Speaker 1: It's so insane. It's so insane.
Speaker 2: Boo boo boo boo boo boo boo boo boo. All right,
welcome everybody to another installment. We will be inter viewing
and reviewing the debate to get today with between William
Lane Craig and Muhammed had Job and my good friend
doctor Bo Branson joins me today. Of course, doctor bo
is very pertinent, very adjacent to this conversation because he's
published in the thing, the book that William lane Craig
mentioned in the debate about four views on trinity. Is
that correct?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4: So William lane Craig, me, Bill Hasker, who he mentioned
during the debate, and Dale Tuggy, and.
Speaker 2: That's four views on the trinity and particularly issues that
are relevant to this debate, such as inseparable operations. And
we'll kind of get into that later on. But what's
your before we get into the doctor bow, what's your
overall feeling and assessment of the debate before we get
into the particulars.
Speaker 3: I was pretty disappointed, but.
Speaker 4: I was actually really looking forward to it because, on
the one hand, William Lane Craig is just like legendary debater,
you know, super smart and everything, but I think that
the doctrum of the Trinity is literally his like the
weakest thing, you know that maybe his Christology, but anyway,
it's you know, something he's like really weak on. So
it's kind of like, wow, I mean this would be
really interesting to see, you know, his MOHAMEDI job, I'm
going to beat him? Is this going to be really
you know interesting?
Speaker 3: But yeah, the.
Speaker 4: So I guess for me, I mean, I just spent
a bunch of time on this book that we're in,
So I've kind of, you know, recently been thinking through
his whole model, and there's like a million things that
I want to say about it. And it was really
frustrating in the book too. It's like you just kind
of have a limited word count, you know, for every chapter.
So I think I had written like two or three
times the word out and still had stuff that was
just an outline form, and I was like, well, I
gotta cut down everything. So I was thinking, like, there's
so much stuff that you could you could go through,
and Muhammed a job stuck the landing on any of
the arguments, Like he kind of mentioned different topics that
could go into like a larger debate, you know, or
larger argument for the incoherence of his view or something
like that. But he never really connected a lot of
those things. Like the first I don't know how much.
It was like quarter of the debate or something, where
he was just talking about how we only in Craig's view,
is heretical or whatever, and it's like, well, cool, but
how does that show that the doctor of the Trinity
in general?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Coherent?
Speaker 2: Right? Which was the title of the debate was the
coherence of the Trinity? Before we get into that, And
this is an area that you you focus on you're
really good in. Could you tell us a little bit
I know, the lot of the audience does not know
the act academic literature and the sort of schools and theories.
Could you tell us a little bit on about what's
the difference between this what they're calling the debate, the
Latin model the Trinity and then social trinitarianism, which Wilane
Craig espouses. And then we'll kind of counter that with
the orthodox of you that you defend, which is monarchical trinitarianism.
Speaker 4: So we'll start with social trinitarianism maybe, So what they
call social trinitarianism. Basically, all social trinitarians seem to be
really focused on this idea that the Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit are three distinct centers of consciousness and will
and whatever, so kind of three minds. That seems to
be sort of definitive of social trinitarianism. And then originally,
like you know, you read old older stuff on social trinitarianism,
was kind of like, well, then they formed this like society,
and God is really like the society. It's like you know,
God incorporated or something.
Speaker 3: It's like the whole.
Speaker 4: You know, they form this bigger thing. And there's been
all sorts of different kind of variations on it since then.
Those that's kind of just maybe that view is a
little unsatisfying in various ways.
Speaker 2: That's what's the origin of that view. By the way,
who's kind of the first to propose that? Somebody pretty modern?
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, Actually, this is a book I'm supposed to
write over you for and I'm way ling on, but
this is a Protestant guy, Matthew Barrett. It's it's a
decent it's a decent introduction i'd say to like Western
sort of trinitarian thought, like he does a pretty good
job of that, and he goes in the first part
and really goes through a lot of kind of the
history of social trinitarianism and basically came up with kind
of to make the doctrine of the Trinity relevant because
it just wasn't like in Western theology anymore. So you know,
I thought, well, maybe if we make God into a society,
then we can just sort of map stuff from the
Trinity onto social things. And so he goes through all
these things about you know, how the Trinity has been
used to just you know, support like like environmentalism and
gay rights and feminism and you know, socialism, like just
all kinds of different things. But it definitely is in
the in the I think the fifties maybe is when
it when it first started. Really yeah, really kind of
coming out, so so not yeah, not super old. And
to say that the you know, the persons of the
Trinity kind of form a larger hole is partialism, I mean,
at least on a straightforward reading of it. And that's
you know, that's been rejected as a heresy for centuries, right,
So what they call the Latin model, I mean basically
it's really that's kind of a term for really more
like what people maybe a few decades ago sort of
thought that was going on in most Latin like scholastic
theology or something like that.
Speaker 3: People used to have this view.
Speaker 4: That there was a huge divide between like Greek and
Latin thought on the Trinity. I think Michelle Renee Barnes
and people like that have pretty much destroyed that kind
of caricature. But anyway, that was the idea was like, well,
the Latins kind of start with the one and then
move to the three, and the Greeks kind of start
with the three, so they're more clear about the distinction
of the persons.
Speaker 3: But any case, I.
Speaker 4: Guess the basic way to put what people usually mean
by the Latin view is just that God is this
one substance, so one simple thing and somehow I mean,
you know, if you're talking about like aquinas, the persons
are subsistent relations whatever exactly that means, and the you know,
the worry of course that everyone has as well. Latin
trinitarianism sounds like it's really just modalism and social trinitarianism,
or Greek as they used to understand it sounds like tritheism,
and so what's the you know, how do you avoid
both of those? Is kind of but I think that's
not a very accurate.
Speaker 2: Well, but you would agree though that by the time
of the Middle Ages, as this is sort of a
side issue. But I know, how what people, for example,
people that are proponents of the Western right will hear
you say that there's not a big difference and think, oh,
we'll see he's saying that there's no difference between Polla,
Moss and Aquinas and everybody's teaching the same thing. You
don't believe that, do you, or that's not what you
mean by.
Speaker 3: Well now, I guess.
Speaker 4: I guess I would just say I think the more
I I mean, the further I go along, the more
I think maybe a lot of people just being misunderstood.
So like Augustine in particular, I find a lot of
times maybe we're just misinterpreting him. Like if you kind
of read him through a scholastic lens, then he looks
one way. But if you read him in the context
of you know, the other church Fathers at the time,
he might be closer really to the cappit oceans.
Speaker 2: But well, I'm speaking more of the Middle Ages though,
Like with how am I synods in the way that
they treat.
Speaker 3: About like a Quinas.
Speaker 4: I mean, I do think like Aquinas's fascination with divine
simplicity is a problem, and I think that's that's kind
of a criticism A lot of modern philosophers would raise two,
which I don't think is well.
Speaker 2: Part of the reason I bring that up is that
I remember years back I was listening to William Lane
Craig and he was he had a brief debate that
was only on audio with Bishop and Baron was defending
the Tomistic position, and I noticed that somehow or somewhere
along the way Wimline Craig apparently had got wind of
modal collapse arguments, and he sort of brought in this
critique of Tomism on the basis of modal collapse. But
he doesn't seem to have the toolkit of the Essen
Centergy distinction to really sort of make sense of it.
So a lot of what he talks about in these
discussions to me seems to be that he's lacking precisely
that toolkit, which is in my view also connected to
the a Pollinarian position that he has, because for him,
person is really equated to like a like a human
like an individual over there, a person is just an
individual with a body and of soul. And so that's
why it's the a pollinarian error, because if he visays
Christ is, you know, the logos is replacing the human
soul or the human mind in the humanity of Christ.
That's a confusion of nature and person on the level
of humans. And so I think that there's this nature
person mistake, and then there's Assassin's interim. It's the thing
that's missing in the in the WAE online Craig scheme.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I agree.
Speaker 4: I actually in this book, I find I find Craig
very unclear at times. It's very strange because I mean,
other you know, he's an analytic philosopher, and he's generally
speaking very clear, very precise, and I find it hard
to kind of parse. And also I guess he's changed
his views, so I criticize a bunch of stuff and
then he's like, oh, I don't believe that anymore.
Speaker 3: But uh, but yeah.
Speaker 4: One of the things that I, by the end of
it I pointed out is like, yeah, the way that
he understands being in person or person and nature is
sort of reversed. So what he calls try I put
it this way, what he calls tri personal monotheism, I say,
is what Gregory of Nissa would probably call try theistic modalism. Yeah,
it's really he really when he talks about so his
view is kind of there's God is like this one soul,
this one immaterial soul that has three sets of top
So he really has one hyposthesis that has three different powers,
which we would kind of one to one associate a
particular power with a particular instance of a nature. So
it's I mean, he really does ultimately have one person
with three natures. I mean that's kind of how our
or three energies. Explicitly he'd say that. So it's just
kind of the opposite of what it, you know, is
supposed to be. But anyway, that's yeah, that's kind of
his his view for better or worse, which I think
there's a million things you can criticize about that, And
I was hoping that Muhammed a Jab would, you know,
find something that it's just like he kind of focused
on a handful of things, could have gone a lot
deeper in a lot of issues. But anyway, I guess
we'll we'll talk about that.
Speaker 2: So getting into the debate, he opens up what we
online Craig does by he didn't really plan the five
minutes or however long they had, because maybe it's four
minutes or something like that, because he kind of like
was saying stuff and then the time right now. But
he did the sort of pitch on the basis of
the kalamb argument, which was intended to appeal to I think,
to the Islamic audience, which most Muslims don't really care
about kalam and medieval philosophical disputes. And that's really why
I think in this debate, Muhammed a Jab, who doesn't
know these topics, was relying totally on Jake by his
own admission, for a lot of this that the.
Speaker 4: Whole time he put out a Muhammed a job put
out some video just afterwards that was he just explicitly
said that.
Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, what it sounds. Yeah. There was
a funny mistake he made where he seemed to think
that the law of identity is the same thing as
the is of credication and that's why it's the is
of identification law, which those are not the same things.
But that was an attempt to sort of trick Williamlin
Craig with some version of the logical problem of the
trinity and the predicating of if the Father's God, the
Son's God, the Spirit's God, then the Father is the
Son based on identical predication. But you know, we've dealt
with that, You've covered that in terms of the debate
that I did with Jake as well. But before we
get to that, so he appeals to the colomn cosmologic argument.
I don't think it's a very good apologetic argument. William
ly and Craig believes that he's revived this and sort
of made it relevant again. But the first mistake that
I saw, and feel free to agree disagree with my
take on it, was he began his argument for the
trinity by saying first that it's a New Testament doctrine doctrine.
I think it's very important that we understand that it's
not only a New Testament doctrine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that kind of came up.
Speaker 4: I mean, we didn't unfortunately, really get into that in
any detail in the book, but it definitely it will
be obvious to you or any Orthodox person like that
we're just coming at this from completely different angles. One
thing that really like irked me, and I just didn't
have time. I didn't have word count, you know, to
actually address it. Was he he mentions a few times,
like in the Gospel of John, you know, when John
says Isaiah saw his glory. But the way that Craig
always like describes it, He's like, oh, look, John is
like he says like retroactively doing some or like retrojecting
Christ like back into the Old Testament, you know, in
this appearance of yahweh or whatever.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, no, that's that's not what John's saying
at all. Like that He's saying Isaiah saw yeah, exactly,
sitting on the throne.
Speaker 4: Like that's that's the idea, because I go into that
in my in my chapters I talk about the Theophanes.
You know, it is like one of the things that
you you about the Trinity needs to address because historically
that was this like major one of the major you know,
things that was kind of driving the doctrine was how
do we make sense? And it's very clear just if
you read.
Speaker 2: Justin versus Tripho for example, Yeah, yeah, like yeah.
Speaker 4: Early Christian stuff and also late Temple, late second Temple, right,
and then look.
Speaker 3: At the New Testament.
Speaker 4: I mean I go in and kind of mention some
of that and compare anyway, I go through sort of
the probability of it all. But point being like, it's
very clear that the New Testament authors themselves were looking
at the Old Testament and saying how do you make
sense out of the Theophanes and sort of saying, well,
Christ is the god that that appeared to Moses, Jacob
and so on. And Craig is just kind of like, oh, well,
they're you know, sort of reading him back into it.
Speaker 2: Or well, but I mean Jesus himself, John five through nine,
in the debates with the Pharisees, identifies himself as the
one talk to Moses, as the one eating with Abraham.
Speaker 4: So yeah, yeah, yeah, and he just doesn't I mean,
he just you know, he thinks that the Old Testament
Theophanies I guess were God the Father, and that it's
just sort of reading Jesus back into But for Craig
that's kind of all I mean, yeah, I mean that's
his view, right. It's just like, oh, we look at
the New Testament. The New Testament authors are indicating that
Jesus is divine and that's kind of you know, that's
all he cares well.
Speaker 2: But I mean again, maybe you don't agree with this,
but this is a key point I think against kind
of the natural theology presuppositions that William glene Craig appealed
to multiple times to say, hey, we believe in monotheism
just like you Muslims. He said this multiple times in
the debate. And you know, when you look at the
Vatican two documents when they talk about the purpose of
natural theology, it's explicitly in Lemgentium sixteen and Nostrotate three,
it's explicitly to find this common ground that we're all
worshiping the God of Abraham. The Muslims have the faith
of Abraham like we do. Vatican two is that twice.
But of course, to according to Paul, the faith of
Abraham is the faith in the Angel of Yahweh. It's
not a faith in a Unitarian deity. And this is
very important for this this discussion. So I think that
from an apologetic standpoint, that's a weak position to take
if you're taking the Christian position against the Muslim to say, oh, well,
we all believe in monotheism, but it's not the same monotheism.
Speaker 3: So anyway, Yeah, and I think that's right.
Speaker 4: I think it's I mean, it's it's an important point
because it's like, yeah, I mean, you can you can
say something like we all agree that the total count
of God's equals one or something like that, right, But
it's like, I mean, if you're worshiping a different god, like,
no one would be okay if someone was just like, well,
I worship Bail and Bail alone, you know, so I've
got one guy, I'm a monotheistic just you know, like,
no one would be happy with that, right, And and
it is.
Speaker 2: It does.
Speaker 4: It does put things in a very different light when
you when you point out, like, no, the god that
gave the Torah to Moses was Jesus. Yes, well, that
puts things in a very different light when you're claiming
to worship this god. But also, you know, it's sort
of like the scene where someone's like talking about how
cool Spider Man is and then Peter Parker's there and
they're like making.
Speaker 3: Fun of him. You know, it's like, well, you're maybe you.
Speaker 4: Realize the inconsistency and the irony of it, but you're
you're doing something that's kind of out of place there, right,
And yeah, that gets lost when you just sort of say, well,
we're all Manothius.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Next to issue that I think is tied into the
one about the New Testament only being or being the
basis for where he supposedly wants to prove the Trinity.
It says, I don't know where he would get this,
my guess would be the Protestant idea of the persepecuty
of scripture, and this idea that well, the text just
says what it means, and it means what it says.
This is a common refrain from Protestants and soul scripturists.
He says that there is no metaphysics, there's no baggage,
there's no hair splitting. The New Testament, doctor, the Trinity
is really only two basic tenets, that there's one God
and three persons. But I don't know, I mean, where
in the New Testament alone is that the two basic tenants.
I think he's assuming the Protestant presuppositions here that there
is this lowest common denominator that we can scale it
down in the New Testament. And then he said there
is nothing in the New Testament about intertrinitarian relationships in life,
which I thought was an odd statement.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we get into that in the book a little
bit too. He's he wrote a paper about the the
eternal generation.
Speaker 3: It's something like, what is you know, is Christ.
Speaker 4: Generated or be gotten in his divine nature? So he
has this view just well call him the sun because
he was incarnate and something like that. And he goes
through and just kind of you know, he he just
sort of tries to argue that the Bible doesn't sort
of explicitly make that clear whatever. But he doesn't really,
at least as far as I can tell, in anything
he's written, he doesn't really have any like positive reason
to reject eternal generation except for this thing about aseity.
He just thinks like, well, if you have the divine nature,
you have to be asse, which I think, I mean.
Speaker 2: I've called that a Yeah, that was the Jake argument
that you guys had.
Speaker 4: And I kind of gave a I gave a little
argument against that in the book. And also I just
pointed out, you know, this also comes down to a
question what is the Bible? Because the Septuagint says from
the womb before the morning Star, I have begotten the right,
and that's I don't know something else. I think it's
some jumbled mess in the masoretic text that does like
no one knows what it looks like, text corrupted or something.
But but anyway, I mean, I'm like, well, what's you know?
Is the Septuagint not the Bible. It's my Bible.
Speaker 3: It's so kind of and there's i mean, there's also
I think.
Speaker 4: Warrant for it in the New Testament. You just kind
of have to dig a little bit deeper. But but yeah,
he one thing that's frustrating too to me is he
he talks about what he calls the Biblical doctrine of
the Trinity, and that's what he calls it in this book.
But you would think that a phrase like the Biblical
doctrine of the Trinity would just mean like whatever the
Bible says about the Trinity, right, whatever.
Speaker 3: That ends up being.
Speaker 4: But of course if that's what it meant, then like
Dale Tuggy, who's a Unitarian, would claim that he believes
in the Biblical like what the Bible says.
Speaker 2: I think everybody every or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what's the content of that, right, Like everyone will
claim to believe it. But he like just stipulatively defines like, okay,
by biblical doctrum of the Trinity. I mean, you know,
boom boom boom, and it's like okay, but I mean
that's not necessarily like I don't know that that's all
and only what the Bible says about the like there's
more So it's kind of a textbook example of persuasive definition,
like he's just trying to kind of pack a premise
into yeah, pretend like that's the definition of it.
Speaker 3: But as I was gonna say, it's.
Speaker 4: Sort of defining trinitarianism in sort of a broad sense
of the term, as like one God in three persons.
But it might not be orthodox trinitarianism.
Speaker 3: It might be you know.
Speaker 4: I mean I argue like, I mean, when we really
talk about the doctrine of the Trinity, we really mean
what the Church settled on in the fourth century. And
so that's just I mean, in my view, that's just
what the term refers to. So I mean I just
kind of say, by the end of the book, like
if you're gonna just knowing like deliberately reject the Nicene
doctrine of the Trinity, like what's in the Creeds and
the Church fathers like just say, I reject the doctrine
of the Trinity, like I reject what English speakers are
referring to when they talk.
Speaker 3: About the doctrine of the Trinity, because you know, I
don't think it's in the Bible.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, even even the Church fathers would complain
that every heretic, whether it's you know, me, yes, or
whether it's Nestorius, would say, well, I believe in the
doctrine of the Father, the Son of the Spirit, and
my my doctrine as biblical. Yeah, but what does it
mean is of course the key question here. So a
lot of word gains, a lot of ambiguity, of textual
and referential ambiguity. Now, the next thing I noticed was
that and this this might be a little more controversial,
but he said there's no metaphysics involved in the Doctor
in the Trinity. I'm not sure that that's the case
even in the New Testament. I mean, you have in
Hebrews won the statement that the Son is the direct
image of the Father's hypostasis. There's some kind of you know,
meaning to that that's more than just what the text says.
I mean, this is again a very common Protestant argument
that texts just mean when they say, they say what
they mean. And when he was asked about this, why
do you you know, why do you have this position?
And he says, well, I believe in solar scriptura. So
you know, I thought there was going to be more
of a high falutin fancy reason why maybe we get
into asaity like you're saying, But it just ended up
being well, I just followed the New Testament, and this
is what the New Testament says. But again, what about
these other verses where philosophical quote unquote terminology is used,
like hypostasis.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I mean scholars have tracked down so many
passages for Paul and other people like use terminology from Platanism,
from Stoicism and so forth. So it's like even in
the New Testament, people are drawing on the resources of
Greek philosophical thought, you know, to make their points.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I agree.
Speaker 4: I mean I think it's I think people want theology
to be sort of metaphysics free somehow sort of feel
like it should be or something. But yeah, I don't
know that that really works. What was it you were
I was just thinking of too? Well, anyway, I'll think
of it later.
Speaker 2: But like Greek terminology and New Testament, what were.
Speaker 3: You saying just before that that you're.
Speaker 2: The text means what it says. There's no that text
aren't theory laid and they're just kind of you know surface.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, one thing, I think, here's what I was
thinking of. He he does this in the book like
he spent it's really the book was disappointing. I thought,
in some sense his first chapter a litle disappointing. He
is like ninety percent of his first chapter just going
through like New Testament evidence for the divinity of Jesus,
like so or evidence of I guess the divinity of
Jesus in the New Testament, right, So he tries to
make the case that the New Testament authors think Jesus
divine and that's like literally ninety percent of the of
the chapter. And then he just has like a page
and a half or something at the end where he's like, okay,
and here's my model of the trinity years how I
think this works, you know, And he's just like, yeah,
God is an immaterial try personal being.
Speaker 3: Boom, no metaphysics, no, nothing.
Speaker 4: Banned out, And I, you know, I just laid out
like here are kind of the arguments against the Doctor
of the Trinity, like the biggest ones in the literature,
and you know, you want a model to kind of
be able to answer those. And you also here's you know,
the theophany issue that's kind of an argument for the Trinity,
and you want your model to be consistent with what
originally was one of the major you know, impetuses if
that's a.
Speaker 3: Word for the Trinity.
Speaker 4: So uh, and I just get like, look, you're like
you haven't answered either.
Speaker 5: Of these big questions.
Speaker 4: I mean, the the obvious question is is the Doctor
of the Trinity tritheistic? Like is the Father Son and
Holy Spirit? Is that three gods? And just telling me
like there is one God, but there are three persons,
father Son, and Holy Spirit, each of whom can properly
be called God and properly means like literally, not just
metaphorically or whatever like that that just creates the quote.
I mean, that's what the big question is, is like,
how do you if you can call each one of
these God, then how is that not three gods? Like
you have to like that's the question, and he he
doesn't do anything to answer the question. I mean he
just kind of acts like it's just there's no problem,
and it's like, now you haven't you haven't addressed the
question at all.
Speaker 2: Well, one question I have because I've only read I
read Reasonable Faith, and I read his book Defending Genesis.
So that's really the only William Lane Krebb books I've
read over the years. I thought the Genesis book was
actually pretty good. But does he ever interact with the
Cappadocian models and approaches that you specialize and talk about
in Yeah, a.
Speaker 4: Few times, but very lightly, I would say, and in
a way that's like frustratingly selective. Also, so like he
has a paper where he was he was criticizing Mike
Ray's model of the Trinity, and he kind of draws
on like one of Basil's epistles and kind of says it.
You know, it looks like maybe Basil is talking about
this kind of view and rejecting it. But then, of course,
you know, if you point out that their church fathers
that are rejecting his views, just like oh, well, you know,
I'm a Protestant, I bring everything before the bar of scripture. Why, Yeah,
it's just kind of odd. So yeah, I mean he
kind of just vaguely, you know, he talks about how
the Capit oceans were clear, that there's a distinction between
the persons. Yeah, sometimes he kind of mentions them, but
it doesn't really doesn't really make munchy.
Speaker 2: Now that book is you had sent me, I think
an advanced version of that. I've got to read some
of that, did you Is that out yet or is
it still that out yet?
Speaker 4: No, it's I don't really know what's going on with it.
It's still the publishers. We all we all spend it
our final drafts like January first, like everything was was in.
So it's been there since then. I got and every
now and then I get an email from the editor
and it's like, oh, they're trying to figure out you know,
this is a typo or whatever. And so I'm not
really sure what's delayed it.
Speaker 2: But and one more time. The title is four of
yous on the Trinity, and that's what published.
Speaker 4: One god, three persons, four views. I think it's whipping stock.
Chad McIntosh will be the editor, So we'll see when.
Speaker 3: It comes out. I'll sart, yeah, come.
Speaker 2: Back and we'll we'll get a deeper interview on that.
Now moving on the next section. Is Mohammed a Job
giving his opening statement. William Craig did end his opening
statement with it which a good question, which is, you know,
tal heat is not a unified position in Islam. Of
course we brought this up a lot in the Muslim debates.
I brought it up to the Muslim Muslim lantern not
too long ago, and which is a fair question. And
then of course they will say, well that and my
edge up. So this is too quoquay. I don't. I mean,
I'm not sure it is too quoqua, because doing an
internal critique isn't too quoquay. And I think in a
debate it's a fair question to ask, Okay, I have
a burden of proof if we're going to debate the trinity.
But I don't think it's unfair to ask. You know,
you have the same kind of issue of reconciling the
one in the mini in God as well. It's not persons,
but for you, the attributes of all law, the dependence
relationship of the attributes. So I think that's a fair question.
But Mohammed a Job tried to side step but by
saying well, you don't disagree that there's one a law,
but we just disagree on what that means. Well, that's
the point. So just saying that you all believe in
one a law is another word game.
Speaker 4: Really we say, yeah, we agree that there's one God,
we disagree about you know what all that requires?
Speaker 2: And that led to deaths. Actually, this wasn't just a
minor dispute. There were just in the early Islamic stages
that were killing each other over this, so it's not
some minor dispute.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought about that too.
Speaker 4: When he said, like, that's a two quotque, I was
kind of like, well, like yeah, I mean, on the
one hand, it doesn't show that the doctorate of the
Trinity is right coherent, but it I think it There
is a point to saying, like, you know, you're offering
this argument against the Trinity, but you yourself don't believe
one of the premises exactly, yeah you did, It would
cause this other problem for your own view, So it
seems a little disingenuous, right, So I think it was legitimate.
I mean, maybe it wasn't right immediately obvious to muhammedan
job like how it was relevant or something, but but
I thought, yeah, it's relevant if like your own worldview
can't sustain.
Speaker 3: That or whatever.
Speaker 2: And I think that the next question that Hajab asked
what you brought up, which I think this was a
fair question and I think we would agree with this,
which is that William Lane Craig does not represent historic
or mainstream Christianity.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 4: And so yeah, but one that's where I was like,
I wish that Muhammed hi Jab would have just explained, like, what,
what exactly is the conclusion that you were aiming at
with that, because it's like, I mean, I'm listening to it,
and I'm like, yeah, I wish that William Lane Craig
would not be a trinitarian heretic. That'd be awesome, and
I agree you shouldn't be. But uh, and it's sort
of like vaguely embarrassing, like ahaha, you've got, you know,
this kind of minority and basically heretical view. But it's like, okay,
so but then where are you going with that?
Speaker 2: Well, the conclusion he tried to draws in non sequitor.
The conclusion was because Weenland Craig's trinitarian doctrine is outside
of the norm, outside the mainstream, that the trinity is
not a clear, conspicuous uh doctrine doctrine and Christians disagree well,
of course, but that wouldn't disprove the trinity.
Speaker 4: So I mean, that's that's I think that's part of
what Craig is trying to do with this really broad
definition of just like one God, three persons, that's the trinity.
Is kind of like, well then anything that falls under
that umbrella like count says.
Speaker 2: Which is interesting because Muhammed a Jab wanted a very
broad umbrella for Muslims all believe God has won. So yeah,
so if there was a fair standards here, yeah, he
should have granted. I think this broad definition, even though
I don't agree with that broad definition, but still from
a debate perspective, it shows I think a double standard. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Weird thing too about that is, I mean, if you're saying,
if you're gonna say, okay, William Lane, Craig's view doesn't
really represent like historically the mainstream Orthodox view about the Trinity,
then what that really does? That means you could demolish
Craig's view and you haven't really addressed like, you know,
the yeah, Orthodox view. So it was sort of like
he just thought well, if William Lane Craig like grants
that the standard view is incoherent or something, then at
the very end of the debate too, I mean he
even sort of he said this. He was just like, well,
William Lane Craig and I have demolished the you know,
traditional Orthodox view or whatever. His own view also has problems.
It's like, you didn't demolish it. He just both agreed
to not talk about it and sort of agreed to say.
Speaker 2: Well, this has to do. I think also with Muhammed
a Jab intentionally choosing William Lane Craig as his opponent
because it allows him to say, I'm debating the most
quote eminent of the Christian apologists that are out there.
Once I've done this, I don't really have to deal
with anyone else because he's sort of the figurehead of it.
But he's not really the figurehead if by all of
the argumentation my job is making, he's the fringe outlier,
so he's not so. But I think it was an
intentional choice to debate when like Craig and to explicitly
not choose to debate me and Sam or me or
Sam or me and Sam and him and Jake, which
he doesn't seem to want to do. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Right after that debate, Capturing Christianity did a review like
a few hours later or whatever, and David Wood made
some interesting observations about it. So one was that that
he like maybe he was going to just try to
from now on be like, well, I've already debated wien
Link Craig, I don't need to you know, I don't
have to debate anybody anymore, which is probably and that
sounds plausible. But also he made an interesting point about
who he thought the intended audience was, and he thought that,
you know, this maybe wasn't really directed towards like trying
to convince Christians that the doctrine of the Trinity is
incoherent and they should become Muslims, or trying to convince
people who are kind of on the fence or agnostic
or whatever, but just trying to but that he's really
is just kind of trying to keep Muslims from.
Speaker 2: No, it's their audience. In fact, I think the last
several Multimum debates were really just done for Muscile audiences. Yeah,
to find a kind of like well clip that clip
that little thirty second there and make it look like
Jay didn't know what he was saying or Sam didn't. No,
that's exactly it. And to that to that first point, actually,
Muhammed had Job today said that very thing. He said,
I've debated William Lane Craig, I don't have to debate
anybody else. Yes, he said that on Twitter today. So yeah,
I think that David was correct there. But again I
want to issue the challenge again to Mohamed d Job.
I did talk to Myron today and Myron said that
freshen Fit would host me and Sam shimun versus Mohammed
a Job and Jake, because Mohammed a Jab was saying
that Sam has to debate Jake first, then he would
debate Mohammed a Job and then Sam's idea was, well,
why don't we just do it two verses two? So
that should solve everybody's complaints if we want to do that.
But anyway, get it back to the debate. So it
seemed like he was trying to sneak in a little
bit of that logical problem of the trinity there, because
he said, if Father is God, Son is God Spirit God,
therefore Father is Spirit because all our God, this all
relies on just sort of one usage or reference to
the word God, as if God couldn't pick out different things,
which again I think comes from Jake. Thank you, and
we've covered that. I think you helped pointing to a
lot of the literature and various papers that deal with
different ways of counting anything you wanted to say, because
they didn't really go into logical problem. The tourney just
kind of just kind of mentioned in passing.
Speaker 3: Hey, I mean I took a bunch of notes.
Speaker 4: And then I was just thinking about that today. I
was like, did I miss something or did he just
never really it never came back. They claim that this
is three gods, which is kind of surprising, like seems
like that's the first thing a Muslim would want to do,
would be.
Speaker 2: Say this is.
Speaker 4: I kind of thought about that. I'm like, if they
just decided that that's kind of played out or well.
Speaker 2: And but to your point where this debate goes when
it gets to inseparable operations, I mean, unless I misunderstood,
you're saying that the model that this inverted Nissa model
that Wimland Craig has it actually kind of does lead
to tritheism, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I think so and it's one thing
that that comes up. So see this is one of
the So this is one of the things that was
kind of disappointing. I guess maybe Muhammed Hi jab A
k A. Jake would not have any way to to
know all this maybe, But anyway, this that kind of
comes out in the book that Craig has. This just
is completely inconsistent about what he thinks about counting and such.
So he'll when I talk a little bit about you
know how in antiquity people would think of that counting
works by your counting discrete, separate things, not overlapping your
things or anything. So, uh, when I talk about that,
he's like, that's crazy, that's that's nuts. The only the
only way you can count is by identity.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: And he you know, cites this paper I think I
think it was by Hughes or something. But anyway, he
was just like, oh, this is crazy.
Speaker 2: It was just a nuts.
Speaker 4: But then he says, because I talk about inseparable operations, uh,
and that the persons of the trinity have the same
will and they're you know all this, so he says, well,
that's really just one person. Then that's really hunitarianism. But
notice that if you want to say that the Father
Son and Holy Spirit are not identical, uh, but they
are just one person, then you're saying that we don't
count by identity. We don't we don't count persons by
see I mean part in fact, the paper that he cites,
like one of the main arguments in there about you know,
let's forget about this weird you know, relative identity and
counting all this stuff.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: One of the premises in that paper is like, if
there are in number of f's, and all the f's
are g's, then there have to be at least as
many g's as there are f's. So it's like, well,
if the Father Son and Holy Spirit are three anything,
then by that reasoning, they if they're all persons, they
had there at least three persons. Funny is he he
adopts like Gregorednis's view basically for counting persons. Yeah, but uh,
but not like beings or whatever. And I just point
out that, well, but what Craig calls a person is
what Gregor Nissa calls a god like a divine person
is what he's and what Craig calls a being is
a hyposthesis. So really, so I was like, really, there's
not actually any philosophical disagreement here. It's just a terminological thing.
Like what what Craig calls divine persons is what Gregory
calls gods. And Craig admits that Gregory has just one
of those. He just calls them persons instead of gods. Right,
So he's basically admitting that gregor Danissa has just one
god if they have in separable operations, which is the
whole argument that I was making, is like in separable
operations are key to, you know, defending the view that
there's one God. So he's just kind of incoherent about that.
And that was something that Muhammed a Job never really
got into. Another thing he does that's really weird is
he says that to me, like you have to count
by identity, anything else is incoherent and crazy. But then
when Craig is responding to Dale Tuggy, he says that
people in antiquity didn't even have a concept of numerical
identity like we understand it today, where you know, so
you can't make these arguments about identity that Tuggy was making.
And I actually asked if we were in a like
a round table discussion sort of thing in November at
this Evangelical Philosophical Society and Theological Society. We got a
chance to kind of ask each other questions. And I
asked him. I was like, so, you know, you say
that this is how counting has to work, but people
in antiquity didn't even have the concept of identity that
would need in order to be able to count. So
it was like, so, how were people in the ancient
world able to count? And he was just kind of like, oh,
that's a good question.
Speaker 3: The typically living that was his response, Just like and
they're like, okay.
Speaker 2: Well maybe he could buy the bullet and say that
they just didn't even count.
Speaker 4: There was no counting there, like how many dogs?
Speaker 3: So what his job?
Speaker 2: And that's that's good because a lot of people don't
know this area of critique when it comes to the
terminology confusion there. What do you think is the source
of William Lane Craig's terminological confusion. Is it just lack
of familiarity with the patristic ideas of nature, person and
all this kind of stuff, or is he just sort
of maybe obtuse about it because he's committed to his
definitions or is it because he doesn't really care what
the church fathers said because it's a biblical perspective. I
mean it seems like, I mean, it's just it's just
odd to not want to use the terminology that the
church father is sort of adopted.
Speaker 4: Yeah, to be fair, I mean, I think that a
lot of confusion has been generated by social trinitarians, Okay,
and I don't you know, I mean, maybe some of
that deliberately, maybe some of it not. So you know,
he may just if you don't really dig into it,
you know, maybe you would just sort of think, well,
this is kind of and in fact, I mean Hasker
even sort of made this point that it was just like,
surely you know about all of this, you know, debate
about what a person is and whatever. And I was
kind of like, I know, the debate is just a
dumb debate that like there's not that's really not that art.
But but yeah, I mean, social trinitarians are so like
it that social trinitarianism doesn't work if you have i mean,
unless you have distinct minds and wills and whatever, it's
not social trinitarianism anymore. Also, though, I think Craig i
forgot when he did. Is his doctorate in theology?
Speaker 3: I forget who.
Speaker 4: But he might have studied under I know he had
studied under Pannenberg, but he might have studied under someone
else there too. That was like a big one of
the big like early proponents of social trinity.
Speaker 2: H okay, his education.
Speaker 3: But so I don't know, but that's yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: That's that's an interesting point. I didn't know that. Now
the next section, williamline Craig responds by saying, well, you
have Koran or no? This is excuse me, this is
a Job responding to I thought this was a really
weak response. Williamline Craig said, you know, in Koran five
sixteen you have this reference to a misunderstanding of the trinity,
and Mohammed Job's response was pretty preposterous. It was like,
the Trinity is not mentioned in that verse. Well, but
the verse is about the relationship of Christ to the
triad and whether he's divine or not, whether all has
sons or not. So fact, the bay was not not
about whether the word trinity do is Is this a
reference to Trinitarian doctrines, namely the deity of the Sun,
which is a Trinitarian doctrine so by extension. So I
thought that was a really weak response and sort of
trying to sidestep the fact that clearly, and this is
a very powerful argument if you think about it, because remember,
if the Quran is true, if Islam is true, we
would at least expect them to get the basic doctrines
of Christianity correct, even if they think it's false, it
should at least have some basic presentation of well, these
errant you know people of the book believe that you know,
there's three persons and once you know one essence or something.
But it never even states that correctly. In fact, I
have iman to MEA's book over there. Even even to me,
it doesn't state what the doctrine of the trinity is correctly.
So that shows that the early generations of Muslims, namely
even to me for example, very important to Jake and
momented job and the authority Muslim school there, like even
even to me, it repeats this misunderstanding, showing that the
Quran actually does misunderstand the Trinity.
Speaker 3: Yeah I didn't.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm not qualified to say a whole ton
about the Quran, but yeah, I was kind of Yeah,
it'd be nice to have more detail, Like it was
just kind of like, well, yeah, that's not really what
it means. It's like, well, I mean I thought that
that passage was sort of about the Trinity like that.
So I mean, if we're talking about the Trinity in general.
Speaker 3: Then anyway, another thing with.
Speaker 4: That, I mean it's I don't know that I don't
know that Islam is committed to something like the clarity
of scripture the way you know Protestants are, but.
Speaker 2: Get at least the traditional ones are.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, so I mean then it's kind of like, well,
then you'd expect the Quran to.
Speaker 3: Be more the like.
Speaker 2: Well, in fact, the Koran says in multiple places that
the Quran makes all things perfectly clear, and then nothing
is unclear, although there is another verse which says some
verses only all I knows the meaning, So I'm not
sure how everything is clear. But then there's other verses
that say that only all I knows the meaning of them.
But anyway, that's a good one to bring up. Now
we only Craig responds by saying, well, look, there's two
broad schools of trinity. They're social and there's Latin. That's
not true. But if you're in a modern I guess
analytic product Protestant setting, you would only think that I'm
surprised he didn't mention any other models. He didn't mention
the monarchical trinitarian model. Yeah, yeah, it was kind of.
Speaker 4: I get maybe he just feels like he doesn't understand
it or something like that. Yeah, and he mentioned Hasker
because and this does I don't know, I kind of
go back and forth on this. So in this book,
Bill Hasker and William Lane Craig, I mean, they're both
social trinitarians, and they I mean, according to them, they
basically agree about everything except the eternal begetting right. So
Hasker thinks that the eternal processions are really important to
kind of secure monotheism, although when I talk about the
monarchy of the Father, which is basically the same thing,
and how that's important for monotheism, he seems to like
want to resist it in weird ways that I don't
really think he needs to. But and then yeah, and
then Craig just thinks, now they have to all be
absolutely I'll say whatever. So and I'm not really sure
if they don't actually disagree more really under the surface.
Speaker 3: But they kind of present it that way. So, I
mean that was kind of his his.
Speaker 4: I guess response to his job there was kind of like, well,
if you want to talk about how the you know,
the fact that he rejects eternal begetting, then just look
at Bill Hasker's model and it's basically the same thing.
But just and Craig, I mean, he is clear that
his model of the trinity is supposed to be like
neutral with respect to that question. So he's kind of like,
he personally rejects eternal begetting and procession of the spirit.
So but he's like, but if you want to believe
in the eternal beginning of the sun and eternal procession
of the spirit, you.
Speaker 3: Know, have ad it.
Speaker 2: Well that to that point, this was something that I
thought Mohammed a Job could have hammered harder, which he
didn't really he kind of touched sort of in passing
mentioned it. But if social trinitarianism is what Leland Craig affirms,
and his affirmation of that, as he says by his
own admission, was because of sol Scriptura and the New
Testament attacks, why was it that no one was a
social trinitarian until the nineteen fifties. This was the clear
New Testament teaching.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess it was Martin Luther and pastor Bob
from the one hundred Luther.
Speaker 2: I mean, does he.
Speaker 4: People who like hit you know, the guy who like
hid the King James Bible.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, Joseph Smith found it. That Joseph Smith
found it and prayed over it, like you know.
Speaker 4: I don't know Moltman or someone who you know, I
don't know, yeah, who knows? I mean maybe it's not
And Craig that we really out the.
Speaker 2: Doctrine of the truth exactly. Now, hit Job said something
I thought was odd, where he says and William and
Craig returns to that point of there being many schools
fighting over talheed, and the Job again says, yeah, but
we all believe God's wont which is again a deflection
from the actual criticism. And then a Job counters by saying,
and I guess he got this from Jake because I've
never heard anybody say this, which is I've never heard this.
You could please correct us if this is false. I
would assume it's false. He thinks that the Kappadocians teach
a social trinitarianism. That's just simply not true. And is
there somebody who argues this where with it come from?
You said that Craig or the Job in passing said
do you think that the Cappadocians teach social trinitarian He
says something like that, affirming that the Cappadocians teach a
social trinitarianism.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well so a lot of social trinitarians.
Speaker 2: Oh, I think a Job isn't familiar with these terms
because he's sort of just repeating what Jake's told him,
and so he would he was probably just assuming that
this is some sort of ancient model, and that's why
we Craig has it because he wanted to then say
that if you believe the Cappadocian social trinitarianism, why do
you reject eternal generation? Right?
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, yeah, well so a lot of social trinitarians
have appealed to the Capitocian Okay, I see support for
their model. So, especially early like in the eighties and stuff,
you'll have people pointing to Gregorbanissa in particularly.
Speaker 2: That's where they're getting that then.
Speaker 4: And the reason is because I think it's just that
the way at least people understood like Latin trinitarianism or
kind of traditional Western view was kind of tantamount to modalism,
if it wasn't just kind of a you know, kind
of repackage modalism or something. But and it's just that
the the capit Oceans are very clear about the distinction
of the of the persons, and.
Speaker 3: They accept that.
Speaker 4: They'll they'll sort of run with the three man analogy,
you know, like they're kind of you know that they're
not going to say they're three gods. I mean, it's
not totally analogous, but they'll they'll kind of run with
that for a while. And so it's kind of clear that, okay,
there's a distinction.
Speaker 3: And so social.
Speaker 4: Trinitarians would say like, look, that's you know, this Greek
tradition and we need to kind of recover that. And
it's there, you know, these kind of early social trinitarians
or something, and I think, you know, once you get
into the details of it.
Speaker 2: It's there.
Speaker 4: Not social critarians, but but a lot of social printarians,
especially early on, kind of appealed to them.
Speaker 2: Next Wymlane Craig moves on. That was where he makes
his statement that there is no New Testament teaching about
the inner life of the Trinity. I thought that was odd.
And then there's an argument from silence, which I thought
was also not a very good argument, which wym lane
Craig says, well, I don't believe in I assume you
saw eternal generation there. I don't believe in eternal generation
because it's not taught by the post Apostolic fathers. Well,
that's an argument from silence. I mean, yeah, it might
be the case that they don't mention it, but there's
all kinds of things that the New Testament first century
post Apastolic fathers don't talk about or teach that William
lane Craig also holds to, for example, the New Testament
post as the post Avastolic Church fathers don't list the
canon of scripture that William lane Craig has. And so
why would we think then that that it has to
be an explicitly written affirmation to believe that this was
something in the post Apostolic period. So a lot of
Protestants do this, They'll say they'll have this sort of
arbitrary standard of well, I don't have to accept something
like eternal generation of the sun because it's not mentioned
until whatever late person. I think it's mentioned by but
that's really again, I don't think that's a very good
reason too too. And there's all kinds of things to
post as I've start. Fathers will talk about.
Speaker 4: That Protestants believe, yeah, and I mean the you know,
the Canada Scripture is kind of the big like gotcha
because it seems you know, obviously circular and self referentially
and coherent if you But but yeah, there's a million
other things. And this is another thing that's really frustrating
is William Lane Craig also has this book where he's, uh,
basically he's he's defending like nominalism because he doesn't want
to say that there's like yeah, he wasn't doesn't want
to be a platonist and say like there's all of
these platonic forms or divine ideas or whatever that are
also eternally existent and you know that God's like dependent
on them for his properties or something like that. In
that book he has a list of like early church
fathers talking about how you know, God is the only
thing that is ungenerated and say basically, so it's kind
of like well, in that book he's going to appeal
to these church fathers. Oh that you know, God is
the only thing that's say or whatever. So you know,
that's it's really it's authoritative.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: There, it's like, you know, and anyway, it's really you
really should follow that.
Speaker 4: You know, it's at least at least has some kind
of to it, right, But it's like, yeah, as soon
as as soon as the church fathers go against you,
it's you know, well, yeah, I'm a Protestant, right.
Speaker 2: And on that same point too, that's odd that he
would defend a kind of nominalist position. Maybe he's just
changed his position because I remember a talk maybe six
seven years ago that I listened to where he was
defending divine conceptualism and it was appealing to platonism and
platonic arguments, which if you're a nominalist, that wouldn't work anymore.
Speaker 4: So in that book, I mean, he says that when
he sort of started that research project out, he anticipated
that he would end up being a conceptualist, but kind
of as he went through everything more he eventually decided
he's so he might have been a concept divine conceptualist
or something earlier.
Speaker 2: On Okay, now, okay, next it begins to shift into
Now this is the part where let's see somewhere. Yeah,
William L. Craig thinks that there's not a specific reference
for eternal generation the New Testament, and that the New
Testament just simply teaches a very scaled down three persons,
one God and that eternal generation. Will Lane cred didn't
explicitly reply to this, but the accusation of his job
is that Williamin Craig thinks the eternal generation necessitates subordinationism.
Is that what Craig argues somewhere?
Speaker 4: Yeah, now they out of my head. I'm not sure
if he does.
Speaker 2: He just think it's not a New Testament doctrine, or
does he think that it mightn't well necessarily, I think.
Speaker 4: His main his main worry is with ausaity. He thinks
that that to be fully divine you have to be
absolutely aw same.
Speaker 2: Okay, So is that why Jake got that argument? He
just cribbed it from probably from Willelan Craig.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Craig and Ryan Mullins also makes the same argument,
and Bill Hasker and Ryan Mullins have gone back and forth,
like y various papers, sort of back and forth about
whether you know a saity is required for divinity or whatever.
But but Craig definitely that's that's I think his probably
main motivation. I can't recall off the top of my
head if he talks about subordinationism in some other respect,
but a saiity certainly is the big issue for him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And this was the point where Muhammad a Jab
says that if there's clear and ordinary language that teaches
the Trinity, then why do you reject the traditional Christian
teaching which wasn't word Well, but I think that's that's
a fair question to ask William Lane craig.
Speaker 4: So what's the how would that argument go? Like, uh,
just that it should be clear in the.
Speaker 2: New Well, William Lane Craig as a Protestants arguing, well, look,
I'm just arguing the clear, scaled down New Testament doctrine
of the Trinity. And then Muhammed Adjab is saying, but
your social trinitarianism is against the you know, two thousand
year clear tradition of what most Christians accept as orthodoxy.
So more of an I guess a hermeneutical objection about
clear and ordinary language. But I think the job is
trying to score points with the just demonstrating that, look,
the Trinity is not coherence because supposedly it's not clear.
But that's actually a false equivalence, Right, something can be
true and not necessarily simple, and so a lot of
Muslims confuse simplicity with clarity or perspecuity, and those are
not necessarily the same things. In fact, when I debated
with Daniel in The Jaws, the first thing Daniel said was, look,
Islam's true because it's simple, God's won. I was like, well,
but that doesn't mean that it's true, because it does
like a version of Rockham's razor fallacy.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now that's one of the things that really.
Speaker 4: It's like a huge pet peeve of mind because I
you know, I teach a class on like kind of
critical thinking sort of, a little bit of logic, a
little bit of just various sort of and that's like
one of the big things that we talk about is
like when so you know, for people who don't know, like,
this is something that's gotten a lot of attention, just
like from from psychologists doing like empirical research about how
people reason and the accuracy of their reasoning and whatever.
I mean, basically the consensus is like there's kind of
two different systems going on in your brain at the
same time. So there's what they'll sometimes just call system one.
It's this like kind of intuitive, like fast, kind of
gut reaction, knee jerk sort of reaction. And then system
two is this like methodical, you know, conscious, deliberate going
through following rules and whatever. And you know the big
issue is just like the system one, like what intuitively
seems simple and obvious to us, Like that system is
it's it's very quick and accurate in certain contexts, and
then it just gives you the completely wrong answer.
Speaker 2: Yes, certain others.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and there's no way to know ahead of time,
like whether it's gonna be the accurate one or not.
Like it's just sort of like it gives you the
right results ninety nine percent of the time in cases
where it kind of is important to make snap judgments forever.
But so it's like it's one of the like this
is something I would I try to spend a whole
semester like telling students to not do this, Like just
because something seems intuitively obvious to you has not necessarily
like any relation to whether it is true or even coherent.
Speaker 2: Yes. This is a key point too, because I've had
a lot of discussions with Thomas lately and with Muslims,
and I've noticed a parallel between the discussion with certain
Thomas and with Muslims, and the pattern is that both
seem to assume that, well, look, everybody knows what monotheism
is and what divine simplicity is, and that a self
evident simple being has to be this, this, this, and this,
and then that being would also be perfect and we
all know that perfection includes this, this, this, and this,
So it's like all this metaphysical baggage that well, wait
a minute, how do I know that's the right content
for what you mean by one God? It's just all assumed.
We don't know that that's the case, And then if
you start asking them epistemic questions, it's like, well but yeah,
but we all know that. So it's like basically just
built on appeals to like peel to masses, fallacy, or
appeal to simplicity or something like that, none of which
necessarily tells us that that's the case or how we're
supposed to interpret what it means to be one God.
It's just assumed, but that brings us to the next point,
where William Craig says, well this the whole debate then
shifts about halfway through to Muhammed Jabs saying, well, you
believe in three wills in God? This necessitates conflict. Now
this was a I think this is a silly way
to go about the debate, because there's not necessarily anything
about multiple wills that necessitates opposition. He should have he
should have gone the route of what you say, of
saying that, well, look, will has to be some kind
of property of an existing nature or being, and that
would necessitate three gods. But he doesn't go in that direction.
He tries to argue that somehow having three wills necessitates
partition in what the beings do, and it necessitates some
form of opposition as a potentiality, which not necessarily I
don't think.
Speaker 4: Any referenced Scott Williams paper. So Scott's a good friend
of mine and he so I don't know. Maybe maybe
Muhammed a job didn't do a good job like articulating
the argument. But what Scott's argument is is if you
have three wills, you know, like social trinitarians want. I mean,
it seems like if you don't say anything else, then
it seems like at least there are possible worlds where
these three wills disagree, and you need to say something
about like why there wouldn't be right because you don't,
I mean, you know you can. It's fine to say
like the persons of the Trinity don't disagree and they
always cooperate, but but it seems weird to say they
could and they you know, they would get into a war.
Speaker 2: Right. But this is where William Lane Craig appeals to
this metaphysics of perfection, which I thought was odd because
it's very similar to them to the Muslim appeal to perfection,
which shows the presubpositions of metaphysical baggage that people have, because,
for example, Muslim thinks that well, to be the more
perfect being means in some cases that Allah is only
strictly just one, because to have real multiplicity would mean
some kind of diminution or some kind of imperfection, because
we all know that multiplelicity means a perfect unity, or
excuse me, perfection truly means a perfect unity without distinction.
So that's a metaphysical assumption about perfection. But in other cases,
right even to me. It says, well, we'd all wouldn't
We all know that to be a more perfect being,
Allah has to laugh versus not laughing, because laughing is
more perfect than not laughing. So there's this weird metaphysical
assumption about perfection. Wim Lane Craig then says, well, look,
there are three perfect beings, so I can appeal to
perfection of the beings, and therefore they would never be
out of a court in terms of three different wills.
I just thought the whole course of the debate at
this point gets into two bad arguments here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's.
Speaker 4: So Richard Swinburne has this kind of view that although
he swinburn believes in the processions too, so he kind
of has a natural way for the father to kind
of have some I don't know priority in some sense,
but anyway. One, yeah, one way social trinitarians will respond
to this argument is to say, well, the.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're perfect.
Speaker 4: So if they're all omniscient and they all are omni benevolent,
like they all know what's good and they all want
what's good, so they'll all kind of so number one,
they'll all just naturally want the good anyway, and then
they know, it's not good to fight and whatever, so
they would all want to agree and whatever. I hi
Jab brought up a kind of good point, but there's
you can go a little further with it. So he
just pointed out that God there are some things that
God wills that are He didn't really put it in
terms of like morally neutral, but that I think that's
the idea, Like they're morally neutral and they're contingent. So
just something like, you know, suppose there's a possible world
where the Father wants the sky to be blue, but
the sun thinks it'd be better if it was green,
and the Holy Spirit sort of likes red, and you
know they want they you know, they can't agree on
the colors, and they and they all have three different things,
so they're all kind of voting on different things. They
can't do you know, by democratically or something. And uh,
Swinburne's argument is kind of like, well, they would all
as perfect and good beings, you know, they would all
like want to resolve that disagreement peacefully, and you know
they'd be willing to kind of you know, defer to
the Father or something like that. But one one thing
that they didn't get into in this debate. And I've
heard people get talks about this and they kind of
it's kind of overlooked sometimes. I like this phrase something
people call it a Canadian standoff, as opposed to like
the Mexican standoff or who's gonna shoot first? But the
Canadian standoff quote unquote is like, you know, suppose you're
at the door and one person is like, oh you
you go first?
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, no, it would right, it would be
an internal stem up.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So it's like you can be perfectly like a good
will and you don't want to get in a fight,
you know, and you're and that's not necessarily enough to
resolve the decision problem, like just having good will, because
you can be. In some cases good will can lead
to the standoff, right, that can't be resolved. Like if
one person would just be like, yeah, okay, man, I'll
go through, then that would resolve the issue. But but yeah,
it could be just precisely, maybe the father wants red,
the son wants green, the Holy Spirit wants blue. But
then everyone's like, oh, well then we need to do
what you want. Oh no, no, we can do we
can do what you want to do. Oh no, well,
let's do what he wants to do. Well, I want
to do just whatever you guys want to you know,
So I think I think it is a problem that, like,
if you're gonna say there's three distinct wills, it's just
not clear how how it could be not possible for
them to like disagree and not be able to resolve
that disagreement. And maybe I mean, you know, I guess
you could just say, like, well, luckily it turned out
that they didn't disagree or something, But that's kind of
a disappointing, unsatisfying, you know response.
Speaker 2: Well, the next part waynmline Craig says that modal collapse
sort of makes an appearance, and williamline Craig says, yeah, well,
God does have I believe, contingent properties, which is odd,
odd language and terminology. Of course, I think he means
the essence entergy distinction and how we believe that, you know,
God has, you know, different possibilities of what he can
will to create or not to create, or that God
does different actions. But but that's odd, Yeah, odd terminology
is that maybe an I've never heard contingent properties.
Speaker 4: Anyway, Yeah, I would just take that as he probably
is just thinking of proper but.
Speaker 2: He says the power of creating, like to create is
not something that he had to do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the property of creating being a thing that has created.
Speaker 3: I mean, usually, like you know.
Speaker 4: Philosophers today, we'll just use the word property in a
very broad you know, just.
Speaker 3: Cover true about something. So I think that's how he's
using that.
Speaker 2: And then it gets into an issue. But what I'm
saying is that again, you know, because there's not an
essenceentrity distinction there. Even though will Lane Craig seems to
be aware of the motial collapse issue. Rather than using
and going to orthodox theology which resolves this question, it's
just another situation where well, I've got to invent sort
of my own you know, system or baggage or whatever.
I mean, it's the New Testament and the Old Testament.
I think, as doctor Bradshaw has shown in multiple papers,
that teaches the Essen Sentarti stinction. I mean, it's a
biblical doctrine, which so if you want to be biblicaal
Paul's teaching the you know, Essen Sceentnerti distinction of multiple
passages in the New Testament, where he talks about the
inner Geia working in him, uh to work with grot
with Christ and so forth, the power of God in
him doing a miss et cetera. That's all New Testament.
But why wouldn't we use that if we want to
resolve this issue of this specific point. I mean, and
Palomas does this, He says, you know, if you want
to notice the difference between essence and energy, says, look
to God creating and then ceasing from creating. That is
an example of this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think he have that apparatus, right,
So it's just kind of like, well, I don't know,
God has some necessary properties and some contingent properties.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But one thing that's this is another thing where I
get kind of confused. I mean, it's hard for you
to understand what his view actually is because if I mean,
if you're going to be anomalist, I mean, I guess
maybe he would just say, maybe we just have to
translate all of this talk about properties into talk about
predicates that are true about God or something, because I mean, there's.
Speaker 3: Not really any properties if you're a nominalist.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's a great point. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Which also, this is another thing that that muhammeda job
never brought up, which I wish that he had. So
Number one, I mean, even if you are a realist,
it's kind of a I always have this question, like
you've got this one soul that has three sets of
cognitive faculties, Like what exactly individuates the cognitive faculties?
Speaker 3: Like how do you get three of them? It's not the.
Speaker 4: Subject because there's only one subject, only one soul, So
that's not making them three. They're not like in three
different places spatially or something, because it's God and you
reject eternal relate the you know, relations of generation and processions,
so there's no like asymmetric relations to individuations, Like how
exactly do you get?
Speaker 2: Yeah, what individuates? What would he say?
Speaker 3: Graduays yeah, and there's no and and all.
Speaker 4: I mean if you just said something like they're just
primitively like they just they just come from the factory
that way, or you know, like it's like why couldn't
there be more? And if there and if it's possible
for there to have been a fourth person of the
trinity and divine persons are necessary beings, then it's necessary
that there's four. You know what I mean, so it's
like if you just sort of say they're primitively individuated,
it's like, well, why aren't there infinitely many persons?
Speaker 5: Then?
Speaker 4: And I don't, I don't have any idea, And he
never as far as I know, he's never addressed that.
And then and then if you add on top of that,
like he wants to be as hardcore nominalists, So like
I would think that that what nominalists would say. You know,
if you're talking about a cognitive faculty or a power
of thinking and willing, you just translate that, Well, it's
just a way of saying that this soul can make
decisions and have thoughts. So what does it mean to
have three that? I mean, if you if there's no
there's no such thing as powers. It's just kind of
a metaphorical way of talking about, you know, this this
thing can talk or think and will, Like, what does
it mean you can think and you can think three
things or will three things? I mean, I can will
three different things or two different things. I can have
a conflicted will or something. But I'm not I don't
have two different faculties of willing.
Speaker 3: So I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't know, you know, It's like, I don't even
really know what the model actually is. So I wish
that Muhammed a Job had brought that up at some point,
but oh well.
Speaker 2: The argument then seems to shift into parts whole situations
in regard to the product of three will three beings,
with three wills creating the world, what does one of
them do that the other two do not? And William
and Craig responds with saying, you are misunderstanding causal overdetermination.
I could have three matches that light at the same
time and there's not you know, one match that's doing
all the work and the other ones are doing half
the work or the third of the work or whatever.
That seemed to be a good response. Although I don't
believe in three wills or three independent beings, but that
would still seem to be a response that our trinitarian
model would use as well. What do you think about that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, William and Craig even at that point said,
I mean he actually used the phrase inseparable operations or
the operations you know, odd extra are inseparable, and basically
he just said, you know, he rejects like inseparable operations
as a general claim. But he's like, I do believe
in some inseparable operations, so like, I think creation is
an inseparable operation. So I mean I thought, I mean,
it's you know, I think it's a weird view to take,
but yeah, I mean I think it pretty much responded
to his to his jobs.
Speaker 2: Argument there.
Speaker 4: I mean, I I get I get into that in
separable operations more in my in the book in response
to Bill Hasker, because Hasker believes in the divine processions
but doesn't like inseparable operations. So I don't really I'm
not sure what kind of metaphysics you have to have
to get sometimes in separable operations like you're muted, I think,
or at least for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was gonna say, like, well, what what what
are the one of the times that we haven't when
one of the times that we don't like what determines
the right, Well, it determines when it's uh inseparable versus separable.
I mean it's odd.
Speaker 4: But yeah, and that and that actually comes up in
the thing with with Hascar and I is that's it's
like yeah, when, yeah, when when would you have them?
Speaker 2: When would you not?
Speaker 3: My I mean, anyway, I.
Speaker 4: Just argue that that causal powers are rooted in an individual,
you know, instance of a nature, not the hypostas, And
that may be kind of hard to see for people
at first, but I think it.
Speaker 2: I think, well, and that's that's that's ironically the traditional
Orthodox and even the Western position in the first thousand years,
we agree that this is why there's two wills in Christ.
There's two natures in Christ, there's two two operations, because
operations or energies signify the nature from which they proceed,
and so that's why there's one will in the trinity,
not three wills in the trinity.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, which is that's I mean, that's the thing.
So that, yeah, if you if you just think that
causal powers inhere in the nature primarily, then yeah, you
have to have inseparable operations in the trinity, and you
have to have two nature's and two wills and two
energies in the incarnation. So yeah, I think it's a
weird I mean, and the other I mean, your other alternative.
It seems like the most straightforward. If you're going to
reject that, you would think that you would say, okay,
powers just kind of directly attached to a hyposthesis then,
But in that case you would always have three actions.
Speaker 2: I mean, there would there would always be the same.
Speaker 4: Physics you have where you kind of sometimes have in
separable operations sometimes don't. But I think he might also
just kind of misunderstand how inseparable operations are supposed to work.
I mean, the cause a little a determination thing I
think works as a move in the debate for for
Craig to kind of defend himself, But I don't think
that's exactly probably the best way to think about.
Speaker 2: Does this I mean you may not feel this way,
but I mean, does this go back to the a
pollinarian mistake? Because pollinarianism is basically taking a feature of
a property of nature, in human nature, and saying that
that's what the subject of the person is. It's identifying
the human subject with the rational soul. And so for
Willen Lane Craig to think in his model of what
a person is, at least what I've undertoo him in
the past, I think a person is for him that's
just an individual with the body and a soul. There's
no notion of a subject that's more than just the
properties of the nature. But that would be consistent with
the nominalism to have that reductionist model. So maybe the
nominalism and the reductionist model and the pollinarianism are all
linked here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's actually I think that's probably right. I mean,
certainly it's pretty clear that there's this widespread kind of
assumption among a lot of philosophers and maybe evangelical theologians
or something.
Speaker 3: But uh that that, yeah, the.
Speaker 4: Cognitive faculties and wills and powers and whatever kind of
our hypostatic instead of natural. Right, And if that's the
view that you take, then yeah, you get three wills
in the Trinity and one will in Christ. And they
seem to not understand or they just don't like the
idea that the will is natural instead of hypostatic. So
and I think that's definitely what's going on with with
Craig and they, you know, they'll sort of associate the
number of wills and cognitive faculties with like that's what
a person is, because they they think of persons like
you know what we mean by a person, like a human, like.
Speaker 2: A modern human individual person modern modern.
Speaker 4: And they just don't yet or they or just don't care,
you know that that you know, hypostas is just anything concrete.
I mean I brought this up at one point, like,
you know, the Church Fathers will use it. We'll give
examples of hypostases besides.
Speaker 3: The persons of the Trinity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, don Damascus does that in Fount of Knowledge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he'll I mean they'll give like a horse or.
Speaker 4: Or you know, a knife, pieces of charcoal, like like
you know, all of those things are hypostases. They're just individual,
concrete things. And I so that's one reason why. Yeah,
I mean, like I realized there's this big debate, you know,
in theological what are persons? Is it person in the
modern sense? But it's like, I have no idea how
anyone familiar at all with the primary sources could ever
think that the Church Fathers are talking about person in
like a Cartesian sense or something like, I don't think
the gold coin is a person in the modern sense
of the term.
Speaker 2: Like that's just nuts, now, doctor Calil. I know he
wanted to call in and he had some comments on
the hit Job and Craig debate. Doctor Calile, do you
want to did you want to say anything?
Speaker 5: Yeah, Hi, yeah, thanks for having me on. I just
I was teaching, so I just.
Speaker 2: Log in now.
Speaker 5: So I don't know what you guys already covered, but
just to what you are saying now, maybe.
Speaker 7: Something that's a question for both but also yourself. So
I made some comments in a preview video about Craig
and hit Job. So one thing is, in my view,
if Craig is a nominalist, which.
Speaker 2: He is, right, yeah, we just we just yeah, that's
exactly what we were covering up.
Speaker 7: So then how can he affirm that Christ like has
a human nature of any kind? Like there's no such
thing as human nature under that view, Like, I don't
know how he can he can ascribe human nature to
anything right, Like for him, I don't see how his
incarnate Christ is genuinely human like in any meaningful sense.
And then I don't how can he even talk about
homousio homosios? Like how can you say the Father and
the Son are homosios if you don't like, like the
three divine persons, they're all bear particulars in Craig's view, right,
they can't as far as I'm concerned, And I haven't
seen anyone make this argument against him, but to me,
that the three divine persons are bear particulars, they can't
share anything. They're like, they're basically three gods. So I
don't know what you guys.
Speaker 2: That's that's exactly where the critique was going. I'll let
doctor will respond, but I mean that's exactly where the
critique was going, was that this would lead to trotheism
and that the nominalism would seem to be another big stickler,
a big roadblock here.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So I think what Craig I think would do is
he would just say, Okay, well, when we talk about
you know, so and so has this nature or that nature,
like we just have to He's just going to kind
of translate that into this, X, Y and Z are
true about this subject. So like if this subject has
such and such DNA and he's like this tall and
this wide and ways that, you know, like all of
that stuff is true. However that works, but anyway, it's true.
So if it's just true, if all these predicates are
true about you, then then the predicate is human is
also true about you. Right, So it's just going to
kind of say, like for him and nature I think
is just kind of a definition. Right, So if X, Y,
Z predicates are true, then like when he.
Speaker 7: Says the father is God or the Son is God.
It just means the Father is a part of an
entity called God. Like that's it, that's his, that's total.
Speaker 4: I think he would want to say, like X is
God means like something like X is all powerful, and
X is omni benevolent.
Speaker 2: And and and and. But but didn't you just say
you had said a minute ago that when he talks
about God possessing attributes or contingent properties, if he's anomalist,
that would be a problem.
Speaker 8: So well, if if you have Craig's view is ex
as God means exit ex as omnipotent and whatever, that
would still imply under normalism that the Father's omnipotence is
still different from the sons, because like there can't be
like truly shared properties, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean he might just they.
Speaker 4: That's kind of a pseudo question, assuming that there's such
a thing as that bothered omnisis or whatever and there
and there really is no such thing. That's a good question.
Speaker 3: But I think it's a problem.
Speaker 2: There's an echo.
Speaker 4: But but anyway, I do think it's a problem because
you do want to say things like there's one nature
between the person of the Trinity or Christ has two natures.
I guess I guess what he would say to get
to get two natures. He would just say, Jesus satisfies
all of the predicates that are required to call him human,
and then he satisfies all the predicates.
Speaker 2: Well, I might have I might have not had the
unmute because I'm trying to I have to unmute if
he's talking, and then I have to mute when you're talking.
But what doctor Calil said was, wouldn't if you're a nominalist,
how could you have a shared after between father and
son as a nominalist?
Speaker 7: Like?
Speaker 2: How could it? Because it seems like there's obviously gotta
be some kind of metaphysical shared reality there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, well, so two things. One is.
Speaker 4: And it's kind of confusing because he'll go if he's
talking about a nature, he's gonna be talking about generic
nature in a generic sense, like just you generically, you satisfy.
Speaker 3: These predicates or whatever.
Speaker 4: But he goes back forth because when he talks about
three persons in one being, like we were saying earlier,
what really his view amounts to is that there's one
hypostasis that has three minds.
Speaker 3: But he kind of.
Speaker 4: He just uses terminology in a weird way, so he
calls that one being. So it's sort of like sometimes
that usia is really the hyposthesis for him, and kind
of everything kind of gets backwards. So really, if you're
if you were going to accuse him of tritheism, I
think what he would really do is I mean, he'd
he'd be like, hey, my model says there's one soul,
so that's the one and the one concrete. I mean really,
I think it really boils down to like there's one
concrete particular, one bear particular. The real mystery of what
Jay and I were talking about just a few minutes
before you got on Khalil was the big mystery is
like what individuates these cognitive faculties if you're a nominalist, right,
because they're not real things. They're just like the fact
that you can think, right, or the fact that you
can will. So if there's just this one soul, and
if having a will just means it's like true that
you can will things, it's not really clear what it
could mean to say that there's three wills or three
cognitive facts.
Speaker 2: In other words, just ambiguity about what individuates but is
there any route because I thought earlier when you and
I were to me and you doctor, but you were
talking about problems in nominalism for viewing God, is there
is there no element of critique for Wayne Lane Craig's
because to me, it seems like it would undercut Christology.
It would undercut the trinity too, if you're a hardcore
I didn't realize it was a hardcore nonmalist.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's that's the I don't think. I mean, so
certainly you the the traditional view about the doctrine of
the Trinity. Absolutely, you know, presupposes some metaphysical machine nature
and there's some you know, you have to be some
kind of realists about you know, property or if not
universals and tropes or something. But you have to have
that distinction there. So it's certainly not going to be
the orthodox view. And I really don't see how you
could actually have a coherent view about the Trinity if
you're a nominalist.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't.
Speaker 4: I mean, maybe someone will come up with something, but
it's it's hard for me to see to see how.
Speaker 2: Now Doctor coils or any other Uh, we we have
progressed in the debate to the point where really they
were just getting into almost what's that.
Speaker 4: I was just saying, we're almost to their closing statements
from what we were doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we had got up to the point of the
closing statements where I just want.
Speaker 7: So in my opinion, you know, I've studied a lot
of the anti Trinitarian arguments that are on offer in
literature from major authors. I thought his job's attack was
very underwhelming, Like, of all the arguments he could have
brought against Craig or the Trinity in.
Speaker 5: General, I have found he just picked the weakest ones.
Speaker 7: And then I actually and you know a lot of
people online like Muslim sort of cheerleaders, and I understand
why they cheerlead.
Speaker 5: They're like, oh, no, like this was so good and
blah blah blah.
Speaker 7: But then I actually talked to three Muslim philosophers and
religion I'm not going to say who, and I was like, guys,
am I the only one who thought this was underwhelming,
And they're like, no, it was underwhelming.
Speaker 5: So what did you think of the hit jobs like
attack arguments?
Speaker 2: Well, before you got here, we had basically agreed that
there were several places where he could have brought really
stronger points. He hit on a couple strong points and
then kind of blew past them, so he really didn't
Both sides were kind of underwhelming, was my assessment.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's exactly what I's what I had thought.
Speaker 3: And yeah, agreed like I thought.
Speaker 4: I mean, I was really excited for it because I
was like, I mean, there's a million criticisms that I
would like to make about William and Craig's views on
the Trinity. And I was just like, oh, this will
be pretty exciting because he's this fantastic debater and he's
a really smart guy, but this is like, I think,
his weakest subject. And I was really, I mean interested
to just see, like, well, how's this going to go?
And yeah, there were so many things I thought, you
so many places Muhammedi job could have taken it that
he just didn't. And one of them was this issue
like how do you individuate these cognitive faculties?
Speaker 3: Like what how do you even get those? And he
never raised that.
Speaker 4: He didn't he didn't even really, I mean, Jaye and
I were talking about like, I don't think he really
even I guess a couple of times he mentioned tri theism,
but like I would have thought that would have been
that would.
Speaker 2: Have been really if he had hammered whining Craig on
tri theism, that would have been really yeah, hardcore, But.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I thought there was a lot of stuff he
could have said that he didn't. And also one thing
I Khalil before you got on here, that I was
saying to Jay was like I just felt like in
a lot of the arguments that Muhammed a Jab did give,
like he never really fully articulated like where he's trying
to go with that argument, Like he spent a whole
bunch of time talking about how Craig is a heretic
and his views not really mainstream. But it's like, okay,
but tell me where that's how that's pertinent, Like I
just make it explicit, like what do you you know?
Why is that showing that the doctor the Trinity is incoherent?
And he didn't really kind of connect the dots on
a lot of the a lot of his arguments.
Speaker 2: Any thoughts on thoughts on the closing statement or anything
else that comes to mind.
Speaker 3: Did Khilie already get offer?
Speaker 2: Are you still there? Did you want to talk to
doctor Blow?
Speaker 3: Maybe not?
Speaker 7: Maybe he's gone the sort of autopositions that Craig have
that doesn't contribute towards the thesis that the Trinity is incoherent.
Speaker 5: It doesn't.
Speaker 7: However, I'll tell you why he did it. So he
did it as a showman.
Speaker 5: He he did that. He started with that. Again.
Speaker 7: I don't think it's a smart thing, but like he
did it for showmanship, because he wanted to get the
audience on his side, right.
Speaker 5: He wanted all of you guys watching.
Speaker 7: To be like wow, like why we shouldn't support this guy?
And then what he wanted is he wanted some clippable
moment moments.
Speaker 5: Jake clipped it up. He clipped it up.
Speaker 1: So this is just this.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, they do this to everybody.
Speaker 7: They tried to do it to you.
Speaker 5: They try to do it to everyone. They don't usually
succeed when they do it. But that's all it was.
Speaker 7: But I do think I would be interested personally. I
have not actually seen a good debate between a Muslim
and a Christian where they act where there's like a
proper sort of more traditional Trinity on offer and they
actually get into the metaphysics of this stuff. I have
not seen a debate usually they're just arguing about scriptures
or this, that and the other.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which that's like I was hoping that this would
get into that because you know, you would expect that
it it could have.
Speaker 2: Now anything on the closing statements. Uh, we've come up
to that point there. Overall, everybody seems to be on
the same page. It was a pretty underwhelming discussion. It's
kind of short. Yeah, it was a little too short too.
It was only one hour. But yeah, final thoughts on
the debate.
Speaker 4: So yeah, at the very end, Craig, I guess, you know,
I guess he did go full preacher.
Speaker 2: Mode at the I was, I was like an alter
call at the end there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Muhammed a job kind of you know, criticize him for.
But and at first, I mean I was kind of like, ah, dude,
you know this.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I mean, I was a little bit like, come on,
I give a real closing statement. I was kind of like, well, okay, whatever,
that's what he's gonna do. But then I had thought
about it, and I was like, you know, actually I
kind of respect William Lane Craig for.
Speaker 3: For doing that, Like you know what I mean, Like,
it's that's that he you know, he's.
Speaker 4: A philosopher, but I mean everything he's done, he kind
of sees is like a ministry and whatever. I was like,
that's that's actually kind of cool. And I was actually
and then I thought about it, and I was like,
you know, I sort of felt like Muhammed hi Job
actually was sort of in preacher mode through the entire thing,
you know what I mean, like like because a lot
of it was him just like being really boisterous and like,
oh this is I will show you this is this
is incoherence. Yeah, right, irrefutable evidence, and like I mean,
he was sort of being like Southern Baptist preacher slash
Islamic and.
Speaker 3: Mom like the whole way through.
Speaker 4: And I was like, ah, why are you criticizing him
for I don't know, I was just a little I
found it a little off putting. But and yeah, his
jobs like last yeah, his his final statement was just
I mean just not he just said a bunch of
stuff was just not the case. Like you know, Craig
is retreated from the debate. Uh, you know, we're talking
about the resurrection and blah blah blah, it's not relevant.
Speaker 3: They we've both you.
Speaker 4: Know, dismantled a quinas together and you know, blah blah blah,
and it I mean, all that stuff is like, I mean,
they didn't dismantle anything, they just agreed not to talk
about it because they just kind of agreed that that
they didn't.
Speaker 3: Think that was true.
Speaker 4: I mean, it would sort of be like if you know,
if I debated a Protestant or something and we were like, well,
let's just let's just agree at the outset that Islam
is false and then we'll go on and have our
little Christian debate or so, and it's like, well, we
just demolished is like, no, you didn't you just agree
talk about that because we both I mean, that's you know,
it's just so ridiculous. But and yeah, I mean, and
I mean they didn't really establish anything. And then he
ended with another one of these like the Trinity is
complicated things and that's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that just drives me nuts.
Speaker 4: So like earlier I was saying, I don't know if
Khalil's still but anyway to you J I was saying, like,
you know, that's this thing I teach people in critical
thinking classes, like just because something seems simple and intuitive
and obvious, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's going.
Speaker 3: To be true.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: The other thing that I really dislike about that, actually,
if Khalil is on, maybe maybe he can respond to this,
because I think that is a horrible long term strategy
for Muslim apologists because what it what it comes across
as it comes across as these guys saying you should
be Muslim because it's easier to be dumb if you're Muslim,
which is not a good look for Islam number one
and number two, Like in the long run, because I've
said this about you, I shouldn't say, but I've said
this about Protestanism for a long but like evangelical kind
of fundamentalist Protestantism for a long time, is like it
leads this it's a problem if you have some approach
that leads to brain drain. And what happens is like
if you've got this approach like here, I'm gonna attack
the Trinity with arguments that are not that great, and
so smart people are gonna look at it and be
like nah, right, and dumb people are gonna look at
it and be like, oh man, this guy seems really
confident and whatever. Right, So like it's the approach they're
taking does nothing to attract or retain intelligent people, and
it only functions to retain and maybe attract dumb people basically.
And what's and what that means is like over time,
you're going to have brain drain, like all the smart
people are going to go somewhere else, all the dumb
people come into your camp. And then that's just like
this that just feeds into so then you then your
next generation of apologists are all morons. You're gonna being
unwittingly right like, and it's it's, yeah, just a really
bad approach.
Speaker 2: Doctor Cali, anything you want to sound out.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but come on, bow, Islam is so simple.
Speaker 5: There's only one God. And you know, you guys have
a hyposthesis and Usia all this stuff.
Speaker 7: I was a common man on the supposed.
Speaker 5: To worship Usia.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 7: You're right, Yeah, just sign to sign up here, give
me your email address. Please make a donation at Sapiens Institute.
You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, the the Mormons say that if I pray,
I'll feel a burning bosom and burning my bosom, so
that that seems pretty simple to me. So I guess
Mormonism is true. But thank you for that. Uh uh,
we got some super chat. Somebody wants to ask that
Doctor Bow will have to go soon. Uh, thank you
for joining us, Doctor Coalili. You're welcome to stay if
you want. If anybody wants to call in and ask
a couple of questions, you can. We have a few minutes.
I don't want to stop doctor Bow from any other comments.
Some of the debate if the only thing.
Speaker 4: Is another thing that I found kind of just obnoxious.
Was after that, after the closing statements, Cameron Bertuzzi was like,
you know, let's end with you know, I want to
end by you know, why don't you say one thing
that you like about the other person's view, you know,
And like Craig was genuine about it. He's like, you know,
I like monotheism and the denial of divine simplicity that
you had. You know, like there's lots of stuff about
Islam that you know, Christians agree with and like, and
so he was kind of a genuine, you know response,
and then Muhammed a job just like took it as
an opportunity to take another dig.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 4: It was just kind of like, well, you know, he's like,
I like Craig William Lane Craig personally, and he's just like,
I like his bravery in denying the eternal generation, and
you know, like it's kind of like, dude, come on,
like just just you know, say something nice.
Speaker 3: That was the one that anyway, I'm.
Speaker 7: Just curious who's the first Christian to deny the generation.
Speaker 5: Of the sun?
Speaker 4: As well, as far as I know, it is from
an Alexander role in sixteen eighty nine, which actually.
Speaker 2: You're cutting out, doctor bo. Could you say that again? Oh?
Speaker 4: Sorry, So Muhammada job actually mentioned in the debate Hermann
Alexander role in sixteen eighty nine. As far as I know,
that is the first person to like explicitly reject it.
And I'm pretty sure that he got that from Jake,
and Jake got that from me, because.
Speaker 3: I don't know anyone else who you know, is made
much out of that.
Speaker 2: So are you saying, second, he said, are you saying
that you prepared Muhammed a job for this debate? Yeah? Yeah, I.
Speaker 4: Mean I guess it indirectly by just saying stuff and
Jake sort of copies and tape indirectly, I did.
Speaker 2: Lily Secure says for three dollars, how would you respond?
To the powerful chronic argument against the Trinity that Jesus
and Mary eight food. Don't you see the signs are clear? Well, yeah,
that's a joke, super Chad, I think that's a bad argument. Anonymous,
ten dollars, God plus the One Holy Catholic Orthodox Church,
thank you for your content and thank you for no
compromise on orthodoxy. A milion assentic ten dollars. Thank you
Jay and doctor Bo for this theological discussion of guidance.
Emilion again for ten dollars. Can you politely ask doctor
bolt Bo, when are you going to create a YouTube
channel and allow us to follow your work?
Speaker 4: Well, you can follow my work. I have most I
think I have everything that I've published except for this
book on my website and most or all of my
YouTube appearances and stuff on it.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've thought about doing.
Speaker 4: Some kind of YouTube like interview kind of series or something,
but I would almost have to have someone else who
would manage all the technical stuff, because.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, it's it's its own it's a hassle, it's
its own job, for sure. Anonymous, five dollars. Holly Orthodoxy
is true? You think, Anonymous, anybody else want to call
in or any other comments, doctor Kalil, anything else. I
don't see anybody who wants to If you want to
request to speak, just hit the request to speak button
and I'll bring you up. Nobody else. All right, Well,
we will look for that book when it's out, doctor Bou.
Appreciate you coming back on and thank you for doing
the debate review. Yeah, let's when the book comes out.
Come back and we'll hear somebody wants to ask a question,
So let's see what MKG has a question.
Speaker 5: Go ahead, man, yes, hi, thanks ring me out.
Speaker 6: Last second, I had a question regarding the last thing
he gets touched on. Regarding the fact that Islam's claim
of simplicity and trinity being complex and you guys saying
that it attracts dumb people and all that, I think
that's a still important issue of the average person. I
know Khalio kind of threw it as like a throwaway comment,
but the fact that Islam attracts common people with that phrase,
people like Sneako and stuff like that. I'm wondering what
you think the best, because I do agree from like
the smart people perspective, that's where it kind of falls short.
But from the average side of like if we were
to see chiosks of religion basically Christianity and Islam, and
then the common man would go and ask each person
why this is a good thing or why this is
the religion of truth? Basically the one phrase that each
one would use like a their thesis statement. I think
Islam's case to the common person might be more appealing.
I'm just wondering, even though I agree with the monarchical trinity,
I'm wondering, what do you think the counter would be
from an orthodox Christian?
Speaker 2: What would Yeah, what would you say to somebody who says, well,
why wouldn't we think that you know it's true because
you know it's simple. How do you convey that to
somebody who's sort of the common man or whatever?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think the conclusion point of like why would
God make the religion for all people complicated?
Speaker 5: I think that's something that a Muslim would.
Speaker 4: Say, Yeah, well, I mean to that, I would just say,
it's not like God is making I mean, it's not
like a religion is God just like makes up right,
It's it's whatever's actually true, So it's not a God
could just sort of well, I'm going to make reality
you know, different or something like that. But I do
think that you raise it an interesting point because this
is something that I realized when I was doing my
dissertation and going through Gregory of Nissa's Letter to a
Blabyous and realizing like the way people have had it
such a hard time kind of reading and interpreting that
text because they didn't realize that the way Gregory of
Nissa himself is thinking about it is he's thinking, who
are the different audiences that we are talking to, and
how do we give a response to each of these
audiences that will satisfy each one. And he gives this
first argument or this response where he says, well, if
you're talking to simple minded people who are just kind
of straightforward and you're just speaking offhand or whatever he says,
you know, I would just say, well, you know, our
religion is it's not like polytheistic like the pagan Greeks,
but it's not this like unitarian view like the Jews,
and we have this like middle way between, you know,
between the two. And then he just immediately is like,
of course that doesn't really answer the question, Like that
doesn't solve anything. And so people have looked at that
and like, well, why does he even say that, you know,
what's he what's doing? And what I realized is he
what he really is thinking is he's he's actually got
three audiences in mind, and he's he's really giving a
response to a bishop, and he's thinking, like, well, in
a pastoral sort of way, what do we say? And
so he does acknowledge, like, yeah, you've got to You've
got to have a response for the common man. It's
just that the response to the common man needs to
be something simple, and it might not really solve, you know,
fully really solve the issue.
Speaker 2: But we lost him for a second. He'll be back
just one second. We lost you for a second. But
we lost you for a second. There you were saying,
the last thing you said was about the common man,
and then you do need to give this response.
Speaker 4: Go ahead, okay, well yeah, just that that, you know,
Gregory is thinking, you do need to kind of think
pastorally and and so have a response for the common
man and have responses for educated people. So I do
think it's important, and yeah, I mean I don't know.
I think I think it's a good point. Like you know,
I guess rhetorically, you do want to have you know, good.
Speaker 2: Well, but I think every every religious position kind of
has this issue. Any any major world religion, it's gonna
it's gonna you're gonna have people saying, well, look it's
really simple, our position is true, and then any of
the ones that you get into, even Islam, you're gonna
find out, well, there's a lot more complexity here than
was maybe on the surface. So you know, there's not
any like silver bullet way to avoid the possibility of
you know, thinking that the system is on the surface
just really simple and scale down. Then you get into it,
you find out there's a lot more complexity involved. And
that's going to be true for any position.
Speaker 7: And as a Muslim, I will say, Islam is complex.
Islam is not simplistic. In all throughout Islamic civilization, both
Sunnis and Shia have always distinguished between the common people
known as the Alam and the intellectual elite known as
the kas. So this is a very common distinction. So
there's always been an internally complex Islamic discourse that is
for the elite that they don't actually share with the
common people, like they purposely.
Speaker 4: Don't do it.
Speaker 7: They're like very specific protocol than every religious science of Islam.
And if you read their writings, they're always distinguishing between
the commoners and the elite, and they're like, oh, we're
writing for the elite, So this is it's really false advertising.
When people come and say, oh, Islam is so simple,
I mean it's really not. Historically, it's not Islam like Christianity,
is a combination of scripture, tradition, and interpretation. Like those
three things. There's not one Islamic you know, sect or
denomination that is free of scripture, tradition, and interpretation. Islamic
law is one of the most complicated things. Like ever,
it's very complicated, right, Islamic theology is like even need
to say, it's more esoteric than Islamic law. And the
thing is to be a Muslim, whether Shia or Sundi,
you are required before you understand the way to live,
you are required to affirm an Islamic creed, a set
of beliefs, and you're required to understand what you affirm,
just like you guys have a nice in creed and
these creeds, I assume a Christian has to know the
creed that they affirm, right, they can't affirm it blindly,
so a Muslim has to affirm a creed out of conviction.
Speaker 5: And you cannot affirm a.
Speaker 7: Creed if you haven't studied some degree of Islamic theology.
And guess what that's full of terms like substance and
accidents and necessary and contingent. So this is just a
mirage that, oh, Islam is simple, and you know, all
the other religions are complicated. Actually, as a religion professor,
I'll say all religions have varying degrees of complexity. There
is a simplistic version of Christianity. God became man, so
man might become God. There very simple like that will
appeal some level of Christians that will satisfy them, and some.
Speaker 4: Level of Muslims.
Speaker 7: The Shahada alone will satisfy them.
Speaker 5: They won't go deeper, and that's fine.
Speaker 7: That's the beauty of religion that all religions contain layers
of complexity and simplicity, and every human can sort of
engage with the level of depth in their religion that
they have the capacity to bear.
Speaker 5: That That's how I feel.
Speaker 3: I agree, And also i'll this too.
Speaker 4: I mean, I ever since I was a kid, I mean,
I've always been interested in just religion in general. I
like to study ancient mythologies and like I like to
learn about Buddhism and Hinduism and this stuff. And and
the way that Islam was always presented to me, I
always felt like, this is the most boring religion that
I don't really like, I'm not really that interested in
it is it just seems so like because it always
was presented when I was a kid or just you know,
reading about stuff on my own, like it's just like, well,
it's just this book and you have there's a few
rules and whatever, and there you go.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 4: And I was just like that's it, Like that's this
is you know. And and it's only in the last
several years that i've kind of you know, really well.
I mean, I guess when I went to grad school,
I kind of started learning something about Islamic philosophy and
I was like, oh, that's interesting. They actually have this
whole you know, history of philosophical debate and whatever. It's like, oh,
there's actually a whole yeah, Like I mean to me,
that makes it more much more interesting. Like now I
kind of am like, oh, I'd like to know more
about all of this. So I think Yeah, it's it's
not a it's not a good way to present.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the attempt at selling point of oh this is
like the super easy thing. It might cut both cut
both ways.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, uh Joe, but it's going to turn off
some people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly exactly, Jordain. You have a question, Well, it's it's.
Speaker 9: Pretty much on the topic that you've had this whole
week about paid these factories and what doctor cooleg just said.
Why even though like over the last like fifty years,
everyone is every church, Protestant church in mainstream like dummed
out Islam, why is it continued?
Speaker 5: Like why is this process.
Speaker 9: Continued of abandoning like any higher intellect within within religion.
Why is it persistent even though the long term it
always ends in liberalism, in atheism?
Speaker 5: Why is it persisted? Do you guys think?
Speaker 2: I think there's multiple reasons. I think there's a there's
a cultural trend. It's can you it's it's really loud
in the background, so let me so. I think there's
a cultural trend in general of people leaving theism, leaving
the church, leaving Christianity because the culture is so toxic.
So it's constantly pumped at them to engage in degeneracy,
to accept degeneracy. The education system, the government from a
top down is pushing it. There are wealthy people who
influence religions and they donate to religious institutions, to seminaries
to make them into atheism factories. So all of those
things play a role. That's that's my take on that.
Why do you think there's a can constant push, doctor Branson?
Speaker 4: I mean, I'd agree with all that, but I'd also
say to me, I think there's this kind of like
business model for churches that I mean, especially in America,
Like it's it's become a thing at some point to
kind of like treat it like a business. Like you're
thinking about marketing and getting you know, your people are
like customers that are going to come in and and
I mean like if you want to be marketable to
the widest audience, like you want.
Speaker 2: To be the lowest common nominator.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean really Like I mean, how could you
get like a huge megachurch, you know, if you're taking
really really specific views on a lot of issues and whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly. Yeah, I mean if you, yeah, your anti schedules,
anti this and that, like that's going to cut down
on the you know, offering plate so exactly that there
might be a you know, it might might hurt the
bottom line. So business church, which I did. I did
a livestream make it coat like if on a business
church a few years ago. So a lot of you
have probably seen that. I don't see any more. Super chats,
Doctor both, thank you for joining me, Doctor Calill, thank
you for joining me as well. Any any final thoughts,
anything else to debate? What have you thought of the
recent Muslim debate. I don't know if you've seen the
other ones, the ones that we did with Daniel and
Muslim Lantern.
Speaker 3: No I heard about that.
Speaker 4: I just now watched the first I don't know, maybe
half hour something, but it was a pretty long one,
so I've gotta gotta go through more.
Speaker 3: But I did.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I notice the opening like this is simple and you.
Speaker 2: Know, and again I want to remind people. Muhammed a
job as well. Like Sam and I Fresh and Fits agreed,
we're happy to do two on two. So Mohammed a job,
doesn't want to debate Sam. Shemoon directly wants Sam to
debate Jake. Easy solution, Jake, Muhammed a job debate me
and Sam on Fresh and Fit. Myron said he's happy
to do that, so I'll issue that challenge and thank
you for joining me. Doctor Bow and everybody can check
out his website. He's linked if you want to go
see his lectures and his media appearances. I highly recommend
this series on monarchical trinitarianism that's over at his website.
You can also find his uploaded videos at Orthodox Rahta.
Doctor Klill is also on YouTube as well under his name.
So thank you guys and appreciate you coming on