My seven year old nephew believes that once upon a time the young George Washington chopped down a cherry tree. For my part, I don’t think that happened. I believe that the cherry-tree story is a myth. Therefore, when my nephew talks about “George Washington” he’s not referring to the same guy I’m referring to when I talk about “George Washington.” Once, this nephew overheard… Read More »God, Allah, George Washington, and Eric Clapton
Christmas time! So time to sell magazines (etc.) with sensational, poorly reasoned articles which attempt to be bold and provocative. It’s as predictable as the rising sun. No book is evidence, right? Right. Else we’d be able to prove the reality of Batman by citing a comic book. [Facepalm] This argument kills with 8th-graders. But any adults should be unimpressed. I’ll wager that any adult can think… Read More »no, Jesus is not a fictional character
Dr. Lee Irons on his contribution to the new book The Son: Three Views of the Identity of Jesus, interview by Dr. Dale Tuggy for episode 117 of the trinities podcast.
Did Isaiah predict that someday God would become a baby?
By me, here at the excellent Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (printable version). A taste of it: …pluralistic approaches to religious diversity say that, within bounds, one religion is as good as any other. In contrast, exclusivist approaches say that only one religion is uniquely valuable. Finally, inclusivist theories try to steer a middle course by agreeing with exclusivism that one religion has the most value… Read More »new article surveying Theories of Religious Diversity
What does it mean to say that God is triune? Is this to say that the one God is a loving community of three divine selves? Or is there but one self common to the Trinity?
Here’s an overview, with a few comments, of an interesting little public disagreement about Romans 1 and atheism. The discussion was kicked off by evangelical apologist Greg Koukl’s “No Duh” video, where he says that according to Romans 1, all atheists are intentionally suppressing their knowledge of God. Randal Rauser then pointed out a hard to accept implication of Koukl’s claim, which seems to require us to re-think just how… Read More »Are atheists denying the obvious? Koukl vs. Rauser and Feser
In 2007 I read Triads and Trinity, by the late Classicist and Egyptologist John Gwyn Griffiths, a book which tries to trace outside influences on the development of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. I was skeptical about any such project, as I knew it has long been a staple of crackpot antitrinitarians to allege that the Trinity doctrine was illegally imported from (take your pick) Babylon,… Read More »Triads and Trinity: a mini-review
In this episode Dr. Bowman and I continue our discussion from last week, about some of the New Testament passages he discusses in his “Triadic New Testament Passages and the Doctrine of the Trinity.”
At the end of the gospel according to Matthew, Jesus is portrayed as saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…”
In standard formulations of trinitarian theology nowadays, one says that there is (only) one God “in three Persons.” But what does this mean? We can ask about how these “Persons” relate individually or collectively to the one God. How exactly are they “in” him? But more fundamentally, what is meant by “Person” here? Some trinitarians will tell you that the answer is, basically: nothing. The… Read More »10 steps towards getting less confused about the Trinity – #5 “Persons” – Part 1
Does the Bible say in the fourteenth Psalm that atheists are fools? And what about Paul’s critiques of the Gentiles in Romans and Ephesians – do these teach that atheism is caused, in all cases, by willful rejection of God, preferring sin to acknowledging him?
In his 2010 book The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief, Dr. James Spiegel, professor of Philosophy and Religion at Taylor University, argues that unbelief results more from the will than from the mind. Drawing on the Bible, Plantingian epistemology, and contemporary psychology, in this book he builds a theory of the source of atheistic belief.
In this final part of our discussion Dr. Rauser and I continue to discuss his interesting new book: Is the Atheist My Neighbor? Rethinking Christian Attitudes toward Atheism.
At his blog our friend Kermit Zarley, aka the Moon Man, has an excellent post on Jesus and God in the gospel according to John. The One Who Sends Is Greater than the One Who Is Sent. In part, Most Christians think the primary message of the Gospel of John is that Jesus is God. I think that is a misunderstanding of this gospel and… Read More »The One Who Sends Is Greater than the One Who Is Sent
“Fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.”” (Psalm 14:1) This says that all atheists are fools, right? Pastor John Hagee says that “Atheism is bankrupt and empty. It’s brain dead!” Others have said that all atheists because they hate God and want to sin with impunity. Is this what the Bible teaches? Is this true?
Chad occasionally talks in ways that suggest that I’ll actually alleging divine deception.
If we accept that God is the greatest being there could possibly be, this will guide our theorizing about God. As Dr. Leftow explains, the method can be uncertain and hazardous. Still, it seems an indispensable tool in Christian thinking about God.
Since 2002, Dr. Brian Leftow has been the Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oriel College, Oxford University. He taught for many years at Fordham University in New York City before moving to Oxford. Dr. Leftow has written over 90 professional articles and book chapters on metaphysics, medieval philosophy, and philosophical theology.
Here, at the Stand to Reason blog. In response to a short video in which a preacher suggests that several shared titles imply “that Jesus is Jehovah” (and he means by this that they are the same self, so numerically one). To the contrary, I point out some ways in which Jesus differs from God, in the portrayals of the New Testament: …only Jesus has… Read More »a conversation about the differences between God and Jesus