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10 steps towards getting less confused about the Trinity – #3 Take the mystery out of appeals to “mystery” – Part 1

Equivocal terms are the enemy of clear thinking. It is common to hear that the Trinity is “a mystery.” But what does “mystery” mean here? Sometimes all that is meant is that the triune God is a great, wonderful, and complicated reality. Call this the honorific sense of “mystery.” It’s not unlike calling a book or movie “profound” or “deep.” The non-trinitarian Christian will agree… Read More »10 steps towards getting less confused about the Trinity – #3 Take the mystery out of appeals to “mystery” – Part 1

Warning to New Christians

Over at Parchment and Pen Michael Patton has posted a chapter on the Trinty, part of a forthcoming book called The Discipleship Book, intended to instruct new Christians.

Dear new Christians – beware. Patton is sincere, but misinformed. He thinks the Bible obviously teaches what he’s asserting, and reasons that any prior Bible-loving Christians must’ve thought likewise.

But having studied a vast amount of historical writings by Christians, I can assure you that this is demonstrably not so, even if we stick to “mainstream” Christians (so ignoring, e.g. “Arians”, Marcionites, etc.) I take no pleasure in pointing this out, and I wish it were as simple as Patton says. But facts are facts.

I’ve discussed his sort of take on the Trinty before. It is not, as Patton says in a comment, “what the Bible teaches and Christians for 2000 years have believed.” It is what (some? many?) theologians at Dallas Theological Seminary think about the Trinity. How widespread these views are, I’m not sure. But the many evangelical and other theologians riding the “social trinitarian” bandwagon would not agree with what Patton says.

Regarding what Patton holds forth as “the best we can do”, take care lest you fall into inconsistency.

You should know that some of the most brilliant Christian thinkers in the last 100 years have held many different views on just how “the” doctrine should be understood. Unfortunately, these theories are, for the most part, not consistent with one another.

Patton asserts thatRead More »Warning to New Christians

Is God a Self? – Part 7 – Swinburne

Richard Swinburne is one of the greatest living Christian philosophers, who has made immense contributions to philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. It is only idolatry of the past that prevents people from seeing him as great a Christian intellectual as Origen, Augustine, Aquinas, or Leibniz. In my view, he’s plainly a better, clearer, more well-rounded philosopher than any of them. “A prophet is honored… Read More »Is God a Self? – Part 7 – Swinburne

Some thoughts on labeling others’ theories

My posting has been infrequent lately. That’s because I’ve been working on an old paper of mine which isn’t on philosophical theology. But it’s also because I’ve been working on a couple of very exciting blog-related things behind the scenes – stay tuned.

My recent exchange with Brandon Watson got me to thinking. This is going to be boringly methodological, but I need to think about this issue, as it’ll come up again and again. As a philosopher, I’m interested in evaluating theories on their merits – consistency, fit with the evidence, coherence with what else we believe, explanatory power, and so on. When I look at the history of theological debate, it is very often marred with the ugly weapons of rhetoric Read More »Some thoughts on labeling others’ theories

Dealing with Apparent Contradictions: Part 11 – One last problem for Rational Reinterpretation

Can’t we all just get along?
One last problem for Resolution through Rational Reconstruction: the new-fangled theory (or if you like, way of understanding the Doctrine) is invariably controversial, in the following sense: it involves metaphysical claims such that some thinkers will consider them false and impossible, and others not.

The more you think about hard stuff, the more opinions you get. I’ve taught philosophy of religion, modern philosophy, logic, and metaphysics courses, and so I have some fairly developed views. Based on theoretical (and non-theological considerations), here are some things I don’t believe in, because I think they’re impossible:Read More »Dealing with Apparent Contradictions: Part 11 – One last problem for Rational Reinterpretation

perfection, the Trinity, and impossible beings (Dale)


“This clears it all up, right?”
Anselm: “Um, no. I must bestow upon it the analytic frown of uncomprehension.”
(image credit)

I used to think I had a great objection to Anselm’s famous ontological argument. (Bear with me – this has something to do with social trinitarianism.) The argument, at least many forms of it, basically goes like this. If it is logically possible that there’s a Greatest Possible Being (i.e. a being such that there’s no logical possibility of there being a greater one), then it is necessary that there’s a Greatest Possible Being. More simply: if it’s possible (non-contradictory) that God exists, then it’s also necessary that God exists (i.e. it is inconsistent to suppose God not existing). (For more, see here and here. For more than you’d ever want to know, here.)

Many critics have replied like this:

I’d be a sucker to grant your premise. Why should I think that the notion of a Greatest Possible Being is the notion of a possible thing at all? Read More »perfection, the Trinity, and impossible beings (Dale)

The Maverick Philosopher: Are the divine persons parts of the triune God?

I missed an excellent post by our friend the Maverick Philosopher back in January: …if the proper parts of a cat can be feline in the very same sense in which the cat is feline, without themselves being cats, then we have an analogy that renders intelligible the claim that the Persons of the Trinity are divine without being Gods.  The picture is this:  God or the… Read More »The Maverick Philosopher: Are the divine persons parts of the triune God?

Trinity Monotheism Part 3: Their Set-Up, Part 2

To fully understand a philosophical theory, one needs to understand not only the content of it, but the reasons for which it is held. This is why I’m patiently going through how Moreland and Craig reject what they see as the competing Trinity theories, before giving their own.

As we’ve seen, they consider themselves to be “social trinitarians” (last time we looked at their rather vague definition of that term). They then adopt Brian Leftow’s taxonomy of social trinitarian theories, and decide that the first of these is the most promising. Read More »Trinity Monotheism Part 3: Their Set-Up, Part 2

Guest Post: Jedwab on “Trinity Monotheism”

I’m very pleased to introduce Joseph Jedwab, who has some interesting comments on Moreland’s and Craig’s understanding of the Trinity. I haven’t had the privilege of meeting him, but given how he spells “center”, I gather he’s English. 🙂 Joseph is currently teaching philosophy and finishing his dissertation at Oriel College of Oxford University, on the metaphysics of the Trinity and the Incarnation. And he’s working under the supervision of one of the greatest living philosophers of religion, Richard Swinburne. Hiring committees take note – he goes on the job market next year! – Dale

I agree this is a clear account. I’m a bit worried about how the discussion might influence terminology. Moreland and Craig describe their view as Social Trinitarian and contrast this with an Anti-Social Trinitarian view. This is a mistake. Leftow’s title indicates his paper is against Social Trinitarianism (ST). It’s not supposed to be the name of a Trinitarian view. As you know, the name of the view Leftow defends is ‘Latin Trinitarianism’ (LT). Further, they say that the main commitment of ST is that there are three centres of consciousness, but it’s not clear what a centre is.Read More »Guest Post: Jedwab on “Trinity Monotheism”