Craig’s antiunitarian argument

My “Antiunitarian Arguments from Divine Perfection” has been published by the excellent Journal of Analytic Theology since 2021. (It can be downloaded for free at the link above.) In it I critique arguments by Craig, Swinburne, and others, which go, very roughly, like this:

• Stage 1: Because God is perfect in thus-and-such way, God must (in some sense) be or contain more than one Person.
• Stage 2: Actually, when you think about it more, God must be at least 3 but less than 4 Persons, so: exactly 3 Persons.

In this new video below, Craig (quite reasonably) expresses skepticism about Stage 2; many Christian philosophers and theologians do.

But as I argue in my paper, he should be skeptical of Stage 1 too, as there I show why his Stage 1 argument from perfect love is unpersuasive.

Stage 1 is a bit more popular than Stage 2. But Stage 1 alone is not so much an a priori, philosophical argument for the Trinity (since Stage 1 alone doesn’t prove exactly 3 Persons), but it’s rather an antiunitarian argument, an attempt to show that a “unipersonal god,” or rather, God as thought of by unitarian Christians, and also by many Jews and Muslims and other monotheists, is (despite initial appearances) metaphysically impossible.

I suggest that Dr. Craig at this point owes us an answer; I claim that his antiunitarian argument stands refuted. So either I’m mistaken about that, or Dr. Craig should stop claiming that there is some cogent argument which shows the impossibility of a God who is a single Self. Ignoring the refutation at this point does not seem reasonable.

Another big theological issue is raised by what he says at the end of the video. If he’s right that this is a divine attribute: being tripersonal–it follows that in his view none of the Persons of the Trinity is fully divine! Or: there are 12 divine Persons, if each of the three is fully divine and so is tripersonal! I think he must go with the first option, that none of the three Persons of the Trinity is fully divine. But in that he contradicts catholic creedal orthodoxy. Admittedly, he’s a bit ambivalent about that. But many Protestants assume that orthodoxy in that sense must be upheld at all costs. Many Craig fans care more about it.

In past work Dr. Craig has said openly that the Trinity is the only god. If that’s so, then the Father is not a god, and then he’s contradicting a clear teaching of the New Testament, which is that the Father is Jesus’ god (e.g. Revelation 3:12), and so is a god (the only one). And some analytic theologians argue that this too is part of creedal orthodoxy. Think of the many creeds which start: “I believe in one God, the Father.” That can be argued, of course.

I point out these costs of Craig’s Trinity theory in our forthcoming debate book One God, Three Persons, Four Views, edited by Dr. Chad McIntosh, although no one in that book really gets into these alleged philosophical proofs of the Trinity.