“The more you accurately know someone, the more capable you are of actually loving them.”
William Lane Craig has been one of Christianity’s most formidable public defenders for decades. But his rejection of the Nicene doctrine that the Son is eternally begotten of the Father raises some surprisingly serious questions about the Trinity and about the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura itself.
In this video, I look at Craig’s claim that the second person of the Trinity only became the “Son” at the Incarnation, why the Church fought so hard over seemingly technical doctrines like eternal generation, and what happens to divine immutability, the distinction of the divine persons, and even monotheism if the Nicene understanding is abandoned.
But the deeper problem may be methodological: Craig routinely uses philosophical reasoning to establish truths that aren’t stated word-for-word in Scripture. So why should that same reasoning suddenly become illegitimate when it leads to Nicene theology?
Timestamps
00:00 William Lane Craig’s surprising claim
01:43 What the Nicene Creed teaches
02:21 “Modern scholars agree…” and the democracy of the dead
03:58 Why these theological details actually matter
05:19 Why dogma exists in the first place
06:50 Begotten vs. created
08:26 The problem of the Holy Spirit
09:26 God cannot become something He wasn’t
10:41 What distinguished the Trinity before the Incarnation?
11:53 Divine simplicity and the problem of composition
12:41 Craig, reason, and the inconsistency of sola scriptura
14:32 Why the Church needs a protected teaching authority
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Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com
Podcast Version: https://brianholdsworth.libsyn.com/
