Craig V Hijab: THE Trinity Debate
Background Before The Debate
This is not a philosophy page. I do read things on Philosophy, but it's not the focus of this Subatack. This Subatack is meant to focus on specifically the history of religion. That being said I wanted to write an article on this recent debate put out by Capturing Christianity. I'm not qualified to speak definitively on this debate (in fact I'm barely qualified to speak on anything at all). That being said I write this article for these reasons
Hijab and Craig are both interesting debaters and Craig is a very talented communicator. I wanted to take a look at their rhetoric
I'm a participant in the religious discourse (as we all are to an extent). Thus, when events in this discourse that are important happens, we should take a look at them.
I write an article every week and was too busy to research something as extensively as I'd like. This article is easy to write and fun as well.
Now I want to introduce my background as it relates to this debate. I am neither Christian nor Muslim. I think both religions can be very beautiful or very ugly depending on how they are practiced, as is true of all things. I also lead my school's debate team and have gone far in debate competitions. I say this to inform you that I have some experience analyzing speaking and argumentative skills while minimizing the effect of my own beliefs.
I am not a fan nor a hater of William Lane Craig. I've seen his debate with Ehrman, and some podcast appearances such as his appearances on Within Reason. I disagree with most of what he says. I think his arguments aren't special but his communication skills are.
I am not a fan or hater of Mohammed Hijab. I haven't seen much of him but I am a disliker.
The debate is specifically on whether the Trinity is coherent. I don't feel strongly that God can't be triune but I lean towards the idea that the Abrahamic idea of God (all powerful, all knowing etc.) probably isn't triune. I also am yet to hear a way to explain the Trinity in a way without issues or contradictions.
With that said I will now watch the debate and report back.
A Summary of the Debate
The beginning of the debate baffled me to an extent. What I saw during the first seven speeches was talks about the Trinity but not its logical coherence like the topic of the debate called for. That being said, partway through the debate during Hijab's fourth speech the debate shifted to Hijab’s attacks against the Trinity. From there Craig remained on defense, and defended himself well for most of Hijab's lines of attacks.
In this article, first, I want to go over the three key lines of attack that hijab used that directly addressed the issue of whether the Trinity is coherent. Then I want to go over some wider thoughts I had about the debate.
Hijab’s Arguments Did They Hold Up
Cerberus
This was the strangest point of disagreement in the entire debate. Hijab mentioned how Craig once used the analogy of the trinity being like a three headed dog. Hijab called this a poor model for God as it is similar to polytheism. He supports this based on the fact that with Siamese twins we consider them to be separate people. Hence, one can’t say the Trinity is one God, just because they are connected. Craig responded that his metaphor about Cerberus was purely a thought experiment. Hijab, in his 7th speech, responds with a strange quote from Craig on this analogy:
“Perhaps we can get a start at this question by means of an analogy”.
Dr. Craig interestingly (and rightfully) gets pretty upset at Hijab, jumping in out of turn to interrupt and emphasize the key part of the quote “get a start”.
Still, what about the wider idea, that saying God has multiple bodies is polytheism? Craig responds this by explaining that since God is nonphysical, he is not comparable to Siamese twins or Cerberus in this respect.
Dr. Craig wins this point
Agreement
This one is pretty simple. Hijab argues there can’t be three gods. They may disagree with each other. Craig rebuts this by explaining that the father can’t disagree with the son as both are perfect. Hence they will always pick the most perfect option meaning they’ll never disagree. Hijab fails to rebut this
Credit
The last point I want to bring up from Hijab is that the Trinity makes it impossible to say all parts of God entirely created the universe. Either one part did it, or they split the work, however multiple persons can’t entirely do one action (He uses the analogy of claiming two people “pumped an 100 pound dumbbell” multiple times). Craig tries to respond by claiming that it’s similar to two matches lighting a flame. This response fails. As Hijab points out with matches, two matches make a bigger flame. Two persons of gods don’t make a bigger universe. Hijab win this argument.
Some Quirks In The Debate
Craig Takes On Islam
In William Lane Craig’s first speech, more time is spent talking about Islam than the Trinity, He asserts that Tawhid is more complex than the trinity. He quotes the Quran more often than The New Testament. Given that the topic of the debate was “Is the Trinity Coherent? “ not “Is the Trinity More Coherent Than Islam?” these points are irrelevant and strange to make, as Hijab points out.
Hijab Makes A Lonely William Lane Craig
Mohammed Hijab spends much of his early speeches proving, not that the trinity is incoherent in itself but that William Lane Craig’s version of the Trinity is unique and disliked by all. He shows that Dr. Craig is in conflict with the early church and contemporary Christian’s disagree. This is also non topical. The debate has nothing to do with whether Dr. Craig is correct. Nor is the debate about whether there is agreement on the question of the Trinity.
The Trinity In The New Testament
Dr. Craig never cites a single passage of the New Testament. This is incredibly strange considering the fact that he consistently says that his job is purely to defend the view of the trinity in the New Testament. It’s strange how one can fall back on the idea that they are only defending one view without citing that original view. Perhaps this was an attempt to avoid triggering a textual criticism debate around the Johannine Comma.
Strange Closings
A closing statement can be a very powerful tool in a debate. It's a chance to sum up all of your arguments in the round. Dr. Craig went first and did not use his closing to talk about the debate. In fact, the idea of the Trinity never came up throughout his entire closing statement. Instead his closing statement did two things. First, it tried to convert Muslim listeners. Secondly, he plugged his website Reasonable faith. He completely ignored the topic of the debate and just kind of used the speech as a soapbox. Hijab did discuss the debate but also soapboxed and plugged his apologetics project, the sapiens institute
Who Won, Two Approaches
Who Won on Substance
In a debate, both participants have a goal in mind. It is the job of one side to prove that a statement is true and it is the job of the other side to prove that a statement is false. In this case, it was the job of Hijab to prove that the question “ Is the Trinity coherent” ought to be answered with a no. Craig's job is to show that it should have a yes answer. In the end, Hijab's task was easier. If a Trinity is incoherent in one way he wins. Therefore, because of his argument relating to the credit for creation, hijab won this debate on substance.
Who Actually Won
It doesn’t actually matter who technically won though! Debates are exercises in convincing and case making. Therefore we ought to look to the comments to see who convinced the viewers. Looking on the link sent earlier Craig clearly won by a landslide. Commenters are saying things like
“The biggest lie i've seen on this channel is calling Hijab a "thinker" [laughing crying emoji]”
and,
“Why Muhammed Hijab cant talk like a civilized person?”
And,
“Hijab calls himself an "intellectual" brags for his degrees and yet he struggled to understand and follow with philosophical terms ...”
Looking at these comments Dr. Craig clearly won! Congrats to him! I went to the comments on the upload of this debate made by Mohamud Hijab to find more examples. I found something different. Looking here Hijab clearly won by a landslide. Commenters are saying things like
“William Lane Craig lost even before he compared God to a 3 headed dog”
and,
“im surprised he had the audacity to say that touheed is more confusing and complex then trinity get this man some help”
And,
“I am very grateful for this - it highlights how logical & correct Islam is. Islam is the greatest gift mankind has.”
Looking at these comments Hijab clearly won! Congrats to him!
In all seriousness the lesson here is that as long as both apologists have their own echo chambers, they can both be “winners” without even winning.
My Closing Statement
I want to close by addressing personally our unsubscribed readers today. I imagine that most of you have been raised in unsubscribed homes and perhaps even in an unsubscribed culture and I think you would agree that being raised in a certain way does not provide a good reason for thinking that it’s worth staying unsubscribed. If an Against The Dying Light subscriber were to say that ‘I believe Against The Dying Light is true because that’s how I was raised’ you would think that was a pretty weak argument. In exactly the same way I think many unsubscribed people today are beginning to ask themselves how do I really know that Against The Dying Light really isn’t worth subscribing to and as a result many are succumbing to the temptations of deleting their Substack accounts and to ignoring Substack. Now I think that’s wholly unnecessary and unwarranted. I think there are good arguments for subscribing to a Substack and so I believe that we should be subscribers but the question of where you go beyond that, to whom do you subscribe, apologetics or Against The Dying Light substacks is going to depend on the content of these articles. What are these articles? They are more I believe than just mere random words. They claim to be free weekly articles on the history of religion delivered to you inbox every Wednesday and were crucified for these allegedly blasphemous clams, but I believe that there is good historical evidence that I release quality articles every week and by doing that I vindicate in a public and unequivocal sense the truth of those allegedly Blasphemous claims for which they are crucified and for that reason I am an ardent Against The Dying Light subscriber and so I would simply want to invite you to begin to look at the content of these articles and the evidence uh for them and their quality. We have 10s of free articles available free of charge at substack.com/@againstthedyinglight and I would invite you to view or to read those um resources and to ask yourself could this really be true. Could Against The Dying Light release free weekly articles on the history of religion and I think if you'll do that um it could change your life in the same way that it changed mine.