I’ve just updated my homepage with a paper forthcoming in Faith and Philosophy, called “Hasker’s Quests for a Viable Social Theory.” My sincere thanks to editor Thomas Flint, and to that journal’s anonymous readers for their help. The paper critically examines the various discussions of William Hasker, a very accomplished Christian philosopher, and former editor of F&P, from whom I have learned much. I think… Read More »New Papers
We had our first post here or 6 / 19 / 06 – over 350 posts ago! Thus, we are 5. Ready for Kindergarden, evidently! 😉 Many thanks to J.T. Paasch, Scott Williams, and Joseph Jedwab for their excellent posts! And thanks to the many great commenters here; we’ve had some vigorous discussions, and only very rarely have things gotten a bit too “hot.” You folks are awesome. A… Read More »trinities turns 5
“… and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”
Joseph Smith made some bold claims, many of which
Leading scholar Dr. Richard Bauckham has done a public service by chewing  thoroughly through the “Lost Gospel”: Dr. Mark Goodacre has posted Dr. Bauckham’s article(s) here. Let’s just say, he determines that it is all bun and no meat. A few teasers: They seem to be proposing a unique genre of ancient literature. Why should we believe them? It seems to be simply a way of getting… Read More »a real scholar on the so-called “Lost Gospel”
An apologist spells out “the Trinity” as incoherent monotheistic tritheism.
The apostle Paul famously says, …for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. (1 Corinthians 8:6) Is this passage a radical transformation of, or a redefinition of Jewish monotheism? Is it an insertion of Jesus into the Shema confession, that… Read More »podcast 14 – One God, One Lord, Two Interpretations
Is it obvious that the cause must temporally precede the effect?
If Jesus fulfills predictions about Yahweh, does this mean that he’s Yahweh?
I argue that the theoretical costs of Bauckham’s theory outweigh its theoretical benefits.
Daniel Waterland (1683-1740) was by all accounts the most important disputant of Samuel Clarke about the Trinity.
Waterland spent his career at Cambridge, where he rose through the ranks, eventually becoming Vice-Chancellor, and also serving as a Chaplain to the King, and as an Anglican clergyman in a number of cities.
He had a good reputation, and was an energetic, but normally cool-headed controversial/polemical writer (aganist Clarke, and other other theological topics, against other respected men), and he gained somewhat of a reputation in Anglican circles as a defender of catholic orthodoxy.
Many, including himself, contemplating his becoming a bishop, but in 1740 he died after complications, seemingly, from surgeries on an ingrown toenail in one of his big toes! He was survived by his wife of 21 years. (His only children were his books.)
I’d describe Waterland’s views on the Trinity as social, with a liberal dose of negative mysterianism. Like Clarke, he insists that his is the ancient catholic view, and much of the dispute concerns pre-Nicene fathers. Like Clarke, he wants to stick to those fathers and to the Bible, and takes a dim view of medieval theology.
About the pre-Nicene catholic “fathers,” I’d say both Clarke and Waterland somewhat bend the material to their own ends (I mean, they tend to see those authors as supporting their view, and being perhaps more uniform than they were), but I think Waterland bends the materials more. In his view, catholics had always believed the Three to be “consubstantial” in a generic sense, yet which, somehow, together with their differences of origin, makes them but one god. Like Swinburne and Clarke, he agrees that the Father is uniquely the “font of divinity.” He continually hammers Clarke with the claim that there’s no middle ground between the one Creator and all creatures.
In this series, I’ll examine the way he deals with some favorite unitarian proof-texts, which, unitarians think plainly assert the numerical identity of the Father with the one true God, Yahweh. According to Waterland, these unitarians are making a mistake like the one I made.
You [i.e. Clarke] next cite John 17:3, 1 Cor. 8:6, Eph. 4:6, to prove, that the Father is sometimes styled the only true God; which is all that they prove. Read More »Daniel Waterland on “The Father is the only God” texts – Part 1
“All we need is one substance to cure the ills of our society!” “I have personal experience with substance abuse, and it is wrong.”
Before I start a mini-series on the Trinitarian thought of Henry of Ghent, I thought it would be good to offer a brief survey of the late 13th c. landscape. This is way too brief and fairly focused, but hey, you’ve got to start somewhere. As the scholastics would say, you cannot will to do something, unless you have some sort of knowledge. No voluntary action without knowledge, however imperfect or confused that knowledge is! (As an aside: Jean-Luc Marion, a contemporary philosophical-theologian and former student of Jacques Derrida contests this medieval Aristotelian claim, and argues that acts of will –i.e. to love- does or can precede any knowledge.)
Of all the issues to discuss about the Trinity the one at hand here is the question: what causes or explains why the divine persons are really distinct from each other? We know there are three persons, and one ‘substance’/’ousia’ from Scripture and our orthodox Creeds, but is there anything that we could say that might account for why there are three, and not say five divine persons? Or even, why not say there is a potential infinity of divine persons (on some contestable account of the deification of believers)? You get my point. Why three divine persons and what makes it that there are three, no more and no less?
Real arguments vs. pointed questions combined with incredulous tone.
Dr. Hurtado on his book God in New Testament Theology.
He argues cogently that even in the earliest parts of the New Testament, the religious worship of Jesus is presupposed, such as in Philippians 2.
Is the idea of “divine identity” the key to understanding New Testament christology?
James Goetz and Corby Amos on the inconsistent triad about Jesus dying.
Theologians say that God is everywhere, which is to say omnipresent or ubiquitous. But why do that say this, and what does the claim mean?
In this episode Dr. Beall explains why he doesn’t accept five consistency-preserving ways to understand the divinity and humanity of Christ.
Dr. Michael Bird argues that in Mark, Jesus is “included in the identity” of God.