podcast 350 – Thoughts on my Dialogue with Craig on the Trinity and the Bible – Part 1

My recent one-hour dialogue with Dr. William Lane Craig featured a number of interesting exchanges, as well as what I believe is Dr. Craig’s first publicly distinguishing between a creedal Trinity doctrine (which he doesn’t defend) and what he calls a minimal and biblical Trinity doctrine (which he does defend).

In this podcast, I reflect on the discussion, and even try to “steel man” Dr. Craig’s definition of a minimal and biblical Trinity doctrine. He distinguishes such a theory from his Trinity monotheism (one soul with three cognitive faculties) and from a full-blown creedal Trinity doctrine.

One way to develop his minimal “tripersonal theism” is this collection of claims:

The Father is a self who is a proper part of God.
The Son is a self who is a proper part of God.
The Holy Spirit is a self is a self who is a proper part of God.
The Father is not the Son. (Or: The Father is not the same person as the Son.)
The Son is not the Holy Spirit. (Or: The Son is not the same person as the Holy Spirit.)
The Father is not the Holy Spirit. (Or: The Father is not the same person as the Holy Spirit.
There is only one God.

That’s one try; but it seems to me that it can’t be what Dr. Craig wants. So I consider another version of 1-3:

The Father is a self who is divine in a greater way than any angel or mere human but in a lesser way than God.
The Son is a self who is divine in a greater way than any angel or mere human but in a lesser way than God.
The Holy Spirit is a self who is divine in a greater way than any angel or mere human but in a lesser way than God.

About his more elaborate “Trinity monotheism” (the Trinity is one soul which has three cognitive faculties, and therefore “is” three selves), I argue that these speculations suffer from unintelligibility and incoherence.

I also discuss an argument which it seems to me is governing how Dr. Craig sees God-statements in the New Testament:

Any application of the term “God” to someone in the New Testament which is not a case of direct address to him is either predicative (i.e. describing him as divine in some sense) or identifying (i.e. identifying him with God), but not both. (premise)
All such predicative or identifying statements about the Father and the Son are true. (premise)
In the New Testament the Son and the Father are sometimes called “God” in the same sense. (premise)
If that same sense were identifying, then the Son and the Father would each be identical to the one God. (2)
If the Son and the Father were each identical with the one God, then the Son and the Father would be identical with one another. (premise)
But it is false that the Son and the Father are identical with one another. (premise)
Therefore, whenever any New Testament author says that the Father or the Son “is God,” he must be predicating divinity of him (i.e. describing him as in some sense divine). (1-6)
Therefore, no New Testament author ever applies the word “God” to the Father or to the Son in order to identify him with God. (1,7)

While the argument isn’t obviously unsound, neither is it obviously sound. We need to be given reasons for thinking premises 1 and 3 are true.

Finally, I argue against Dr. Craig’s claim that ancient people can no concept of identity, and so could not, for instance, have been identifying the Father with the one God.

In part 2 I’ll get more into Dr. Craig’s biblical objections to my own unitarian Christian theology and christology.

My less philosophical, more big-picture conversation with Sean Finnegan about my dialogue with Dr. Craig is here: