Friday, July 17, 2020

Trinitarian Apologist States that there are Two Distinct Yahwehs (or, in other words, "two distinct Gods")

In a book defending Trinitarianism against Oneness Pentecostalism (Modalism), one Trinitarian apologist wrote that:

 

Both the Hebrew and LXX of Genesis 19:24 irrefutably presents two distinct Yahweh’s (“Then the Lord [Yahweh] rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord [Yahweh] out of heaven”), which utterly shatters the Oneness-unitarian view of God. (Edward L. Dalcour, A Definitive Look at Oneness Theology in the Light of Biblical Trinitarianism [4th ed.; Potchefstroom, South Africa: North-West University, 2016], 110 n. 14, emphasis in bold added)

 

What is shocking about this is that the apologist does not state that there are two persons called “Yahweh” but there is numerically one Yahweh (two persons who share the same “being”); instead, he argues that there are two distinct Yahweh’s, and as Yahweh = God, one way to rephrase this is Gen 19:24, in his view, “irrefutably presents two distinct Gods.” On should compare what the apologist says on p. 74 about Eph 4:4-6 (cf. 2 Cor 3:17-18) "That God is one Being (one Spirit) and three separate Spirits [which] is consistent with the doctrine of the Trinity."


Further Reading