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Christian publishing houses pour forth a constant torrent of articles and books on the history, meaning, justification, practical importance, apologetic defenses, and biblical grounding of “the doctrine of the Trinity.” Evidently, there is a fairly large market for such products.
But not every customer is a happy customer. In this episode of the trinities podcast, I talk with Corby Amos, an active Southern Baptist layman, Sunday school teacher and sometime preacher, about his frustrations with what he’s been reading.
Interestingly, despite our theological differences, and that my degrees are in Philosophy, while his is in Anthropology, we agree on a lot of the problems. We talk through the items on the list he expands on in this post at his blog Odd in the Truth. Along the way I add a few complaints of my own!
Do you disagree? Or did we leave anything out?
Links for this episode:
- Corby Amos
- James White, The Forgotten Trinity
- podcast 182 – White’s case for the Trinity – Part 2
- podcast 181 – White’s case for the Trinity – Part 1
- Lewis Ayres, Nicea and Its Legacy
- R.P.C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God
- podcast 31 – Dr. William Hasker on the “Arian” Controversy
- podcast 28 – Interview with Dr. William Hasker about his Metaphysics and the Tripersonal God – Part 2
- podcast 27 – Interview with Dr. William Hasker about his Metaphysics and the Tripersonal God – Part 1
- podcast 173 – Eusebius of Caesarea
- What is the Trinity?
- podcast 190 – What is the Trinity? A triad of book reviews
- This week’s thinking music is “Ennui” by Lee Rosevere.
Thanks for having a “regular guy” on your show, Dale. Corby Amos’s church experience and what he has encountered in his readings are largely the same as mine and all of the things he struggles with are things I also struggled with for a few years as I circled this issue again and again (and I still do and likely always will) as I read and investigated about this doctrine. Thanks for putting the material of all sides out there for us. I have a high respect for anyone who can articulate what they believe about this. After reading Clarke, Worcester and the Christians from the second, third and fourth centuries and comparing them to scripture I couldn’t help but agree with them. But I’m also always open to revise it and hungry to learn and be exposed to new ideas. Take care and God bless.
Great episode!!
I really like what Corby said in this podcast about the importance of using “simple” terminology to explain biblical theology rather than theological jargon that isn’t derived from scripture.
Dale,
Thanks for doing this podcast. I’m looking forward to the second part of it (I’m assuming here since the title says “part 1”). I resonate a lot with Corby.
From the outset let me state that I am an evangelical Christian with Calvinistic soteriology with a heart for unreached and unengaged people groups around the world.
My main concern is missional and evangelistic. I interact a lot with Muslims and I plan on going overseas to the middle east with my denomination. It is my interaction with Muslims that has led me to ask questions and eventually came across you, Dale. I think, to add to the list of frustrations, that the trinity can be a huge hurdle to evangelism. Most Muslims have a distorted view of the trinity already but then to try to explain the “orthodox” (I recognize that there isn’t one doctrine of the trinity, hence the quotes) makes it even harder. Additionally, I never see an evangelistic sermon given in Acts that represents the idea of the trinity. Its quite the opposite. It is that God sent the man Christ Jesus to be the Messiah (Acts 2). We don’t even present the gospel to people in a trinitarian way unless we are dead-set on being dogmatic about it. Most people, in my estimation, believe that God sent Jesus to give us eternal life (I’m also outing myself as a conditionalist, i.e. annihilationism) and then gives his Spirit as the guarantee of that salvation life, effectively three different persons who are related but seperate. Dale, how do you think that the/a doctrine of the trinity and Unitarianism affect missions?
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