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Literature lovers almost always come out of the movie version of their beloved novel saying “the book was better!” In truth, books are more suited than videos for enabling deep, sustained reflection.
The same is true of the debate I had in 2019 with apologist Chris Date. I took the positive side: that Jesus is human only – not also divine. He took the negative side: no, Jesus is both human and divine. The face to face debate was good. But the book is better.
Here, we go deeper on many things, including the christological views of several early “fathers,” Philippians 2, various “two natures” speculations, whether or not the mediator between God and men has to be someone other than God, what it takes to be the creator, and whether the New Testament teaches that God died for us. Yes, Date doubles down on his “protective bird imagery” argument here. And I double down on why I think that is a poor argument. We also get out the knives for some tightly argued mutual interrogations on various topics. This material is wholly new.
We worked very hard at making a readable, short, yet hard-hitting book. This does not just re-hash things you’ve heard before. Endorsers praise it as challenging, interesting, and as serious rather than merely polemical.
“Dale Tuggy and Chris Date’s vigorous debate over whether Jesus is both human and divine includes meaty, informed discussions of New Testament interpretation, patristic Christology, and both theological and philosophical issues. Both scholars ably represent their respective positions of Unitarianism and Trinitarianism. Regardless of your own view, prepare to be challenged and stretched.”
Dr. Robert M. Bowman Jr.
Thanks are due to our editor and publisher Adam Murrell at Icthus Publications for putting up with some brutal rounds of revisions and corrections, thanks to Tuggy’s terrible typo problem and his bloated footnotes and messy, voluminous references. I would also like thank Chris for carrying on through a job-change and other challenges.
You can get the paperback or ebook at Amazon or directly from the publisher.
Why not give it a read with a few of your friends? When you’re done, contact me, and we can schedule a video chat with the 3 (or more) of you for a half hour or so, and you can give me your feedback or ask me questions. But you must have in some sense worked through it together and have discussed it before, and there must be at least a trinity of you.
If you want to interview me about the book for your podcast or whatever, email me. It’s just my first name, at the same domain as the blog you’re reading.
