kindle-sync: bookId: '53153' title: >- Contending with Christianity's Critics: Answering New Atheists and Other Objectors author: Paul Copan and William Lane Craig asin: B002KJA90K lastAnnotatedDate: '2016-11-23' bookImageUrl: 'https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71poVC7ofWL._SY160.jpg' highlightsCount: 16

Contending with Christianitys Critics

Metadata

• Author: Paul Copan and William Lane Craig
• ASIN: B002KJA90K
• ISBN: 0805449361
• Reference: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002KJA90K
• Kindle link

Highlights

A more charitable interpretation would be to take these six statements not as premises but as summary statements of six steps in Dawkins's cumulative argument for his conclusion that God does not exist. But even on this charitable construal, the conclusion “therefore, God almost certainly does not exist” simply doesn't follow from these six steps, even if we concede that each of them is true and justified. The only delusion demonstrated here is Dawkins's conviction that this is “a very serious argument against God's existence.” — location: 189 ^ref-23326

The point is that rejecting design arguments for God's existence does nothing to prove that God does not exist or even that belief in God is unjustified. — location: 198 ^ref-44175

Muslims reject the tri-unity of God as heretical and blasphemous; this is shirk—ascribing partners to God. — location: 4312 ^ref-3394

Not a few Christian philosophers—I won't mention any names—have referred to God as “a person.” This is misleading. Three persons—Father, Son, and Spirit—fully share in the one true God's identity. From eternity there has existed not one solitary person but a God-in-relation, three divine persons fully loving and enjoying one another. — location: 4321 ^ref-40168

Overemphasizing threeness leads to tritheism—a version of polytheism (many gods). This error, which is found in one version of Mormonism, denies God's oneness (monotheism). Overemphasizing oneness leads to modalism—that God is just one person who appears in different modes or manifestations (e.g., as Father in the Old Testament, Son in the New Testament, and Spirit during the New Testament church age). — location: 4344 ^ref-8116

Rejecting equality leads to subordinationism. In this case the three persons do not possess alike the divine nature but are a kind of hierarchy. — location: 4349 ^ref-45445

but mystery or partial knowledge doesn't imply contradiction — location: 4379 ^ref-11325

ironically, he presents a doctrine that no orthodox Christian believes—“that three persons are one person.” — location: 4388 ^ref-42855

in the name [not names — location: 4400 ^ref-59649

to be in conflict, the same category or relationship must be involved. But threeness pertains to persons; oneness pertains to God's nature or essence. — location: 4405 ^ref-29113

A nature is what makes a thing (or person) what it is — location: 4407 ^ref-29876

We can reject this without inconsistency and even respond, “If the Father is God, to whom is He speaking when He says to the Son, ‘Your throne, O God, is forever’ or “You, Lord,…laid the foundation of the earth'” (Heb 1:8,10 NASB)? — location: 4415 ^ref-6417

Great response!

The necessary unity of Father, Son, and Spirit is like the angles of a — location: 4443 ^ref-51767

triangle. If we remove one angle, we no longer have a triangle; all three must be in place. — location: 4443 ^ref-20531

When it comes to God, we need further clarification. Though I share the same human nature with, say, my students, they are separate and distinct from me; it's possible for me to exist without them or vice versa. The members of the Trinity, however, are inseparably related. One can't exist without the other two. — location: 4446 ^ref-48005

In the public square Christians should proclaim a relating God who is the foundation for ethics and personal responsibility, for human dignity and rights, for reason and truth, and for tolerance and cooperation. — location: 4495 ^ref-40345