podcast 167 – Lamson’s History of The Unitarian Congregationalists
In this episode we hear a voice from 1852 describing a lost species of American Christianity:
In this episode we hear a voice from 1852 describing a lost species of American Christianity:
Responding to YouTube videos by Dr. James White, Mrs. Qureshi, and “The Friendly Banjo Atheist.”
Four authors summarize their views on the Trinity.
You say you’ve looked into the biblical credentials of “the doctrine of the Trinity.” But have you actually read anything by unitarian Christians?
What does “monarchical trinitarianism” include exactly?
Dr. White vs. John on the thesis of the 4th gospel.
Is the “Granville Sharp Rule” + 2 Peter 1:1 and Titus 2:13 “fatal to unitarianism”?
Is there a plausible and biblical “doctrine of the Trinity”?
Can one be a trinitarian without believing in a tripersonal God?
The gripping story of Nabeel Qureshi’s journey from Islam to Christianity.
In this episode I respond to the interesting article “What about This View? How to Defend an Anti-Trinitarian Theology,” by evangelical apologist Dr. Robert M. Bowman Jr.
In round 5, Bowman aims to show that the “threefoldness” of God is implied by the Bible. At issue is how to explain “triadic” mentions of Father, Son, and Spirit (Or God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, etc.). Bowman mentions his list of fifty such passages. Here he focuses on a dozen passages. But first, his recap of where he thinks the debate is so far:
In the preceding three rounds of this debate, I have argued that the person of Jesus Christ existed as God prior to the creation of the world and that the Holy Spirit is also a divine person. If my argument up to this point has been successful, I have thoroughly refuted the Biblical Unitarian position and established two key elements of the doctrine of the Trinity. Add to these two points the premises that there is only one God who existed before creation and that the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit, and the Father is not the Holy Spirit, and the only theological position in the marketplace of ideas that is left is the doctrine of the Trinity. Since these are all premises that Biblical Unitarianism accepts, I have not defended them here. (emphases added)
I’m tired of pointing out the inconsistency of what Bowman is urging. I’m capable of hearing the many ways theorists smooth away apparent inconsistencies (making subtle distinctions), but other than a quick gesture (I think in Round 1), I hear none of these familiar notes from him. This is just to say – he’s a resolute positive mysterian. Briefly, Father, Son and Spirit are numerically three, as they qualitatively differ from one another. But also, Bowman seems to think, each of them is numerically the same as God. This is inconsistent, because the “is” of numerical sameness is transitive – if f = g, and g = s, then f = s (compare: the concept of “bigger than”). Also, it seems that he thinks Father and Son to the same god, and also, since this god just is a person (hence “who” above), they are the same person as each other. And, of course, also they are not. Sigh. Let’s stick with the vague “threefoldness” claim I started with.
Bowman ignores what I call Read More »SCORING THE BURKE – BOWMAN DEBATE – ROUND 5 – BOWMAN – PART 1
Dr. Mike Licona argues that the real, historical man Jesus considered himself to be God.
A podcast listener recently emailed me to ask (emphases added): I won’t hide that I’m a happy Trinitarian and yet that I’m thoroughly enjoying your podcast since it provokes my theology and forces me to actually think about why I believe what I believe. This is a healthy check I think. I am puzzled though about why the numerical issue is so important. If Jesus… Read More »reader question on the Trinity and numerical sameness
Its purpose is to equip you to think through these disputed theological and biblical issues. Appropriately, it’s again available in Three formats.
0.75x 1x 1.25x 1.5x 2x 0:0000:25:26 podcast 46 – Professor Timothy Winter’s Islamic perspective on the Trinity Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsPlayer EmbedShare Leave a ReviewListen in a New WindowDownloadSoundCloudStitcherSubscribe on AndroidSubscribe via RSSSpotify In this episode I talk with Professor Timothy Winter (a.k.a. Shaikh Abdal-Hakim Murad), an Islamic theologian at Cambridge University. He’s the author of a chapter called “The Trinity is Incoherent” in the 2013… Read More »podcast 46 – Professor Timothy Winter’s Islamic perspective on the Trinity
In the recent and ongoing series, I have been showing that famous early “fathers” are not, contrary to popular accounts, trinitarians at all, once we carefully define the term. They are unitarians, again, carefully defining the term.
But these recent comments by reader “Villanovanus” got me thinking.
He finds it outrageous that I call people like Irenaeus and Origen “unitarians,” even though I also call them “subordinationists.” Isn’t a subordinationist by definition a trinitarian? (When one reads the trinitarian authors of histories of theology, they are usually a little more modest, saying that these folks are sort of, kind of, maybe trinitarians, if not good ones, or fully developed ones, etc.) Am I not grammatically challenged, or perversely unwilling to look up terms in a dictionary? If a “subordinationist” is by definition a trinitarian, then “subordinationist unitarian” is a contradiction in terms.
He cites a number of dictionary type definitions of “subordinationism”, e.g.
The second definition is too narrow. But making “subordinationism” Read More »“Subordinationism”
Is my definition of the concept unitarian so wide that it would allow in some famous trinitarians?
In the New Testament “God” is nearly always the Father. But what follows from that, exactly?