The length of the debate is 2hr45mins
Dale Tuggy’s Opening Statement
- The Father is the only God (1 Cor 8.6; John 8.54)
- Jesus is not God but messiah, God’s agent (1 Tim 2.5)
Compare 2 hypotheses in light of 6 indisputable facts
1. NT believe Father is one God alone
2. NT believes one God is the Trinity
6 Indisputable Facts
- All 4 Gospels feature a “mere man” compatible main thesis
- John 20.31 -> that’s it? nothing about Jesus being God
- The word God nearly always refers to the Father and no word refers to the Trinity
- they should sometimes use the word God to refer to the Trinity
but they never do - in the NT God is nearly always the Father
- no more than 8 texts where the term God refers to the Son
- a human can be referred to with the title God
- Jesus makes that point in Psalm 82
- they should sometimes use the word God to refer to the Trinity
- Only the Father and Jesus are worshiped
- no worship of the Trinity
- no worship of all 3 persons -> no spirit!
- Phil 2.11 says that Jesus’ worship is indirectly to God
- by worshiping Jesus we worship the creator
- That God is triune or tripersonal is never clearly asserted in the NT
- poor Jewish theology is always assumed
- Jesus never gets around to telling us that God is 3 persons in 1 essence
- No controversy about the Trinity in the NT
- Trinity theories always engender controversy
- the NT controversies are over whether Jesus is messiah and whether non-Jews can be saved apart from Torah observance
- No NT author lifts a finger to limit or qualify clear implications of the son’s limitations
- Jesus got his mission, authority, message, power, from God
- no author shows any embarrassment that Jesus is subordinate
Jesus is a real human man
- with a real human mother
- but with God as his father
- he was brought into existence in the womb
the one God is eternal
- why aren’t the NT authors at all concerned to exert the eternal existence of the son
- will grant pre-existence but not eternality for purposes of this debate
Age To Come 