[...] on November 14, 2009 by Louis| Leave a comment Robert Bowman at Parchment and Pen has issued a challenge to debate someone who does not believe in the [...]

Fortigurn,

After 33,000 words of comments dumped all at once, are you saying that your twin brother is still not done rebutting? I stated in my comment after that onslaught that it seemed only fair that I be given the last word. But then you kept posting comments, essentially in his place. Since your comments (like his) repeatedly misrepresented the facts (including the facts about what I said), I felt that there was no point in allowing it to continue. Therefore, against my own preference to have continued posting comments replying to your brother’s comments, I decided it would be best to close the comments.

As far as I know, we are still going to do the poll.

I note that the debate threads have been closed before Dave Burke was able to post his final counter-rebuttal. Was there a reason for this?

Furthermore, I haven’t seen anything about the poll which was to be held. Is this still going ahead?

From a gadfly:

As I have a fear to go through, spending time and enjoying reading in this important topic, I hope someone has clearly set what is the proposition of the doctrine we are going to debate and discuss.

When I have to go through hundreds and hundreds pages of books and hundreds and hundreds web-pages piled and waiting to be read up, I find that most of arguments are wasteful of my time because they fail to have all the words appearing in the proposition precisely defined at the start. [e.g. are they still using such inadequate term 'person' without having it defined? If they do, it will be a clue for something to follow.]

As far as I’m concerned this doctrine of Trinity is the only doctrine as such any Christian needs and it will survive and be defended until everything ends, including the whole Torah, at the Consummation.

Are there any other things to be called ‘doctrine’? Maybe, but I bet, it’s all theological phrasing of what the Bible says, no more, no less. My understanding of the doctrine may be different from the ‘traditional’ one, but I’m die-hard on this. If I have to die on a doctrine as such, this might be it. (Of course, no one dies for any doctrine. Even if someone dies for the ‘truth’, the truth cannot be a vague idea or doctrine. It has to be the divine reality, God himself. For that, one has to die when called for.)

[...] can read Rob’s introduction to the debate challenge here. And also worth reading is Rob and David’s list of resources that are relevant to the [...]

Ron, the debate will commence on the 11th. A new thread has been started here: http://tinyurl.com/y25akpo

OK, less than a week away now. No correspondance for a month now; must be time to start generating the interest. Dave/Rob are we still on track for the 11th? Is the debate going to be conducted through this current link? Any update on the format?

I may have missed one or two of the posts/comments/lines in this blog post but have both parties expressed their initial statement as to their belief as to what they understand the relationship of God Jesus and the Holy Spirit to be? Given that this debate is about the trinity, I think that it would be necessary to have a base-line to work from.

The following list comprises a collection of books and articles which accurately reflect my Christology. None of them were written by me.

Where possible, I have provided hyperlinks to online versions of the books as well as the articles.

_____________

The Racovian Catechism (1605) Polish Brethren: http://tinyurl.com/ygmo936
Lectures on the Principles of Unitarianism (1824) Hyndman, J S: http://tinyurl.com/yhjz46g
The Doctrine of the Trinity: Analytically Examined and Refuted (1937) White, Percy: http://tinyurl.com/ybvsfut
Wrested Scriptures (1964) Abel, Ron: http://tinyurl.com/ycodx2t
What Are the First Principles? (1990) Booker, George: http://tinyurl.com/yb9j3br
The Trinity: True or False? (1995) Broughton, James & Southgate, Peter: http://tinyurl.com/md3o3l
The Doctrine of the Trinity: Christianity’s Self-Inflicted Wound (1998) Buzzard, Anthony & Hunting, Charles
Before He was Born (2007) Perry, Andrew
The Restitution of Jesus Christ (2009) Zarley, Kermit

“What do Biblical Unitarians Believe?”: http://tinyurl.com/39qu8o
“Who is Jesus Christ?”: http://tinyurl.com/yg7e47w
“Interpreting Jesus’ Birth”: http://tinyurl.com/y85gvqq
“The Two Adams”: http://tinyurl.com/yhvaglh

Dave Burke and I have agreed to a six-week debate that will begin April 11, 2010. We have also agreed to limit ourselves to 5,000 words each week instead of 10,000.

I am going to post this message also as a new post, just to make sure everyone sees it. In that post I will also list the pro-Trinitarian works I recommend for the purposes of this debate. After Dave posts his recommended works, I will add his list to that new post so it will appear on equal footing with my list.