podcast 375 – The Trinity, the Deity of Christ, and the Best Craig – Part 1

Dr. Tuggy:

A few notes about this episode and the challenge mentioned in the second (which I have yet to get to, so my advice on that may be premature).

ON “HERESY”

I don’t know where Craig gets off arguing that your position is heretical as though that means anything. In the strictest general sense, sure, it is heretical from the standpoint of Trinitarians, but isn’t that exactly what we ought to expect when that is the very definition of the disagreement between Trinitarians and Unitarians? Kind of right there in the name. It’s like arguing that “Lutherans are heretics because they reject communion with the Pope” when on a Catholic podcast; I mean, yeah, that’s why they’re Lutherans and not Catholics, so what?

Accusing someone of heresy only makes sense rhetorically when one is advancing that one’s position is, in fact, orthodox. And obviously in the case of the Catholic podcast, they probably do think that. But I am skeptical that Craig can claim the same, because so far as I can tell, Craig’s positions on issues such as the Trinity, divine forewknowledge, the historicity of Adam, etc. are possibly not orthodox in the sense that they do not clearly reflect the historical teachings or positions of his professed Wesleyan faith. If Craig is dubiously conforming to his own denomination’s teachings, he probably should not throw around the label of heretic so loosely.

That aside, and I think you have mentioned this, such an accusation is not charitable. One thing that impresses me about Biblical Unitarians is that they disagree on preexistence but appear to consider it a matter of conscience and debate rather than justification for schism. It would not do the no-preexistence people any good to call the yes-preexistence people “heretics.” It doesn’t advance the dialogue.

ON “THE VAST MAJORITY OF NEW TESTAMENT SCHOLARS”

I would be very curious as to who, precisely, Dr. Craig is counting as a New Testament scholar. Surveys have been conducted of scholars in various fields on numerous positions which have shown that a great many ideas thought to be uniform in a field are not actually as broadly-believed as the majority tend to think. Does Craig have in mind, or has he researched, everyone whom he thinks counts as a New Testament scholar?

This is important because, depending on how broadly one defines “New Testament scholar,” one draws in scholars working for explicitly religious evangelical institutions, mainly in America. The issue with this is that such scholars are often bound to statements of faith which require them to accept certain doctrines as a condition of their employment. This calls into question the trustworthiness of such scholars, as they would not be permitted to entertain accepting a position which runs counter to the theological positions of their institution. Michael Licona was fired over this sort of thing.

Craig’s own Talbot School of Theology at Biola University — which strictly gates admissions on applicants being Christian, as determined by the school itself from reading submitted essays — includes in its Doctrinal Statement such claims as:

1) “The Lord Jesus, before His incarnation, existed in the form of God and of His own choice laid aside His divine glory and took upon Himself the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men. In His pre-existent state, He was with God and was God. He is a divine person possessed of all the attributes of Deity, and should be worshiped as God by angels and man.” I don’t see why I should take it as remarkable that all theologians at Talbot are Trinitarians. Of course they are! The school says that’s what you have to believe!

2) “By His death on the cross, the Lord Jesus made a perfect atonement for sin, by which the wrath of God against sinners is appeased and a ground furnished upon which God can deal in mercy with sinners.” I would not find it remarkable that all theologians at Talbot affirm substitutionary atonement.

3) “All those who persistently reject Jesus Christ in the present life shall be raised from the dead and throughout eternity exist in the state of conscious, unutterable, endless torment of anguish.” I would not find it strange that no theologian at Talbot is a universalist.

Now granted, not all religious institutions have statements of faith for students and faculty (e.g. Notre Dame), and not all institutions that have statements of faith require they be adhered to (e.g. Oxford’s Wycliffe Hall is open to applicants who are not Anglican Christians). So it’s not simply a matter of “religious school, scholar untrustworthy.” But there are a lot of evangelical scholars at evangelical universities that DO have such doctrinal requirements, and how many of those scholars Craig is counting seems to me highly relevant to whether his appeal to consensus is warranted. If every university in Texas and California required that professors affirm that Texas/California is the best state in America, a statement like “The vast majority of scholars in the United States claim that either Texas or California is the best state in America” would not be persuasive or interesting.

I also think it’s quite silly to appeal to field consensus in matters of Christian theology. There are very few non-Christians who are in the field, and most of them are ex-Christians like Bart Ehrman. It’s a field that by its very nature attracts a certain group of people who are more likely to hold some beliefs in common regardless of whether they are true. It’s not as if there are a bunch of Hindu and Jain New Testament scholars who also 100% concur with the evangelical read of these doctrines. That there is a consensus in New Testament studies that hews closer to evangelical Trinitarianism probably has a lot to do with the field being most attractive to evangelical Trinitarians (and people who once were evangelical Trinitarians). Enough, at least, that we should be more skeptical of consensus than Dr. Craig seems to be.

(As an aside, I’m not impressed with Dr. Ehrman’s research into certain topics, but for very different reasons than I imagine you are.)

ON THE DEITY OF CHRIST BEING THE HEART OF JOHN’S GOSPEL

As you have pointed out on numerous occasions, it’s kind of strange that this would be such an important thing to the author of John that he forgot to include it in verse 20:31 where he explicitly states what the purpose of writing his Gospel was. If belief in the deity of Jesus is essential to having eternal life, he really left readers hanging not spelling that out in the bit where he spells everything out.

(I think it would be interesting to press this and your point about Peter’s speech in Acts and ask whether those people who converted based on a plain understanding of those assertions were not “properly” saved because they didn’t believe in a thing that they were never taught, particularly when Acts claims they received the Spirit.)

ON DEBATING WILLIAM LANE CRAIG

Don’t.

I don’t say this because I think you would do poorly, because I actually think you would do well. I say this because Dr. Craig is not an honest interlocutor and does not argue in good faith, but to “win” arguments and appear to be the smartest person in the room. I don’t think he has the slightest interest in addressing any of the debate topics you have proposed, all of which are fascinating and deserve to be taken seriously, which he will not do. I’m honestly surprised you would entertain the idea considering how he is defaming you in these clips.

But perhaps you revealed in the second part that you are aware of this and still want to go through with it because taking this seriously is important to you and you want to confront him on these issues in a public forum where he has to answer them. In that case I wouldn’t try to stop you (not that I could), I just don’t think he’s going to learn anything from this about your position or treat it with any greater respect because he almost never does that with anyone who corrects him on things he hasn’t adequately researched. I would feel bad about it if you invested serious time and effort into these topics only to have him try to change the subject constantly and spend much of the debate trying to make you look stupid.

Or if you can get on a really visible platform and cream him so he can’t bury it and chop it up to play out of context on his podcast. I would certainly like to see that, but I don’t think he’s going to agree if there’s a good chance of it turning out that way.

I know that space is quite limited in these “X Views of Y” books, but I hope you took at least some time in your response to Craig to point out a few critical historical points about which he is clearly not aware:

1. It isn’t the case that the majority of modern scholars are unconvinced about various unitarian arguments; rather, most of them have simply never encountered or researched them at all. During your interviews with Bart Ehrman and Larry Hurtado it was clear that they had never encountered such ideas.

2. Historically speaking, at least with respect to the United Status, Unitarianism didn’t die because of the force of the counterarguments; rather, it committed suicide by grafting itself to the cancer of Universalism.

3. Back when there *were* scholars who took Unitarianism seriously and tried to refute it, they were apparently unable to rise to the challenge and offer compelling refutation. As Leonard Hodgson himself admitted:

“on the basis of arguments which both sides held in common, the Unitarians had the better case. They could counter their opponents’ biblical exegesis with interpretations equally, if not more, convincing.” (Leonard Hodgson, The Doctrine of the Trinity, London: Nisbet & Co. 1943), p. 223