First DL from Mobile Command Center, Then Dale Tuggy Punches Low

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But we are in the Alpha and Omega travel rig, I'm not sure what it's called, a fifth wheel.

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I'm so new to the RV world that I had heard of fifth wheels and toy haulers, but I had no idea what any of that stuff meant,

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I just didn't know. And so when I rented that little

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RV that I went back to Oklahoma with and met some people who know about RVing, then

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I started learning stuff and learning how a fifth wheel is attached to your truck right over the back axle, and so it's more stable and better turning radius and stuff like this.

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And to make a long story short, that wasn't that long ago, and here we are. I've been putting some stuff away,

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I got the app working that allows me to sit in the truck and control everything in the unit, put the slide out, do all that kind of stuff.

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Now I'm hearing myself, they're coming back to me. I'm sure they can hear that too.

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So, amazingly, the only problem we're having is on Rich's end, and everybody else can hear you too,

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I'm sure, but I bet they can because I can hear you through my speakers and that's where my microphone is, so yes, they can hear you just fine.

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Anyway, so it's working.

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I could see situations where it might be a bit challenging, but hey, for the first shot, not bad.

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I'm not out on the road yet, we are where our unit is stored at the moment, and so next week,

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I'm going to be taking her out on the road, I'm going to be taking her up what's called

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Five Mile Hill, and everybody in Phoenix knows Five Mile Hill. It's a challenge, no two ways about it, and we'll see how the truck does and all the rest of that fun stuff in the process, but we'll set up and we'll be in a sort of a remote location, and that way we'll really find out how well this will work.

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Now, it's supposed to have Wi -Fi, so we'll see. That'll be interesting to see if we can, you know, it's a grand experiment, and you get to come along with us.

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I do want to express my sincere thanks to all of you who have given to the Travel Fund to help defray the beginnings of this journey, this trip.

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I'm going to be going out on the first major trip, starting,

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I believe, at the end, yeah, right at the end of July into August, and already have set up a number of, going to be doing a little mini conference with Jason Lyle.

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I'll be speaking at Redemption Hills Church in Denver, and of course,

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I'll be up at the Grace Agenda Conference in Moscow, and as far as I know, speaking at Christ Church on the following Sunday, and then, so lots of cool stuff that we're going to be able to do, and then this is how

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I'm getting the G3, and I'm working on the trips, the stops on the way out and on the way back as far as G3 is concerned, and looking forward to seeing everybody there.

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Really, at one point, I thought about, what if I worked it out to where I could take this and park it near wherever we're going to be and have a special little study in here with about,

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I don't know, we could probably fit a good 10 people in here, maybe do something fun like that.

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I don't know if I want to go through all that, so it depends on the weather and everything else back there, but here we are.

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And so, again, many thanks to everyone who's made this possible and will continue to make this possible.

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I mean, one of the things I was thinking about as we decided to do this was if Joe Biden has his way, a gas that could cost $10 a gallon by next year, and of course, the only thing

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I can think of that might keep that from happening is the fact that all the people in Congress want to get reelected, and they don't have the control of the voting machines that the president does.

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So maybe that won't happen, I don't know. But anyway, there'll be costs down the road.

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And so to everyone, thank you very, very much. And then let's just see, starting next week, how doing.

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We're good. My plan is to have the doors right here, and I've got the awning out a little bit to provide some shade from the sun.

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This would have been perfect yesterday with the rain and all. It would have been,

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I mean, it only got up to 80 something while it was raining, and then it got to 100 later. But yeah, there you go.

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We will be doing dividing lines from out there. I mean, I could put this computer and this light and this camera on a picnic bench underneath the awning and show you the great outdoors if that's the way we need to do it, depending on where I am and how the

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Wi -Fi works. So there you go. So we wanted to try to make this work.

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It's working, and we're excited about that. And hopefully you are as well.

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Just a couple things. I don't know how long we'll go today. Like I said, we've got a little generator running outside.

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That's how the air conditioner up there is working, and it'll be easier.

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We can just plug in and do things like that. But so I don't want to, well,

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I don't like the phrase, push our luck, because I don't believe in luck. But I want to do things appropriately, shall we say.

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But anyway, interesting stuff yesterday.

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I mentioned at the end of the program that, yeah, don't push your providence is what

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Rich says. I mentioned at the end of the program from the large studio that I was going to listen to an interview that Jake, the

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Muslim metaphysician, did with Dale Tuggy. Now, we've talked a little bit about Dale Tuggy in the past.

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There's been a lot of interaction. He is a Unitarian, primarily a philosophical

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Unitarian. And the Unitarian folks, the buzzard group, oh,

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I guess I can move my table over there. The buzzard group, those folks, he's sort of their big philosopher type guy and buzzards their exegesis guy, and they all have different views.

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Unitarians have never been overly... So Unitarians are primarily held together by their denial of Christian theology, not by anything overly positive that would actually do much.

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But anyway, so I found the time to listen to the interview that Jake did with Dale Tuggy.

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And I'm just going to be perfectly honest with you. I've listened to Dale Tuggy stuff in the past, and every single time

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I have the exact same thought. This is just stultifyingly boring. I mean, just dry as the desert.

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There's no passion, there's no excitement. It's just sort of like, okay, all right, whatever.

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And so I'm just sort of listening along going, okay, you know, we're going to talk about this, that, and the other thing. And of course,

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Jake's real into philosophy, analytical philosophy. And so they're doing their conversation and talking about how analytical philosophy is where it's at.

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If you're not into analytical philosophy, you're really not anybody anymore and all this kind of stuff. Finally, about 45 minutes in,

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Tuggy started getting a little more animated because he started talking about apologists.

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Now, I first started seeing his name back, oh, I don't know, 15 years ago, maybe somewhere around there.

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I forget exactly where it was, but it was on Triablog primarily. And I was seeing these long articles that I think

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Jason Engler and James Anderson, I know, engaged with him and stuff like that.

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And I wasn't exactly sure where these debates were taking place. They were primarily written debates and stuff like that.

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And, but I just sort of remembered the name, didn't find it all that interesting to get involved with, but I saw some fairly interesting articles in response to him and things like that.

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And then I've heard some of the debates have happened over the past couple of years. I know Michael Brown did one with him.

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And Chris Date, I think, did one with him as well, as I recall. I think that's the case.

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Anyway, he's been rather fully responded to by all sorts of other folks, and he's extremely dismissive.

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I mean, the man just, I don't know if he just doesn't reflect upon his own words or whatever, but he's just incredibly dismissive of any

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Trinitarian perspective. It comes out in what we're going to play here in a moment. Well, the issue comes up with the

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Doctrine of the Trinity, and I think we can learn a few things by listening to what a

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Unitarian says about the

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Doctrine of the Trinity, the distinction of being in person. They just basically say you can't really consistently come up with a meaningful differentiation and healthier.

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And also, then, some of the church history stuff. Tuggy is not an exegete, even though he's doing a paper on John 1.

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I'm really looking forward to seeing that one. I'll interact with that. That'll be well worth it because Unitarians can never, ever, ever hold a fully

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Orthodox view of Scripture. Unitarianism has always led to a collapse of a view of the highest view of Scripture.

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Always has. Just look at history. Just it's plain as the nose on your face. But he's going to be doing something about John 1.

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I can't wait to interact with that because he's not an exegete, and he is not a historian, but he makes claims in both those areas.

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So really, there's nothing that Tuggy doesn't address that he just doesn't view himself as really the cat's meow as far as his expertise on things.

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So when he got into this stuff, I started listening a little more closely. OK, well, that's interesting. Wow, boy, is he really dismissive.

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And yeah, I didn't understand that one, right? And then eventually he started naming names. And that's when it got really interesting.

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You'll discover that I hate, according to Dale Tuggy, I personally, James White, hate

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William Lane Craig, which, of course, is a lie. It's not true. I do not hate William Lane Craig.

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But the reason why I allegedly hate William Lane Craig is the most interesting part, because it really reveals the self -importance of these analytical philosophers.

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They really do believe they are the high priests of knowledge. And what all of this, you may go, well,

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I'm not really interested in you having a fight on the internet with some of these folks. Here's the issue.

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If you want to know why this is important, other than if you've encountered the Unitarians and their arguments and things like that, here's why it's important.

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When over and over again, as I was listening to Tuggy making his claims and being so dismissive about the

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Doctrine and Trinity and things like that, what struck me over and over and over again was, interesting enough, as an analytical philosopher, he seems utterly oblivious to the presuppositional nature of the problems he has with the

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Doctrine and the Trinity. And specifically, he doesn't seem to have thought through. And most people haven't.

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But this guy claims to, you know, I mean, this is his thing. I mean, he is a self -citation machine.

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Well, you just need to look at Episode 302 of my Trinity's podcast. And I wrote an article on this.

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And I contributed to the Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy article on the

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Trinity and just had to look at that. So he just loves fighting himself. So he puts himself in that position.

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He's making these claims for his own expertise. So he seems completely oblivious to the reality, as most people are, and I don't want our listeners to be, to the reality of the fact that what you have when we talk about the philosophical implications of issues such as being in person, for example, what's the what?

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Why do we even use terms like this when they're not biblical terms? Sure, you can come up with things similar to that in Scripture, but it's not being used specifically to talk about Greek philosophical categories or continental philosophical categories or analytical categories or anything else.

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That's not what the biblical authors are referring to. And there have been many who have said, hey, look, the real problem here with you folks, you

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Christians, you Trinitarians, is over time, you have moved so far away from what the apostles taught that what you're now saying is orthodoxy and necessary to believe, they wouldn't have even understood or recognized.

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At the same time, when we look historically, we realize the reason these issues came up is that as the gospel goes out into the world, it encounters all these differing philosophies and worldviews and things like that.

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And so what are you supposed to do in the midst of something like that?

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What are you supposed to, are you just supposed to say, well, you know, we can only answer in biblical categories?

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And in biblical language? Well, no, because the gospel is supposed to go out to all the world.

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And so what happened, and there's no question that this happened, anyone familiar with history knows that what happened was that as these, as we develop language, as we develop vocabulary, that dealt with these issues.

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At the same time, there was a diminishment in the emphasis upon scripture itself, its primacy and its centrality.

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Over time, you have the development of a view of history that makes that history,

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I'm sorry, the development of tradition that makes that tradition, that which becomes the lens through which scripture is interpreted.

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Now, 23 years ago, I wrote a book.

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So it's probably about 24 years ago, almost a quarter century ago, I was sitting in a hotel in Chicago, working on the

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Trinity book. And I wrote the line, I am a biblical

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Trinitarian. And then I explained what that meant. I'm a biblical

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Trinitarian in the sense that I am forced to believe in the doctrine of the

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Trinity by believing in sola scriptura and tota scriptura. Now, Tuggy lied about me in the interview, said, well,

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White just bangs on the table and says that if you just know Greek and you do exegesis right, you'll come to the right conclusion.

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Well, I think that's his sort of twisted way of maybe saying what

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I do say, and that is the reason for Christians to be

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Trinitarians is not just because in the past, this is how great men of God who are the word of God came to their conclusions.

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The primary reason to believe in the doctrine of Trinity is because of the nature of revelation similar to the issue with sola scriptura.

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When Jimmy Akin misidentified and misdefined sola scriptura, it's because he doesn't either remember or never understood or no longer wants to accurately represent what we believe about the not just the primacy of scripture, but it's absolutely unique nature as being

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God speaking, not just God inspiring men to say certain things, but there is a supernatural nature to the divine revelation that makes it the ultimate authority in all things.

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All the rest of human, yes, even analytical philosophy must be subject to scripture.

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And the philosopher goes, it can't be because you have to have a philosophy of language to read scripture. It's a philosophy has to be primary.

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It has to, it must be. That's, that's the mindset of, of the philosophy and the mindset of the, of the, the person who views scripture as secondary to human experience and, and to human philosophy.

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But if you recognize that when Adam was made, Adam was dependent upon God, even in the unfallen state,

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Adam was dependent upon revelation from God. So how much more in the fallen state must we be dependent upon the revelation that God has given to us?

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And if we did not have a, if the one who came out of the empty tomb had not had such a high view of scripture, we would not have a foundation for holding this high view of scripture, but he did.

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That's the point. That's the point. So what we'll need to illustrate over and over again in our discussions.

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And as we deal with this, as we deal with the simplicity issue, as we deal with so many things, we have to come back to our, our central foundations.

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And those central foundations are going to bring us back to the fact that we have a divine revelation in Christ, the incarnation, the greatest revelation of God that could ever be imagined.

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All right. So in the incarnation, we have the whole ministry of Christ, the incarnation, death, burial, resurrection, center point of history.

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Here is your ultimate level of epistemology,

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God revealing who he is and what he's doing. As we come along, we have that divine revelation in scripture, and now we need to communicate it to all sorts of different kinds of people.

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And so we seek to faithfully use lesser categories, lesser means, human language, to communicate to these individuals in various places, in Eastern religions or Western religions and Western philosophy, these types of things.

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But we always must remember that the categories that we are using when they are outside of scripture are sub -scriptural and hence are never fully able to communicate the essence of biblical truth so that what we have to be very, very careful that never happens is that we take divine revelation and then we take these philosophical categories and we compress, constrict, exclude portions of divine revelation, all because we are putting our ultimate authority in the definitions of philosophy itself.

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So, for example, when we talk about being in person, if you take your definitions of being in person from out here in the philosophical realm, and there's all sorts of ways of doing that in the philosophical realm, and then enforce them in a constricting, defining way upon divine revelation, you're going to end up destroying the continuity and consistency of that revelation.

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You must always recognize that to define being in person, you do so in such a way that it is then consistent with the divine revelation.

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See, mankind goes the opposite way. So, what you have, and Jake, this is what you do, you use particular definitions, and for Jake, you can't do this because you've got the

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Qur 'an, that's where you're in a tough spot, because if you apply the same things to your own faith and the supremacy of the

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Qur 'an, you're going to end up creating the same problems in your own faith that you think you're creating in the

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Christian faith. More on that later. But the point is that secular man, philosophical man, what he does is he starts down here with the definitions of being in person, and then constricts scripture, constricts the revelation of God to fit into those parameters, and then turns around and says, see, there's all these different theories because people come with all sorts of different definitions.

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And since they come with all sorts of different definitions, then they create different theologies because they're importing it from outside rather than having a consistent scriptural foundation for these things.

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So, that was, I'm sorry, that gets a little deep, but it's extremely important to understand the direction of where the knowledge is coming from, and how scripture must override and determine the philosophical categories, the terminology that we're using, because we're seeking to reflect what it's saying.

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Once we make those definitions our highest standard, then that determines what scripture can say.

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See the difference? That's a very important thing. So, I'm going to look at Rich.

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Rich, see the difference? Okay, Rich is my only audience right now, so, and he turned his hat backwards, which

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I just find, I'm sorry, from a guy from Prescott, you know, the backwards hat thing, if it was a cowboy hat, it'd be worse, but there you go.

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All right, so now here's, we didn't get a chance to test this, all right? We didn't get a chance to test this.

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So, Rich, I'm going to try to play a video here, and you just, you tell me on Signal whether it's understandable or not, because if it's not understandable, then we've got to go a different direction,

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I just got to sort of summarize some stuff, we'll go from there. If you can make it understandable, then we can listen to some of this and go from there.

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So, Rich is standing by, I suppose I should mute that so that we don't hear the ding, ding, ding,

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I don't even know if you can hear the ding, ding, ding, but all right, here we go. This is from,

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I could share this, let's just, let's not try to get too complicated here right now. Here is part of Jake and Dale, Tuggy, as they are discussing trinities.

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Obviously, you kind of chuckled there. So, why do you, why do you think that this isn't sufficient to solve the problems, and why is it the case that so many popular

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Christian Trinitarian apologists think that it is? Okay, I started that,

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I was rushing toward the end. He's talking here about the distinction between being a person, and I pointed out to Jake that I think one of the weaknesses in his interaction with Biblical Trinitarianism is that he's never, ever, to my knowledge, ever even mentioned the reality of the fact that in Scripture, you have the one name of the covenant

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God of Israel, the creator of all things, Yahweh, and the

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Bible's insistence on describing three persons, and Tuggy agrees, there are three different, there are three persons in the sense that they have communication, relationship, so on and so forth.

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So, he's not a modalistic Unitarian, he's a subordinationist Unitarian, but you have three persons, and each one is identified with the divine name.

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So, whatever we do with our inferior philosophical categories, we have to make those categories match the divine revelation, not the other way around.

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The divine revelation is the one name of the one true God is used of three persons, okay?

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So, that's what gives rise to the distinction between being in person, the being of God that is

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Yahweh, who often speaks in a singular, and yet three persons who are identified in that way.

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So, this comes to us from seeking to accept only

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Scripture and all of Scripture. That's where the distinction between being a person comes from.

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And so, when he had raised this, Tuggy had dismissively just like, shit, yeah, and laughed about it.

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And that's what's the background of Jake's question. It's part of apologetics lore, okay?

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I don't mean to laugh at it, like I think it's something stupid, like it's not stupid, because they are realizing that if you say, if you were to say three persons and not three persons, that's a contradiction.

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If you said one being and not one being, that would be a contradiction. And so, they want to say, look, we're not saying those things, okay?

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We're distinguishing between being in person. The only reason I was chuckling, it's not because I think they're stupid or anything like that.

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It's just that these terms being in person can be interpreted in many different ways.

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Catch that? They can be, if the source of your definition is

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Greek philosophy, Continental philosophy, whatever, how it's used in your culture, whatever, they can be.

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But not if you are seeking to consistently identify them in the light of biblical categories.

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There's the issue. And I have a couple of chapters. I think I have two chapters in my book,

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What is the Trinity? One is about different ways to interpret the term being, and one is about different ways to interpret the term person.

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So, just to point out that there's a distinction in the Trinity theory between being and person.

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I mean, that's nice, but everybody knows that, right? No, the vast majority of Muslims I have ever spoken to did not know that, did not know.

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I have a blog post about this. I call it the standard opening move. And, okay, so you're not saying three persons and one person.

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That's great. So, what are we saying? But the problem is, you know, the problems arise when you start to say what you mean by being or what you mean by persons, right?

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So, for instance, for a social Trinitarian, when you're just thinking about the New Testament picture of the

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Father and the Son generally, like when we say person there, like a person is a certain being.

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It means like an intelligent being or something like that, or a being with a point of view, you know, which can engage in friendships and has knowledge and will.

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So, any person just by virtue of being a person is a certain being. So, then, you know, three persons does imply three beings, and then if each of those beings is divine, it looks like we have three gods.

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Now, being could also be interpreted, for instance, as a universal essence. So, maybe it's just, you know, like a universal, like divinity.

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So, if there's this thing called humanity, and it's in all the humans, it's that which makes any individual that has a human being.

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If there's such thing as this platonic universal humanity, suppose there's this universal essence divinity.

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Okay, but again, you've just told me that the Father's different than the Son, and that Son's different from the

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Spirit. So, there's really three things, and if each one of those has divinity, and all of divinity, not just a portion of it, then, again, it looks like three gods.

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So, yeah, the standard opening move is fine. It's just an attempt to clarify kind of what

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Trinitarians are up to, but it really doesn't go very far in addressing concerns about coherence.

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Concerns about coherence. So, not concerns about accurately representing scriptural revelation, but you have an external set of tests that you're putting on this that are defined by philosophical categories rather than what we're doing, and that is, here's how

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God has revealed himself. And so, we have to expand our philosophical categories to fit the greatness of his revelation rather than what

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Unitarianism does. Unitarianism shrinks down the revelation so it can fit into human categories.

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That's why you always end up with this human Jesus type of situation. That's the problem in applying these things to theology of all all.

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Now, you know, I think a lot of Christian apologists don't really understand that, it's fine, but it's not necessarily sufficient to get the job done.

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And this was evident in a debate I had, blah, blah, blah.

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And, you know, I was trying to say that to establish that, look, like what you said,

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Dr. Tuggy, one being three persons. First of all, how do you define those things?

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And then within that, you have different permutations. It's just not enough information. So, he couldn't understand why

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I didn't say it was a contradiction on the previous slide. But then when he got to the next point, I did.

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This is kind of interesting. Popular Christian apologists, typical

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Christian apologists that deal with the Trinity, they're kind of a waste of time because...

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Okay, so here's where we get to the fun stuff. As far as I can understand, what

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Dale Tuggy is saying is that, you know, he has no interest in any of us out here. We are a waste of time.

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We are beneath his notice. And so, you know, that's fine.

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We'll just keep demonstrating the holes in his arguments and go on from there. But we're just a waste of time.

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And so that's fine. But this is where it started getting at least somewhat interesting. They either don't want to or don't have the skills to delve into the analytic literature that deals with actually different Trinity theories.

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And just as apologists, you know, they're kind of... They're not scholars, okay? They read all each other's junk and they just rehash the same junky arguments, the same misinterpretations ad nauseam.

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And, you know, it's part of the ideology. It's kind of small -c Catholic and Protestant ideology.

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It's part of the ideology. Hey, this is just what Christians say. This is just, you know, historic Christianity.

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Blah, blah, blah. Like they just don't care to know about the differences. They're not interested in the truth of the matter so much as kind of a culture war.

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Defending their version of Christianity against the dastardly outsiders, whether it's

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Muslims or Jehovah's Witnesses or evil Unitarians like me. But, you know, truth -seeking is not their thing.

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So, you know, I think there's a great... Oh, broad brush. That's what it's called.

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Broad brush. Wow. But this is really what

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Tuggy is all about. Most people have known this for a long time, but there you go.

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And they get a big status boost in the community from standing up and saying, hey guys, this trendy thing that you all are avoiding, it's really important.

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I talk about this in my podcast, 302, The Stages of Trinitarianism. See, who has he cited every time so far?

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Himself. It's in number 302. It's in number 260. It's just like, wow,

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I could no more do that than the man on the moon. I mean, I'm able to go, it's in a certain book that I wrote, but the dividing line on such and such a date?

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Nah, I don't think so. You get a big ego boost and a big status boost as an apology because all the other

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Christians are really afraid to delve into these super confusing topics. And you're standing up.

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No, this all makes sense. It's all reasonable. It's better. Everybody else's conception of God is faulty except for this.

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And yeah, this is just one thing. We've been saying the same thing the whole time. They're not serious.

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I mean, if they were serious, they would read stuff that's in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on the

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Trinity. Which he contributed to. So if you're serious, Dale Tuggy is the standard of serious.

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Wow, I was watching this just going, okay, wow.

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It's written by actual truth -seeking scholars. Truth -seeking scholars. It's really more kind of culture war defense game that they're playing.

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And it's kind of a waste of time for the serious inquirer. And I would say -

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So if you got the idea that he's serious, he's a truth seeker. The rest of us, nah, not at all.

37:15

Look, if I'm right, that this later stuff is separable from New Testament Christianity, then it's a waste to get all caught up in this.

37:30

I mean, the real issue is New Testament Christianity, isn't it? So if you're considering Islam to be your religion, what you want is

37:38

Islam properly understood. If some later medieval Shia came along and said this and that, well, you don't want to get all distracted by this and that.

37:48

You want to get - Smart work. Throw out a shot of Shias while speaking to the Sunni. That's how you do it.

37:56

To what you think the proper understanding of the tradition is. Right. And for Christians or anybody who's investigating

38:04

Christianity, you know, the source is really Jesus and his apostles. And our best guide to those are the books that's in the

38:12

New Testament. So if you're going to get all caught up in this realm of propaganda, defending speculations from the fourth century, that's going to actually keep you from investigating the truth of, you know,

38:26

Christianity per se. Christianity went along for quite a while without any Trinity theory. There weren't any

38:33

Trinity theories in the first century. There weren't any in the 100s. There weren't any in the 200s.

38:39

By the time you get to the second half of the 300s, people are starting, based on Nicene, on the 325

38:46

Nicene Creed, they're starting to go in the direction of Tri -God. But that doesn't get made official doctrine until 381.

38:54

So - Fascinating and twisted view of history. As I pointed out, I provided a quote.

39:00

And Tucky, actually, I need to do this. I know Rich is getting worried about how long we're writing in general.

39:08

It's supposed to run, but it's hot. Okay, the whole place explodes. You know what happened.

39:13

If it just goes up in a blinding sheet of flame, you'll know what happened. But I just had to, at least briefly,

39:22

I had to at least briefly pull this up. This is from about 265.

39:29

Now, Tucky tries to say this isn't a Trinitarian theory, because all philosophy has are theories.

39:37

Okay, that's just the best you can pull up. You can't talk about a divine revelation or truth or anything like that.

39:44

It's just this theory versus that theory. That's really all Unitarianism offers to you. But let me give you some words from about 265, okay?

39:54

And I'll expand upon this. I had to Greek up. I'm going to have to skip that. We'll have to do it in the next program when we're not sitting in the -

40:00

Well, I may be sitting in the RV, but connected to power rather than generator.

40:07

Let me just read you this 265. So this is 120 years before when he's saying, and they're starting to get around to it.

40:14

There is one God, the father of the living Logos, who is the father's personal wisdom, power, and eternal image.

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God is the one who perfectly begets the perfect begotten. He is the father of his only begotten son. There is one

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Lord, the only one from the only one, God from God, the image and likeness of the deity, the all -accomplishing

40:33

Logos, the wisdom who embraces the fashion of all things. The power who forms the whole creation, the true son, the true father, the invisible from the invisible, the incorruptible from the incorruptible, the immortal from the immortal, the eternal from the eternal.

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And there is one Holy Spirit who has his personal existence from God and is manifested by the son to humankind.

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He is the image of the son, the perfect image of the perfect. He is the life, the cause of all living things. He is the fountain of holiness.

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He is sanctity, the source and leader of sanctification. In him is manifested God, the father who is above all and in all, and God the son who is through all.

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There is a perfect trinity existing in glory and eternity and sovereignty without division or separation.

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There is nothing created in the trinity nor anything in servitude. There is nothing added as if it did not previously exist but was introduced later on.

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Thus the father never lacked the son and the son never lacked the spirit, but without alteration or change, the same trinity endures forever.

41:30

265. Oh, that's not the trinity. That's a triad. Well, like I said,

41:37

I've got the Greek. We'll look at it when we have a little bit more time. But just be aware of the fact that Unitarians have a goal as well and it's been very often demonstrated.

41:55

Look at how, for example, Anthony Buzzard just destroys Hebrews chapter 1 and Psalm 102.

42:04

That'll give you an idea of how far you're willing to go, either as historical sources or biblical sources, to attempt to defend that.

42:12

But I do want to very quickly here finish up with this. If you accept the

42:17

Protestant idea that there are some mistakes in the development of mainstream Christianity, you ought to consider that, well, wait a second, what if Christianity makes sense without trinity and without incarnation?

42:31

I think it does. That's why I'm still a Christian. Right. Now, kind of going back to the logical problem of the trinity, one of the ways that it's expressed and how

42:42

I've kind of used it is the way that Dr. Bo Branson expresses it in his seven premises, pritheism or partialism.

42:53

Yeah, so this is a new piece of apologetics lore that was introduced very recently,

42:58

I think maybe in the last 30 years, so, and this move is given by philosophers like William Lane Craig and J .P.

43:07

Moreland, who understand the logic of numerical identity in modern logics. And so they can see that there's a severe problem with saying that three different things are each numerically identical to the same thing.

43:21

Because that's just to say that there are three different things and they're the same and they're not three different things. It's just nonsense.

43:28

And so... Which of course is not what we're saying. And if Dale Tuggy cannot understand that, then he's never even started to actually understand what he's critiquing.

43:39

Because that's not what we're saying. Now, in his, you know, he's stuck in his philosophical world and his very narrow man -created categories, and that's not big enough for divine revelation.

43:52

That's why he is not a Christian. Unitarianism is not Christianity. Never has been.

43:59

But that's all he's got. And so you just get rid of all the divine revelation stuff and you end up with this nice, neat little package.

44:07

And then just simply say, that's just ridiculous to allow scripture to define these things. And to make that distinction between being in person and to deal with the reality.

44:17

Why? Well, this is why they do what they do trying to get around this. Because they know if the

44:22

New Testament writers identify Jesus, the Son, specifically as Yahweh, they're done.

44:29

Their position's done. And they know it. And so all the philosophical stuff is just to get around the reality.

44:36

They don't have any way to deal with that, that actually is consistent and meaningful. That is done. They don't want to just get into straight, you know, jump headlong into total nonsense with the

44:47

Trinity. So they say, hey, when we say the Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God, let's not take that as asserting numerical identity.

44:57

Let's take that as just predicating divinity of them. So you say the

45:05

Father is God, that just means the Father is divine. All right, then the Son is divine, the Spirit's divine.

45:11

All right, well, that avoids the identity problems. But then you just jumped out of the frying pan into the fire of that problem

45:17

I just explained a little while ago, which is divinity is supposed to be by definition, that which makes the thing a

45:28

God. That's what it is to have divinity. It's to be a God. You got three different things.

45:33

Each one individually has divinity. So each one... You notice how this definition is not coming from Scripture?

45:40

It's coming from outside, being forced onto it. Pretty obvious, isn't it? Individually is

45:45

God. You know, they're not the same God, because there's three things. So it just looks like tritheism.

45:51

Yeah. Now, in response, Craig has suggested that strictly, it's only the

45:58

Trinity which is fully divine. Okay, now this is a big change in the tradition, right?

46:04

Instead of three fully divine persons, now you have none of the persons of the Trinity are fully divine, but only the

46:12

Trinity itself or himself is divine. And yeah, you could call that partialism, where the persons of the

46:19

Trinity are something like proper parts of God. And that's really against most Trinitarian traditions.

46:25

But I would say more importantly, it's against the New Testament teaching that the Father is the one true

46:31

God. It's never suggested in the Bible that the Father is one third of God, or the

46:37

Father is a proper part of God. Anything that's called God in the Bible is a single self, a single someone.

46:45

You know, basically, that's always the Father. In more than 99 % of cases in the New Testament, when it says

46:51

God, it means the Father. A few, a small handful of cases. And when it says Lord, Kurios, which is the name of Yahweh in the

46:58

Old Testament, it's Jesus. Let's skip over that part, because that's really inconvenient for our nice, neat Unitarian philosophy.

47:06

You can argue that it's referring to Jesus. Oh, is that because Jesus is also God? No, if it is referring to Jesus as God, it reflects the older tradition that you see in the

47:17

Old Testament of referring to beings other than God as God. Jesus himself.

47:23

Yeah, because he's the creator, because he's associated with the Father and the Spirit. Yeah, this is your standard representational stuff.

47:31

Listen to the debate that Michael Brown and I did against the Anthony Buzzard and Joseph Goode. It falls apart just as it has always fallen apart for Dale Tuggy when he's attempted to do this as well.

47:43

Mentions this in John chapter 10. Even one time it calls

47:48

Satan the God of this world. So anybody who's called God in the Bible is a single someone.

47:55

But predominantly, again, 99 % of the time, that's the Father. But that's just because they think the

48:00

Father is the one true God. The Father alone is the one true God. So this three -person

48:07

God just doesn't come up for a mention. And that's a huge problem. If they believed in it, they would say something about it.

48:15

Yeah, let's just ignore the entirety of the New Testament here. Let's ignore the references to Jesus as Yahweh, as God, use of kurios.

48:23

Let's ignore Paul's utilization of the Shema and putting Jesus in the Shema. That's just all gone.

48:30

And you get this nice, neat, little philosophical package that has nothing to do with Christianity. Right, and I say this all the time because certain people knock

48:42

Dr. Craig. But I think that you can see that he's really trying to deal with the issue.

48:48

I mean, he's making the proper moves. As you said, he's saying, look, guys, this is of identity thing isn't really going to work because then we're into sort of logical.

48:58

Or the problem is that for Craig, it's always been philosophy in terms of theology, not the other way around. And so it's a backwards flow of information that results in the problem.

49:08

And then if we say, if we go to the is a predication and each one of the persons are fully

49:16

God, well, then you just got three gods. So he understands that as well. And then he makes the further move to say, well, our only option then at that point is that if we keep the is a predication, say that they're parts of God.

49:29

Now it does give this awkward partialism and it does conflict with the

49:34

Bible as you have expressed. But people like James White, they hate

49:40

Bill Craig. Yeah, it's really weird because you think he would be their best buddy because isn't he trying to defend the

49:47

Trinity, but they hate him partly because they hate philosophy. Can I just stop right here and say, this is a lie.

49:54

Dale Tuggy knows it's a lie, but I guess he figures he's only talking to a Muslim audience maybe, I don't know.

50:00

I do not hate William Lane Craig. I have been fair in my criticism of William Lane Craig.

50:07

But this is, this is sola philosophia coming out of Dale Tuggy.

50:14

His ultimate authority is right here. It's between these two things right here.

50:19

That's his ultimate authority. And he's going to express it here. But these guys hate

50:25

Bill Craig because he's so much smarter than them because he's doing philosophy.

50:32

See, that's his whole thing. And they hate reason. And he loves those things.

50:38

But partly because we hate reason. He just said that. The fact that he's actually acknowledging problems that they prefer to slough over with their rhetoric.

50:50

Rhetoric. So, you know, someone like - I've spent 45 minutes doing rhetoric.

50:55

It's just rhetoric. And from his perspective, it is because of the origin and sourcing.

51:02

I'm not bowing the knee to human autonomy in epistemology. And therefore, well, that's just rhetoric.

51:10

Brown or James White. They just love to pound the table and just repeat the traditional language. You know, one being three persons.

51:17

Come on, guys. Can't you get it? Like as if this solves all the problems somehow. And Craig, he just sees it doesn't solve all the problems.

51:25

He's like, boy, we better do something about this. So he starts making distinctions. God bless him. He's trying to solve real problems.

51:32

But, you know, what he comes up with is his own unique and very problematic theory.

51:40

But, yeah, it's weird that these apologists, they hate him because partly they're afraid of philosophy and philosophers because they're not trained in it.

51:51

They don't understand it. And I never taught Christian philosophy of religion on the graduate level or any of those things to them.

51:59

If you in any way warn about philosophy like Paul did, if you subjugate it to a higher authority of scripture, that's the great heresy.

52:13

How dare you do that? How dare you do that? You're seeing ultimate authority.

52:20

Scripture is not an ultimate authority for Dale Tuggy at all. At all.

52:26

Very, very plain. Very, very plain. It shows the falsity of their claim that there's just some one thing

52:35

Christians have always been saying. And worse than that, James White holds to this kind of, and the same is true of most popular apologists.

52:45

They hold to this just obviously incorrect view that you can just simply deduce one

52:51

Trinity theory from the New Testament if you just look at the grammar hard enough.

52:57

So if you just knew Greek, you would just see that everything I'm saying is just right there.

53:03

Yeah, you've all heard me saying that, right? If you just knew Greek, then that everything I'm saying is just right there and I'd never demonstrate exegetically anything.

53:15

I think what this is, is the twisting and it is twisted. The twisting of my assertion that there is a consistent divine revelation on the subject and he will not have it.

53:30

He will not have it. There is a consistent divine revelation and if you use the same,

53:37

I think what he's heard of, if you just knew Greek, is actually do exegesis consistently, which

53:45

Unitarians cannot do. Cannot do.

53:53

And when he does his John one thing, we'll demonstrate it. We will demonstrate it.

53:59

He will have to use different methodologies. But this is just simply wanton open rebellion against the supremacy of a scriptural revelation.

54:12

That's all there is to it. Now, I don't hate Dale Tuggy. I think he is a lost man who needs to know the truth.

54:24

Well, knows truth is present. So this, if Dale Tuggy is a beautiful example of how you can have lots of knowledge but no connection to the spirit.

54:35

And so the man needs to be converted is what he needs, what he really needs. And then be submissive and bring his huge massive intellect into submission to scripture.

54:50

Because what he's saying right now, you know, he's lying. I don't hate William Lane Craig, but to them, daring to question the great philosophy of mankind is hateful.

55:05

Really is. And sadly, it's one thing to see Unitarianism. I've seen

55:11

Christian Trinitarians have just as inflated and imbalanced a view as what he just demonstrated right now.

55:21

So Dale Tuggy lied. I do not hate William Lane Craig. It has absolutely possibly nothing to do with, well,

55:27

William Lane, they're just afraid of William Lane Craig, which is why I have to challenge William Lane Craig to debate me on presubstantial apologetics,

55:36

Molinism, Calvinism, et cetera, et cetera, because I'm just so very frightened at that possibility.

55:42

But remember, I suppose what you could say is, he's already said,

55:49

I'm a waste of time anyways. So why should he even worry? About caring about what

55:54

I believe, right? Or even accurately representing them. It's just a waste of time. Much more to be said on that, but I'm sure that,

56:04

I think Rich is getting a little nervous over there. So he's just getting a little nervous.

56:11

Anyways, folks, once again, exciting to be in here. Can't wait to be doing this next week up about,

56:20

I think from Spain, it's about 4 ,500 feet above sea level. And I'm planning the month after that to be at 7 ,000 and 7 ,200 feet and things like that, heading up North into Colorado, New Mexico, those places.

56:36

It's exciting. It's great. Pray for us. It's a learning curve for all of us, both

56:42

Rich and I. But everybody says, once I get back from that long trip, be an expert.

56:49

Hope so. Hope so. But thanks again for making this possible. And Lord willing, we'll see.

56:56

Let's see. Today's Thursday. Yeah. Hopefully see you from right here next week.