possible beings – Part 1 (Dale)


“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 located in my home state of Texas – Alexander Pruss of Baylor and Mike Almeida of UT San Antonio (here, comments #2, 7-9) These guys are extremely sharp and are doing a lot of creative work in the field, by the way. About perfect beings – I’ve come to find out that Mike has thought a lot about this!

This post is my attempt to process Mike’s feedbackRead More »modal shootout on greatest possible beings – Part 1 (Dale)

Allah = God?

An interesting discussion, with some links, by philosopher Parableman Jeremy Pierce: Muslims Worshiping God But Not Worshiping God. His view, as against some recent pastors and other folks, is that yes, Muslims do refer to the being that Christians acknowledge as the one true God, when they use the word “Allah”. [Saith Jeremy]…it seems completely ludicrous to me to claim that this being that is… Read More »Allah = God?