God is one and God is three. All Christians must affirm this truth, but is it reasonable to believe this? And is the doctrine of the Trinity actually true? Do we have any evidence for a Trinitarian God?
In this, my research paper for Dr. Thomas McCall’s PhD course: Trinity and Atonement (which he graciously let me in on), I set out to answer two relation objections to the doctrine of the Trinity:
- that it doesn’t make any sense, and is thus irrational to believe (the de jure objection).
- that the doctrine of the Trinity is not true, that it does not match the facts of the world, and hence there is no good evidence for it (the de facto objection).
In answering 1. I use Oliver Crisp’s Chastened Trinitarian Mysterian Model from his new book Analyzing Doctrine, to show that it is rational to affirm the doctrine based on further Christian theology. I then seek to answer 2., the truth question, by rehearsing the philosophical problem of the One and the Many and then using Van Til’s doctrine of Equal Ultimacy and Bavinck’s Organic Motif in order to match the mystery in the Trinity with the mystery we find in our reality, our uni-verse.
As always, feedback is welcome. You can find my paper below:
Enjoy!
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