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In this and the next episode I engage with an episode by Cold Case Christianity apologist J. Warner Wallace called “Why is the Trinity an Essential Doctrine?“ (Also here. Alternate title: “Is the Trinity Contradictory?“)
We first hear him explain how crime-solving police detectives reason using Inference to the Best Explanation, or what some call abductive reasoning. This is an approach I endorse; among other places I have made use of it here and here and here. But as you’ll hear, Mr. Wallace abandons this method entirely when it comes to “the doctrine of the Trinity.”
Topics in this first part include:
- The objection that the word “Trinity” isn’t in the Bible, and the much stronger objection that the idea of tripersonal God isn’t there.
- Inference to the best explanation, and how that method of reasoning would be done regarding “the doctrine of the Trinity.”
- In the New Testament do we see Jesus worshiped as God?
- The Jewish background of the New Testament and Jesus’ own Jewish monotheism.
- The Old Testament idea of the creator as being the ultimate source of the cosmos and how this is not compatible with being the instrument through which the one creator acted.
- His argument that the Bible obviously implies that the one God is a Trinity based on Yahweh-only qualities: omnipotence (really: being the creator), omniscience, omnipresence, omnibenevolence, and being referred to with the word “God.”
- Whether the New Testament authors believe the Holy Spirit to be to be a divine person in addition to the Father and the Son.
Links for this episode:
God’s Crime Scene: A Cold-Case Detective Examines the Evidence for a Divinely Created Universe
the evolution of my views on the Trinity
Dale’s publications at PhilPapers, Academia.edu, and Google Scholar
podcast 126 – What is an evangelical? With Kermit Zarley
“Trinity,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Dale Tuggy and James White debate: “Is Jesus YHWH?”
McIntosh, ed., Branson, Craig, Hasker, and Tuggy: One God, Three Persons, Four Views
podcast 232 – Trinity Club Orientation
Dale Tuggy – Trinitarian “Fool’s Gold” – Mainstream Christian Theologies – Late 100’s to Early 200’s
Dale Tuggy – Christian theologies in the year 240John 17 posts
podcast 227 – Who Should Christians Worship?
Dunn, Did the First Christians Worship Jesus?: The New Testament
podcast 259 – Who is the one Creator? – Part 2
podcast 258 – Who is the one Creator? – Part 1
podcast 26 – Pastor Sean Finnegan on “the Holy Spirit” – Part 2
podcast 25 – Pastor Sean Finnegan on “the Holy Spirit” – Part 1
What John 1 Meant lecture (blog post)
a reading of Philippians 2:5-11
podcast 224 – Biblical Words for God and for his Son Part 1 – God and “God” in the Bible
Scriptures discussed include: Acts 5:3-5; Mark 12:28-34; Deuteronomy 6:4; John 8:40; John 17:1-3; Matthew 2:11; Isaiah 44:24; John 1:1-3; Job 33:4; Mark 13:32; Matthew 24:36; John 4:25; John 16:30; 2 Samuel 20:14; 1 Corinthians 2:10-11; 1 Kings 8:27; Matthew 18:20; Psalm 139:7-12; Romans 15:30.
This week’s thinking music is “Bad Guys” by Dirk Dehler.
