reply to a critique of podcast 248

Recently on Twitter I complained that no apologist yet has given a thoughtful response to podcast 248 – How Trinity theories conflict with the Bible. But my friend Andrew DeFord pointed out that he had indeed responded in 2021, privately, via email. I did get that and look at it, but for whatever reason put off responding until I forgot about it. But thanks to his prompting, I’ve found that email and will respond to all of it here. It is over-long and not on-target, but perhaps this complete response will be helpful to people who struggle to follow what I say about identity.

A Response to Dale Tuggy’s podcast #248 “How Trinity Theories Conflict with the Bible”

1) God just is Yahweh.
2) Yahweh just is the Father.
3) God just is the Father. (1,2)
4) God just is the Trinity.
5) It is not the case that the Trinity just is the Father.
6) The Trinity just is the Father (3,4).
[My aim here is not necessarily to debunk the argument above, it is to reframe the argument and the ultimate point Dale is trying to prove.]

Here’s where things start to get off track. My whole argument is not, as one might initially think, represented by that deductive argument. I don’t there just straightforwardly argue for my conclusion here. Rather, I present that argument as a problem to be solved. This reasoning leads to a contradiction: 5 together with 6. The question is how to avoid it. 4 is required by any Trinity theory. 3 follows 1 and 2, so only denying 3 would not be to the point. 1 is something any Christian will agree to. So my point was: a Bible-believing Christian has more reason to agree with 2 than she does with 4 – so the best way to avoid the contradiction is to deny 4 (without 4, 6 does not follow).

So the argument doesn’t need to be “debunked” – whatever that means. Rather, our friend Andrew needs to explain which premise he thinks should be denied, and why. And he should engage with my case for preferring 2 to 4.

Moreover, the argument is, by design, perfectly clear. “Just is” expresses the concept of numerical identity, a well-understood, perfectly clear concept that in fact all humans have and use – though they usually don’t realize this. Then we have the names or titles: “God,” “Yahweh,” “the Father,” and “the Trinity.” The supposed reference of these is not really in dispute, although unitarians like me don’t think “the Trinity” actually refers to anything real. The others are just familiar, biblical terms.

But Andrew has the idea that something is amiss here, so instead of shouldering the burden of explaining which premise should be denied and why, he tries to raise problems about the terms used.

As a philosophical argument, the above makes sense as a critique of the Trinity. If the premises
are true, the conclusions should follow, but it has problems.

Yes, that is to say that the argument is what logicians call “valid.” But it has other virtues too: All Christians agree with 1. All trinitarians ought to agree with 4. And in my view, all people who agree with New Testament teaching should agree with 2. But let’s let him continue:

The premises are . . . kind of true, but it depends upon what is meant by the terms used.

No, it can’t be that all the premises are true, because they imply a contradiction. No contradiction can follow from only true premises.

For me, the main problem is equivocation. The word “god” is used in multiple ways in bible and common parlance. “God” can be used as a descriptor or it can be used as a name. In fairness to Dr. Tuggy, he may be using the term in the same way with each use, but that is not how the bible or Trinitarians understand and use the word.

It is clear enough that the four aforementioned terms here are being used as singular referring terms, not as descriptions. This observation, then, is not to the point. Nor has he put his finger on an important “equivocation,” i.e. some ambiguity of terms which, when the ambiguity is revealed, shows that the argument is not valid after all. It is valid, as he grants.

Nor does he explain his own usage.

Incorrect. It is clear enough in the post that I’m using those terms as singular referring terms because when I translate the claims into logic I replace those terms with single letters, which are understood not as predicates (descriptions) but just as singular referring terms, functioning somewhat like proper names. Granted, not everyone will pick up on that, so I could have been more clear.

If I were to address God personally, I could say, “Hi, God.” That is the name usage. Or I could be describing my relationship with him and say, “You are my God.”. That is the descriptive usage. These two uses have a great deal of difference between them. The word “god” or “el” in Hebrew was in many Hebrew names (SamuEL or DaniEL). Yet, in the Hebrew bible, the only person(s) rightly called “my God” are the true God, or, Yahweh, his personal/”memorial” name. This is important because the primary person referred to as “God” in the NT as a name or title, is the Father. In the adjectival usage (my God or our God), the Son is the recipient several times. [As an aside, the other chief name or title of the true God in the OT is YHWH, or “the Lord”. This is a primary title of Jesus in the NT and is rarely used of the Father in the NT.] So, it is vital to understand the usage.

All of this is, I think, true. But none of it is to the point.

Despite being called “God” as a title maybe only 1 time, Jesus is referred to as “my God” by an apostle several times. This is something never done for anyone other than YHWH and Jesus in the whole bible. Someone being God, adjectivally, is describing their relation with the subject. Jesus is the “God of” Thomas, for example. The Son and Thomas have the relationship of Deity to creature. In other words, the Son is divine or has a divine nature. It follows that as the Son of the Father, he has the same divine nature as the Father.

Here our friend gives an argument that Jesus is divine. Unfortunately it depends on an unclear text; it is unclear whether Thomas is calling Jesus his god here, rather than referring to Jesus as his lord and also to the Father who is at work in and with Jesus – a major theme of the fourth gospel – as his god. But in this book, granting that Thomas here calls Jesus “my god,” it is not clear that this would be to assert that Thomas and Jesus are related as creature to creator, for as the author tells us (John 10:35), beings who are not gods may nonetheless be so-called. So this argument is way too short, and bristles with problems. But most importantly, it doesn’t tell us which premise of the above argument to deny and why, which is the task at hand.

Let’s alter the syllogism and insert more accurate, Trinitarian information.
1) Yahweh has the title/name “God”.
2) The Father has the title/name “God”.
3) (Conclusion) Yahweh and the Father both have the title/name “God”.
4) The Father has a divine nature.

5) The Father is not triune.
6) (Conclusion) The Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) shares a divine nature.

This is in no sense a correction of the earlier argument. It is just the author changing the subject to another argument which he would rather discuss. For what it’s worth, I agree with 1-5, but disagree with 6. And I’m consistent in so doing, because 1-5 do not entail 6! (The argument is invalid.)

The above, with more precise language for a Trinitarian, has no contradictions, but it (the 2nd half) isn’t a complete or sensible argument because like Tuggy’s example, it still needs more information to make sense of it. I’ll expand on this but we need to do some theology first.

Huh? We’re just off-subject now. This was supposed to be a reply to the overall argument of podcast 248. Our author gives us a little theology lecture now.

A Classical Theism
In the beginning all that existed was God. There was literally nothing else. No heaven, no earth, no angels, nor was there a place in which God resided. God was it. God was totally independent of anything else. If that is true, anything that can be said of him cannot appeal to anything else. If God was “good” prior to creation, then goodness isn’t an abstract concept that God appeals to or comports with, “goodness” just is God himself. Or, goodness equals (=) God. God also cannot change (immutable). So, if God wasn’t “good” prior to creation and is now, then God would have to have been changed by creation. That cannot do because God is immutable.

This leads us to believe that God’s eternal attributes like goodness (G), wisdom (W) and love (L) are eternal and identical with God. Any attribute (p) = God. Does this mean that G = L and W = G?

Two problems here. First, it seems obviously false that God is numerically the same as his attributes, as God differs from each. His wisdom is an attribute of God. God is not an attribute of God. So, as they differ, it is false that God just is his attribute of wisdom. That’s just an application of the self-evident indiscernibility of identicals. Second, = (the relation of numerical sameness or identity) is by definition symmetrical and transitive, and so yes, he claims here would wrongly collapse together (identify) all the divine attributes. The sort of argument would go like this:

1. God’s wisdom = God
2. God’s love = God
3. God = God’s wisdom (1, symmetry of =)
4. God’s love = God’s wisdom (2, 3, transitivity of =)

And such collapses as 4 seem obviously false. God’s love is that in virtue of which God is loving. It seems false that God’s wisdom is that in virtue of which God is loving. It looks like an obvious mistake to collapse these into one thing.

I don’t think so. The words are distinct and describe realities that are distinct. [However, I would suggest that there is interdependence between the terms. One cannot love rightly without wisdom, and true wisdom is only found in goodness. Still they are distinct.]

Sorry, but identifying things with God, and then insisting that those things are nonetheless not identical to each other – this is foolish, and suggests that our author doesn’t understand the concept of numerical sameness / numerical identity. This is like saying that A is bigger than B, while insisting that it is false that B is smaller than A.

When we look at created things, there is absolute dependence in all of it. Unlike God, nothing in creation stands on its own. I may be good, but only in my relation to something else. I rely upon God for goodness. Furthermore, I can also be bad. Therefore, goodness does not equal (=) me. My body is reliant upon my genetics which I got from my parents. Therefore, my body ? me. My mind was shaped by my experience. Therefore, my thoughts and knowledge ? me. This is a stark contrast between me (creation) and God. Nothing about me just is (=) me where everything about God = God even if we can find distinctions within his being.

To the contrary, collapsing together a thing with its attributes, or seemingly distinct attributes with one another, makes no more sense with God than it does with us. Nothing about the difference between createdness and uncreatedness seems relevant. Our author has bought into the doctrine of divine simplicity, a part of so-called “classical theism.” I’m not clear why, really, given what he’s said here. This doctrine is theologically disastrous for many reasons.

Let’s try a new syllogism with what we’ve learned using Y for Yahweh, the divine Being.
1)G = Y [God’s goodness = Yahweh]
2)L = Y [God’s love = Yahweh]
3)L = G [God’s love = God’s goodness]
This may not be a valid or sound argument from a philosophical perspective, but it is from a theological perspective.

No, this is valid, period; 1 and 2 imply 3. (I’ll spare you the proof.) Arguments are not valid or not “from a perspective.” Logic is subject-neutral; it applies to human discourse about whatever. Of course, 3 seems false, for obvious reasons I have already mentioned. So no one should think the argument to be sound. If the conclusion is false, and it is, and the argument is valid, this shows that it least one premise is false. Here, plausibly both 1 and 2 are false, for reasons I’ve already stated.

Either it is true that Yahweh is identical with his attributes or it is true that God is dependent.

Notice that this claim is neither taught in the Bible, nor is it self-evident. And many contemporary theists deny it, and yes, many trinitarian Christian theists. Our author needs an argument to back up this claim, which shows that if God is not identical with each of his attributes, then God will be “dependent,” I take it, in a way incompatible with divine aseity.

The bible declares that God is independent, so the former is true and the latter is false. Therefore, the attributes of God are either identical with each other or they are not. I would assert that they are not by definition. Therefore, Yahweh is identical with his attributes and there can be a distinction between them in the Being of Yahweh.

I don’t think the Bible says that. But our author here embraces the nonsensical position that each of the divine attributes is distinct from each of the others, and yet each is numerically identical with God. Sigh. To try to buttress this demonstrably incoherent view, he then tries to kick up a cloud of mystery dust to hide the problems.

This should not be surprising, even if we can’t full grasp it because a) God is truly unique and b) do we understand how a being can have no beginning and no end? Can we fully grasp how a being that is ultimately timeless created something at a moment in time before time existed? If you do, you are vastly more intelligent and enlightened than I am.

None of these considerations help him to get around the self-evident truth that things identical with the same thing must be identical with one another (’cause it’s all just one thing being named in different ways). No one needs to claim vast intelligence or enlightenment to see that, or even to have answers to his two questions in this paragraph.

New syllogism:
1)Anything that can be said of Yahweh, just is Yahweh. (p = Y)
2)Wisdom just is Yahweh. (W = Y)
3)Goodness just is Yahweh. (G = Y)
4) Love just is Yahweh. (L = Y)
5) Therefore; Wisdom, Goodness and Love, just are Yahweh. (W, G, L = Y)

I’m not clear on what the point of this argument is. Again, he implies, despite himself, that each divine attribute just is each of the others.

Dr. Tuggy would obviously disagree with the Trinitarian exegesis of the key texts, but for us, we see the bible as declaring that the Son is eternal and the creator of all things. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him not even one thing came into being that has come into being (John 1:3). We believe this is saying that the Son precedes all creation. Therefore, the Son is uncreated and eternal. This is also a key attribute of Yahweh as Dr. Tuggy says in his podcast article. If the Father is eternal Deity (Yahweh), then so is the Son. This would mean that the Son = YHWH. We will assume that the Spirit is eternal as well (Heb 9:14). Therefore, the Holy Spirit = YHWH. We agree with Tuggy that the Father = Yahweh.

And yet, presumably our author agrees with catholic traditions that none of these are identical to either of the others: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. But then, he’s just continued his streak of elementary mistakes in reasoning about =. He has non-identical things each being identical with one and the same thing, Yahweh. Which as I’ve explained is a hopeless position.

So, another syllogism:
1) All things that can be said of Yahweh, just is Yahweh. (p = Y)
2) The Father just is Yahweh. (F = Y)
3) The Son just is Yahweh. (S= Y)
4) The Holy Spirit just is Yahweh. (HS = Y)
5)Therefore; Father, Son and Holy Spirit just are Yahweh. F, S, HS = Y)

The Father etc. really are not things that are said of Yahweh. At any rate, he has committed to this (sadly, not uncommon) demonstrably false Trinity theory.

Again, the above two arguments may have philosophical problems, but not theological ones
because Yahweh is unique, utterly different than what he has created. (One could say that he is
supra-logical).

That your set of claims can’t possible by true – this is both a theological and a philosophical problem. And no, God isn’t, because he’s unique, somehow exempt from logic. Or more properly: our discourse about God isn’t exempt from logic. This doesn’t imply or assume, by the way, that we can fully or even adequately understand God.

Back to my original argument. There is an absolute Deity that exists. This Deity is infinite.
Meaning, there are no physical dimensions or measurements of this Deity. In other words, there is no place where he begins or ends. He is just there, or more precisely, everywhere. There cannot be two infinite beings because that would imply that one begins where the other one ends. Therefore, the Deity is, no matter what is found within Him (attributes, persons, etc), absolutely one.

I can’t see a plausible argument here for divine simplicity, although that is obviously what our friend is trying to construct. On the face of it, everything before the “Therefore” could be accepted by a denier of divine simplicity.

There can be no more than one infinite God. Therefore, if the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are Yahweh, each is truly and wholly Yahweh. This may be hard to fully grasp, but if we are right in our exegesis, it must be true.

Again, this seems like a non sequitur. More would need to be said. But he continues:

Implied from God’s independence is his simplicity. Divine simplicity just means that God isn’t
made of parts.

No, it means much, much more than that. Many a denier of divine simplicity will agree that God is not composed of parts.

In this context, a “part” is anything about the whole that is less than the whole which composes the whole to be what it is. This implies that parts are not the whole. This would require the Deity (the whole) to rely on the parts to be who/what he is, making him dependent upon something not him to be him. This denies a fundamental attribute of Yahweh. As Yahweh is simple; then Father, Son and Spirit are not parts of God. Nor are they separate gods as each person, biblically, is eternal (and infinite). In other words, like the attributes of goodness, wisdom and love, each person just is Yahweh. Yes, there are distinctions within, but that is ok because of Yahweh’s uniqueness.

“each person just is Yahweh” – and yet, I take it, they are truly three, that is, none is identical with either of the others. Yes, this is the demonstrably incoherent Trinity theory which I mentioned and linked above.

The Argument
In sum, Dale’s argument fails from imprecise language and incomplete theology.

This is pure point-missing. The original argument above was not offered as a sound argument (i.e. one which is valid and which has only true premises). I agree that it “fails” (is unsound), and so should anyone else. The question is, which premise should be denied. And by the way, it has not been shown either that the argument suffers from “imprecise language” or that somehow it implicates one in “incomplete theology.”

Admittedly, there is an element of mystery in my understanding of how all of this works together. If there is a weakness to my counter argument, that is it. However, isn’t there mystery in all things divine?

I don’t know which “counter argument” is meant here . . . Maybe the first, invalid one? No, invalidity would be a bigger problem that “an element of mystery.”

Now he revisits my argument, adding his own comments after each premise.

Dale’s premises.

1) God just is Yahweh. True. Yahweh has all of the qualities of deity. (Yahweh is a god) Perhaps Dale is using the term ‘God’ univocally with the Father. The bible nor Trinitarians do that, so, this is unjustified.

Comment: 1 is a statement of numerical identity, not a description of God. “God” here is a title for the ultimate reality, the unique god, the creator. It does not mean the same thing as “the Father,” although if I am right then the two terms co-refer.

2) Yahweh just is the Father. True. The Father has all the qualities of deity, so he is identical with Yahweh. Again, Dale seems to assume that, biblically, only the Father is called “God”. However, that is untrue. Jesus is called “God” with the stronger “deity usage” several times.

Again, this is an identity statement, not a description of the Father, saying that he ha all the divine attributes. The following is false, and is in no way implied or even suggested by 2): “Dale seems to assume that, biblically, only the Father is called “God”. ” What 2) is saying is only that Yahweh (i.e. the god of the Jews, the unique god of the OT) is one and the same with the Father (i.e. the one the NT calls that).

Conclusion (1,2). 3) God just is the Father. True. The Father is given a divine title and divine descriptions in the NT. Secondarily, he is right, but only if he means that the Father is eternally a father. The equivalency of Yahweh (a god) and Father (a god) are reliant upon the individual having the divine attribute of immutability. If he does, then the Father cannot become a father later on without a substantial change. Therefore, the Father requires a begotten one. Namely, the Son of God the Father.

I agree that 3) is true, but more to the point, it follows from 1) and 2). 3) (which is g = f or equivalently f = g) is, remember, a part of the incoherent Trinity theory our friend has unfortunately committed to.

4) God just is the Trinity. True. The Trinity (the 3 eternal persons) have all of the qualities that make one a god.

This is the premise which any trinitarian as such is committed to. If it is true, then yes, the Trinity must have all the divine attributes – but that’s not what the sentence says.

5) It is not the case that the Trinity just is the Father. True. The Father is not triune. The Father is the father of Jesus Christ, a different person.

Right. I agree with premise 5) because I think there is no such thing as the Trinity. Andrew agrees with 5) (I assume) because he sees that the Father and the Trinity differ (the first isn’t and the second is triune), and then by the indiscernibility of identicals we infer that they (the Father and the Trinity) can’t be one and the same (i.e. numerically identical). That is good reasoning on his part. However, it seems to me that he is committed to f = g (mentioned above) and to g = t (premise 4) above) – and from these it follows (by the transitivity of =) that f = t!

6) The Trinity just is the Father. (follows from 3,4).
False. This conclusion does not follow.

Sigh. Of course it follows. I’ve already explained how. Thus, if one wants to deny 6), one must deny either 3) or 4) or both. (And if one denies 3) one must deny 1) or 2) or both.) Since Andrew is about to offer a diagnosis of where this reasoning goes wrong, let me spell it all explicitly out. If you’ve made it this far, you will know what the letters refer to.

3. g = f

4. g = t

4b. For any a and any b, a = b if and only if b = a. (symmetry of =)

4c. f = g (3, 4b)

4d. For any a, b, and c, if a = b and b = c, then a = c. (transitivity of =)

6. f = t (4c, 4, 4d)

That’s about as clear as that reasoning can be made! The justification for 4b and 4d is that those are definitional for =. Once you grasp what is meant by = in logic, then you immediately “see” that these general principles are true.

Our friend has agreed to 3 and 4. But the rest undeniably follows. There’s no getting away from the validity of 3-6, or from the truth of both 4b and 4d, once one has a clear grasp on the relation in question (=). But, let’s hear out his diagnosis of where this supposedly goes wrong.

It assumes a univocal usage of the word “God”.

No, nothing in the argument presupposes that the word “God” can only be used in one way.

The Father is called “God” in two ways. A) He is the primary NT person to have the title “theos”. B) He has all of the qualities that make one a god. B is the important one because many are called “theos” in the bible. The Father has all the attributes of deity, but so does the Son and the Spirit. In a distinct way, the Father has all the attributes of deity. He is the Father who begets. The Son has all the attributes of deity as the one who is begotten. The Spirit has all the attributes of deity as the one proceeding from the Father and the Son. The Trinity is “God” through how the persons are related within the Being of Yahweh. There is a closed circle of divine persons that Christians have named “the Trinity”. On the other hand, the persons are “God” in the qualities they have in themselves AND their relation to each other. In other words, all three persons are identical with Yahweh, but they are distinguished by how they relate to one another. Very similar to how we’d talk about the relationship between the attributes. Goodness is a divine attribute that is identical with Yahweh, but does not stand on its own. One needs wisdom and love to be appropriately “good”. God can be independent, but independence requires simplicity and simplicity requires immutability.

I don’t see how any of this helps. Which premise above (3-6) would any of this show to be either false or unjustified? Perhaps he is trying to say that the Trinity “is God” in a way different that each Person “is God.” But no, above he has granted g = t and g = f, so this is to say that the Trinity and the Father are related to God in the exact same way, and that way is numerical identity! At the end of the day we have this: “all three persons are identical with Yahweh, but they are distinguished by how they relate to one another.” But this is the obvious falsehood of things being numerically the same with one and the same thing, and yet despite that they are distinct from (not identical with) each other! It’s about as obviously false as this: A is bigger than B, yet B is not smaller than A.

Conclusion
Scripture is clear that God has certain attributes. The chief one is established in the first verse.
Yahweh is creator of all things. Y = C and C = Y. For Trinitarians, scripture is equally clear that
the Son is the active agent of all creation. So, S=C. Therefore, S = Y.

Here our friend confuses identity statements with predications (descriptions). If Yahweh created all things, that is a description of him, and this is represented in logic as Cy (that is: Creates: Yahweh). If the Son “is the active agent of all creation,” again, that describes the Son, so in logic it would translated as (As – that is, ActiveAgentInCreation: Son). It doesn’t follow from these, though, that s = y (the Son just is Yahweh). One could mount an argument for that, but this post is way too long already.

If Jesus is Yahweh, we must account for that.

Well, we can’t just treat that as some kind of obvious datum that any theology must account for! Why? Because Jesus and Yahweh seem to differ in many ways according to the Bible, and so by the Indiscernibility of Identicals, they can’t be numerically identical!

The Trinity, as a doctrine that brings many truths together, is the best option, and there are no contradictions once all of the information has been brought to bear.

This first claim has not been shown, and the second claim is false, as I have explained how our friend is committed to a demonstrably incoherent Trinity theory.

Dale’s argument is dependent upon what is called the Leibnitz’s ‘law of identity’. Which says, no
two physical objects can be identical with one another. Two nails, which could be as alike as any two things can be, are never truly identical because they are not the same “thing”. I would have to agree with Leibnitz’s law. However, who says that the eternal Deity is a physical object? He most certainly is not. Our God is as unique as any existent thing can be. No objects are infinite. No objects are immutable. No objects independent. No objects are without parts, but God is all of those things. Actually, those qualities are what God is NOT. (If God is not finite, what does that make him? I’d say, we can NOT say, exactly) We do this “negative theology” because from our point of view, God is mysterious. In some respects, we can only say that he is not like us or any other existent thing, by which we must say things like “God is identical with his attributes but the attributes are not identical to each other”. Clearly, God is not like us, so perhaps there is no one to one ratio to how Leibniz’s law works with the Creator as opposed to the creature.

This part is very misinformed. Nothing in this post (or in anything I have ever written) implies or presupposes that God is either a physical object or creature.

Sometimes either of these two principles below is called “Leibniz’s Law” or even the conjunction of the two together:

The Indiscernibilty of Identicals – my argument does, as mentioned, assume this. And happily, this is a self-evident truth. Roughly, it is that some a and some b are = only if they don’t ever qualitatively differ (at one time). This implies the Distinctness of Discernibles: if some a and some b ever do qualitatively differ, then they are not identical.

The Identity of Indiscernibles – this is that if some a and some b don’t differ qualitatively, then a = b. (In other words, there can’t be qualitatively indistinguishable nonidentical things.) This is far from obviously true, but nothing in the post (or that I have ever written anywhere) presupposes or implies that it is true. I am inclined to think that this principle is false.

A Final Word
I firmly believe that maintaining a distinction between the “particulars” in God is important. The bible declares that the creation images or reflects the glory of the Creator. Looking at creation, we see a dynamic universe. A God without true or “real” distinctions in his being is a static Monad. The universe is just not that way. The cosmos is a unity in diversity (uni-verse). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not reading created categories into God, I’m (hopefully) demonstrating a foundation upon which the created order was established. God didn’t pull dynamism out of thin air; it reflects the glory of the Triune God. A God who is a unity in diversity. One and three.

So God is utterly simple, and yet must have true or real distinctions in his being? Sorry, but that is another contradiction – saying that God is and is not simple.

But most importantly, the main task of responding to the argument has not been accomplished. The reasons I gave for affirming 2 and denying 4 have not been engaged with, nor has the author said which premise he would deny and why.