Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Spotify | Email | RSS
This is the final part of my response to some recent podcast episodes by Dr. William Lane Craig here and here.
Dr. Craig accuses me of being disingenuous in claiming that his minimal, so-called “biblical” doctrine consisting of two sentences is not enough to count as a trinitarian theology. I stand by that claim, and point out that it is unclear why Dr. Craig thinks that those sentences say anything about a tripersonal God.
I also discuss his claim that his rival hypothesis, that the New Testament authors assumed those two sentences, explains the 20 facts I build my case on in the forthcoming debate book. I don’t discuss all 20 facts here, but I describe the 5 facts that I presented in the recent book panel session, and point out that Craig’s hypothesis in fact doesn’t explain any of those, in contrast to the hypothesis I call “U,” that the New Testament authors assume that the one God just is the Father and that neither the Son nor the Spirit are fully divine.
In his recent podcast Dr. Craig also seems to suggest that I think there is one doctrine of the Trinity, and that in the debate book I attacked a straw man theology which no trinitarian holds. I point out that both claims are mistaken. I also discuss the two different Trinity theories he has presented, pointing out that one could be true while the other is false.
Finally, I summarize the shortcomings of our recent interactions and I challenge Dr. Craig to a full-length, face to face public debate, suggesting four topics:
- The New Testament teaches that the one God is tripersonal.
- The Gospel According to John teaches that Jesus and the Father are equally divine.
- The Chalcedonian doctrine of a divine and human Jesus is coherent.
- The New Testament teaches that Jesus and the Father are equally divine.
Links for this episode:
podcast 375 – The Trinity, the Deity of Christ, and the Best Craig – Part 1
podcast 374 – Book Session Identity Crisis – Part 3
podcast 373 – Book Session Identity Crisis – Part 2
podcast 372 – Book Session Identity Crisis – Part 1
Reasonable Faith Podcast: Trinitarianism vs Unitarianism Part One
Reasonable Faith Podcast: Trinitarianism vs Unitarianism Part Two
“Craig’s Contradictory Christ”
“Trinity,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
This week’s thinking music is “Hi as Hats” by Van Loon.
I truly hope he will take you up on your offer to a good-faith debate, or, better, just an extended, recorded dialogue.
If Dr. Craig believes that persons distinct from God can be called God, but the Father/Son/Spirit can be “properly called” God, what exactly determines whether an application of the term is one of metaphor or agency or a “proper” attribution of deity?
The argument as I understand it having only heard the survey talk and these episodes (haven’t read the book, obviously) is that whether someone is “properly called God” is an identity association unless explicitly distinguished. Axiomatically, Yahweh is properly called God, as to disagree would mean one isn’t an Abrahamic monotheist even in principle, so anyone who is Yahweh is properly called God. But when Moses is said to be the God to Pharaoh/Aaron/Israel/etc., this is an explicit distinction of agency; Moses is not “properly called God” because Moses is not Yahweh and is only conditionally called God with respect to certain situations. And the king is not “properly called God” in the coronation psalm because the king is explicitly not Yahweh and receives the title from Yahweh.
So to argue the Father, Jesus, and the Spirit are “properly called” God in the New Testament, we would expect that they are identified as Yahweh and NOT as agents of Yahweh, because if they are agents then it is at least a plausible reading that they cannot be “properly called God,” but instead are only conditionally called God.
I’m unaware of any passage implying that the Father is not Yahweh. So the Father is identical to Yahweh, who can properly be called God, and thus the Father can properly be called God. But there are many passages that imply agency on the parts of Jesus and the Spirit. They are sent, they do the will of the Father, they are empowered by the Father, etc. This appears more like the Moses example than like the Father, and so it appears that the New Testament writers at least plausibly could have felt they were agents of God, thus akin to Moses, thus not “properly called God,” thus Craig’s theory is possibly false and it’s a matter of interpretation at best (though I think the subordinationst interpretation is obviously correct for most NT authors).
The only other out for this is to argue that they are equal either to the Father or to Yahweh, as identity with either would make them identical to one who can properly be called God. Hence Craig’s shift to the divinity of Christ (interesting how the play is never the divinity of the Spirit, despite that being easier to argue, probably because it plays into the hands of Binitarians and Unitarians arguing against the Spirit’s personhood). But I don’t think this saves him, because one can be a subordinationst and affirm the lesser deity of Christ (which is not Trinitarianism according to Trinitarians), or affirm the identity of Jesus as Yahweh and deny the NT authors believed him a separate person (sketchy as that claim is). In the first case, Jesus cannot be “properly called God,” merely divine or a God beneath Yahweh; in the second, Jesus can be properly called God, but isn’t a different person from Yahweh.
So I don’t see how Craig can be so confident that his minimal Trinitarianism accurately summarizes NT positions when it is entirely plausible to read the text as asserting that the titling of Jesus or the Spirit as God is conditional in exactly the same way Moses or the king of Israel were conditionally so titled. For Craig to be correct, it has to be either impossible or at least highly improbable that such a reading of the text works.
It just appears he is presuming Jesus is Yahweh and trying to end-run around the clear subordinationst agency passages by arguing that Jesus can properly be called God via identity. But also, he says the writers of the NT did not live in a time where numeric identity was properly and robustly understood. So how could they have meant that?