Thomas McCall - Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity

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• Selection and layout throughout, and content
• Chapters 1, 3, 7, 8, 9, 11, 16, 17, 18, 19 Oxford University Press 2009

• Chapters 2, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15
• appear by permission of their original publishers as cited in text

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• First published 2009

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• ISBN 9780199216215

• 13579108642

We are grateful to Charity R. Anderson for preparing the index for this volume, and to the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts in the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame for funding that made Charity's work possible.

The following chapters are reproduced by permission of their original publishers:

Chapter : The Trinity, Richard Swinburne. Taken from Christian God by Richard Swinburne (Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 17091).

Chapter : Anti Social Trinitarianism, Brian Leftow. Taken from The Trinity, edited by Davis, Kendall, and OCollins (Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 20349).

Chapter : Toward a Tenable Social Trinitarianism, William Lane Craig. Appeared in a slightly different form in Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview by J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig (InterVarsity Press, 2003, pp. 58394).

Chapter : Trinity Monotheism, Daniel Howard-Snyder. Taken from Philosophia Christi 5: 375403.

Chapter : A Latin Trinity, Brian Leftow. Taken from Faith and Philosophy 21: 30433.

Chapter : And Yet They Are Not Three Gods But One God, Peter van Inwagen. Taken from Philosophy and the Christian Faith, edited by Thomas Morris (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), pp. 24178.

Chapter : Relative Identity and the Doctrine of the Trinity, Michael Rea. Taken from Philosophia Christi 5: 43146.

Chapter : Material Constitution and the Trinity, Jeffrey Brower and Michael Rea. Taken from Faith and Philosophy 22: 5776.

Chapter : Does the Problem of Material Constitution Illuminate the Doctrine of the Trinity?, William Lane Craig. Taken from Faith and Philosophy 22: 7786.

Classical Christian orthodoxy insists that God is Triune: there is only one God, and this God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (381) states that the Father and Son arehomoousios (of one substance). The Athanasian Creed expresses this central Christian conviction starkly: So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; and yet they are not three Gods, but one God. Belief in both the distinctness and the divinity of the persons, on one hand, and belief in the oneness or unity of God, on the other hand, are essential to orthodox Christian belief. But what does this really mean? And how could it possibly be true?