1. Principally the three arguments in my ‘Divine deception, identity, and Social Trinitarianism’, Religious Studies, 40 (2004), 269–287CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and to a lesser extent those in my ‘The unfinished business of Trinitarian theorizing’, Religious Studies, 39 (2003), 165–183Google Scholar, and ‘Tradition and believability: Edward Wierenga's Social Trinitarianism’, Philosophia Christi, 5 (2003), 447–456Google Scholar. Of the three aforementioned arguments, the first and second turn on what appear to be cases of wrongful deception, and the third ‘direct’ argument turns on the Bible's implicit identification of the one God, the Father of Jesus, and Yahweh.

2. William Hasker ‘Has a Trinitarian God deceived us?’, in T. McCall and M. Rea (eds) Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity (New York NY: Oxford University Press, 2009), 38–51; idem ‘Objections to Social Trinitarianism’, Religious Studies, 46 (2010), 421–439CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. Hasker ‘Objections to Social Trinitarianism’, 423–424.

4. Tuggy ‘Unfinished business of Trinitarian theorizing’, 168–169. Brevity forces me to forgo responding to his ‘methodological precepts’; Hasker ‘Has a Trinitarian God deceived us?’, 43–46. Of these, I see only the third as truly relevant; I argue briefly against it below.

5. Hasker ‘Has a Trinitarian God deceived us?’, 47, emphases added.

6. On this last, I have in mind the authors of the third- to ninth-century Indian doctrinal digests analysed in Paul Griffiths On Being Buddha: The Classical Doctrine of Buddhahood (Albany NY: SUNY Press, 1994), ch. 7.

7. Hasker ‘Has a Trinitarian God deceived us?’, 47.

8. William Hasker Metaphysics: Constructing a World View (Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity Press, 1983), 114. In the last part of the quotation he's talking of what isn't true of the ‘God’ of pantheism, but I take it that the contrasts imply that the ‘God’ of theism does have those features. Cf. Michael Peterson, William Hasker, Bruce Reichenbach, & David Basinger Reason and Religious Belief: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, 3rd edn (New York NY: Oxford University Press, 2003), 9.

9. These, together with reasons to believe that God is a self, are surveyed in Charles Taliaferro ‘Personal’, in Brian Davies (ed), Philosophy of Religion: A Guide to the Subject (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 1998), 95–105.

10. This is confirmed by what Hasker says elsewhere; in his view, the one God is not literally a self. See my ‘Hasker's quests for a viable social theory’ (forthcoming).

11. Paul Copan ‘Is the Trinity a logical blunder? God as three and one’, in Paul Copan & William Lane Craig (eds), Contending with Christianity's Critics: Answering New Atheists and Other Objectors (Nashville TN: B&H Academic, 2009), 205–217, 206; Thomas McCall Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism? (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 33–37, 92–94; Craig, William Lane, ‘Trinity monotheism once more: a response to Daniel Howard-Snyder’, Philosophia Christi, 8 (2006), 101–113Google Scholar, reprinted as ‘Another glance at Trinity monotheism’, in McCall & Rea Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity, 126–130.

12. That is, theories on which there is exactly one divine self, the ‘three persons’ being his modes of acting, interacting, revealing, or living, etc.

13. Luke, 8.16, English Standard Version.

14. Hasker ‘Has a Trinitarian God deceived us?’, 45, n. 9.

15. It is not clear to me that he does; does he not apply the term ‘person’ (meaning a self, not a human being) non-analogically to each member of the Trinity?; Hasker ‘Objections to Social Trinitarianism’, 422.

16. William Alston, Divine Nature and Human Language: Essays in Philosophical Theology (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), ch. 3.

17. Carl Mosser notes that ‘social’ theorists are actually quite divided on this point; Carl Mosser ‘Fully Social Trinitarianism’, in McCall & Rea Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity, 131–150, 135–138. This undermines Hasker's appeal to ‘Christian common sense’ to support his claim about analogy.

18. Hasker ‘Has a Trinitarian God deceived us?’, 49.

19. Ibid., 47–48.

20. Ibid., 48.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid., 48–49.

23. The third, direct argument is:‘Let y name Yahweh, the one true God presented in the Old Testament. Let g be the God of the New Testament. Let f be the Father of Jesus Christ, and s and h be the Son of God and the Holy Spirit, respectively.

1. (1)

   (1) y=g

2. (2)

   (2) g=f

3. (3)

   (3) y=f

4. (4)

   (4) f≠(f, s, h)

5. (5)

   (5) g≠(f, s, h)

6. (6)

   (6) y≠(f, s, h)';

Tuggy ‘Divine deception, identity, and Social Trinitarianism’, 284.

The symbol ‘=’ means numerical identity, and the notation (f, s, h) is supposed to refer to ‘the Trinity as a whole’ – to all three persons, or the set, sum, or thing they compose, if any. I might instead have used ‘t’ to be either a name referring to the Trinity (this assumes it to be an entity) or a plural referring term, which refers to f, s, and h (this doesn't assume that group to compose any entity), which would make the last three steps in the argument read:

• (4) f≠t

• (5) g≠t

• (6) y≠t.

24. To clarify, I don't claim that any of the premises has been explicitly revealed. I do claim that they are clearly presupposed throughout the New Testament, and are implicitly taught therein. They are things that in the New Testament era went without saying. Those assuming g=f include John, 17.1–3, 20.17, and Ephesians, 1.2–3, 16–17. Those assuming y=g include Acts, 3.13, John, 8.54, and Hebrews 1.1–2.

25. Tuggy ‘Divine deception, identity, and Social Trinitarianism’, 273.

26. Hasker ‘Has a Trinitarian God deceived us?’, 49–50, emphases added.

27. Ibid., 50.

28. E-mail to the author of 23 December 2009. I take it that Hasker has in mind all three arguments.

29. I thank Bill Hasker for helpful correspondence and comments on a previous, longer draft of this paper, and Peter Byrne for his comments on the penultimate draft.