Affirm the Trinity and Work forSocial Justice

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this is where the graphic would be

If I could use a picture of Mohamed.
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The reason I used such a strange broken title is differentiate my article from the dozen or so entitled they way I was going to do it, "Do Christians and Muslims have the same God." Down the row on Google,v same title again and again. The reason  so amny are writing on this because doings at Evangelical Wheaton college have made it a hot topic.

Larycia Hawkins, a professor at Wheaton College in Illinois, decided to wear a headscarf during the Advent season as a gesture of solidarity with Muslims. In doing so, Hawkins quoted Pope Francis, saying that Christians and Muslims "worship the same God."But some evangelical Christians disagree — and Wheaton, a Christian school, responded by putting the political science professor on paid administrative leave. The college says it needs time to review whether her statement puts her at odds with the faith perspective required of those who work there.[1]

The controversy pits liberals and ecumenists who are concerned about not seeming to attack Islam and not wanting to oppress the refugee against evangelicals and conservatives who fear the drift away from Trinitarian doctrine. Both sides are being alarmist. We can support refugees (I am all for that) and not be at at with Islam and still affirm the Trinity. I support all three of those things, To answer the question we have3 t do dome unpacking snd examine the nature of the question,

First, technically the God of the Quran is supposed to be the God of Abraham and Issac and Jascob. This is stated in the Quran:

Zeki Saritoprak, a professor of Islamic studies at John Carroll University in Cleveland, points out that in the Quran there's the Biblical story of Jacob asking his sons whom they'll worship after his death."Jacob's sons replied, 'We will worship the God of your fathers' — Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac. He is the God," Saritoprak says. "So this God that Jacob worshipped, this God that Abraham, Isaac worshipped, is the same God that Muslims worship today."[2]

Of course the real dividing line is the notion of Trinity. We really can't deny that as Christians we worship the God of Abraham. Jesus prayed to him and called him father. As I pointed out last time there are points of contact between God in OT and Triune God of Greek based Trinitarian doctrine.

But Christians themselves differ on this question. The Second Vatican Council, speaking to Catholics back in 1964, affirmed that Muslims "together with us adore the one, merciful God." And Amy Plantinga Pauw, a professor of Christian theology at Louisville Seminary, says Christians can have their own definition of God while still seeing commonality with Muslims and Jews."To say that we worship the same God is not the same as insisting that we have an agreed and shared understanding of God,"[3]

 Technically Mohamed made reference to God of Bible and was dealing with tht view of God but Islam has developed such a cultural palemcest over that truth that they no longer do deal with the same God. Of course that can  be said of some kinds of Christians, that does not mean that we can water down the Trinity. We can protect the rights of Muslim Americas  and work with them for social justice without abandoning the Trinity. That is imperative.

We just got through Christmas and that should remind us, truly God and Truly mean, core of the faith.


what do you think? I want commemts





[1] Tom G Jelten do Christians and Muslims worship the same God NPR, Updated December 21, 20156:40 AM ET Published December 20, 2015 RA website
http://www.npr.org/2015/12/20/460480698/do-christians-and-muslims-worship-the-same-god

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid

Correcting Common Athiest Criticisisms on Trinity

ArgyHowever, I will go somewhat further and say that belief in the existence of the god of Christian tradition is irrational. Here are a couple of reasons why...

1. Jesus (according to common Christian tradition) is wholly man and wholly god. Humans are NOT god. The logical rule of non-contradiction says Jesus cannot be God and not God at the same time. Hence is is illogical and irrational to hold the Christian belief about Jesus.
2. The Christian tradition says Jesus is wholly and entirely God. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity says that god is three persons (Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit). Jesus is not three persons. Hence Jesus cannot be god according to the rule of non-contradiction.

My point is that, while it is impossible to falsify the general claim that a god exists, it IS possible to show that some religions believe in gods that are logically impossible.

Sorry that doesn't cut it.

On point 1: Jesus (according to common Christian tradition) is wholly man and wholly god. Humans are NOT god. The logical rule of non-contradiction says Jesus cannot be God and not God at the same time. Hence is is illogical and irrational to hold the Christian belief about Jesus.

This criticism is confessing the concept of "deity of Christ" with the phrase "Jesus is God." "Jesus is God" does not express the truth of the creeds accurately, it's a simplified overstatement that implies that all of God came down and made himself look like a man. Jesus is not just human in appearance. He was actually a man. What made him divine was his attributes the he shared with the divine and that connected him to God. People use the latter phrase are not clerics or theologians and they have no studied the official doctrines. That's a miss-statement watered down doctrine for the masses because they have he background to read the creeds.

The real doctrine defines what it means to be a person. It doesn't say "center of conscoiusness," that would be a good way to describe what it's telling us. It's using "person" in terms of an identity within the Divine. The term used in the creeds is persona means a mask worn by Greek actors. That mask marked the identity of a character.The God-head is three pesona in one essence. In classical terms its defined in terms of substance, or essence. What it's really getting at is an identity. The three identities share this one thing that defines what they are. The Platonic concept of essence or substance (Hamousios)means the thing that makes you what you are the collection of attributes by which things are known. Like my dog participates in the universal doginess by having all the attributes that are uniquely those of a cute dogie. He was cute too.

Jesus is a unique being in that he was a normal human, born of a woman, (although sort of artificially inseminated before it was popular) but possessed of two wills and two natures. He was not God in a man suit. He was all of God crammed down into a man. He wasn't God making himself look like a man to fool us. This conjunction could be accomplished, one way one might theorize about it, by interfacing minds between human and divine. That means if you could go inside Jesus' brain and get into the brain mind interface you would then go into infinity by going inward. In other words while Jesus body was temporal and limited to one point like our body. his spirit was infinite and that means the dimension of that point, you travel along the point infinitesimally. Infinity in a different direction. Jesus the man is "hooked up" so to speak to that infinity.

The description that "people aren't God so Jesus cant' be God' is complete misapplication and misunderstanding of the doctrine.

Point 2:


The Christian tradition says Jesus is wholly and entirely God. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity says that god is three persons (Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit). Jesus is not three persons. Hence Jesus cannot be god according to the rule of non-contradiction.

This criticism misstates the doctrine. This is pure and simple a misunderstanding of what it says. Doctrine says "truly God and truly man" not "wholly and entirely God." What you are confusing is the idea that he's not half God or this divine nature and will are not watered down quasi-divine. That is not the same as saying 'wholly and entirely God."

Then in criticism no 2 the deity of Christ is turned into a duplication of what God is only in the form of man. So that means that man must have three persona too. No that's not right. The man is the embodiment (the coming to flesh) of one of the three persons not all three!

The doctrine of Trinity in Athenian creed recognizes that the son the second person of the Trinity became incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth.

Like most times when atheists criticize doctrine it's because they don't understand the doctrine. I sense that this is what comes of the their little gimmick of refusing to learn theology. You just can't conduct a critique of a belief system while remaining ignorant about tit. you have to study theology.