Music Well, I'm sure that you and Jan appreciate the outpour, your prayers and concern over your brief stay in the hospital. Now, it was all over social media and would you like to just tell us what happened? Well Janne and I went on a little four day vacation to Florida and we both contracted coronavirus and mine was compounded by pneumonia and it was the I think, that really laid me low and put me in the hospital until they could get me through that. And then I came home. And now we're both recuperating, regaining strength every day. We're taking it easy. So it's not to over extend ourselves, but virtually back to normal, I'd say. And you just went to a clinic because you had some congestion, just a few symptoms, and did they end it up there suggesting that you go ahead and get further checked out? Yes, that's right. You just walk in clinic here in the area. We just thought we'd get some antibiotics or something from them. We had no idea that it was severe and so they were the ones that advised me to go to the hospital and so we did and again we didn't think they would check us in but they did and so I wound up being there for five days. You know Bill you work from your home office and so your chances of getting COVID were much lower. Did you ever expect that this would catch up with you and that you would get it? I really didn't, Kevin, because I'm so sequestered here, working at home, I just didn't expect it. We've been two years, you know, without incident. But going on this trip to Florida proved to be an exposure to the virus. And you're feeling good now and doing well. Okay. You know, you missed a conference or two, a couple of occasions because this. I think both of them were on historical atom. You were able to attend one and you weren't able to attend one. Talk about that. That's right. There was a conference in late April that I had to cancel. It was a conference based on a four views on the historical atom book that I'm participating in. It's edited by Ken Keithley, who's a professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. And it features Kenton Sparks, who is taking the view that there was no historical Adam. Then I take the view of the mytho historical Adam. And then Andrew Locke takes the view of the recent genealogical Adam popularized by Joss Swamidas, and then the young earth creationist views defended by Marcus Ross. And so that conference took place at Southeastern Baptist without me, and I understand it went very well. And so now the next step is that each of us will write a response to the contributions of the other panelists. And so that remains now for me to be done with regard to this book. Now, the other conference I was able to attend. Kevin, I think my recovery has been quite remarkable. And so this past month in May, there was a conference at Trinity of Injullical Divinity School in the Chicago area. And Josh Swamy-Dos and I did a four-hour pre-conference workshop on our two books on the Historical Atom. We refer to Josh's model as the recent genealogical atom and my view is the ancient genealogical atom. And I just loved seeing Josh Swamy Das again and fellow shipping with him as well as with several of the other theologians at this conference. It was a real encouragement and it was the very last of these conferences that were ever be held. Their funding is now gone and so this was the final conference and Josh said to me, I think these conferences that we've been going to hear over the last four or five years will be historic in their impact. And certainly it has been in my life, Kevin, because my book in quest of the historical atom flowed out of the stimulus that I received in attending these conferences. Well, let's see stuck in the hospital four or five days, Bill. I'm sure that maybe you got a little reading in while you were there. You want to fill us in?

Yes. While I was in the hospital at first, I had nothing to do, but lie in bed. And there was a phone in the room. And so I would call Janet, talk to her. And so she says to me, well, while you're lying in bed, why don't you think of a philosophical problem? What a what a what a what a what a what a what a what a what a what decided to think about the problem of identity and the doctrine of the Trinity. And I think, Kevin, I came to some genuine insights about this that I have since written up after I got home and incorporated into my chapter on the Trinity. And let me try to share this with our listeners as simply as I can. An author a number of years ago named Wainwright wrote a book on the Trinity in which he argued that most of the authors of the New Testament weren't even aware that there is a problem of the Trinity. For them, the notion was unproblematic. He says he thinks that Paul and the author of the book of Hebrews and John sensed that there was a problem here, but only John really grasped it and proposed

a solution to it. And that really got me to thinking, why would the authors of the New Testament not be aware that the doctrine of the Trinity is problematic? And then it hit me, Kevin, the authors of the New Testament and the ancients in general didn't have a modern grasp of the relation of identity. The relation of identity is the strongest equivalence relation that holds between an object and itself and nothing else. And this is a relation which is reflexive, symmetric, and transitive. But you can show that the ancients didn't have a modern grasp of the identity relation. Aristotle alone in his topics has a paragraph on the identity relation but it was overlooked and forgotten for centuries until others rediscovered these insights later. And so when the authors of the New Testament said things like, Jesus is God, the Father is God, but Jesus is not the Father. They just didn't see any problem with that. In order to see that as problematic, you've got to have a grasp of the logical relation of identity, which these ancient authors did not have. And so I think that we are in real danger of overreading them, of importing into their statements, modern concepts of identity, that they simply didn't have. And so when they said things like, the Father is God, the Son is God, they didn't intend for these to be identity statements in a modern sense of the word. And so for them, I think the notion of the Trinity just didn't even appear to be problematic. So for me, this was really a major new insight into the New Testament material on the doctrine of the Trinity. Wow. And Bill, here you say that, one of the things that occurs to me is how we, as ambassadors of Christ, have tried so hard to reach to our Jehovah's Witness friends, our Mormon friends, our Muslim friends, because all of them, those three I mentioned there, have issues with the Trinity and we find ourselves trying to go to proof texts, trying to go to the scriptures and go to the scriptural data, which is quite appropriate. But how would this play in? Do you think when you have a dialogue with a thoughtful member of like the LDS or Jova's witness or

Muslim. It would come into play when they read statements like the Father is God as an identity statement and they would say therefore it cannot be true that the Son is God because identity is a transitive relation. x is identical to y Y and Y is identical to Z, then X is identical to Z. So if you say the Father is God and the Son is God, that implies that the Son is identical to the Father. If you read those as identity statements, and I'm convinced that these ancient authors didn't intend these to be identity statements in the modern sense because they didn't even have a modern grasp of the theory of identity. And this really undercuts a large portion of the argument offered by various unitarians against the Trinity by saying it's an incoherent doctrine maybe another book will come out of this Well my systematic philosophical theology is going to have a long chapter on the Trinity in it And that is exactly what I'm writing on now In fact after being in the hospital couple days Jan She could not visit me because I had coronavirus. I could have no visitors, but she set a book up to me to read while I was there. And here's the book she sent me, Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity by McCallan Ray. And this is a great book of collected essays on the doctrine of the

Trinity. It's just chock full of material. Now, I want to advise our listeners. It's

not for lay people. But if there are any professional philosophers listening to

our podcast today and they haven't read this book by McCall and Ray, this is I

think an indispensable collection. And so I spent much of my time digesting that book. Bill, to wrap it up today, you know, I've seen firsthand how you take care of your health. You exercise, you eat right, you try to get plenty of sleep. I think that we can probably attribute a lot of that to Jen, if not most of it. But you're always vibrant. And I'm sure this was a factor that helped when you got corona. Can you talk a little bit about your routine? What has worked for you? Because believe me when I say we all need a little encouragement to take care of ourselves. Well, Kevin, I do believe that because my underlying health was really good, that I was able to recover rapidly from this pneumonia and to shake off the lingering effects of fatigue and weakness from it. And one of the things that I do that you might not know is that like Jordan Peterson, I pretty much follow a carnivore diet. I eat an enormous amount of red meat and very, very few carbs. I've given up bread altogether. And so I am basically a carnivore. and it has really, I think, bolstered my health and stamina. The other thing that has really helped me is sleep, as you said. When you're recovering from an illness like this, I think it's so important to be patient with yourself, not to be over-anges to get back to the normal routine, to get back in the swing and think, rather listen to your body and if you feel tired, even though it's mid-morning, go to bed, get a nap and if you feel tired again in the afternoon and after lunch, go to bed. The world's not going to come to an end if you don't get done all your projects.

So I've really, and Jan as well, have really tried to just be really patient and not overdo it, not over-extend ourselves and get lots of rest. And I think that's been a great help. And so I would encourage any of our listeners who might be recovering from illness of this sort, Not to overextend themselves to really be patient and to keep in mind that there is enough time in every day to do all the will of God. Bill, I'm glad to doing well. A lot of people prayed for you and prayed for this ministry during that illness. I'm glad you're doing good. Well, we do appreciate it so much, Kevin, those prayers,

sustain us and keep us going. Thank you.