Speaker 2
Yes, that's i like that response. Mea. I've had a siduati on the channel before, and his, he's a beast. He's a beast, to put it lightly. And he's going to be on the channel actually, soon with doctor josh raspingson wherther, talking about his argument, again, from grounding for the existence of god, which should be superexiting. So all right, let's get to the next stion here. And we're just already rolling with the questions on the trinity. So this one's from brando. He says, does the trinity, we get it on the screen here, get on the broadcast, does the trinity involve a contradiction even if it did, would this constitute a reason not to believe it? Considering we we tend to want to see god as a logical being?
Speaker 1
Now they think, you brando, that's a very good question. So it depends on who you ask, and i guess you're asking me. And for those who are in the nob you sort of get that. I when you look at the statements that seem to be required for some one to accept a doctrine of the trinity, maybe superficially it appears that there's contradiction. But lot of people throughout the historical christian tradition have wanted to say it's a putative contradiction. It's just the appearance of a contradiction, and that if you understand the content that's being expressed in the particular claims, that the contradiction goes away, or that if you spell it out in certain kinds of ways, or paraphrase it, that you don't have a contradiction, and so you're not doing anything logically problematic. Thats said, when we're trying to give an account of the trinity, we're using the tools that we think are the best ones to use, the ones that are plausible, the ones that can be motivated and defended. And the fight is going to be at various levels. There's going to be an epistemological level, there's to be a metaphysical level, or there's going to be a logical level. An end for philosophical logicians, they're going to debate what is the best account of logic that we should use. And some people think, well, the kind of quotonquo classical logic that says, buddha contradictions, maybe that's not the best one. Maybe there's an account of logic that permits contradictions, and that that's perfectly acceptable. And so this isn't an adhock manoeuvre to avoid something logically dubious in the doctrine of t trinity. This could be a way in which some one's having a debate with regard to philosophical logic and saying, yes, maybe the best system does permit contradictions, and then seeing if there's anything in christian theology that contain a contradiction. The person who's probably most famous for this is a philosopher at noter dane, j c beale. And j c thinks that there is a contradiction when you're talking about the doctrine of the incarnation. So he thinks when we talk about christ that we're going to have a contradiction. But he, before he even published his book, thought, ye, the logical system that allows for contradictions is already the best logical system to endorse. Anyway. So now we apply a to christian theology, we see one in the incarnation, he thinks it's not bad. And he's currently working on a book trying to apply the same method to the doctrine of the trinity.