I just recently listened to a rather eisegesis/question-begging filled presentation in favour of Jeff Durbin (if you want to torture yourself for 70 minutes, click here). Many of his "proof-texts" for the Trinity (e.g., Heb 1:3; 8-9) actually refute, not support, Trinitarianism (for e.g., see my paper on LDS Christology here [Heb 1:3, for e.g., supports the Father having a body, for instance!). One of his arguments in favour of the Trinity is Gen 19:24:
Then the Lord (Yahweh) rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord (Yahweh) out of heaven.
The argument is that there is one Yahweh in heaven and another Yahweh on the earth, indicating a plurality of persons within Yahweh. Firstly, allowing this to be the case, one has to reject basic mathematics and logic:
There is numerically only 1 Yahweh
There is 1 Yahweh in Heaven
There is 1 Yahweh on the earth
The Yahweh on heaven is not the Yahweh on earth.
This is the same as saying that 1 plus 1 equals 1. Apart from the rules of logic (e.g., identity of indiscernibles) and exegesis, mathematics is not the friend of Trinitarianism.
Furthermore, only one person who is Yahweh is in view here; Gen 19:24 is reflective of a Hebraism. In Latin, it is antecedens pro pronomine relativo, where an author repeats the noun in place of the pronoun. Consider other examples:
And Lamech said unto his wives, Adah and Zillah, Hear my voice; ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech: for I have slain a man to my wounding and a young man to my hurt. (Gen 4:23)
Solomon amassed chariots and horsemen. He had 1,400 chariots and 12,000 horsemen, and he stationed them in the chariot cities and with the king [Solomon] at Jerusalem. (2 Chron 1:14 NASB)
So that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the day of your Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Cor 1:7-8)
Calvin, in his comments on Gen 19:24, cautioned his fellow Trinitarians against using this verse as a valid "proof-text" for a plurality of persons within the One God, a caution Robert Morey, Jeff Durbin, and others really should heed:
The proof which the ancients have endeavored to derive, from this testimony, for the Deity of Christ, is by no means conclusive: and they are angry, in my judgment, without cause, who severely censure the Jews, because they do not admit this kind of evidence. I confess, indeed, that God always acts by the hand of his Son, and have no doubt that the Son presided over an example of vengeance so memorable; but I say, they reason inconclusively, who hence elicit a plurality of Persons, whereas the design of Moses was to raise the minds of the readers to a more lively contemplation of the hand of God. And as it is often asked, from this passage, ‘What had infants done, to deserve to be swallowed up in the same destruction with their parents?’ the solution of the question is easy; namely, that the human race is in the hand of God, so that he may devote whom he will to destruction, and may follow whom he will with his mercy. Again, whatever we are not able to comprehend by the limited measure of our understanding, ought to be submitted to his secret judgment. Lastly, the whole of that seed was accursed and execrable so that God could not justly have spared, even the least.
