A RANTING guy on Facebook recently wrote to me, in part: The Hebrew word ELOHIM is PLURAL which is the real nature of DIVINITY. …The creator of the Heavens and the Earth in Genesis 1:1 is ELOHIM, a community of creativity! I replied that the word elohim is plural in structure, just like the English word “pants.”But elohim is often singular in meaning, just like “pants.” “These… Read More »what “pants” teaches us about “elohim” (“God”)
Synopsis: I’m not Eastern Orthodox, so am incompetent to discuss the Trinity, and I’m somehow missing the whole point.
The rebuttal is to this blog post of mine, and it is by a Blogger user named “Annoyed Pinoy,” with whom I briefly discussed these things in the comments here. I take it that he is an evangelical Christian who is interested in theology – that’s all I know about him, other than that he is a Filipino in Illinois who is smart, curious, and… Read More »On a Rebuttal to my “How Trinity theories conflict with the New Testament” – Part 1
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
Last time, c. 1998-2001, I was a social trinitarian along the lines of Richard Swinburne. While I was on the job market in 1999-2000, my former professor Stephen T. Davis was kind enough to invite me and a friend to attend the Incarnation summit, a follow up to the earlier interdisciplinary Trinity Summit. This was a great privilege, and I pretty much just observed. But… Read More »the evolution of my views on the Trinity – part 6
If there’s at least one, there must be exactly three. Q.E.D.
The installment before the last, we saw that Richard Swinburne’s social trinitarian theory is very carefully built so as to satisfy multiple demands of orthodoxy. There is, he argues, a contradiction-free, reasonable trinitarian theory, which fits well with the classic creeds. But we can do even better than that. In Swinburne’s view, there’s a plausible argument for the Trinity based on reason alone. Don’t believe it? Oh, ye of little faith reason. Have ye not read the earlier Richard on this?Read More »Swinburne’s Social Trinitarian Theory, Part 5 – Yes, we can prove it by reason alone
I’ve been reading Robert Letham’s The Holy Trinity lately. He’s a Reformed kind of guy, and like many contemporary theologians, he’s spent a lot of time thinking about Karl Barth. Now it’s well known that Barth in many places denies that he’s a “modalist” about the Trinity, and yet he says many things like these (these are quoted from Barth’s works by Letham): God is… Read More »yet more on Modes and Modalism: Barth and Letham
Finally, the last part of this long, five-part series. Our friend Annoyed Pinnoy continues, Now there are varieties of gifts, but the SAME Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the SAME Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the SAME God who empowers them all in everyone.- 1 Cor. 12:4-6 Notice how Paul uses the word “SAME” three times. Once… Read More »On a Rebuttal to my “How Trinity theories conflict with the New Testament” – Part 5
Understanding “the plural of majesty” in the Hebrew Bible.
Dr. Keith Ward is a prolific and influential theologian, philosopher, and scholar of religions. He’s also an Anglican priest. In this first of two interviews on his 2015 book Christ and the Cosmos: A Reformulation of Trinitarian Doctrine, we discuss his christology, how to understand what is unique about the man Jesus.
Can we establish on historical grounds that the historical Jesus thought that he was God?
In this episode, my evaluation of the case made by Shadid Lewis. Does he establish, on grounds which his opponent must affirm, that the Trinity implies polytheism? See Lewis’s arguments as analysed on the post for episode 17. What is the doctrine of the Trinity anyway? Are the persons members of an eternal group of wonderfully unified friends? Or are they aspects or personalities of… Read More »podcast 21 – review of the Lewis-Rogers debate – part 2
Review of a learned and insightful yet deeply flawed book.
Ten basic questions that need to be answered, and ten more advanced questions.
I see trends in this analytic theology literature somewhat towards relative identity theories, and towards “metaphysical madness.”
Thanks to Robert Bowman for his reply to my off-target criticisms. I thought I understood what he was doing, following in the steps of many a theologian, but evidently I was mistaken in my inferring that he holds to a one-self Trinity. In this post, I make a clarification, then ask two questions. He says that in trinitarian doctrine, the term [“person”] was and is… Read More »continuing the conversation with Robert Bowman – different selves, same being?
Apologist explains what any theist can, declares victory for his own pet theory.
Three World Vision employees are fired because according to World Vision they don’t believe in that Jesus is “fully God” or that he’s a member of the Trinity.
But inquiring minds want to know: what did they believe, what statement or statements of faith did they sign, and are the beliefs therein necessary and sufficient for being a real Christian? This time, we’re digging a little deeper.
Their website saith,
World Vision U.S. hires only those who agree and accept to its Statement of Faith and/or the Apostles’ Creed. (source)
Interesting! Note the “and/or” – employees must affirm either one or both. As we’ve noted before here at trinities, nothing in the so-called Apostles’ Creed requires belief in either the “full deity” of Christ (whatever that may mean) or any sort of trinitarian theory.Read More »No Trinity, No Job – Part 2
Up to this point in Book 3 Richard has told us several things about love (caritas). We have wondered at his saying there isn’t a perfectly good person if he doesn’t love. We have sorted through some necessary conditions for love such that we wonder whether a perfectly good person p must love another person q if p is to be perfectly good. You might say we’ve been contemplating some divine ethics, or aesthetics, or whatever.
In the previous post I suggested how we might interpret what Richard means by saying (two) divine persons are equal and similar to one another, namely the divine persons have the same disposition of love and the same acts of love (see [T4’] and [T5’]). In the next part of Richard’s argument he returns to his metaphysics of the divine substance which he discussed in Books 1 and 2.Read More »Richard of St. Victor 7 – The Same Divine Substance (Scott)
Thanks to our friend Alvin Kimel for linking my post Jesus, God, and an inconsistent triad. Check out his post and the ensuing discussion here. Unfortunately, the fact that I’m a unitarian seems to distract him from the actual purpose of the post. He says, In this article he hopes to persuade us that the classical trinitarian doctrine is logically absurd. No. That is not… Read More »dialogue on God, Jesus, and identity with Alvin Kimel