What does it mean to say that God is triune? Is this to say that the one God is a loving community of three divine selves? Or is there but one self common to the Trinity?

Dr. Keith Ward is a prolific and influential theologian, philosopher, and scholar of religions. He’s also an Anglican priest. In this first of two interviews on his 2015 book Christ and the Cosmos: A Reformulation of Trinitarian Doctrine, we discuss his christology, how to understand what is unique about the man Jesus.

In this episode Dr. Bowman and I continue our discussion from last week, about some of the New Testament passages he discusses in his “Triadic New Testament Passages and the Doctrine of the Trinity.”

At the end of the gospel according to Matthew, Jesus is portrayed as saying, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit..."

Does the Bible say in the fourteenth Psalm that atheists are fools? And what about Paul's critiques of the Gentiles in Romans and Ephesians - do these teach that atheism is caused, in all cases, by willful rejection of God, preferring sin to acknowledging him?

In his 2010 book The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief, Dr. James Spiegel, professor of Philosophy and Religion at Taylor University, argues that unbelief results more from the will than from the mind. Drawing on the Bible, Plantingian epistemology, and contemporary psychology, in this book he builds a theory of the source of atheistic belief.

In this final part of our discussion Dr. Rauser and I continue to discuss his interesting new book: Is the Atheist My Neighbor? Rethinking Christian Attitudes toward Atheism.

"Fools say in their hearts, "There is no God."" (Psalm 14:1) This says that all atheists are fools, right? Pastor John Hagee says that "Atheism is bankrupt and empty. It's brain dead!" Others have said that all atheists because they hate God and want to sin with impunity. Is this what the Bible teaches? Is this true?

If we accept that God is the greatest being there could possibly be, this will guide our theorizing about God. As Dr. Leftow explains, the method can be uncertain and hazardous. Still, it seems an indispensable tool in Christian thinking about God.

Since 2002, Dr. Brian Leftow has been the Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oriel College, Oxford University. He taught for many years at Fordham University in New York City before moving to Oxford. Dr. Leftow has written over 90 professional articles and book chapters on metaphysics, medieval philosophy, and philosophical theology.