Transition, Theories

As promised, I now hope to run (walk, crawl?) through the gamut of theories of the Trinity propounded by recent analytic philosophers. My aim is to bring these articles to a wider audience, so I’ll try to write clearly, and focus on the what I think is important about the piece. I’ll try to omit needless details, and summarize or skip arguments that would throw non-PhDs. I’ll strive to be fair, but I’ll feel free to criticize as well. You see, they can’t all be true – these theories, taken together, assert much that is contrary or contradictory. So we need to separate the sheep from the goats.

I purposely started with modalist theories, as they are on what you might think of as the far right wing, chistologically speaking. If Christ just is God, he couldn’t possibly be any greater. Or if he’s a mode of God, then whenever you see Christ doing anything, that’s just God himself acting. From here, I’ll start with “Latin” theories, and go “down” or “to the left” from there, till I get to theories on which Jesus isn’t divine in any strong sense. Whenever I’m doing one of these articles, it’ll have the category of “Theories” (see the list of posting categories to the right).

I intend, God willing, to do maybe one posting a week. I’m plenty busy with teaching, family life, and church life, but I think this is doable. If I don’t crap out, I don’t see myself running out of material any time soon. Even if I’m brimming with time and energy, I want to take it slow, to give the discussion time. I really want to hear from all of you!

Article authors are always, always welcome to join in. In fact, unless you don’t want me to, I’ll post your replies (“Tuggy is full of it!”) on the main page under a “Replies” category. I have no doubt that our authors, being philosophers, will have something to say when I start insulting their precious children criticizing their theories. 🙂 And be assured, I’m very interested in being corrected, and the readers here are very interested in seeing that stupid know-it-all Tuggy get creamed. 😉 Another reminder – on this blog, discussions are never closed. So if I did a hack job on your article a year ago, and you just read it and want to set the record straight, just do it!

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