Transcript

DEBATE: Is The Trinity Biblical & Coherent? Sijuwade vs. Ostler

From Inspiring Philosophy Academy · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 2 h 36 min · 28,631 words · 342 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "DEBATE: Is The Trinity Biblical & Coherent? Sijuwade vs. Ostler", an episode of Inspiring Philosophy Academy published September 18, 2026 (2 h 36 min, about 28,631 words). It mentions 98 people, works and ideas, including Trinity, Joshua Sijuwade, Blake Ostler, Equivocation, Josh Blake.

What this episode is about

In this debate, Dr. Joshua Sijuwade and Blake Ostler tackle whether the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is biblical and logically coherent, beginning with the question of which version of "Trinity" is even under discussion. Ostler, a monarchical monotheist, argues that the Father alone is expressly identified as the one God in key New Testament passages, and that later creedal formulations such as eternal generation and homoousios are philosophical constructs not expressly taught in Scripture. The episode offers a rigorous, good-faith exchange on biblical exegesis, the logic of identity and predication, and the methodological question of whether the Bible can be treated as a unified system, setting up a second segment on coherence.

Key takeaways

  • Blake Ostler argues the Trinity as later defined (homoousios, eternal generation) isn't expressly taught anywhere in Scripture.
  • Ostler calls the nominal vs. predicative distinction a logical tool that no biblical writer had in mind.
  • He warns that stitching verses into doctrine treats the Bible like Lego blocks, ignoring its diverse, separate authors.
  • Ostler contends Aquinas's Trinity view faces incoherence via the indiscernibility of identicals.
  • Both speakers agree the Trinity's historical formulations need scrutiny, though the debate hinges on which version counts.

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 15:00: Trinity, Heavenly Council, Blake Ostler, Joshua Sijuwade
  2. – 30:00: Consubstantiality, Divine Identifying Features, Monotheism, Eternal Generation
  3. – 45:00: Trinity, Divine Identifying Features, Consubstantiality, Language game
  4. – 1:00:00: Trinity, Eternal Generation, Language game, Gospel of John
  5. – 1:15:00: Trinity, Equivocation, Eternal Generation, Gospel of John
  6. – 1:30:00: Trinity, Equivocation, Logical Coherence, Joshua Sijuwade
  7. – 1:45:00: Trinity, Divine nature, Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, Grounding
  8. – 2:00:00: Trinity, Divine nature, Grounding, Trope theory
  9. – 2:15:00: Joseph Smith, Revelation, Language game, Joshua Sijuwade
  10. – 2:30:00: Consubstantiality, Joseph Smith, Divine nature, Genesis
  11. – 2:36:22: Trinity, Genesis, Logical Coherence, New Testament

Notable quotes from "DEBATE: Is The Trinity Biblical & Coherent? Sijuwade vs. Ostler"

  • Divinity as the father or do they have their own instances of divinity? So what I mean by this is I believe that Blake's position and the position of the Latter-day Saints…
    about Blake Ostler · at
  • I believe the totality of scripture does evidence.
    about Trinity · at
  • We're you guys are going to be doing some statements again on the topic of the coherence of the Trinity. Josh, you're going to go first this time, correct?
    about Josh Blake · at
  • There's a way to make the trinity coherent if you are willing to quivocate in the premises. Every logician knows that if you use terms in an equivocal way, you really don't have a syllogism that could demonstrate incoherence.
    about Equivocation · at
  • Thus is unfree with respect to the father's will. The same result follows from the notion of eternal generation that is a matter of essence. I am essentially a human and I have…
    about Eternal Generation · at
  • You're doing that with saying Joseph Smith and the canonized scriptures of the Latter-day Saints, aren't you?
    about Joseph Smith · at
  • They're not playing the philosophical language game. They're and I think you know Dr. Siguati is has quoted biblical scholars to this extent.
    about Joshua Sijuwade · at
  • Came from Moses either it's writing in the context of the 7th century and so the way that this term is used by Paul is not the same as the way as it's used in Deuteronomy and…
    about New Testament · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Joshua Sijuwade — Person · 6 mentions · first at
  • Blake Ostler — Person · 5 mentions · first at
  • Josh Blake — Person · 2 mentions · first at
  • Joseph Smith — Person · 7 mentions · first at
  • Tim Stratton — Person · 3 mentions · first at
    Awesome. Thank you so much you guys.
  • Thomas Aquinas — Person · 2 mentions · first at
    Sawati and I will agree that these are neither scriptural nor logically coherent. And that includes the version of Aquinas. I saw his debate with some Thomas in which I thought…
  • Michael Heiser — Person · 2 mentions · first at
    Misunderstand the way the language is being used. Now, I'm going to depart from Heiser in this way. Heiser says that the gods are all created by Yahweh.
  • Rudolf Carnap — Person · 1 mention · first at
    And assemble a view in this way. He has argued in several places that what we should do is adopt a methodology of carnap to treat the biblical texts as propositional data…
  • Dan McClellan — Person · 1 mention · first at
    No. No. People Unfortunately, this is a dynamic Dan can explain and then we can move on.
  • Larry Hurtado — Person · 2 mentions · first at
    Through these divine identifying features and individuals like Richard Borim and Larry Hatardo have argued in the similar way and I believe that there are five main features…
  • Tim Stevens — Person · 1 mention · first at
    You are at 8 minutes. Let me pause real quick. You're at 8 minutes and 40 seconds right now.
  • Philo of Alexandria — Person · 1 mention · first at
  • Peter Strawson — Person · 1 mention · first at
    It's simply a category mistake to adopt this method. car moreover carnaps use are deeply flawed. If you read Quin or Strawson, you understand the carnap and the way he approached data was deeply flawed and I wouldn't rely on it.
  • Willard Van Orman Quine — Person · 1 mention · first at
    It's simply a category mistake to adopt this method. car moreover carnaps use are deeply flawed. If you read Quin or Strawson, you understand the carnap and the way he approached data was deeply flawed and I wouldn't rely on it.
  • Richard Bauckham — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Identify who is the creator it was through these divine identifying features and individuals like Richard Borim and Larry Hatardo have argued in the similar way and I believe…
  • William Lane Craig — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Quite a bit actually. Relative identity models, the trinity monotheism that for instance proposed by William Lane Craig, these are not logically coherent. And let me make clear Dr.
  • Jonathan Schaffer — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Thirdly, you said grounding. I took grounding from Whitner. I didn't take grounding from Whitmer. In my writing, I take grounding from Jonathan Schaffer.
  • Jacob Hansen — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Have rejected a part of what I defended. in other words, you're aware from your discussion with Jacob Hansen, and you've even argued that I get the King Flet discourse and the sermon in the Grove wrong, but I'm certain you're not aware.
  • Ludwig Wittgenstein — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Just in two different so what I'm relying on here is in some way related to Lud Vickenstein's language game and trying to play one language game and then use it in a different…
  • Lenroa Baker — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Distinct and are not merely aspects of each other. Now he takes his view of first-person perspective from Lenroa the late Lenroa Baker of a person an entity X is a person if…

Books & papers

  • New Testament — Book · 6 mentions · first at
  • Philippians 2 — Book · 2 mentions · first at
    In your relationship with one another, have the mindset as Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he.
  • Gospel of John — Book · 5 mentions · first at
    Philosophy. So let's ask what it meant what it meant to be relationally a son in that kind of a culture especially when the gospel of John was written and what it meant was a…
  • Genesis — Book · 6 mentions · first at
    Creation in the Old Testament and New Testament where God is already creating and what the verb bar mean for in that's used in Genesis is mostly to cut divide. In fact, it's…
  • Revisioning the Mormon Concept of Deity — Book · 2 mentions · first at
    You said that really stuck with me but I found it very problematic. You said and this is quoting from revisioning the Mormon concept of deity page 41. You state and I quote…
  • John 17 — Book · 7 mentions · first at
    Appears in biblical texts and I'll I'll deal with Hebrews 1 and 3 in a second, but the actual oneness that's discussed in the Bible, and you're all familiar with this, is in…
  • Hebrews — Book · 6 mentions · first at
    Very same sense that the father and son are one. That's what the scripture set up in the gospel of John 17. Now we have a statement in Hebrews 1 and3 that says the son is the…
  • Deuteronomy — Book · 5 mentions · first at
    Was a Yahwe of Tamoon, a Yahweh of all these different cult places. At the time that Deuteronomy is written, you have a centralization of worship in Jerusalem. And what they're…
  • Isaiah 44 — Book · 1 mention · first at
    Father is the sole creator of all reality or Yahweh is the sole creator of all reality. For example, we have in Isaiah 44 where Yahweh says that he made all things and alone stretched out the heavens and spread out the earth by myself.
  • Revelation — Book · 6 mentions · first at
    The lamb who's been taken to be the being who has all religious devotion given to him. It says in Revelation 5:13 to 14, every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth…
  • Isaiah — Book · 4 mentions · first at
    Used are referring to what almost all scholars would say is the heavenly council. And even in Isaiah 1 and in 2 Isaiah, for instance, in Isaiah 41 1-8, which is supposedly the…
  • Psalms — Book · 2 mentions · first at
    Were plural there was a plurality of gods. The sons of God in the heavenly council in Psalms 2982 and 89. The stars and heavenly bodies were considered gods in Job 1 and 38.…
  • Psalm 82 — Book · 2 mentions · first at
    Imposing in the translation their view on the text. They do so when they're for instance translating Psalm 82 as judges rather than as gods. And so when we use scriptural text…
  • Genesis 14 — Book · 2 mentions · first at
    Blake, you said it was Elon in Deuteronomy 32:8, except it doesn't say that. It says Elon, Yahweh is called Most High in Genesis 14.
  • Targums — Book · 1 mention · first at
    Wellestablished doctrine of the memor in Aramaic use and in the Targums and the use of memor the word fully accounts for what we find in John.
  • Psalm 110 — Book · 1 mention · first at
    And then they charge him with blasphemy and then Jesus then quotes Psalm 110 for his argument against the Pharisees if that makes sense.
  • Job — Book · 1 mention · first at
    Council in Psalms 2982 and 89. The stars and heavenly bodies were considered gods in Job 1 and 38. And they're actually gods placed by Ellelon over various nations of the earth…
  • Jonah — Book · 1 mention · first at
    Court. I am and there is no other besides me. And so what we're looking at and you can you know this appears also in Jonah, but the reality is these are not making metaphysical…

Companies & orgs

  • Inspiring Philosophy — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Join inspiring philosophy academy. Thank you, Sheh GPT. this is from an LDS member. He says, As an LDS, Dr. Siguati is one of my favorite, most compelling trinitarians.
  • Inspiring Philosophy Academy — Company · 2 mentions · first at
    Problem. So just looking at here that so sorry for the audience is it's good we're on the academy channel because we're going a lot more deeper here than we were in the…
  • Skool — Company · 1 mention · first at
  • Patreon — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Below and donate today. And if you want to go even deeper, consider joining our Patreon community. You'll get early access to videos, behindthe-scenes content, and a place to connect with others passionate about this mission.

Concepts & topics

  • Trinity — Concept · 52 mentions · first at
  • Equivocation — Concept · 6 mentions · first at
  • Eternal Generation — Concept · 11 mentions · first at
  • Personhood (first-person perspective criterion) — Concept · 6 mentions · first at
    First-person perspective from Lenroa the late Lenroa Baker of a person an entity X is a person if and only if X possesses a robust first-person perspective defined as the…
  • Logical Coherence — Concept · 4 mentions · first at
    Which thought world is working better in pro providing coherence which is simpler to understand in overall terms and I think these are the kind of things that we need to ask about.
  • Intrinsic and extrinsic properties — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    What should be considered to be intrinsic properties. So for instance, Dr. Sidui admits that being cylindrical comes out to be an extrinsic or merely a relational property on his definition.
  • Consilient Trinitarianism — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Explains the data and it does it in the simplest way possible. It is consilia trinitarianism. Now consiliate trinitarianism is a simple statement that there is one god the…
  • Consubstantiality — Concept · 15 mentions · first at
    That there is one god the father and two relationally distinct persons the son and the spirit who are of the same divinity as the father. And so based upon this there are five…
  • Creatio ex nihilo — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
    God has to be has to be uncreated in an absolute sense and creator of everything else in an absolute sense. And the biblical thinkers just don't think that way about creation.…
  • Latter-day Saint movement — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
    You're doing that with saying Joseph Smith and the canonized scriptures of the Latter-day Saints, aren't you?
  • Coherence (logical consistency) — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
    Okay. So the second part of our dialogue is about is the trinity coherent and so I think it'll be good to define certain terms so we understand what we are dialoguing about. So coherence is just normally defined as a set of.
  • Aspect Theory (Aspectualism) — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    From my work on the idea of aspects and this deals with certain objections that could be brought up. So the father, son and spirit are aspects of divinity. So if you see fa, SA…
  • Mormonism — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Use it. And if you read my books, for instance, in my third volume of Exploring Mormon thought, I use each period. I go back and say, Okay, when we're when we're talking about…
  • Monotheism — Concept · 11 mentions · first at
    Position that's given by blake. And then just the last one here and I'm finishing the Yahweh texts also speak very clearly about strict monotheism. And so what we have here is…
  • Divine Identifying Features — Concept · 10 mentions · first at
    Of ways but one of the key ways I'll I'll put forward is that I believe that there are certain divine identifying features that we can understand that the scripture teaches us…
  • Divine nature — Concept · 9 mentions · first at
    With respect to the divine nature in this sense. On the other hand, the divine persons can fail to have the properties of divinity because the divine nature's contingent on the…
  • Grounding — Concept · 8 mentions · first at
    Just finish with this. Joshua's presentation of divinity requires it relies upon grounding theory and God in his view has to be a complete ground.
  • Trope theory — Concept · 5 mentions · first at
    Here's a problem. Tropes are generally taken to be concrete instances that exemplify or instantiate properties.
  • Grounding Theory — Concept · 4 mentions · first at
    The prior probability of this view being sound is extremely low. S Dr. Dr. Siati relies on trope theory, grounding theory, aspect, philosophy of mind as firstp person…
  • Divine Identity (Numerical Identity of Substance) — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
    God, the son and the spirit are distinct, both bear all of the divine identifying features. It seems to be very clear that there is identity, not likeness. Unless you're going…
  • Monarchical Monotheism — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    That's for the philosophical portion. So let's begin. what does it mean to adopt monarchical monotheism? Well, the father is expressly. By expressly I mean it's actually written this way is identified as the one true God or the.
  • Divine simplicity — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    He did a great job demonstrating using the incernability of identicals argument to show that the toistic view of deity is in fact etern internally incoherent. And I enjoyed the…
  • Incommunicability of identicals — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    That. So if we take the iniccernability argument that you used against the Thomas. So incernability of identicals is that everything that's if everything that's true of X is also true of Y, they're the very same thing, right?
  • Kenotic Christology — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    Primarily from Philippians 2 and John 17. In Philippians 2, it says that Christ essentially emptied himself of his divinity and became mortal. In John 17, he begins out by…
  • Univocity of scripture — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    Would be equivocal and to try to make them into a system where they're univocal this is called the univosity of scripture is to misunderstand the nature of the scripture they…
  • Indiscernibility of Identicals — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Then the problem of the trinity is that it is logically incoherent because it violates the property that the rule of incarnability of identicals. I've attempted to show that…
  • Language game — Concept · 13 mentions · first at
    Relying on here is in some way related to Lud Vickenstein's language game and trying to play one language game and then use it in a different way is to misunderstand the…
  • Nicene Christianity — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
    Discussion I assume trinity is that term as it is used equivocally by the way in the seven ecumenical councils but most fully I think described in the third council of Constantinople in 681.
  • Shema — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
    Forget the text as they operate in their own context. let me give you an example. The statement in the shama that the you know the Lord our God is one based upon archaeological…
  • Heavenly Council — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
    The Old Testament text taught that there were plural there was a plurality of gods. The sons of God in the heavenly council in Psalms 2982 and 89. The stars and heavenly bodies…
  • Atonement — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
    But atonement can only be accomplished by divine nature. Christ did not suffer in divine nature. Therefore there's no atonement.
  • Creator-Creation Divide — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    And why I believe it's the best one is because one of the key things in ancient Jewish monotheism was a cre creator creation divide that there was a creator of all reality and…
  • Aspect theory — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    You approach the Trinity. And what you've used your notion of aspect theory assumes the notion of trope theory. And so, when you were talking about different aspects, they each exist in a different region. And what.
  • Second Temple Judaism — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    That was really cool to see you actually talk about some of the Second Temple stuff, too. That was like the memo and everything. So, Josh, are you ready?
  • Doctrine of Atonement — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    Well, I think you're using terminology that is heavily weighted because I can turn the same question on you and say I assume that you hold to the doctrine of atonement. Is…
  • Homoousios — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Have to ask which trinity? This is the trinity I'm going to address. The trinity involving the notions of same substance their homosios or eternal generation as a necessary act…
  • Relative Identity — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Of deity is in fact etern internally incoherent. And I enjoyed the discussion quite a bit actually. Relative identity models, the trinity monotheism that for instance proposed…
  • Divine omniscience — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Intrinsic properties of self-referring knowledge and dexicals are in fact essential properties entailed by omniscience. the trinity, the father, the son as well as the as a…
  • Inference to the best explanation — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    What's for the first part of the question what's the inference of the best explanation so if I'm understanding the super chat correctly Josh's method was an inference best explanation methodology and I think.
  • Deuteronomy centralization of worship — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    All these different cult places. At the time that Deuteronomy is written, you have a centralization of worship in Jerusalem. And what they're saying is our Yahwa is the true…

Places & events

  • Israel — Place · 4 mentions · first at
    One power not two acts combined. The second one is also that exclusive devotion. Israel is commanded to fear, serve, and worship Yahweh alone. We see this throughout the scriptures.
  • Third Council of Constantinople — Event · 2 mentions · first at
    Persons. Add to this that siduati posits that the sun has two minds and [clears throat] two wills following the third council of Constantinople.
  • Seven Ecumenical Councils — Event · 1 mention · first at
    Bible. for purposes of this discussion I assume trinity is that term as it is used equivocally by the way in the seven ecumenical councils but most fully I think described in the third council of Constantinople in 681.
  • Council of Constantinople (681) — Event · 1 mention · first at
    As it is used equivocally by the way in the seven ecumenical councils but most fully I think described in the third council of Constantinople in 681.
  • Roman Empire — Place · 1 mention · first at
    There were adoption rituals that were part of the legal system part of the Roman legal system the Greek legal system and the Hebrew legal system there were rituals of adoption…
  • Council of Nicaea — Event · 1 mention · first at
    You deny that there is any public revelation after the apostles, which means that there is nothing that the councils received that was revelation because they gave what they…
  • Constantinople — Place · 2 mentions · first at
    Persons. Add to this that siduati posits that the sun has two minds and [clears throat] two wills following the third council of Constantinople.
  • Tamoon — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Evidence that it probably meant there was only one Yahwa. We know that there was a Yahwe of Tamoon, a Yahweh of all these different cult places. At the time that Deuteronomy is…
  • Jerusalem — Place · 1 mention · first at
    All these different cult places. At the time that Deuteronomy is written, you have a centralization of worship in Jerusalem. And what they're saying is our Yahwa is the true…
  • Babylon — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Are statements of boast essentially that it's it's like claiming that [snorts] in it's like Isaiah judgment against Babylon and the exclamation now therefore here this is you…

Full transcript with timestamps

All right, welcome everybody. We just had that chill little countdown there compared to the normal stuff. Blake, I don't know if you ever watched the opening like countdown stream for the stream or anything like that's typically like a metal core song. Figured I'd try to be a little more professional with you coming here. Today's going to be fun. Um, we got Dr. Joshua Sajiati and we got Blake Oler here. We're going to be discussing whether or not the Trinity is biblical and whether or not the Trinity is coherent. Um, correct me if I'm wrong. We we had agreed that there'll be 10-minute like statements basically for the biblical portion followed by open dialogue between you two. After that, once we are good good with that dialogue portion, we're going to switch to the coherence topic and we're going to have openings again from both of you and then followed up by more dialogue.

Yeah, sounds good. Okay. Um, who's going first for the for the opening for the um

I am on this one. Okay, awesome. So, uh, what I'll do, Blake, is um I will drop all of us. You'll be the only one on screen. Do you have anything that you want to share on screen or anything like that?

Yeah, I I do. Um, I'm going to Am I sharing now? I don't see anything yet. Okay. Well, it's supposed to be coming up. Okay. Here we go. And share. Can you see my screen now?

Yep. Yes, we can. Okay. Um, so here's what we're looking at. [clears throat] The question is, is the Trinity biblical? And at least on a number of things here, I think that Dr. Sijuadi and I are going to agree. I'm a monarchical monotheist. Um in one sense I'm a uh I also believe that the um divine three persons have a particular relationship that would make them so united that would it be appropriate to call them one god as well. Um and let me begin this way just so you know um Dr. is would you prefer Dr. Sijuati or Josh?

Hey. Uh, he can't hear you just just yet because you're the only one on the stage at the moment. Like that's all.

All right. Then this is how we'll go. Um, I've read all of Dr. Siguetti's um works I believe and but I'm not going to in this portion directly interact with all the distinctions that he makes. That's for the philosophical portion. So let's begin. Um, what does it mean to adopt monarchical monotheism? Well, the father is expressly. By expressly I mean it's actually written this way is identified as the one true God or the one God in several New Testament pack um passages. Um we call it monarchical not because it's called monarchical monotheism in the Bible anywhere but because of the practice in the ancient world of modeling um deity after a king.

they all everybody writing he was subject to a king and that was the uh um context in which they were writing I think Dr. situ and I also agree there's a logical distinction between nominal use now a nominal use is calling somebody by their name so um David is a name and if I say David is human that's a nominal use uh if I say um David has a name and it means just one David that's a nominal use if I say David is a human um I'm essentially predicating of him um a participation in what some would call universal humanness is a universal But let me make this clear.

[clears throat] This kind of a distinction is not found anywhere in scripture. Any suggestion that any writer of any source of scripture had this distinction in mind is ludicrous on its face. [gasps] And when we ask is the trinity found in the Bible. Well, there are many versions of the trinity historically that have been elucidated by Christians. And I believe that Dr. Sawati and I will agree that these are neither scriptural nor logically coherent. And that includes the version of Aquinas. I saw his debate with some Thomas in which I thought he did an admirable job of demonstrating that the toistic view is incoherent based upon the iniccernability of identicals. Um so in the is the trinity in the Bible we have to ask which trinity? This is the trinity I'm going to address. The trinity involving the notions of same substance their homosios or eternal generation as a necessary act of the

father communicating the identical substance to the son. This is not expressly taught in any passage in the bible. Um for purposes of this discussion I assume trinity is that term as it is used equivocally by the way in the seven ecumenical councils but most fully I think described in the third council of Constantinople in 681. So let me be clear on what the trinity is. The trinity is a later philosophical construct that I believe is the best attempt of the authors of the creeds to make sense of the biblical text. Um, but and here's the problem that I have with this approach. um they're using the Bible as if though they are Lego blocks where I'm going to build something and the view that the Bible is playing the language game of some overall coherence that is univosity of scripture or even asserting that there are propositions to be assembled in this way is neither scriptural nor is it a responsible

hermeneutic. The scriptural texts were written at different times and places by people having different views of God, Gods, and divinity. The writers of these texts had no idea of a unified corpus that would include their work and that would be construed together to construct and assemble doctrines. Um, in fact, if we do it this way, here's how this usually goes. What we do, um, we I've seen this in all kinds of Protestant works. I've seen it in Catholic in in the in the councils. What we do is we say what well I well there's no passage in and of itself that teaches the trinity when I put it all together.

So what I do is I take it and I use these all as data points and magically I conclude that my view is the one that best accounts for all of that evidence and we exclude some some um statements as as not really central. We it we decide what to include. We decide how we're going to interpret it when we pose a later interpretation on the text. We forget the text as they operate in their own context. Um let me give you an example. The the statement in the shama that the um the you know the Lord our God is one um based upon archaeological evidence that it probably meant there was only one Yahwa. We know that there was a Yahwe of Tamoon, um a Yahweh of all these different cult places. At the time that Deuteronomy is written, you have a centralization of worship in Jerusalem. And what they're saying is our Yahwa is the true Yahwa. Okay? So, but they're not denying that the other Yahweh had cult places, but they want to

centralize worship. And so, the text functions very differently in that context than it does when we take it as a metaphysical statement. Moreover, anyone who's studied various um historical expressions of the Trinity knows that using this method, we can come up with widely divergent, inconsistent views of the Trinity. We're just assembling it. And there's no real principled way, by the way, um of determining which of these interpretations is best. Uh and I'm going to focus on the way that Josh Suiati, Dr. Sichuati uses the philosophical tools um to anacronistically overlay onto the text and assemble a view in this way. He has argued in several places that what we should do is adopt a methodology of carnap to treat the biblical texts as propositional data points and then we can take all of the data and assemble them and we ask well which is the best theory that best explains the data in in

terms of the kind of criteria we want to use. But here's the problem. Karnap is using his method to assess scientific physical facts. And these kinds of theories can be tested. Once we get the facts put together, we then put the test to we put this to the test and say, "Okay, now let's see what predictions it makes. We're going to devise the test to see if the predictions come true. We don't have that kind of of a test and it's simply a category mistake to adopt this method. Um, car moreover carnaps use are deeply flawed. If you read Quin or Strawson, you understand the carnap and the way he approached data was was deeply flawed and I wouldn't rely on it.

Um, Sigui, Dr. Sigui and I agree that the Old Testament text taught that there were plural there was a plurality of gods. The sons of God in the heavenly council in Psalms 2982 and 89. The stars and heavenly bodies were considered gods in Job 1 and 38. And they're actually gods placed by Ellelon over various nations of the earth according to Deuteronomy 32:8. We agree on all of this. Um, now here's something that is extremely important. The heavenly council already existed when God Elohim set about to create the heavens and the earth and Elohim consulted them. you know, um that it we know let us make and so forth. The kinds of plurals that are used are referring to um what almost all scholars would say is the heavenly council. And even in Isaiah 1 and in 2 Isaiah, for instance, in Isaiah 41 1-8, which is supposedly the most intensely monotheistic part of the Old Testament, there are references to this heavenly

council. Now, Dr. Sigui agrees with this. is he's a fairly sophisticated reader and he's accepted I'm not going to read all of these but what he Dr. proc is aware of the work of Michael Heiser and Michael Heiser has argued that um statements saying that I'm the only God, there's no other like me are are statements of boast essentially that it's it's like claiming that [snorts] um uh in it's like Isaiah judgment against Babylon and the exclamation now therefore here this is you lover of pleasures who sit secretly in your court. I am and there is no other besides me. And so what we're looking at and you can you know this this appears also in um Jonah, but the reality is is these are not making metaphysical claims. And here's the fact about the matter. To take the biblical text and try to force them into a metaphysical context is to do violence to the text because we rip it out of its context. We

then assume that it's playing a language game that it clearly isn't. It's it's analogous to this. I say, "Well, aren't you a ray of sunshine?" And you respond, "No, I'm a human being and and human beings are a different kind of thing than rays of sunshine." It's to misunderstand the way the language is being used. Now, I'm going to depart from Heiser in this way. Heiser says that the gods are all created by Yahweh. There's no passage where that said. In fact, there's no theogyny. A theogyny is a story told about the origin of a god of the benlohim or the sons of god or the gods. Unlike in near eastern accounts in all near eastern accounts outside of Israel there's always a story about how there is a an origin of any particular deity but the fact is there is never a theogy of the gods anywhere in scripture and they are already present when god sets about to create.

They're there already in the council and are consulted when God sets about to create the heaven and the earth. Um, so now I want to get a little more particular and you know, keep me track of time. When I've got five minutes left, will you let me know?

Um, I was going to say you're already at the you're your 10 minutes already kind of came up here, but I was just if Josh is okay with it, um, I was just going to let you keep going. You Josh can give me a thumbs up or

down. Is that all right, Sh? Josh. Yeah, he's given a thumbs up, so I'm totally okay with it.

I'm just gonna I'm just going to walk through this. The term substance never appears in biblical texts and um I'll I'll deal with Hebrews 1 and 3 in a second, but the actual oneness that's discussed in the Bible, and you're all familiar with this, is in John 17. And I'm just going to read in 20. My prayer is not for them alone. I pray pray pray also for those who will believe in me through their message that all of them may be one father just as you are in me and I am in you I have given them the glory that you gave me that they may be one as we are now in this context Christ has prayed for his pre-earth glory which was full deity to be restored to him and he's praying that this same glory be shared with his disciples and they can be one in the very same sense that the father and son are one. That's what the the scripture set up in the gospel of John 17. Now we have a statement in in Hebrews 1 and3

that says the son is the radiance of God's glory, the exact representation of his being. Um the the translation of hypothes um is sometimes translated as as meaning a substance. the epos is sometimes translated substance but we have to be clear about this when we're referring to a character it can't be the same substance means a copy it it means something that is a a replication um it might be um something like making a statue of a person because this is this term was used for the prior 150 years in the prevalent philosophical schools of the stoics and epicurans um where they use this term and it is always a concrete reality that is um being the image of something that's copied. So um the eternal generation of the sun in the Bible there is nothing that talks about eternal generation ever. There's no passage that spells it out or that expressly addresses it. Now you'll the argument is well um only

begotten son uh means something like eternal generation but King David in Psalm 2 and 7 is declared to be begotten. This language is used from Psalm 2 which is an it's basically a coronation exaltation type of a a text that's applied to Christ in Hebrews 5 and5 Mark 1 9-11. David is called also called God Elohim in Psalm 45 and6 because the king was considered to be a divine agent. But the notion of eternal generation is never expressed in the Bible and I [clears throat] believe that is a construct that does damage to the what the biblical text is actually talking about. It's not a metaphysical issue in the Bible. the eternal procession of the spirit. [snorts] Often times John 15 and 26 is is cited um where the the phrase is used that the the spirit of truth who goes out from the father um is sometimes translated as proceeds from the father but in this context the son is going away due to his

impending death and the the spirit is now coming to take his place. This has nothing to do with metaphysical origin as procession is used in the creeds. Um, [snorts] there's this argument it's not bad to impose Greek terms on on the Bible because John did it in John 1 with use of the term logos. It's not true. Um, usually this is based on the argument that somehow he's quoting Pho. But there's not a single copy of the works of Pho that's been found in pilot Palestine or environments during the first century after Christ when John was written. More importantly, John is not relying on Greek philosophy. There was a wellestablished doctrine of the memor in Aramaic use and in the Targums and the use of memor the the word um fully accounts for what we find in John.

Now finally the notion of assumption creation X out of nothing is not a biblical view. In fact, it has the opposite view. The deep and the chaos already exists when God sets about to create in Genesis 1. And there's a scholarly consensus. And I know people don't like scholarly consensus, but the fact is is that virtually every critical scholar agrees that Genesis 1 takes the the deep and the darkness to already be a type of chaos that exists when God says about to create. Now, when I say critical scholars, I'm not talking about people who are trying to prop up faith.

Um, because they're going to assume their view and impose it on the text. But creation out of nothing is never found in the text. And so, the kind of fundamentality analysis that's being done by Dr. Sichuadi can't even begin to get off the ground based upon the biblical text. Um, I'm sorry I took more time than I should have. Um, but that hope that clears it up for you. Thank you so much, Blake. That was fun. That was really cool to see you actually talk about some of the uh Second Temple stuff, too. That was like the memo and everything. So, Josh, are you ready?

You're muted. Sorry. Yes, I'm ready. All right, I'm going to drop everybody and then I'll put you up and then on your

slides as well. You can start whenever. Perfect. Okay, hopefully everyone can see this. Okay, so thank you very much uh Blake for that presentation. One thing I would say though at the beginning is when you are looking at the biblical texts and you're saying that um for example the trinity is not taught in the Bible. What you'll also need to do um is not just show that the trinity is specifically not expressed by the collection of the scriptures. Um but then you'll also have to provide a plausible alternative because we won't want to go to the position that the scriptures don't teach anything about the nature of God and its relation to his son and the spirit. And so what you'll need to do is show that it doesn't come from the scriptures, the position I'm holding, and then provide a plausible interpretation that it's a simplest explanation of the data. And I don't believe that you've done that. You

you I believe that you attempted the first task. Uh I would disagree in the sense I in I don't think you were successful in it. But then second, you didn't provide a working alternative. And I would like to see that maybe in the dialogue portion of um this discussion. Okay. So what I'm putting forward though is something I do believe explains the data and it does it in the simplest way possible. It is consilia trinitarianism. Now consiliate trinitarianism is a simple statement that there is one god the father and two relationally distinct persons the son and the spirit who are of the same divinity as the father. And so based upon this there are five main tenants to what I'm stating or that statement that you've just heard. The first is that the father is the one god. The second is the son is relationally distinct from the father. The third is that the spirit is relationally distinct from the father.

The fourth is that the son is of the same divinity as the father. And the fifth is that the spirit is of the same divinity as the father. Now in these sort of terminology that there is one god the father and two relation distinct person. Son and spirit are of the same divinity as the father. There are certain terms I think will be helpful to define. Now firstly what we mean by the one god is to say that the father is the fundamental divine person. He is a source without source. He's the ground of all reality and he is ungrounded himself. And so based upon his role of being the ungrounded ground or source without source, he is the being who can be referred to as the one God. Or when we're normally referring to God in our speech, we are picking out the father because of him being the fundamental divine person. What I mean by relation distinct is that each of the persons, the father included, are distinct from

one another solely by their relations of origin. The father is unbegotten. The son is begotten by the father and the spirit is eternally proceeding from the father. That is the only way in which we can distinguish the persons. So they are not and I'll be very clear on this. They are not numerically distinct beings but they are relationally distinct from one another. And then of the same divinity means that they are numerically um in the sense that they have the numerically singular divine substance power and nature as the father. So they have numerically the same divine substance, nature and power as the father. There is only one thing predicated in the trinity when it comes to divinity. There is one instance of divinity. There's one substance, one power, one nature. And that is communicated eternally from the father to the son and the spirit. So again, I'm going to state what the doctrine of trinity is and what I

believe is the best explanation of scriptural text about the doctrine of God. There is one God the father and two relationally distinct persons of the son spirit who are of the same divinity as the father. Now the biblical case for this I believe can be seen in a variety of ways but one of the key ways I'll I'll put forward is that I believe that there are certain um divine identifying features that we can understand that the scripture teaches us about the person of the father and based upon him having these divine identifying features we can call him god. we can call him a divine person. But then if there is any other um person or substance or anything that is also correctly predicated this divine identifying features then we would also have to say that they are divine. But the key thing I'll argue later is that they have the same divinity as the father. So why I hold to this position and why I believe it's the best one is

because one of the key things in ancient Jewish monotheism was a cre uh creator creation divide that there was a creator of all reality and creation the the entities that come from the creator are dependent wholly upon the creator and so we can divide reality into the creator the singular creator and all of created reality that comes from him. Now one of the key ways in which we were able to identify who is the creator it was through these divine identifying features and individuals like Richard Borim and Larry Hatardo have argued in the similar way and I believe that there are five main features that we can look to the names attributes actions rulership and devotion that were given to God so when I am speaking about the names I'm speaking about him being called theos being called god but more particularly and more importantly him being called the divine divine name Yahweh that was a unique name that was

given to God alone. The attributes there are many attributes that God has but one of the central divine identifying attributes within ancient Juda Judeic monotheism was eternality that God is the one being who has not come from anything. It is God has always existed and he will always exist. He's the eternal one. Actions the the third category is that God is the sole creator and sustainer of all reality. rulership. He is the one who rules ultimately through his throne and um enacts divine judgment upon all reality. And then devotion is the idea that there are full the full religious or cultic devotion was given to Yahweh alone and no any other being. And Larry Hatardu argues very persuasively that one of the key ways in which Jews were able to distinguish themselves from any other um people group was through their sole devotion to the being that they believed that was God. And so based upon that,

I'm going to go forward in a second to show how then we can say because the son and the spirit also have these divine identifying features given to them in the scriptures, they can be taken to have the same divinity as the father. That is that they exist on the creator side, the divine side of the creator, creation divine. Now, however, before I do that, it'll be good to show how the three other pillars of considerism are evident in the scriptures. We see the one God, the father. So the first pillar that the father is the one God. We see this in four ways. He's named as the one God throughout the scriptures. He's given the title God the Father by Paul and and other writers. He's um when we see the word God pop up a lot of the times, we see the word God without the qualifier father coming along with it.

So for example, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Now that is the idea that there is an interchanging of the term God with that of the father because the Judeaic um background in which this text was written um was able to identify that the word God was picking out or designating the person of the father. We see this throughout the scriptures that God is used as a proper name for the father rather even than the father itself. And then the fourth line of evidence for this is that we see throughout the scriptures that God is referred to as a single personal subject and as a single personal subject we can refer to him as a single person. So the one God the father has four lines of evidence that are supporting him. The second one that the son is relationally distinct. We see him in the book of John being uh with God. So he is God but he's also with God. So he bears a relation with him. He

shares a glory with the father and is loved by the father before the world existed. So there seems to be a relational distinction between them in that he exists with the father but also he is um a being who um is God but has a distinction that can be drawn relationally and I'm going to go to later just to rebut what uh Blake brought um up about the scriptures speaking about eternal generation. I'll return back to that at the end. And then the third one about the spirit being distinct from the father. Uh the spirit proceeds from the father within the scriptures. We see this. We also see that he's taken to be another helper. So he's personally distinct from the father and the son but he's also taken to be the one who proceeds from the father.

That's the relation that he bears to the father. So then when we move from this we then move from the three pillars. The one god being the father the son and spirit being relation distinct to what I would say the key ones are for this debate. Do the son and spirit share or have the same divinity as the father. Now, the first thing I would say is that's very clear that the son has all of the divine identifying features predicated of him. He has the names that are given to God. So, he's called God throughout the the scriptures. He's called Yahweh or specifically Kios in the Greek and he's given texts that are given that are spoken of Yahweh in the Old Testament and they are now written in light of the person of Christ. So, we have for example Hebrews 1:10-12 uh which does this in other texts that we see as well. We have attributes that um God is taken to have as I said to you about eternality. We see this being

predicated of the sun as well. So he's eternally existed before all um all things came into being. We see this in John 1 1-3 um 858 and 175. We see him performing divine actions, creating, sustaining, forgiving and judging. We see him ruling, sharing the throne and holding the judgment seat that God has. And we also see him receiving a full range of religious and cultic devotion, worship, prayer, um doxologies and and praises given to him. And so we see very clearly that that the son is taken to be divine like the father. And then the spirit is also given these divine identifying features as well. So he has the names given to him. He's called God in Acts 5. He's also identified as the Lord in 2 Corinthians 3:17. He's taken to be eternal, the eternal spirit in Hebrews. He's taken to perform the divine actions of creating, regenerating, giving gifts as he wills.

He also rules in the sense that he's the one who's actually calling believers. He's commissioning believers. He's directing believers. And then also, he's taken to be a being who actually has devotion given towards him. He's included in the baptismal name. And he's also taken to be a being who um is a co-reient of blessing. in 2 Corinthians 13:14. So, we can see very clearly that the New Testament places a son, the spirit on the creator side of the divide. But then the key thing that's going to be the main um area of contention between myself and Blake will be well, is it that the son and the spirit have the same divinity in the sense that they have a numerically same divinity as the father or do they have their own instances of divinity? So what I mean by this is I believe that Blake's position and the position of the Latter-day Saints would be that the father has his his own instance of

divinity. The son has his own instance of divinity and the spirit has his own instance of divinity. They are qualitatively in disccernible in the sense that the father is omnipotent, the son is and the spirit is. But they are three substances, three objects. You have three instances of divinity. Now, it's [clears throat] important for me to show that this is not the case because just by establishing that the son and the spirit have the divine identifying features doesn't necessarily show that they have the same divinity, numerically the same divinity as the father because it could be that they have the divine identifying features.

Someone could argue um but they have them in their own personal individualized fashion. The son has his own divinity, the spirit has his own, the father has his own as well. But I believe that this is not the case and there are three reasons for this. The first one is that the type of features that we're talking about are not features like wisdom. We can say the son is wise, the father is wise and the spirit is wise. And then it's quite clear that we can say well they have their own particularized forms of wisdom. But what we're looking at with the divine identifying features is that they are identity defining. They are bringing the son and the spirit into the divine identity of the father. So we're seeing the son being the creator of all things which was solely given to the father. We see the spirit being the creator of all things which again is solely given to the father. We see them standing outside of created reality

bearing Yahweh's um identifying texts. We see them ruling the whole created order and receiving all of creation devotion. And so what we see here is that there is an identity claim that's been made here with these features because the way in which we knew God or who God was amongst every everyone else was through him bearing these features. And so it's the same thing with uh the son of the spirit. I'm going to argue for this um in a more precise fashion. Firstly by looking at creation. So we see very clearly that the scriptures teach specifically for one of the divine identifying features that the father is the sole creator of all reality or Yahweh is the sole creator of all reality. For example, we have in Isaiah 44 where Yahweh says that he made all things and alone stretched out the heavens and spread out the earth by myself.

But then we also see the son saying that all things came into being through him visible and invisible. So there's nothing that exists in a created fashion that didn't come through the sun or come into being through him. So we have on the one hand Y saying he created all things by himself. He stretched out things alone. But then we have the son saying or um it being saying the said of the son that he's he's part of this creative act. Now the problem that you have is that Isaiah seems to say by saying myself that there are not independent agents even divine ones who could have taken part in being the creative source of reality because then it wouldn't make sense to say that Yahweh created by myself. No he created with someone in a cooperative fashion if they are independent substances that bring their own creative valition to this creative act. But then if you take the consiliate position that the son the

spirit um who are creators with the father are of a numerically same substance in the father father then there is one creative reality that brings about all things one act from one power not two acts combined. So this allows you to hold in a very clear fashion Yahweh saying he created all by myself and the son being the one who all things are created through him because there is one creative act. So it is Yahweh creating by himself because there is no other agent cooperating cooperating sorry with him in bringing the actions together to make uh all created reality. There's one act from one power not two acts combined. The second one is also that exclusive devotion. Israel is commanded to fear, serve, and worship Yahweh alone. We see this throughout the scriptures.

Also, the lamb Josh. Yes. Real quick, we're just we're getting about to the like even amount of time with how much we left over time. Just letting you know.

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks a lot, man. Thank you for that. So, we have on the one hand, Israel is commanded to fear, serve, and worship Yahweh alone. But we also have the lamb who's been taken to be the being who um has all religious devotion given to him. It says in Revelation 5:13 to 14, every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth, and the sea offers honor to him. So then if you want to hold an exclusivity of Yahweh having um devotion and worship given to him alone, how can you have this if there are separate substances? Because that will mean that there are two ultimate objects of devotion. But in the consilia position saying that there is a same substance you have one divine reality one numerical um entity that is receiving the unique devotion. So again you can hold this position clearly in the consilin position but not in the position that's given by blake. And then just the last one here and I'm finishing

the Yahweh texts um also speak very clearly about strict monotheism. And so what we have here is if there is one God in the scriptures, the father is the one God, the son and the spirit are distinct, both bear all of the divine identifying features. It seems to be very clear that there is identity, not likeness. Unless you're going to multiply creators, multiply objects of devotion, which are two of the key things, soul creatorship and soul devotion that were one of the one of the ways in which um the Israelites were able to identify their god um amongst all the other gods. So what I would then say for my interlocator Sophra Blake is that you'll need to give me and I'll look for this in our dialogue. You'll need to give me an individuation criterion. What makes the three persons um three substances instances rather than one substance one instance from the scriptures? What is the way in which you

can do that? Because if you just point to relational distinction that is um explained by my position. But what actually allows us to say that there are three instances of divinity here from the scriptures. Secondly, I like to know a counting rule that allows you to say that there are three substances, three divine substances, three instances yet there are not three gods unless you want to commit yourself to there being three gods. Um and then the last one would be how can we understand uh what I said to you previously that there are several uncreated substances that can create and rule and receive worship without multiplying them. That's the key thing here. How can we have soul creator, soul ruler, soul uh being who's recipient of devotion within your position? So these are the three things I'll be looking for. I look forward to our dialogue.

Thank you. All right. Thank you for that, Josh. Um, so how long do you guys want to go for open dialogue here? Cuz Blake, I know you're slightly on a time crunch here, too. Um,

well, should 15 20 minutes. Is that sufficient? Um, Josh. Okay. Yeah. Let me respond that I'm simply going to decline. We are talking about the Bible. I'm going to decline your your claim that I need to show that there is just one substance and not three substances. the terms as you're using them substance don't appear in the Bible and we have an agreement here. This is an extremely important agreement. You agree that there is no passage in the Bible anywhere that expressly lays out the trinity as you've explicated it. Right.

I believe the totality of scripture does uh evidence. Yeah. And so what you're doing is you're playing the language game of data points and you're using the scriptures. Do you believe that any writer in scripture intended their statements about Yahweh to be taken as propositional data points in a theory?

Well, I think you're using terminology that is heavily weighted because I can turn the same question on you and say I assume that you hold to the doctrine of atonement. Is there any specific passage that lays out a full doctrine of atonement?

No. And the doctrine of atonement ought to be open-ended. And it ought to be not it ought to be something that brings in a number of different images, number of different ways of thinking about it and not just one. So the scriptures have a m multiplic multiplicity of views and the way you're using it simply ignores the context, the time, the issues that were being addressed. It addresses the nature of the language being used. and for you to suggest that I need to adopt your approach to talk about substance and and with all due respect, look, I like you.

You're very difficult not to like. Okay. And I think you're brilliant. But it is such an abuse of scripture to overlay it with this kind of a world view and say, "Oh, they're playing this language game, this propositional data point way of looking at the scripture." So we agree there's not a single passage in the scripture that lays out the notion of the trinity the way that you have. We need to take the whole thing and just say we'll put it all together and then you get to claim I think this is the best reading of scripture. Here's the problem with that. If the trinity is truly as important as you say it is, then the fact that they omitted to expressly address it requires a large explanation. And the explanation is they didn't have the notion of the trinity in that way. They didn't address it in that way. They address it in terms of worship. They address it in in terms of the use of name and so forth. So the

fact that there is no express passage tells me that the kind of language game you're playing imposes on the text something that is quite foreign to the text. And so the way that you ask me to then play your language game is something that I refuse to do. That's not how I deal with scripture. It's not in my opinion, it's not a sound way to deal with scripture. Okay. But let's let's teach let's talk a little bit about something else.

Because you're something else. Can I can I respond? Of course. Yeah. Okay. Well, two things. Um I think again you're you're um approaching the scriptures in an incorrect fashion. We take the scriptures to be canonized in the sense that there are multiple books and they're expressing uh doctrines over a multiplicity of texts. So I think it's very rare that you'll find a doctrine that you probably affirm to be true that is just stated slap bang in one scripture. You'll probably take a multitude of scriptures and say actually this is the witness of scripture to this specific position. And that's exactly what I'm saying. So I'm saying the witness of scripture from this position as I've shown is that there's one God the father and two relationally distinct persons who are of the same divinity as the father. Now when I was asking about the doctrine of atonement yes you are you actually agreeing in part to my

point because you will say yes there's a multiplicity of different ideas. Yes. So you

I haven't agreed with that. I don't I don't I don't agree that there are three instances of divinity. There's one divinity. It's shared among them. They're not three instances. Okay, one second before we go there because that that's an important point but because I think we're going more at the methodology um it's it's a very I I mean it's a difficult philosophical point. Let me help the audience understand it. The fact is is they share exactly the same divine um all the divine prop all properties that are necessary to be divine they share in common. Okay, they have that in common.

And in fact, it's sharing in this divinity that makes them divine at all. I'm going to address for instance, there couldn't be a conflict between divine wills because if one of them disagreed and didn't love the others completely or disagreed in any way, they wouldn't be omnipotent and so they couldn't exercise divine power. And so they can't conflict. There can't be conflicting omnipotent wills or action. Okay. Moreover, and this is extremely important when we're talking about instances of divinity and and you used it this way, they are relationally distinct. Well, the way you use relationally distinct doesn't appear in scripture.

It just isn't there. Yeah. You say that they are mere relations. I have to ask well and we'll get into this when we get into the philosophical discussion but the sun I I mean under the councils here's the strangest thing on earth the trinity has one mind and will but Jesus has two minds and will okay and what we have however is that we actually have Jesus acting independently even as a resurrected being he appears beside the father on his right hand [snorts] he is expressing that he's going to our father and his father. He's expressing the kinds of distinctions that are required for personal identity. The way that you use instances is not something I would impose on the Bible or any of its biblical text. They don't think in terms of that at all.

Sorry. Sorry for interrupting just because I'll say something before. Sure. Let me just for for a moment go a little bit more programmatically because we were looking at methodology. I'm happy to address about the instances in a second. Sure. I wanted to address what you were saying about the methodology um because I think that you um again were reducing the way in which doctrines are normally explicated. So doctrines are summaries I would say of the witness of scripture. So we don't just normally build a doctrine off of one passage off of even one book necessarily. We take the witness of scripture to this specific teaching and then we say this is what the scripture teaches about this position. That is what I've done with the doctrine of the trinity. So you saying is there one passage of one scripture, I think that's just not the way in which doctrines are ever formulated. I would hazard a guess that

you do not have a doctrine that you affirm. You can just point to one scripture showing you the totality of that doctrine. And so yes, I can point to one scripture that will point to maybe one of the pillars of consiliated trinitarianism, but the whole totality of the five pillars would probably need to take the whole witness of scripture. That's the correct way. Sorry, just one second before we before we move on.

Yeah, you understand that I reject that, right? That's fine. That's fine. because they don't have any notion of doctrine the way you're using the word. They don't have any doctrine of the university of scripture the way that you're using it because you're requiring that all speak they all speak as if though they're they're supporting each other and they're speaking in the very same way making propositional assertions and that is not how the biblical documents operate even remotely. There's not a single I'm not aware of a biblical scholar that is treating the Bible in a way that says, "Oh, all scriptures are univocal. We don't look at the context.

We don't understand the differences in the way the language was used, the differences in the way the terms are used." Um, a and to say that they all must agree with each other. I mean, I know that Protestants have a doctrine of inherency of scripture, but I doubt that you hold.

Okay. Okay. Well, there's a few things there. Firstly, when we're speaking about the Trinity, we're talking about systematic theology. We're not talking about biblical theology. So, saying a biblical scholar doesn't agree with this doesn't add anything to the to the issue. The issue is about the systematization of scripture. So, what is the best systematization of scripture? You're saying that the scriptures the Bible the Bible as we've used our our proposition for this dialogue is does the Bible teach the trinity? So, you're taking the totality.

You're assuming university. You're assuming that there is. You're saying given this position that you hold to you are incorrect. That's what you're trying to say to me. And so it's not I think it's sort of fast and loose to say well actually the biblical scholars don't hold to university. That's a different conversation for a different day. What we're saying is given the totality of scripture is a systematization of the trinity the best explanation of the data. That's what we're looking at. But sorry but not to get um I don't want to get too in the weeds on this. Let me just state when you say when for instance just calling it the Bible as a whole and assuming that there's this unified corpus that is written like a systematic theology is to vastly misunderstand the documents that you're dealing with.

Okay. So are you are do you think that they're playing a propositional language game in the

Okay. Then then just back to you then. So what's the doctrine of God for you? What who is God for?

What is God for you? What is God for me? Yes. The the father is being worshiped by Jesus Christ. He is Yahweh and he has shared his name with Jesus Christ. I don't disagree with hardly anything you said.

Okay. Very good. Do you find that in Do you find that just in one scripture? Yeah.

Actually, when the son says, "Hold on, hold on, wait one second. So, you're saying to me, just so I get it correct, can you just state what your statement is of the doctrine of God that I'll affirm it from your own standpoint? I'm going to reject the notion that there are actually doctrines in the Bible. Doctrine is a later theological imposition on the Bible. They're not thinking in doctrinal terms.

Doctrine just means teaching. Doctrine just means teaching. Yeah. Well, so the teachings, you're saying,

no, a doctrine is something that is systematized in a religious system. And in the way the Trinity is used, it's a large philosophical construct that took nearly 350 years for it to begin to gain traction.

But I I reject that assumption. I I don't hold to that at all. I will go the minimal sense of what doctrine means teaching. So does the Bible teach the Trinity? That's all I'm asking.

Yeah. The Bible does not teach the Trinity even the way you put it together. But I wouldn't put it together.

As I've said, that's a violent use of the text. And what it does is it takes the text and imposes on it a later view that they didn't hold and then imposes a matrix on it. And in fact, I mean, your own doctrine is vastly different in a lot of ways from the way numerous scholars have laid out the trinity using your very same method of coming up.

That's fine. But but that doesn't that doesn't show the evidence to show your position's correct and I'm wrong. Just because scholars hold to certain things, many scholars hold to many things. That doesn't show push the debate further. But what I hope is the way you're using scripture is is not way

you can disagree that. Let's look at the evidence, not the way in which I'm using it. Let's look at the evidence. So is there um was I incorrect to say that the the scriptures evidence there being one God, the father [snorts]

in some passages? Yes. You know, there's no Okay. So there is evidence for that. So is there also evidence for the son being relationally distinct to the father?

No. There's not a single statement in the Bible. There is no relation. There's not a single statement in the Bible that reduces Christ to a mere relation or mere

I didn't say I I didn't say that to you. I said that's what look when you use terminology that you've carefully defined. Yes.

And that doesn't appear in scripture. The only reference that can be given is the way you've used it. And when you use it, you use it within a philosophical system. in fact importing in numerous different philosophical theories that are highly contested in order to give it any meaning. And so I simply reject and refuse to play that language game because there is no sense of being merely relationally distinct anywhere in any scripture.

Okay. So when um when we have John 1:18 says is God the only son who's close to the father's heart who has made him known it seems to define who the p the second person or who the the person that is in relation to God as the son that's a relational term isn't it

no relational sorry you're using it as a definition and the passage doesn't operate

is is the is son a relational term it can be it's not always for instance well in this passage It is God the only son who is close to the father's heart who has made him known. Is that speaking relationally or not?

It's speaking relationally in a familial sense not in a philosophical sense. Yes.

I'm not saying philosophical. We haven't got to the philosophy. No. No. Yeah. We haven't got to the philosophy. So let's ask what it meant what it meant to be relationally a son in that kind of a culture especially when the gospel of John was written and what it meant was a special place of honor that is granted by a patron and there were adoption rituals that were part of the legal system part of the Roman legal system the Greek legal system and the Hebrew legal system there were rituals of adoption and they are being imported into this passage so that we understand that the father is honoring the son by making him an heir.

An heir in a real sense by the way because these are the adoption um rights that lay underneath this particular way of of expressing this this view.

Now see we agree for instance my problem is is that there claims here but I want the evidence because what I'm trying to look at is does the Bible teach the trinity. So, as far the contextual sort of background, that's great. And I'm saying for the position that you're trying to attack, how are you trying how are you showing this from the Bible? That that's what I'm I'm trying

how how would I show what's from the Bible? That what I've said that there is no relational distinction that the son so in that passage I gave you for example, it called him the son. He said that he's in the father's bosom. And so, did he become the son after creation? How you could read into that that there is a grounding relation between the father and the son and only a logical distinction of in of an external relation which is what you mean by it is simply not expressed in that passage. That's not what it's referring to at all. It's referring to a culture in which the father is now honoring the son and making him his agent so that he can then represent him. So when we send an agent to be a sent one, the father is now saying you speak for me and I'm going to send you to be the messenger for me and they will treat you exactly as they treat me in the same identity.

So that for instance when uh they didn't have internet back then they didn't have telephones when they sent a messenger the messenger would show up. So for instance we have actual documents um from the near east and Greek world. So for instance, the messenger from King Adoraxis shows up. Behold, I am King Adoraxis the Great. They didn't respond and say, "What are you talking about? You're a messenger. You're not the King Adteraxis." They understood what was being done. The language game that is being played is in that thought world, not the thought world of philosophical distinctions that you're playing.

But again, I Ive I've I've listened to you. So my my issue is that you keep on bringing in this assumption. I I haven't used any terms like grounding. I haven't used any philosophically loaded terms. What I'm saying from the scriptures is that can you construct a doctrine a minimal doctrine of the trinity in the statement that I've said there's one God the father and two relationally distinct persons who are of the same divinity as the father.

But what do you mean by relationally distinct? Yeah. When you use the term relationally distinct.

So I'll okay eternally begotten and the spirit is eternally proceeding. And just give me a few minute or a little bit of time to to catch this. Okay.

So, I I believe that you can get to eternal generation again in a um a summary of the scriptures. So, I think the the um not to bring in the majority, but I think it's like that it's sort of a Muslim tactic that I hear that can well show me that Jesus is incarnate from the B, you know, God, he's he said to him, he's got from one passage. That's not the way that the scriptures work when we are looking at teachings. Again, we're looking at the totality of scripture. So let's look at the totality of scripture about the relation that the the son bears to the father. So the first

all you'd have to say is that the word the word was God and then the word came.

Wait, can I just have a bit of time? So okay, first thing we can affirm eternal pre-existence. We have John 1:2 John 17:5 that affirms the eternal pre-existence of the word. Uh we then have the word being called God in John 1:1 John 1:18. He's identified as God. We then have him being identified not just as the word just as or the logos but as a son. So he's John 1:14, John 1:18, John 17:24, they speak about him being a son. We then have, and this is the important one. It then states in John 5:26, and I'll read what it says here. For just as the father has life in himself, so he has granted the son also to have life in himself. So what we have here is that the first the father has life in himself. The son then has life in himself. But the son's possession of this life is from the father since he has granted it to you. So then from this since the son is eternally god and eternally the son this communication

cannot be temporal. So just for the audience to understand the progression 14 we have this we have eternal pre-existence eternal deity eternal sunship divine life from the father but because we have eternal deity um and eternal sunship this life that's given to the son granted to him given to him cannot be temporal it has to be eternal therefore we have eternal generation the son is eternally from the father because he possesses the from the father the divine life that the father possesses in himself without beginning, creation, change or inferiority. So please help me my just just focus in my step of my reasoning where it's incorrect. We move from pre-existence to deity to sunship to communication of life. But this communication of life cannot be temporal. Therefore, it must be eternal. Therefore, this whole stage is eternal generation. Please tell me why I'm wrong.

First of all, you use the term communication. That's not remotely there. That's a philosophical term that you impose on the text.

Okay. To also have life in itself. That's Yeah. Has life in himself. Just letting you guys know we're at like the 20ish minute mark.

Okay. Let me just finish up on this one and then we'll move on. After you do that, I just will one just say one thing, but it doesn't have to be technical. Right.

So for when you say it's not temporal, if you think that there is any notion of timelessness in the Bible, I think that you're again overlaying onto any biblical text that somehow this is something that is outside of time. When you say there's a communication of life, life is not the same as an intrinsic or extrinsic property. Properties don't have life. Okay? And so if you want to say that he is, you know, the only thing that divides them is some kind of of extrinsic property, which is what you do say, and that's what you import into every single conversation that you're now having, is that this is not what they had in mind. They they had um they were kind of vitalists and they believed that life was something that could be shared like giving light and glory. When you share this light and glory, it vivifies and gives life. By the way, sharing life is also done with the disciples both by the father and the son. And so

it certainly doesn't mean he's communicating divine life in the sense that you're using it of eternal generation because eternal generation is a philosophical concept. That means that the essence or or sub so I'm not if we use it as a an individual substance the way that Aristotle does, we can speak that way. But let me use your terms at best I can. It it means that there is a single divine trope that is had among the father, son, and holy ghost. That's the way you use it, right? [snorts] And so when we're talking in these terms, when you say it shares life, it's not even remotely in the same they're not using the same linguistic practices that you are. It's vastly different. And to impose your linguistic practices on the text is to misunderstand the text altogether. is to impose a later view on it and then to assume that it said it it has your view in it. You can't learn anything from the text when

the father has life in himself. The son has life in himself. But he says he's granted that from the father.

Mhm. Does that mean please? [snorts] It it means they they share a common glory. The the life as I said was a they had a king.

They had a vitalist concept of life. Yeah, I understand you're going to that but I'm saying go with the text. Give me a better exodus of the text view. So you're saying to me that so because what I'm just seeing very clearly the father has life in himself. I'll read the the passage again. But just as the father has life in himself, so he has granted the son also to have life in himself.

Yeah. So what that means in context is that Christ now has the power to have eternal life in the sense that he is going to be resurrected and death can't overcome him. That's all it

So he didn't have life before the rest. It's not a metaph it's not a metaphysical statement.

I'm not saying so just it's quite logical. It doesn't mean let's be clear what it doesn't mean. Okay. It does not mean that there is some essential nature that is being communicated. That's not what

No, no, no. You're you're saying it doesn't say that. But one second. Let's just go with the text. So it's saying the father has life in himself. Okay. Did the father only have life from the resurrection?

No, he didn't. So I don't understand because I asked you very quickly. Father is a source of life in this sense. Okay. He breathed life he breathed life into Adam.

Yeah. Now you're not saying that when he breathed life into Adam, he made him some he didn't share some kind of of nature with him.

Yeah. It meant to make him alive. Yeah. But what I'm just trying to do just so the audience understands I'm trying to divide the philosophical discussion which we're going to have soon from the biblical discussion. I'm trying to say let's do a little bit of exogesis in the text. You keep on going back to so it doesn't say nature doesn't say this. So you're giving expectations to the text which I'm not as which we are not at this point trying to to battle with. What I'm trying to say to you is can we construct a biblical doctrine of the trinity? That's what the question is. And so my question was it says the father has life in himself so he has granted the son also to have life in himself. So you'll see that life in himself came. So you you what you said to me was about the resurrection. Can you say the best understanding?

Easy. There's a there's an animal energy of life that makes things alive. This is the underlying idea. And the father has this life in him because he's eternally alive. The son is being given by the father this same kind of shared animating power. It could be called an animating power of glory of breath. And in fact they were thinking of breath when they were thinking of this kind of life being shared. So what he's talking about is I'm giving this kind of of animating life to Christ. And now because Christ has this in him he can pass it on to the disciples. Okay? And the disciples can now pass it on to others because they received it from Christ.

So, so is equivocation when life is referred to the father and it's referred to as obviously. [snorts]

No, there's not an equivocation. It's using it in the very same vitalist way. Okay. So, when it says the father has life, what is it saying?

It it means that the father is alive and has this animating fact of life given in his existence. Okay? given in the fact he has it in himself.

Yeah. And so does the son. And so does the son. Yeah. So does the son do the granted to him.

Yeah. And so do the disciples. So they can No, but it doesn't speak about disciples here. So

not here. It doesn't. Yeah. But it doesn't speak at all in reference to this. So it says he has life in himself, the father. So it says what going with what you're saying. He has animating life. Okay. He's alive. That's why we can say the father is alive. Then it says that the son is alive, but it says he's alive because it's been granted to him by the father. So my reasoning here though is when you're looking at the earlier passage in John, we see him already saying that well the word is alive because he's with God in the beginning before creation comes about.

So then where is this granting of life? It's because he was mortal. He was mortal at the time and could die. In fact, he did die. Wait, he was he was mortal when? Pre-time mortal.

No, he was No, he was mortal during his mortal life. Okay. And it's during this mortal life that it's referring to him having life being given to him by this father. He doesn't need this kind of life pre-temporally when he's already with the father. Right. And I'm not saying pre-temporily because I don't believe in timelessness the way you do.

Yeah. But all I'm just saying for the audience and we can even maybe we can leave at this point, but I think the audience can see, you know, whatever position they want to take. But what I've tried to establish is we have certain things I said about the person of Christ. He eternally pre-exists. He eternally is God. He's eternally referred to as a son. He has life that's granted to him by the father. And then the best explanation of that I would say is that cannot be temporal because he already has life in him because of our assumption that he's pre-existent and he is God. Thus that granting must be one which is an eternal granting. That's what I'm trying to say. So if you can what I was asking for was a better interpretation. But then I felt that you you were going into background stuff without actually going wrestling with the text that I I brought up. But

no, I did give a better interpretation. One that puts it back in the context where they're using life in a vital vitalistic manner and it is something that can be shared with others. Okay. And so the very the the very um thing that that is life that gives us life that the the the father has now given it to son so he can have eternal life. It's referring back by the way it's projecting regarding the the resurrection when Christ will resurrect. And in fact in the context that's exactly what it's doing as well. So when you use these terms in this way and want to draw conclusions about eternal generation by putting these all together, what you're doing is using terms in an equivocal way that would not be what anyone writing that scripture understood. Okay.

Wait, so so can I just understand you correctly? So he he wasn't alive because you used you you refi you pissified life as being

no in this context does not mean mortal life. It means he is giving him divine life.

Well, hold on. Can I just understand you correctly? So, at the resurrection, the son wasn't alive. Sorry.

Of course, he was. That's absurd. How did you get So, then why is he giving life to him if he's already alive?

Because he has a mortal life that's subject to death and he's giving him eternal life.

Well, sorry. He's he's not eternally existent. Sorry. What do you mean he's not eternally existent?

You don't hold to the sun being eternally existent? Of course I do. Okay. So I'm a bit confused here.

What? Okay. No, I'm a bit confused. If you No, because I don't see how it follows what you're saying. So he's eternally existent. His his whatever you want to call it. I know you probably won't like to use the term human nature, but his human nature experienced death, but there was still the persistent entity that existed um during the the mortal death of the sun. So my my problem is is that you seem to have to have a very weird understanding of what being alive is because on the one hand you have to say he's alive but he's not really alive.

No. Yes. First of all the notion of life that is used there means precisely it's the kind of life that God lives that he's going to give him. Right? It's not saying I'm just going to give you mortal life. He already has that. He has mortal life at the time. He's become mortal already. Look at the text. So he has a mortal life. This vitalistic nature of immortal life does not save him from death. He has to have life from the father and share life with the father in order to overcome death in the resurrection. So he has this power given to him is dependent on the father and but this what they're talking about in the term life. Now as I said they were thinking in animistic terms. So they have this vitalistic concept underlying where life is literally a kind of a power. And often you can substitute the word breath because in their world if you were breathing you were alive. And so when God gives mortal life he breathes it

into us. When God gives this ionos when he's giving this eternal life what he does is glorifies. Now you'll notice that when he we'll go back and he's you know in John 17 when he says he's glorified the son what he's saying is he's given him eternal life that is shared in the same way by the father. It is not using terms in a modern sense or a Greek sense. It's using it in the context in which John was written in a vitalistic sense. It's a different meaning.

Yeah. No, no, I understand. But just the last point on this maybe. So you just said that he's giving him eternal life that the father has. I mean, I don't see how that's not firm in what I'm saying. I'm saying that he's given him, but your issue is where do you date that giving?

You're saying you date that giving at the resurrection. Where do you get that else from the scriptures? Well, well, that's why because we're both agreeing the son is given eternal life. Okay. Eternal life.

Now, you're saying that you date that eternal lifegiving action from the resurrection. I'm saying this is pre-temporal given the prior things that the the the writer uh John has said about the person of um of the son.

If we read John, what we see is that he gives him this kind of life throughout his ministry. So when the when Christ is sent, he's sending him to give this kind of life to the others the same way the disciples do. And so this kind of life that we're talking about has nothing to do with with relations of origin. It's not talking about the fact that he has some kind of eternal life in the sense of an a neverbe life that is given to him um essentially by the father. It's talking about an animistic vitalistic power that is infused into him throughout his mortal life because mortal life is subject to death. But Christ is the one who can overcome death because God has shared this vitalic animation with him. But in the context that's what it's saying. Did it did he have life in John one when it says the word was with God? Did did he have life then?

It yes he had life but not but not this kind of animistic life. Okay. When he's mortal

when he's mortal he shares this kind of animistic life with him. It's like God breathed life into Adam

and it would be say well the kind of life that God has he's given him his very life and it's like yeah that's kind of how they they viewed it. There was this anim animating power in the breath. It was a power that gave life. And so if it comes from God, is it eternal life? Is it ever ending life? No. Because Adam died. And Christ is subject to death and merely having this animated life. But when [snorts] he is given eternal life, the anos, what happens is that God is sharing with him the kind of animating power that will allow him to overcome death and the resurrection. and his giving life throughout his ministry. So they're viewing it as a kind of sharing.

Let's see if I can use an analogy. So what I'm doing, let's say that I shine a light on you and light gives you life. Okay, just assume. So what he's doing is the father um gives the light to Christ and then Christ gives the light to others. Okay? And his disciples then take the light and spread it around the world. this light if it were an animating power would be the kind of thing that's being talked about. Um it it's difficult to go back into the vitalistic assumptions that existed at the time the Gospel of John was written because we no longer share this world view. Right? So the kind of vitalistic assumptions underlying the text aren't supporting some kind of of univocal view of what life is. You want to say, well, the divine life he had in the pre-existence is the same kind of life he has and it's immortal.

I think that's what you're saying real quick, guys, because we we've we've we've had this portion of the discussion for quite some time now, more than we intended.

I'm going to leave it up to you guys if you want to keep talking about that or we can move [clears throat] to the coherence.

Yeah, just because you had a little bit of time. Can I just say one point? So, where where do you get from the scriptures that this is animistic life? this specific term that's used in the Greek,

the the scriptures don't say, "Oh, we're using it in an animistic way." Okay? So,

in the context of the culture in which they're writing, okay, but then when the scriptures normally use this, we see it a lot of the time being referred to as eternal life. So, for example, we have in Matthew 19, it uses the same Greek term for this and it talks about eternal life. Matthew 25, it speaks about eternal life.

John, Mark 10 speaks about eternal life and it's using the same Greek term. So where is where are you getting from the scriptures because I know you're going a lot to this background but first the audience have to assume that your background reading is is correct which I'm not assuming it's correct right

so but what I'm saying is from the scriptures from the Bible where are you getting this animistic context that we can do this correct ex Jesus you're proposing

I I gave you the context for instance in Genesis one where breath becomes life yeah okay then when it

it's an animating power yeah I I don't see how it supports your position because yes, something could be anim you said the father has this animating power but the father but the father one second the father isn't mortal but he has this animating power that's what you said okay but then it says are are you are you taking that back because you said to me when I read the verse

I'm not taking anything back I don't know what you mean by my position I just said I I asked you I said for just as the father has life in himself that the first part of that verse what is the life understood as when it's referring to the father. You said it's this animating power. That's what you said,

right? Okay. So, you're saying the father has this animating power, but the father is not a mortal being. So, it it isn't animistic, is it? When it's referring to the father, is

of course it is. It's the same kind of power that gave life to Adam. So, so the father's life is contingent upon him being mortal. Is that what you're saying?

Of course not. Okay. So, what I'm saying is that God can give different kinds of life and that's why we have the modifier. Now I'm asking you what the father's life is in that verse.

You're asking me what what the father's life is. In what context? In that verse, what is it saying when it says the father has life in himself?

What it means is that that he is eternal and he can give eternal life to others and he does it through Jesus Christ.

It's not speaking about giving. It's saying he has this life in itself. It's speaking it's referring to the life. Not no I said the father has life in himself. He can give it to others.

He what is that? Okay. The thing that he can give to others. What is that? It's an animating force and it is it has different meanings within the context of what we're talking about. So I used and said we've got an animating force for instance when Adam is created he brea.

But so the father has this animating force for himself because you're saying what this life is in himself is an animating force. Okay. He has this animating force. Okay. Did he begin to have that animating force or not?

No. No, he's always he's always had it. Yes. Yeah. He's always had this animating force. And in fact, so is Jesus and so is everyone. So yeah.

Okay. So then when he So that the life that he has, it then says so he has granted the son also to have this life in himself. But something you just said as well. Sorry. He said everyone else. But it seems like Jesus is saying this is a unique thing to him because if it was something that's an assumption that everyone else has, why would he say so he has granted the son also to have life in himself already assumed

because the same eternal life is given to the disciples. It's fine. Let's let's leave it here. I think uh we might have gone gone to the weeds in this.

Um should we It's okay, guys. You It sounded like you guys were having fun talking, so I was gonna I was just letting you guys kind of go for it.

Yeah. bottom line is I I simply refuse to play the language game that you overlay onto scripture and you think it's an appropriate thing to do. I think I think that's the difference.

And just a summary point for myself, um I would say that the way in which we approach scripture is that scripture teaches things. It's expressing propositional statements to us like it wants us to believe. It's teaching us things. And so what I'm saying is when we take the totality of scripture, scriptures teaching about the doctrine of God, it does evidence that this doctrine of God is the trinity as I've I've understood it without any philosophical concepts. I've because I haven't used any philosophical concepts.

I I've demonstrated throughout that you're using philosophical terms like um only intrinsic properties and

I never had that in my presentation. That wasn't there. So no, you used it in our conversation and you did use it in your present. I never said he had intrinsic problem.

Yeah, you did. In your presentation, you said that only look back. Maybe I forgot that. We'll look back and see if I've used that term, but in my presentation while I presented um I don't believe was anything that had any philosophical concepts. Um I believe I was just going by what the scriptures were saying and used summarized terms to try and express them. One thing I would say though, not not to open up a can of worms, I did leave a challenge that I really wanted to see because I was trying to say the scriptures say that Yahweh creates alone and Jesus creates I was trying to say that we best make sense of this because there is this sort of one divine reality. Um, but when maybe we go into the philosophical conversation, I like to see how

it might clarify it. Okay. All right. So, for this next portion, we're you guys are going to be doing some statements again on the topic of the coherence of the Trinity. Josh, you're going to go first this time, correct?

Yeah. Awesome. I'll knock us all down once you're ready. Sorry, just one second. I think I'm going to share my

Yep. screen again. Let's see if I can do that. Okay. Sorry, just one second. No worries. Tim, how are you doing, man?

Doing good. No, this is great. This is uh this is lively. This is going I'm really excited for the the second part of this.

This is a fun Many terms will be traded back and forth. So, Joshu uh looks like you're sharing it. You ready?

Yeah. Yeah. Already. All righty. I'm going to knock us off um once I bring this all up and then floor is all yours.

Okay. So the second part of our dialogue is about is the trinity coherent and so I think it'll be good to define certain terms so we understand what we are dialoguing about. So coherence is just normally defined as a set of propositions is coherent if and only if its members are jointly logically possible so that they can all be true together without contradiction. Now contradiction of two propositions is one in which one uh you have the negation and it negates something else. So you have P and not P. So the problem that you have here with P and not P, they cannot be both true at the same time. So contradictions just where you have something like P and not P. So which one you have one negating the other. So they cannot be true at the same time. Uh now what I imagine that we'll be speaking about is something called the logical problem of the trinity. This is the idea that there is an apparent logical

inconsistency between the claims that the father, the son and the holy spirit are each god and that they are distinct from one another and that there is exactly one god. And so just keep in mind again it's very important just for the audience that we understand what coherent means. In order to show something is incoherent you have to show that they are not jointly logically possible because they cannot be true together without contradiction. So any of the any of the propositions that we're going to look at if we take them together can they be true together without contradiction? If they cannot be true together without contradiction then they are incoherent. Outside of that you haven't demonstrated an incoherence. Now just the formal statement of the problem. So just looking at here that so sorry for the audience is it's good we're on the academy channel because uh we're going a lot more deeper here um

than we were in the biblical phase of the discussion. So formal statement on this. It's very good to always look at formal statements because then you can sort of see and identify where there is a contradiction. So let F be the father, S be the son, H be the holy spirit and x is god. Then the first uh statement is f is g, s is g, h is g, f is not s, f is not h, s is h, and there is exactly one g. Okay. So what we're basically saying here is that the father is God, the son is God, the holy spirit is God, the father is not the son, the father is not the holy spirit, the son is not the holy spirit and there is exactly one god. Now what I imagine that blake will be saying is that this is something which is incoherent because we cannot have all of these seven statements being true together without there being a contradiction. We have to maybe take six of them and drop uh the seventh. Now there are the way in which I will tackle

this is through something called the equivocation strategy. I think this is a very clear way that shows that there is no logical contradiction. Now the general equivocation strategy is what's on the left on the screen. So for people uh looking at it and just uh defining the terms here so just looking where it says let so let fs and h being the father the son and the spirit let x is a divine person be um x and then the d um and x is a fundamental divine person x and the fd. So taken together then these are the propositions that I'm affirming.

F is D, S is D, H is D. F is not S, F is not H, S is not H. And there is exactly one X such that X is FD and X is F. So what I mean by that seventh statement which seems to be um challenging, it's just basically saying that there is exactly one fundamental divine person and that is the father. So putting this not now in normal speak uh so the father first one is saying the father is divine the son is divine the holy spirit is the divine the father is not the son the father is not the holy spirit the son is not the holy spirit and there there is exactly one fundamental divine person um the father that's what I'm saying in those seven statements and those seven statements um are um when they're taken together they are jointly logically possible because they do not um entail a contradiction so they are coherent that is a coherent statement Um then um if someone wants to go a little bit further um I've worked on and I'm not

going to spend a lot of time on this because I think we've already gone into the weeds with aspectalism um sorry with what we've done with the Bible but now with aspectalism will bring us a lot deeper in the weeds. Um but there is another equivocation strategy that you can take which draws from my work on the idea of aspects and this deals with certain objections that could be brought up. So the father, son and spirit are aspects of divinity. So if you see fa, SA and HA and then you have divinity being D and you have X is the fundamental divine aspect and then you have X and Y are spectally distinct and then you have um FA is D, SA is D, HA is D, FA is as spectally distinct from SA. FA is spectally distinct from HA. SA is uh spectally distinct from HA and that there is exactly one X such that X is um FDA and X equals FA. So in normal speech this is saying the father aspect is divine, the son aspect is

divine, the holy spirit aspect is divine, the father aspect is um aspectally distinct from the son aspect. The father aspect is as spectally distinct from the holy spirit aspect and the certainly the um son aspect um is spectally distinct from the holy spirit aspect. And then the last statement says um there is exactly one fundamental um divine aspect that is the father aspect. And so in both of these strategies you have no logical incoherence because in both strategies there's an equivocation in the word god. Because when we go back to what it was saying here, we have a um an ambiguous usage of the word God here.

But when we disambiguate and we precify our usage of the word God as trinitarians do, we would go with the equivocation strategy, the general one such that you have no contradiction. And the spectal one, if you want to go a little, you're a bit fancy, you want to go a little bit deeper in the philosophy, you can also go that way as well. But what I'll be generally want to focus on just so the audience can come along with me in this discussion um is a general equivocation strategy. So I asked my interlocator to demonstrate how the statement on the left is logically incoherent. Now I really like in this stage because I felt that we were talking past each other in the biblical phase about different methodological standpoints because what I'm seeing is that this is an internal critique such that taking my position it is incorrect.

So taking my position on the Bible I was expecting then to be a good showing of different Bible verses that counteract what I'm saying and thus the best explanation is not the trinity but something else. Okay. And this happens with the unitarians. Unitarian might say actually the Bible passages don't support what you're saying. They support a unitarian view. And I didn't really find that in the biblical portion. But then what I'm saying here is something I think will be a lot easier because we seem to share um I imagine logical systems. And so within this classical logic system, I ask you please to demonstrate how uh 1 2 3 4 5 6 and seven on the left um entail a contradiction when they're jointly taken together. I propose that they do not. Therefore, the doctrine of the trinity as it's understood that there are three divine persons and there is one fundamental divine person, the father, that is

something which does not entail contradiction and I feel I've demonstrated it on the left. Thank you very much.

Awesome. All right. Thank you for that. Josh Blake, are you going to be sharing your screen again for your section?

As a matter of fact, I am. Let me share it right now if I can get it to come up.

No worries. It's taking a second to come up. Okay, I'm going to go to this. Okay,

and I'm probably going to um disappoint Dr. Sidui because I agree with him that there's a way to make the trinity um coherent if you are willing to quivocate in the premises. Every logician knows that if you use terms in an equivocal way, you really don't have a syllogism that could demonstrate incoherence. Um the problemat the problematic problem at this point is the equivocal use. So I agree with Dr. Suati that there are numerous formulations of the trinity that are in fact logically incoherent. He did a great job demonstrating using the um incernability of identicals argument to show that the toistic view of deity is in fact etern internally incoherent. And I enjoyed the discussion quite a bit actually. Relative identity models, the um trinity um monotheism uh that for instance proposed by William Lane Craig, these are not logically coherent. And let me make clear Dr.

Sigui, when you say what you need are Bible verses, you're asking me to impose onto the Bible. I'm talking the same language as you now, but the Bible doesn't speak that language. It doesn't use the notion of aspect at all, which is essential to your presentation of the trinity. It doesn't use a theory of propositional identity or propositional.

Wait, sorry. Sorry, Blake. Um, is this your statement? Because we're not sharing your screen yet. I'm not sharing it because when I'm looking at it, it's just showing your monitor instead of the a document or something like that.

I am sharing my screen. It came up saying I was sharing my screen. Let me try again. Share screen.

Yeah. Is it sharing? Let's just Yeah. And then let's just confirm. Yeah. The thing is it's showing the StreamYard lobby right now. Um you're you're to switch to

It's showing the lobby that we're in right now instead of your document. Well, this is a problem. Can you it's

when you share your screen um there is an option should come up. It'll say like tab window stuff like that. Okay. Share screen. Okay. Share screen. It comes up and then it share. I'm going to share entire screen. Okay. I see this. Let's see if I can get this to come up. How's that now?

Let's see. That's okay. Now, now we're seeing it. Sorry to cut you off. Go ahead.

So, the question of whether the Trinity is coherent is a logical question. Is playing a different language game than any document in the Bible uses. And to ask me to impose back on the Bible a language game of propositional um modal logic it is a best it's a misunderstanding of the nature of the biblical documents. But let me say I'm going to respond to Dr. Sidueti's entire work here and the way he has defined things because his model of the trinity relies on a vast and complicated logical structure that's highly contested among philosophers where even the theorists who accept the theories don't agree on hardly anything.

The prior probability of this view being sound is extremely low. S Dr. Dr. Siati relies on trope theory, grounding theory, aspect, philosophy of mind as firstp person perspective, an antto thematic rules to parse the trinity to avoid incoherence. Let's look at this. For instance, he uses a trope to define God. Here's a problem. Tropes are generally taken to be concrete instances that exemplify or instantiate properties. Tropes are things like a particular shape, weight, and texture of an individual object.

[snorts] And because tropes are particulars for two object to share a property or we could say to exemplify

[snorts] um is to each contain or instantiate or exemplify a greenness trope where those greenness tropes although numerically distinct nevertheless exactly resemble each other. But the problem is the tropes were developed with the notion of concrete spatial temporal loions in mind. They were used with science in mind to talk about the actual physical world. But God and the divine persons are not concrete particulars who are spatial temporally located at least in Dr. Siguati's view. [snorts] Look at Dr. Siguati's view of God and ask yourself if whether it can be divorced from the spatial dimensions in inherent in trope theory. This is his definition. God is a maximal trope not confined to one location but is multiply located in three distinct regions each representing a different aspect of trinity. And then look at the grounding theory that he adopts. Siguati adopts Whitmer's grounding theory but the Whitmer Bushard

Trogden theory that he adopts is incompatible with metaphysical views that posit necessary connections between distinct realata like the father and the son because the identity of the first entity collapses into the identity of the necessarily distinct riotta so they can't be distinct. Now let me ask what it is to be a person. Okay. Um Siguati posits the father son and spirit as a trinity have only one mind. But he also that each of the persons of the trinity has a robust firsterson perspective which distinguishes them. But po properties positing self-referring knowledge of oneself or first person perspective are intrinsic properties.

And here's where the problem of incoherence in the argument he gave comes back. [snorts] If there are any distinct non-reational properties in the fa in the son and the holy ghost or the spirit then we can't play this equivocation game because they truly are distinct and are not merely aspects of each other. Now he takes his view of first-person perspective from Lenroa the late Lenroa Baker of a person an entity X is a person if and only if X possesses a robust first-person perspective defined as the capacity for conceiving of oneself a p person in a first person reflexive consideration. Now the divine persons cannot be merely distinct relations. Having a robust first person perspective logically tells that each divine person has intrinsic not merely relational properties that are distinct.

For instance, knowing that I am the one who atoned is a first person intrinsic property until being the son that is not possessed by the father or spirit. Knowing that I am the ground of all else that exists according to Dr. Cawati is an intrinsic property of the father not possessed by the son or spirit. It follows that the son and spirit are distinguished by not only exttrinsic or relational properties but also by distinct intrinsic properties. Now let me give you an idea of relational property. There's a certain painting I don't like. Okay. But even if I like the painting or even if I didn't exist, the painting would be exactly what it is. So if there are intrinsic properties in something, my relation to it doesn't change it or define what it is. But if it's an intrinsic property, say for instance, I am the one that the painting is of, there's an intrinsic property that I exist and the painting adopt is

relying on my existence. This would be an internal property. Add to that the fact the situ perspective to the trinity as a whole. So, and he has to because he accepts the doctrine of simplicity in a kind of pwikian fashion. But now we have four distinct divine persons. So, we have three distinct divine persons who have a per first person perspective. And we have the trinity having a first person perspective. And the trinity knows I'm the one who's composed of three distinct divine persons. And because having a first person perspective is sufficient to count as a person, we now have four persons. Add to this that siduati posits that the sun has two minds and [clears throat] two wills following the third council of Constantinople.

But having a distinct mind and will seem to entail having a robust first person perspective and thus the sun is actually two distinct persons based and that gives us an historian heresy. The problem is that these attributions of intrinsic properties of self-referring knowledge and dexicals are in fact essential properties entailed by omniscience. the trinity, the father, the son as well as the as a divine nature and spirit all have omnicient robust first-person perspectives and that entails that each has intrinsic properties distinct from the others.

Okay, now I'm going to skip down the quaam move that he makes and or will make I suspect is that in so far as the you know we're speaking of one aspect we're not speaking of the other or in so far as we're speaking of the of the human nature of Christ we're not speaking of the divine nature but take a perfectly round square this thing has the property of having four sides only in so far as it is square has the property of being circular only as a circle and so we can positly around squares the concept of a bare relation where one of the relat that has no distinguishing intrinsic properties but is a bare relation itself is a vacuous idea. Relations are descriptions of the way or motive existing together of two distinct things that requires that a mere latte that has no intrinsic properties itself cannot count as a person. Indeed, there's nothing positive to be related. To treat a relation as an

existing thing that is distinct from the relata themselves commits the logical fallacy of Ria, making concrete what is merely a description. Now here's the problem of the atonement that arises um because of adoption of this kind of an approach. Christ suffers only in so far as he suffers in his human nature. But atonement can only be accomplished by divine nature. Christ did not suffer in divine nature. Therefore there's no atonement. Problem of deficient love. This is an important problem. One of the greatest problems of the trinity is that there's only one mind and the sun is generated as a matter of essence. And so it rejects the most valuable kind of love that is freely given and freely accepted love among persons. If there's only one mind and one will in the trinity as as Dr. Sichuati says then there's no distinct mind that can voluntarily choose to love. It is one thing if the reason there's only one mind and one

will in effect is that our love out of love the beloved willingly and voluntarily submits his will to accept the love given. It is quite another thing. If there can be metaphysically only one will and one mind and no metaphysical possibility that the beloved can freely agree to accept or submit his will to another, that makes this kind of valuable love impossible because the son who has no distinct mind or will cannot be a different mind and thus is unfree with respect to the father's will. The same result follows from the notion of eternal generation that is a matter of essence. I am essentially a human and I have no choice but to be essentially what I am. It is not a free act and cannot possibly be free. Can't. It's not voluntary. The son is not brought about as a result of love but because of the father's essence which is logically prevolitional. So this kind of most valuable other love

where we freely give ourselves. We freely receive the the one that we love can't exist within God. Now this is the the most important argument. How much time do I have?

You are at 8 minutes. Let me pause real quick. You're at 8 minutes and 40 seconds right now.

Okay, I'm going to go through this fairly quickly because it's easy to understand. Given the incisernability of identicals. Um well, I I'm going to move off of that. Given that the son is dependent on the father, the the father has a property that is um essential to being divine and that is being a to a a complete ground. The the father is the complete ground of all reality. The son is not and that gives us what we call a [snorts] um deficient divinity possessed by the son and spirit. Now a I'm going to put on the screen. Take a screenshot. This is the definition of proper intrinsicality that is given to us by Dr. Sajati to overcome this kind of a problem. Here's the problem.

The this is something that he adopts from Whitmer. But this kind of a definition misidentifies intrinsic properties on this definition. We have a positive um requirement here and a negative requirement here that was added ad hoc just to ward off the kinds of problems that arose from the initial definition. But the whiff whiter definition still misidentifies what should be considered to be intrinsic properties. So for instance, Dr. Sidui admits that being cylindrical comes out to be an extrinsic or merely a relational property on his definition.

But if anything should be an intrinsic property, being cylindrical should [snorts] and and uh he but what happens is he accept he accepts this anomaly because he asserts that his sadity is a dependent is dependent on relational facts. That answer begs the question by simply accepting the definition proposed of what it is to be intrinsic. And if anything should be intrinsic, the property of being a sphere or being cylindrical should being a say that is having a sad also should be intrinsic. And the reason is is that asserting that something is to has totally independent existence and doesn't depend for anything else on any of its properties should be intrinsic but on this definition it isn't. Now that's the solution that Dr. Sigati gives us because they're only extrinsic properties. we don't have anything that um would give us a a problem in the logical argument. But the problem is is the notion of first-p person perspective

entails intrinsic properties and the definition he was given is is a really bad one. Um moreover he's admitted I mean Dr. Sichuati himself has admitted that having the extrinsic property of being the sole ground of all reality is in fact a great making property. Even if it is intrinsic extrinsic properties can be great making and that is there could be something that are essential to be the greatest being like God. So for instance other love the fact that I love something distinct from myself like a human being that if there is a human being I have complete love for this being and this is not merely an intrinsic property in this definition even. So the fact that is that love itself is a good example of extrinsic properties. that God must possess in order to be considered great. Um,

we're at we're at like 13 minutes now. Okay. Um, I'm just going to give up on this for the rest of it and maybe I'll give it to you to Po so that we don't have to worry about it. How's that?

It's totally fine with me. I'm just trying to I'm just trying to keep things fair, that's all.

Yeah. No, I want I I agree. All right, Josh and Blake, uh, how long do you guys want to go for for the open discussion here? Uh, since we kind of messed with the times here a little bit, how much time do you have left, Blake?

15 20 minutes. Okay. Probably not. I I apologize, Josh, but my 92-year-old mother's more important than this discussion. So,

no, that's I think we [snorts] can all agree. No offense taken. No, that's fine.

All right. I'll remove Tim and I and then you guys can kind of get to it. Could I just open up with responding just because yours is the freshest uh more than mine uh to a few things that you said. Um okay. So I just noted down a few things which I I think need to be corrected. Um firstly um okay I'll go with a number of them. I'll stop just in different ways. So uh you said the indexical of being uh of the sun saying I am the sun is an intrinsic property. Um, indexical statements are not properties. They're propositions. So, they're things that can be true or false. What indexicals are picking out are properties. And the property that that indexical picks out is being the son. Being the son is an intrinsic property because it's had in virtue of another. The son has the property of being the son in virtue of having the father. So, just saying that the son says I am the the son doesn't make that into intrinsic property

because it's not an intrinsic property. Neither is it exttrinsic. It's a statement. It's a proposition which has truth value. It could be true or false, but it's not a property. It picks out a property which it is um which is itself um extrinsic. Um secondly, you then said um tropes are um spatial. Uh there's nothing in the definition of a trope that makes it spatial. Uh tropes are concrete, but being concrete doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be spatial. So for example, I imagine that you will hold to God being a concrete object. A concrete object is just one that has causal powers. It can do things and it can be causally acted upon. And so that doesn't necessitate that it has to be spatial. So tropes are just things that are concrete concrete objects, but they don't necessarily have to be spatial. Even though that tropes might have been formulized by certain individuals to make sense of um spatial

reality, um that doesn't necessarily mean that tropes intrinsic to themselves have to be spatial. Secondly, uh sorry, thirdly, you said grounding. Um I took grounding from Whitner. Um I didn't take grounding from Whitmer. In my writing, I take grounding from Jonathan Schaffer. Jonathan Schaffer doesn't take grounding to be contingent relations at all. He takes them to be necessitating synchronic relations. So that fits perfectly with the idea that the father grounds the son. Um you also said uh sorry one second. Uh you said um quite quite a few things um about robust firsterson perspectives. Um but I just don't see uh that they have any bearing on what I'm saying once you take on board their spectal account of reality.

Um, if the son has a robust first-person perspective, the spirit has a robust first-person perspective, and the father has a robust person perspective, that is just the capability to be able to um h have self-awareness. Um, but then the content of that is going to be relativized to those specific aspects. So there might be certain content that the son has that the father doesn't have at that specific time. So for example, the son having become incarnate is something that will be a belief that the the son has but the father doesn't have.

You have the other belief of the son has become incarnate. So the content might not be identical. Um but the robust first person perspectives um I don't see how they cannot be held by the persons in an aspect account when aspects are understand correctly. Um and then I'll maybe you can bring up more of the other stuff after but I just want to then return back to the issue that we were looking at. And it seems that you've similar again, you've changed the [clears throat] conversation. The conversation was about coherence, not about truth. So a lot of the things that you spoke about was about the truth. It just doesn't seem to have a pri like for example use the term it has a low prior probability. That's to do with truth.

Things can have low prior probabilities [clears throat and cough] um but they um still are coherent. So long as they don't have a prior probability of zero, they can be coherent. Um so what I tried to do was give a definition of coherence where you can then demonstrate to me the core teaching of the trinity that there are three divine persons and uh there's one fundamental divine person who's the father. Okay, that's the statement um precified uh where that entails a contradiction. So far in your presentation you haven't shown me that that entails a contradiction. You've uh maybe questioned a lot of my metaphysical assumptions. Um you also mentioned something earlier that um a lot of them are controversial. Well, please pick something for me in philosophy that isn't controversial. Um I think everything even um you know self-existence and identity and various aspects that you'll think are are just

quite clear are taken to be um are taken to be controversial. So something being controversial in philosophy doesn't really um bear any weight um as an argument. If something was controversial in science, that's different. Controvers controversy in philosophy doesn't really show anything. It's about actually is it coherent? Um, if you are speaking about coherence, is it plausible? Is it prob uh probabilistically true? If you're talking about truth, but again, I don't think you've demonstrated anything that shows that the the core statements of the trinity are incoherent. Um, that's again something I'll like to look for.

Um, but yeah, you I'll I'll hand it over to you. Yeah, I I appreciate that. First we disagree that indexical self-referential knowledge is not a property. Okay. Um if because there is something that inheres is a property in having knowledge. If I know that your doctor said this is a fact about me and it's a property that I possess. Um the fact is that um I could give you a number of scholars who have written about um self-referring indexicals as being intrinsic properties and probably we'll have to get into that discussion but they are properties because there are um what they are are descriptions about the way something is in itself um and it that means that it's a mode and having a property. So it is a first person pers and and having a first person perspective. I don't think you disagree with until these kinds of of knowing indexicals. I think you accept that. So if we take the iniccernability

argument that you used against the Thomas. So incernability of identicals is that everything that's if everything that's true of X is also true of Y, they're the very same thing, right? Roughly. We could get more technical if we wanted to. But if there's nothing that is intrinsically true about the father that's um not also true about the son then we don't have something different. If we merely have extrinsic properties there's no contradiction. But if we have any intrinsic properties everything true of the father is not also true of the son and we violate the incertibility of identicals. So it demonstrates an incoherence and so positing a first-person perspective and you haven't disagreed that we have four persons given the trinity which has its own first person perspective and the three divine persons who each also have a first person perspective. We just have too many persons. The bottom line is is

that when we get right down to this, you're using a system and and I agree with you being controversial in and of itself is is not a demonstration of incoherence. What it is is a great big flag saying you have this huge structure and everything in it has to be true before any coherence can be demonstrated because that's the entire structure and your entire structure and I I think people just listening to you speak can see that this is a very sophisticated difficult to understand area where the likelihood that you've parsed everything correctly and you're the only one in the whole history of the world who's done so. Um, not very likely. Okay, but and this is an argument about coherence because if the entire system is not workable, then your way of showing coherence collapses.

Okay, and I don't accept I I'm I'm skeptical about I I'm very skeptical about trope theory. I I grounding theory if it's merely about um levels of explanation and what has priority and explanation logically um I I think can we can make sense of it but if we turn it into some kind of an ontological statement rather than having a statement of priority or logical priority merely in other words something that merely exists in as a concept and not something that's actually instantiated it can make sense when we begin to actually instantiate realities with it. I think it doesn't make sense.

So, you and I are not going to get on the same page as the as to the way that you approach um the Trinity. And what you've used your notion of aspect theory assumes the notion of of trope theory. And so, when you were talking about different aspects, you know, they each they each um exist in a different region. And what I've said is I don't think that you can um disambiguate the notions that you're using in trope theory without assuming spatial kinds of of relations. And when you define them, you use spatial locationions. And so it seems to me that um you need to break down further and demonstrate how your spatial locations in fact are not spatial region. Um, you know, if I'm talking about merely a logical region, that's fine. But you don't take the the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost to be merely logical constructs, right? You believe they're actually instantiated.

Yeah. Can I You said quite quite a number of things. Of course. Yeah. You're trying to keep them in my mind. Um I don't remember where have I written that the um do you say the trinity or the divine substance has a first person perspective um independent of the persons? I don't know.

I took that from your paper on monotheism. Oh well that at all didn't bring up anything to do with aspects and anything. So that was a general mon that was nothing to do with aspects. I never brought in aspects and never spoke about them. So I I just think it's an incorrect reading of my my writings. I've been very clear when I do speak about first-person perspectives because I don't think I even brought in first person perspectives. Maybe in that that paper. Um when I do speak about them, I say that there are three first person perspectives. The father, the son, and the spirit have those and that's it.

I've never said that there is uh this divine substance over and above the persons who can then have a first person perspective. Um I would actually question it's more your position than actually in your writing that you do there is something which is over and above the person's that had that makes it into a fourth entity because I I see very clear I just want to read something because I I do believe a good back and forth is always healthy. Um I want to give a direct quotation for something you said that that really stuck with me but I found it very problematic. You said uh and this is quoting from revisioning the Mormon concept of deity page 41. You state and I quote, "The Godhead cannot fail to have the properties of divinity and remain what it is. The Godhead is thus immutable with respect to the divine nature in this sense. On the other hand, the divine persons can fail to have the properties of divinity because the

divine nature's contingent on the voluntary love of the divine persons for one another. Thus, while the steadfast character and personal essence of or identity is essential to each of the divine persons, the properties of divinity are not. The divine persons could voluntarily empty themselves of divinity by freely choosing to leave the unity of indwelling existence which characterizes the divine life. So you say to me that I am raifying something over and above the persons that make it a fourth entity when it seems like you've actually explicitly done that because you said that the godhead something called the godhead is immutable with respect to the divine nature. The persons are not immutable with respect to the divine nature but they have divinity. So we have three persons who have divinity and we have the godhead which has divinity. So we have three four divine entities. So for me that's more problematic than anything

I've said about first person perspectives. And then even going further you actually warrant you you say in your own writings that the persons could fail to have the properties of divinity. So that means that there is a possible world where the father is not divine. So we have the father, son, and spirit in a possible world where there is they are not divine persons. They are non- divine. I I just don't know how that could ever fit or be explicated and come from the scriptures that the father Yahweh could exist and not be divine.

That that just seems very problematic to me. Yeah. So it seems that actually there's more contentious because I would say for example as well your understanding of divinity is something which is grounded upon voluntary love outside of your own work. I've I've not seen anyone that takes that in philosophy of religion. So when you're talking about controversial concepts and topics actually seems to be that you are assuming things which are not even defended by anyone but yourself at least uh aspects um troke theory uh grounding multiple location they're all things which are defended by leading philosophers within their respective fields but just in philosophy religion you hold to there being a godhead that has divinity over and above the persons you have you hold to the three divine persons being able to exist without divinity such that there is a possible world where the father, son, and spirit

are not divine beings at all. And you also believe that divinity is grounded upon it's an emerging emergent property of voluntary love. Well, I've I've never seen that before outside of your own work. So, it seems actually the controversyy's li lying um in your own position.

Well, first of all, three things. I'm working in a very different tradition than you are, which explains why I approach it differently. I am far from the only philosopher who believes that robust um voluntary love for others or other love is an essential property of divinity. Okay. I'm far from the only one who argues that there and in fact you use it this way yourself that there are two different ways to use the term um God and one is to refer to what is shared among them which we call the godhead and that which refers to them individually.

I've not actually said that in my written I have you use the you have a predicative use. Yeah, but the predicative use is used of the persons, the father.

Yeah, that's exactly right. But you also have a nonpredicative use. But you're saying you're saying that there is something over and above the persons that exists which can then be predicated. Are you not saying that?

No, I'm saying there's something that they each participate in that makes them jointly divine. In other words, the fact that they participate in each other and have this kind of love is what's essential to be divine. If they didn't have this love, they couldn't be divine. So it's a description.

So when you say the godhead cannot fail to have properties of divinity and remain what it is, the godhead is thus immutable respect of the divine nature. That's not something the godhead is not something which is divine over and above the persons. Because you're saying the godhead cannot lose divinity. You're saying each of the persons can lose divinity.

No, not that's not true. First of all, I adopt a kotic theory of christologology. And I'm sure you're familiar with kotic theories of christologology. And so in the kotic theory of christologology, it takes its leave from primarily from Philippians 2 and John 17. In Philippians 2, it says that Christ essentially emptied himself of his divinity and became mortal. In John 17, he begins out by asking for the father to return to him the glory that he had before the earth was. And it's evident that he doesn't have that glory when he's praying as a mortal. And so what we're referring to is a fullness of the expression of divinity. Okay? He doesn't have that as mortal. Um you would use the terminology of the human nature of Christ. I'm saying that it's the very same nature. And what happens is that we actuate these inherent and intrinsic properties, the essential properties in each person to to then

manifest their um divine properties and fullness. So, it's the difference between an acorn again and an oak tree, which you're familiar with from Jacob um Hansen. It's it's an analogy that I use. And so, the fullness of divinity, the fullness of the expression of divinity is something that requires a fullness of love. And the father is returning to Christ, something that he didn't have as a mortal, something that he gave up when he became human. And it's in essence activating and making um so that they are manifest when they haven't been manifest in the mortal life. So what we're talking about here is a and this divinity is this life. You talked about you know giving life this the father gives life to the son. Well, the the the father gives light, but he it's the love and indwelling glory that they share that makes them what they are. And on my view, we can call that emergent. Um we could say supervenes or um essentially

arises from what they are when they are in a loving unity of in of indwelling unity where they have completely shared lives. Okay. Um, and I'm just taking this based on mostly John 14-17 where they share their lives. And this is this kind of co-inherence is certainly not something that is new to you. I'm sure you're Orthodox, right?

Yeah. So ju just from the script from what you're saying then, one last thing. Okay.

I wrote that 1981. I was um in 1981 I was 22 years old. I'm [snorts] now 68 years old. And I would I have rejected a part of what I defended. Um, in other words, you're aware from your discussion with Jacob Hansen, and you've even argued that I get the King Flet discourse and the sermon in the Grove wrong, but I'm certain you're not aware of the various sources on which the transcription of those s um sermons was given. Um, and so I I would just push back your reliance on pancrats to suggest that I'm not reading them correctly is not a very good response.

Yeah. But that's just is there something over and above is a description of the way things are is it something over and above what they are?

Yeah. Yeah. So I I mean I I just want to nail down a few things here. So um I I'll grant for you let's say that just for the sake of argument I don't agree with it at all but the sake of argument let's say that the son diverted himself of all the divine attributes.

Okay. Let's say the scriptures teacher, which I don't believe, but I'll grant for the sake of argument. Um, where does it say the father does this? Because it seems to be that you don't limit this um contingent divinity just on the son.

Oh, I agree. The scriptures the scriptures never say that the in these words this that the father became mortal. Um, however,

and the spirit as well. Yeah. The spirit hasn't become mortal yet. In in my view, the spirit hasn't been mortal yet. Okay.

Okay. So, so our discussion though is does the Bible teach the Trinity? Okay, that's what we looked at.

Does the um is the Trinity coherent? And so the sources are quite limited in what we're looking at. And so then you're bringing in something which is not grounded upon the Bible. So it doesn't really add to the arguments that you're giving. What I'm trying

right because I'm not relying on the Bible. We have additional scripture. And what I'm doing, my project is different than yours. Okay. I'm making sense of the additional scriptures in the context of Joseph Smith's statements and the way that everything was, you know, as it was understood at the time the revelations were given that received were received by Joseph Smith. So the corpus with which I'm working is vastly different.

Yeah. But then then it's a similar even Aquinus even Aquinas accepted that if the son could become mortal then so could the father. Um, again, I don't grant that, but I'll just put that. Well,

it's true. I guarantee it. They they can quote Quinus. Okay. But anyway, I mean, uh, Quinus is not a saint in in the Orlock church, so again, it doesn't um have authority. But but if you're if you're saying this thing that you're able to sort of expand your corpus to hold to the things that allow you to have this discussion, then if I'm playing that same game, I could say, well, as an Orthodox Christian, I take as authoritative, infallibly authoritative, the councils. And so

we can't say that. Let me tell you why. What makes something different? You're doing that with saying Joseph Smith and and and the the canonized scriptures of the the Latter-day Saints, aren't you?

No, they're not the same thing because you deny that there is any public revelation after the apostles, which means that there is nothing that the councils received that was revelation because they gave what they had publicly. They don't say this is what God delivered to us that is the truth. They're saying and in fact, this is what they're doing. We're doing our best cogitation to come up with an explanation of these scriptural texts and I accept that's what they're doing. I simply disagree with the way they did it and what they came up with.

And is the is the King Flet discourse revelation? Of course not. It's a discourse that was given by Joseph.

But you affirm that in what you were just saying because the canonized scriptures don't speak about the father diversity.

No. No. So the king f you're holding the same thing. you're holding to something which is authoritative because it's Joseph Smith's um teaching but it's not revelation. So why is that any different from what I'm saying?

It's different because what I'm actually doing is parsing scriptures and using the King Flet discourse to understand the terms that are used by Joseph Smith in Revelation and what he what he's revealed. And so I use the King Flet discourse as other statement in context to give context to understanding the scriptures that he gives us.

Okay. But the King Philip discourse is from him. The canonized scriptures are revelation from God. So you're using you're not using the same source to interpret the same source. You're using

but I'm using them very differently. So the only thing I have to accept is binding are the scriptures. In order to understand the scriptures, I go and use these sources from Joseph Smith who is the source of these scriptures that the scriptures came through to understand what he's saying. It's a very different usage. I'm not saying that the language of Joseph Smith is somehow binding and no Latter-day Saint would say that the King Flet discourse is binding in the way that the councils are. It's just not.

Okay. We we can we can hear. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to let you u because you have to you have to get going here pretty soon, don't you?

I do. I I apologize, but I do. No, it's okay. Um, do you guys want to just say any final statements and then, uh, Blake, if you got to get going, that's totally fine. Um, I was just going to get through some of the super chats and stuff like that.

Let's go through the super chats. And I I'm just keeping an eye. My My mother is in fact waiting. Um, I've had my wife contact her and let her know I could be a little bit late

and a little bit is so vague I could be. Anyway, so um yeah. Yeah, there's a few Okay, there's we'll we can do super chats. I'll just go through a few questions um that people that people have had for you too and then um we'll do closing statements and then if you want to get going after that, Blake, you can and we can we can just we'll just finish up any other super chats um because I want you to get to your mother. Okay. So, first one here is if reasoning through divine features um totally underdetermine the object, how did the Jewish authors tell who is divine to stay consistent with Blake's position? To stay consistent with Blake's position reduces to the Bible isn't inspired.

Well, I I'll respond to that. No, it doesn't. Um none of the writers of the Bible claimed that they were um reasoning through divine features. Okay. None of them were engaging in this kind of a project. And what I'm saying is they were inspired. But look, there's a reason we accept revelation and what comes from the prophets. And that's because God's a lot smarter than we are and it comes from God. But they're fallible. And their speech and their language demonstrates that they're speaking within the context of a particular culture and their words have a con concrete particular meaning within the context in which they live. And so what I'm doing is putting the language back in that context to understand what's being asserted. And one thing they don't do, they don't use language as a propositional language game.

They're not playing the philosophical language game. They're and I think you know Dr. Siguati is has has quoted um biblical um scholars to this extent. They're not they're not interested in philosophical statements. They're they're interested in the kind of things of family relations and the status of their nation and the status of faithfulness to the covenant before God and whether or not they're violating and that kind of a thing and and so we're just in two different so what I'm relying on here is is in some way related to Lud Vickenstein's language game and trying to play one language game and then use it in a different way is to misunderstand the language game it is why I gave the the example of if somebody says, "Well, aren't you a a a burst of sunshine today?" Nobody should take that literally as a proposition.

So, okay. Um, we got a lot for you, Blake. Um, question for Blake. What's the argument that IBE of IBE meaning inference of explanation of the ancient neareastern data in scripture is insufficient? this all I'm not gonna read the final part but we'll just um what's for the first part of the question

what's the inference of the best explanation so if I'm understanding the super chat correctly Josh's method was an inference best explanation methodology and I think the question the person that asked this um thinks that you're rejecting that methodology and he's asking

I yeah what is it that suggests it's insufficient well basically the the methodology ology that virtually every serious biblical scholar uses to understand the text. So what we have to do as I've asserted is the way that language is being used in these texts is not the conversation of philosophy or you know logical propositions and the argument I believe is self-evident. um when we go back to understand the text for instance we and what that means is that every use of scripture um when we're going between sources would be equivocal and to try to make them into a system where they're univocal this is called the univosity of scripture is to misunderstand the nature of the scripture they use the terms differently and and [snorts] uh you know usually they have very different terms and terminology so for instance when we have a a I gave an example Example, when we have a writer telling us the Lord our

God is one, he's not asserting anything like um a philosophical mono um metaphysical monotheism. And to take that statement as a statement of metaphysical monotheism is to misunderstand the thought world, the culture, the way the language is used in that context. There's a different use when it says in Corinthians that the father uh we have one God, the father. Okay. um that's not the same kind of a use and he's not using it in the context that the writer of Deuteronomy writers of Deuteronomy and and I you know just to be totally upfront I don't believe it came from Moses either it's writing in the context of of the 7th century and so the way that this term is used by Paul is not the same as the way as it's used in Deuteronomy and to think that it's used in the same way is to misunderstand the text you know and I can say this is the way Paul used it and I think Dr.

Sichuati and I largely agree that it's meant to designate some the the primacy of the father as the one God and and so um you know I just think it's a it's a mistake to address scripture in terms of propositional truth and university the way I don't accept university of scripture. They were written in different times at different places by different people having different ideas often disagreeing with each other and of and even when agreeing not using terms the same way. So that's how I see it.

Awesome. Um, another one for you, Blake. Uh, can you or any Mormon actually motivate the idea that we can't use external philosophy reasoning to derive doctrine?

No, because that's the only way to derive doctrine. The fact is is we use philosophical reasoning where we take and we what we do is we're asking so what what is a basic idea that I'm working with how can I best put it together so that it's coherent and understandable for our time [snorts] okay that's what theology does and philosophical theology is saying I'm going to do my best to disambiguate these terms in a way that they're not disambiguated in the text and then I'm going to try to show that I can put these together into a coherent system and so it's a very different kind of a thing. And so um the the reason for motivating um I don't know what you mean by external philosophy but by philosophy reasoning is that I'm doing my best within my situation to understand the message that was delivered. And that's why I go back and say, "Oh, I'm doing my best to understand the text within the

context, the time, place, and culture that it was written." And I know they're not playing the language game that I'm playing. So, I'm going to be sure I don't impose that onto the text when I use it. And if you read my books, for instance, in my third volume of Exploring Mormon thought, I use each period. I go back and say, "Okay, when we're when we're talking about the earliest period of biblical texts, they clearly have this view and and it's very likely that they viewed L and Yahwa as two distinct divine beings." Um it's quite likely that there was a a female deity Asherat or Atherat and there was some sense among a lot of of um Hebrews and this may have been in the text there there are some clues that it was in the text but um I think it's been edited out. So I I think that when you get to redacting the ancient texts they they didn't transmit. And I can show you for instance that the Meseretic writers use

the text in a way that they were imposing in the translation their view on the text. They do so when they're for instance um translating um Psalm 82 as judges rather than as gods. And so um when we use scriptural text my my argument is very simple and that is we've got to go back to how that term is used in that context. when I'm doing philosophical theology, I'm asking what I can do in my context. And so they're two different contexts.

Can I can I answer this just quickly? Sorry, just in response to this. I know it was

Sure. Go ahead. Just um just the most respectful way possible, but I feel that you're committing the what's been called the taxi cab fallacy of that you're sort of going in the taxi as far as you want and then you jump out when you don't need it anymore. So it's like you use reasoning as far as you want to support your position. When the reasoning doesn't support your position, you say, "Oh no, I need to go back to the original text." We can't use reasoning or philosophical frameworks because for example in our discussion, you said that Kosis is to be understood as divesting of the divine nature of

No, no. Philippians. Philippians. No, Philippians doesn't say any of that. No, it does say that he empties himself and that's

of the divine nature. It says it. Yeah, he empties himself reading of it. Yeah. No, he empties himself of divinity is what it says.

It says it he he it he empties himself of divinity referring to his divine nature. Sorry. It says that.

Yeah. Well, I I I know a lot of scholars that will argue against that. I will argue against that as well. That you're reading into that a certain philosophical presupposition that the text doesn't say that he destropies, the eternality. you're reading philosophy into that into that specific ex Jesus which again as you were saying the writers wouldn't have been able to understand that. So it seems like you're using philosophy when it supports your position but you're not using philosophy when it doesn't support your position.

That that's just my own. You know what's interesting Dr. Sichuadi is I I have the same criticism of what you're doing based upon the fact that you seem to be gerrymandering all of these different definitions so you can get the right result. That was the the strong impression I had of of what you were doing. And so, um, you know, I I guess we can accuse each other of those kinds of things, but I'm going to assume that you're doing your best to actually, um, you know, understand these matters as best you can. But what you're accusing me of is somehow being dishonest as I understand it.

No, no, I would I wouldn't go that far, please, to use that language. I'm not at all trying to say that. What I'm just saying is I mean we can we can I've probably been facious in this discussion and in my writings um without actually deceit. I'm not saying you're intentionally doing this um because deceit normally includes intention. Um what I'm saying is that it seems like it's when it's supporting your position you're having to use philosophical framework. So I don't believe that there is a deductive case that can be taken for that Philippians passage to say it says that he emptied himself that means emptied himself of the divine nature. I don't really think that some people would say that it's his glory the status that he had the authority that he had.

He emptied himself and became a slave. That's the reading that some people would take. So for me it seems like you're taking a philosophical approach when it supports your position, but you're not taking the philosophical approach to other passages when it doesn't support your position. But but I'm not saying please. So don't take it as me saying you're intentionally doing this and there's deceit involved. That's not what that's what it what it came across. I'll say

and that's fine. I'm I'm just going to share my screen if that's all right and and bring up this particular scripture. Is it being shared?

Yep. Okay. In your relationship with one another, have the mindset as Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing. The verb here, okay, is is um a form of the verb kinosis, which means to empty, which means he emptied himself by taking the nature of a servant being made in human. Now, why did he empty of himself? I think it's a perfectly reasonable reading of this to say what he emptied himself was the nature of the very nature of God. [snorts] So, you know, now is it the only

that somebody would disagree with me is not surprising. No, but I'm just saying is is it the only reading of that?

Is it the only reading of those passages? No, of course not. I don't believe there is.

So then that supports what I'm saying. So you're bringing in your own philosophical presupposition to interpretation of that whilst others will be bringing in their own. So that supports my point. I'm saying you're bringing in certain philosophical baggage that is not deductively entailed by that passage. So

because I don't believe anything is is deductively entailed. How do I stop sharing? I'll do it here. I don't believe anything's deductively entailed by any passage because the notion of of deductive logic is not being used. So look, what I do is I go back into the context. I read the original language and I ask myself, what did these things mean in that context? I'm certainly not the only scholar to take this to refer to a self-mping of divinity. I'm sure you're aware of that. You're aware of the kotic Christology position,

of course. But but I would say that many scholars also take it as that he's divesting himself. That's why the key word is servant.

Koticristologology is not consistent with Tomism or your view. And so you'd have to take it differently.

I I'm not a toist. So um No, you're not. But I'm saying any tois or anyone who took your position would have to reject that reading.

Yeah. But I would say you don't have to be a toist or someone who takes my position. I think the majority position of most at least Christian scholars would be that that is a position of him divesting himself of the status that he had.

Yeah. And and [clears throat] I'm going to stop you for a second. You talk about Christian scholars. I claim to be a Christian. So you can refer to them as as those who accept the creeds, those who are traditional scholastic scholars, those who are logicians, any way you want, but please don't exclude me from being Christian.

Again, I I don't know why you're taking my my statement that way. What I was meaning by that is Christian in a broad sense.

I I and I just one second. It's important so so you don't misunderstand what I'm saying. So what I meant by that is certain atheistic scholars might interpret it in a different way. What I'm saying generally when we're talking Christian scholars and I didn't exclude you at all in that. I'm saying when we're normally talking about Christian scholars I would say generally the majority position that people will take is actually a divesting it himself of a position of authority or status. And so koticism is a possible option but it seems to be the minority position.

Yeah. But in the context it's talking about divine nature. And so I'd say that this reading better fits within the context and the way the language was actually used. So, we're we're going to disagree on that. But that we have a disagree on what a scripture means should surprise absolutely no one. [snorts]

All right, guys. Um, I know you have to get going, Blake. So, I'll just do this real quick. Somebody just super chatted here uh saying Oscar is doing a phenomenal job pointing out that everything language and concepts Sidra imposes on the text of the Bible, no one in the Bible believed or understood. Yeah, but can we take anyone wearing a bunny suit seriously?

Looks like a unicorn and there's rainbows in the background. Oh, I guess you're right. We can't take unicorn seriously. So, sorry, Travis.

All right. Uh, we still have some other super chats we're going to get through, Blake, but um the rest of these are just going to be little things like appreciation, respect for the passion of both, admiration of both. There's some uh super chats. I'm not going to go through it just because people are kind of being rude. Um but you can uh you're you're free to go if you want to go be with your mother. Blake,

are you going to continue this discussion without me? Is that what you're saying?

No, I'm just going to I'm going to finish up some of the super chats here that weren't rude. Um you're free to stay. I'm just I'm giving you the freedom to

All right. I'm going to turn off my screen. I'm probably going to be in and out during this period. Um, but I'll be listening and if I need to get back in and I'm here, please ask me to come back in. Okay.

Okay. Uh, yeah, I'm just going to go through these real quick and then we'll finish up with your closing statements. Uh, Cosmic says, "Later, philosophical frameworks and language tool developments come to clarify the same original concepts taught in a text without exact wording or is Jesus." Thank you, Cosmic. Randy with more memberships. Thank you, Randy. Gigachad cosmic again says the word mind is inherently vague depending on the definition. God has one, three or four minds because we mean entirely different things by that same word.

Um thank you for the jewels, the shekels. Um white [snorts] Tim won the debate. Uh Josh, I don't know if you know this, but

No. Is it about your hat? Is it? No. No. People Unfortunately, this is a dynamic Dan can explain and then we can move on.

Uh so so Tim and I would just call each other black and tan. I'm black and he's tan.

Okay. But then people have taken to uh calling Tim White Than and stuff like that.

Oh goodness. So Joshua film me. Yeah. Um so Joshua using reasoning to conclude his position is insufficient due to it not being explicit in scripture. Uh oh this was for um Blake if he wants to answer it we'll when he comes back if he comes back we can do this. Um but I think he also answered this during the discussion a little bit in his own way too. Um cuz he was going for the context of the ancient world that he's talking about this. Um this might be a question for Blake or you Josh doesn't say maybe if you want to answer it Josh when Christ says we are gods what is that god?

Um I mean is it when he's saying that the old testament um says that I'm assuming he's talk I'm assuming he's talking about that passage in the gospels. I don't remember off the top of my head where Jesus is before the Pharisees um and then they charge him with blasphemy and then

Jesus then quotes Psalm 110 um for his argument against the Pharisees if that makes sense.

I mean I would just generally take Elohim normally to refer to a supernatural being um so something a little bit more than the natural. Um, but then there's a special way in which we use Elohim when it's predicated of the Son, the Father, and the Spirit, which is to say not just that they're supernatural, but they are divine. I don't think Jesus was saying that um all people are divine. Um because I just think that would have gone quite clearly against um the monotheistic background that he was affirming.

Awesome. Um, oh, here's another one for Blake that we missed. Blake, if you can hear me, uh, we got a question for you. Um, oh, there he is. Um, given quantum mechanics, in what way is a color a physics trope? Spatial on the fundamental level, light is fundamentally nonspatial, but just pure relations. Um no there I mean in quantum mechanics there's actually a region that is taken up by the wave particle. The wave has a certain frequency and it takes up and has a certain frequency that defines the wavelength until it is realized against a background where you see it become a particle and it has a spatial relation to where it hits um some kind of a film. So in quantum mechanics they're they're not fundamentally non-spatial. These are physical realities and I don't think Dr. Siduati would say that that quantum um level particles are somehow nonspatial either.

So all right if the first principle of the gospel is to know the nature of God then Joseph proceeds to give the nature of God in the king fallit discourse. How is that not binding? What's binding on people like me who are part of the LDS church is what we accept by common consent of scripture. And so what we're saying is this is definitive of who we are. We have an express doctrine that prophets are not infallible. Um Joseph Smith stated it many times. We have an expressed doctrine that a prophet is a prophet only when speaking as a prophet.

that is only when he's speaking under the spirit of revelation and it's very clear that he was not claiming that this was a revelation and so it's not binding however because it's coming from Joseph Smith and the status that it holds it is a source to which we can look to understand what he means in the revelations that he received and understanding Joseph Smith's thought on its own terms so it it has it has that kind of authority All right, my guy one. I just got here. Join inspiring philosophy academy. Thank you, Sheh GPT. Um, this is from an LDS member. He says, "As an LDS, Dr. Siguati is one of my favorite, most compelling trinitarians.

I appreciate you engaging with LDS seriously on this topic." Oh, thank you very much. I really appreciate the kind words.

And Dr. Suati, let me echo that. I've greatly appreciated that you would take this seriously and um engage in this kind of a conversation. The fact that we disagree should not be taken to mean that we don't like each other or that we don't even love each other. Right.

And and so I mean the fact is I have great admiration for Dr. Sichuati. I may be one of the only people you'll ever talk to who's read everything you've written. And so, you know, that's the kind of admiration I have. And you've written a lot

and and and so um I think that's the best way. If you admire Dr. Sigati in that way, go read his stuff because it's truly impressive and you know, taken on its own terms as a real it's challenging. And so, you know, I'm just let me let me echo that. Thanks. Thank you very much.

No, I appreciate the kind words as well, Blake. And and likewise, thank you. All right, we got one more question here for Blake and then we can do our closings if you want to and then we'll close out the stream. Uh Blake, you said it was Elon in Deuteronomy 32:8, except it doesn't say that. It says Elon, Yahweh is called Most High in Genesis 14.

Yeah, except if I said that, I misspoke. Elon does mean most high God. Elon means the most high God. Okay. Um, Elon is actually used in Psalm 82. Um, and um, Elon is used in Deuteronomy 32:8. And you know, we have the fact is they both mean essentially the same thing, the most high God. And I'll have to look at Genesis 14. I'm not aware that it uses Yahweh to call [clears throat] to be called the most high God. Um, Elleion means most high God. and I'll have to look at the context because I'm just not familiar with what they're referring to.

All right. Um, you guys wanted you guys want to say any final statements before we close out the stream?

Go ahead, Josh. I've talked enough. You sure? Okay. Yeah. Thank you. So, I I just want to first say thank you very much, Blake, for this great discussion. I really enjoyed it. We got into the meat of the discussion, looked at a lot of um challenging things and hopefully the audience were edified by our discussion and also hopefully our mannerism uh towards each other. Um I truly do respect you. I really do um believe that you are elucidating various important aspects of Mormon thoughts and I found it very enlightening reading your work as well. So thank you for that um in light of this discussion. So my main um objective was to uh demonstrate positively um that the consilia doctrine of the trinity that is the statement that there is one god the father and two relationally distinct persons um who are of the same divinity as the father is the teaching of the corpus of scripture that we take to be um revelatory and

authoritative um and I tried to demonstrate this in sort of five part ways saying that we can see the one god being evidenced relational distinction of the son and the spirit and same divinity of the [clears throat] script with the father. Um I then gave sort of the challenge of saying okay well if we if you have a problem with them being of the same divinity and we said that they have different instances of divinity then what grounds do we have from uh scripture to show that uh technically uh mainly based upon the position that it says quite clearly that Yahweh is exclusive creator and the exclusive object of devotion. So if the son is creator and also the spirit creator and they are also objects of devotion then the only reason in which they can be um those things is because they have the same divinity as the father. So that was my biblical sort of case. Then my philosophical case was more negative one

in the sense of saying I um you will need to show that the statements are called statements of the consilia doctrine that there are three divine persons and one fundamental divine person who's the father um entails a contradiction so that they cannot be true uh taken together. Um I would say that I don't believe you've shown that um uh because unfortunately we were sort of going into other aspects of the discussion and these are important things anyway because these are commitments that I hold to. So anyone reading my work it'll be good to see sort of push back from yourself on them.

So anyways I've really enjoyed this discussion and hopefully as I said it's been edifying for the audience and thank you very much for for giving the time um and I hope all blessings to you and and your mother and your family as well.

Thank you. I appreciate that. What I've identifi what I've attempted to show is that imposing the trinity on scripture is imposing something that is a philosophical construct that was developed hundreds of years later that is not in any way consistent with biblical language and the way it presents itself. I've attempted to show that the kind of presentation that that Dr. what he has given to us inherently and and inextricably um assumes these kinds of of philosophical constructs when ed executing the scripture. I reject univosity of scripture so that somehow I can take all these statements in scripture univocally and then build a building based upon it. I've given an example for instance of the shama where one god means something very different than it does and and the context in which it's being used means something very different than when we call the father the one god. So it's just an

example of the way that we have an equivocal use between various time periods where they're actually addressing very very different issues. Um, as far as the I I just think that the methodology that is used is is is not one that honors scripture for what it is. Um, the in terms of coherence, I I believe I've demonstrated that there are intrinsic properties possessed by the sun and the spirit. And if there are then the problem of the trinity is that it is logically incoherent because it violates the property that the rule of incarnability of identicals. I've attempted to show that the way that it parses persons is is one that is impossible imposing on it a firsterson perspective kind of a model. And let me just finish with this. Joshua's presentation of divinity requires it relies upon grounding theory and God in his view has to be a complete ground.

But that would disagree with the way scholars view um the statements of creation in the Old Testament and New Testament where God is already creating and what the verb bar mean for in that's used in in uh Genesis is mostly to cut divide. In fact, it's usually translated as divide the the waters um from the land, divide the the light from the darkness. And what he's doing is operating with already existing structures. And he is his work is to divide them in in from each other. And he divides the heavens from the earth by by placing a a dome called to separate them. We're dealing with a world view that is vastly different. Okay. uh uh than the kind that Dr. Sigiati is is working with. But when we're looking at the biblical text, they don't have anything like creation. It's nihilo. And this is an imposition on the text of an idea that is that later becomes used as a as a metaphysical statement of what

God has to be has to be uncreated in an absolute sense and creator of everything else in an absolute sense. And the biblical thinkers just don't think that way about creation. And and so I would say the entire project that Dr. Su what he is engaged in is assuming something that just isn't true. Um I mean second Peter talks it goes back and reflects on the Genesis creation essentially is saying that water is the original existent. And so when we're dealing with this kind of a project if what Dr. Siguati is saying is I can show that there is a view of the trinity that I believe is consistent with the councils and is coherent. I don't think there's any problem in that because you're using all of these kinds of approaches univocally as a as a metaphysical project. But if you're saying I am elucidating to you what the Bible actually delivers, I I'd say that's a misunderstanding of the biblical text.

However, Dr. Siguati, I I agree. Go read his stuff. If you're going to do that, read my stuff, too. I have five books and I've I have over 87 articles. And so, um, [snorts] my view is that it it's worth the time to see how different thought systems work. That our thought systems are incommensurate, meaning that they can't really be put together shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Um, so, you know, which thought world is working better with the way scripture presents itself? which thought world is working better in um pro providing coherence which is simpler to understand in in overall terms um and I think these are the kind of things that we need to ask about logical systems and systems that we evaluate um on the kind of terms that that Dr. situation would evaluate in the Bible. It's but it's a very different thought world. But then, you know, we just approach things very different ways and I I think my way is superior and he

thinks his way is superior and I'm more very happy to have that disagreement. Um the the reality is is there there are points to be made on both sides and I I think we've done our best to make them.

Awesome. Thank you so much you guys. Thank you for the cordial discussion. It was I love I love being able to kind of just sit back and actually enjoy listening to people talk when they have a debate rather than having to police them. So, this was super fun. I really appreciate both of you. Um, and everybody else, thank you for coming to hang out during the discussion. Uh, until next time everybody. God bless.

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Questions about this episode

What is "DEBATE: Is The Trinity Biblical & Coherent? Sijuwade vs. Ostler" about?

In this debate, Dr. Joshua Sijuwade and Blake Ostler tackle whether the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is biblical and logically coherent, beginning with the question of which version of "Trinity" is even under discussion. Ostler, a monarchical monotheist, argues that the Father alone is expressly identified as the one God in key New Testament passages, and that later creedal formulations…

What is mentioned in this Inspiring Philosophy Academy episode?

98 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Trinity, Joshua Sijuwade, Blake Ostler, Equivocation, Josh Blake, Eternal Generation. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "DEBATE: Is The Trinity Biblical & Coherent? Sijuwade vs. Ostler"?

The episode runs 2 h 36 min; the transcript is about 28,631 words in 342 timestamped sections.

More from Inspiring Philosophy Academy

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated November 5, 2026.