Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Christian Doctrine

  • Can Love be Commanded?

    And one of them, a doctor of the Law, putting him to the test, asked him, "Master, which is the great commandment in the Law?" Jesus said to him, "'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind.' This is the greatest and…

  • William Lane Craig on the ‘Same God?’ Question

    A tip of the hat to Karl White for pointing us to this article which includes a critique of Francis Beckwith's contribution to the debate.  Craig concludes: So whether Muslims and Christians can be said to worship the same God is not the truly germane question. The question is which conception of God is true.…

  • Do Muslims Worship the True God?

    It depends. Suppose the true God is the triune God.  Then two possibilities. One is that  Muslims worship the true God, but not as triune, indeed as non-triune; they worship the true God all right, the same one the Christians worship; it is just that the Muslims have one or more false beliefs about the…

  • Lydia McGrew on the ‘Same God’ Debate

    She says that it is too important to be left to philosophers.  She is right that the debate is important and has practical consequences, although I don't think any of the philosophers who have 'piped up' recently (Beckwith, Tuggy, Feser, Rea, Vallicella, et al.) want to take the debate  merely as a point of entry…

  • Trinities Podcast 121: Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God? Part II

    Master podcaster Dr. Dale Tuggy and I continue our discussion. He's got a great voice for this medium, doesn't he?  Me, I'm too sotto voce.

  • Do Christians and Muslims Believe in the Same God? Francis Beckwith and the Kalam Cosmological Argument

    Francis Beckwith mentions the Kalam Cosmological Argument in his latest The Catholic Thing article (7 January 2106): 1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. 2. The universe began to exist. 3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence. Suppose that a Muslim and Christian come to believe that God exists on the basis…

  • Edward Feser on Christians, Muslims, and the Reference of ‘God’

    So far, Ed Feser's is perhaps the best of the  Internet discussions of this hot-button question, a question recently re-ignited by the Wheaton dust-up, to mix some metaphors.  Herewith, some notes  on Feser's long entry.  I am not nearly as philosophically self-confident as Ed or Lydia McGrew, so I will mainly just be trying to…

  • Trinities Podcast 120: Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God? Part I

    Master podcaster Dale Tuggy presents the question and then he and I discuss the 'public square' and 'technical' aspects of the question.  You can also hear it on YouTube.  Part II in a week or so.

  • Do Christians and Jews Worship the Same God?

    Yale's Miroslav Volf has a 17 December 2015 piece entitled Wheaton professor’s suspension is about anti-Muslim bigotry, not theology.  It is a sloppy piece of mere journalism but it does raise an important question: What is theologically wrong with asserting that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, according to Hawkins’s opponents — and mine?…

  • “And the Word Was Made Flesh and Dwelt Among Us” (John 1:14)

    Let us meditate this Christmas morning on the sheer audacity of the idea that God would not only enter this world of time and misery, but come into it in the most humble manner possible, inter faeces et urinam nascimur, born between feces and urine, entering between the legs of a poor girl in a…

  • Merry Xmas!

    When I was eight years old or so and first took note of the phrase 'Merry Xmas,' my piety was offended by what I took to be the removal of 'Christ' from 'Christmas' only to be replaced by the universally recognized symbol for an unknown quantity, 'X.' But it wasn't long before I realized that…

  • San Bernardino, ISIS, Islam, and Refugees

    A measured statement from the Christian evangelical camp by Mark Tooley.  Excerpt: At the very least, Christian immigration advocates should urge U.S. immigration policies that strongly prohibit persons who reject American democratic principles.  Over one hundred years ago immigration policies screened against anarchist sympathies, which murderously raged in Europe.  Later U.S. policies screened against Bolshevism.…

  • Galen Strawson Versus Nicholas Humphrey on Consciousness

    (This is a repost from February 2013 slightly emended, except for an addendum added today.  Reposts are the reruns of the blogosphere.  You don't watch a Twilight Zone or Seinfeld episode just once do you?)  ………………… A couple of days ago I had Nicholas Humphrey in my sights.  Or, to revert to the metaphor of that…

  • Is the Christian the True Philosopher?

    Steven Nemes makes two main points in his Christian Life as Philosophy.  The first I agree with entirely: Jesus Christ is not a philosopher.  The philosopher is a mere lover of wisdom.  His love is desirous and needy; it is eros, the love of one who lacks for that which he lacks.  But Jesus Christ…

  • Peter Kreeft on the Trinity

    This from reader D. B.:   The doctrine of the Trinity does not say there is one God and three Gods, or that God is one Person and three Persons, or that God has one nature and three natures. Those would indeed be self-contradictory ideas. But the doctrine of the Trinity says that there is…