This is the transcript of Restitutio episode 663: The Trinity Now a Minority Belief in America with Dustin Smith This transcript was auto-generated and only approximates the contents of this episode. Audio file 663 Dustin Smith - biblical unitarian trends.mp3 Transcript 00:00 Sean Finnegan Hey there, I'm Sean Finnegan and you are listening to Restitudio, a podcast that seeks to recover authentic Christianity and live it out today. 00:12 Sean Finnegan Are you under the impression that everyone believes in the Trinity? 00:15 Sean Finnegan Most denominational creeds, seminary requirements, and church statements of faith begin with a confession that there is one God who exists in three person or some such articulation of the Trinity. 00:27 Sean Finnegan Perhaps you think that this means that American pastors believe in the Trinity and they faithfully teach it to their congregations? 00:36 Sean Finnegan If so, you would be wrong. 00:39 Sean Finnegan Today my guest is biblical studies scholar Dr. 00:42 Sean Finnegan Dustin R. 00:42 Sean Finnegan Smith of Spartanburg Methodist College in South Carolina. 00:47 Sean Finnegan He presents the shocking truth based on three independent surveys about American belief in the Trinity. 00:54 Sean Finnegan The results are in. 00:56 Sean Finnegan Belief in the Trinity is now a minority position in the United States, both among Americans in general and among those who attend church. 01:05 Sean Finnegan What is going on? 01:07 Sean Finnegan What are the implications? 01:08 Sean Finnegan And what does this mean for biblical Unitarians? 01:12 Sean Finnegan Join me as Dr. 01:12 Sean Finnegan Dustin Smith explains what's going on. 01:15 Sean Finnegan Here now is episode 663, The Trinity, now a minority belief in America with Dustin Smith. 01:30 Sean Finnegan Welcome to Restitutio, Dustin Smith. 01:32 Dustin Smith Thanks for having me, Sean. 01:33 Dustin Smith I appreciate it. 01:34 Sean Finnegan To begin with, could you introduce yourself, just say a little bit more about who you are and what you do? 01:41 Dustin Smith I'm a husband and a father of two, and I'm deeply interested in helping other people understand the Christology of the New Testament authors, of the biblical writers, and also how they understood 01:57 Dustin Smith that the true God is the father alone. 01:59 Dustin Smith And so I've basically spent the last 10 years of my professional adult life trying to make that information accessible to people. 02:05 Dustin Smith So most people know me from the Biblical Unitarian podcast, but I've also kind of gone into scary waters of TikTok and various other places as well. 02:15 Dustin Smith So I'm just trying to help those that are misinformed or have 02:21 Dustin Smith not had access to all these tools and this information to become better informed about what the New Testament authors wanted us to understand about God and Jesus Christ, arguably the two most important people in the universe. 02:36 Sean Finnegan You do a lot of work in taking scholarship and helping 02:42 Sean Finnegan regular people understand it. 02:44 Sean Finnegan And that's an important role. 02:45 Sean Finnegan That's a very important role. 02:47 Sean Finnegan I've met many scholars who or come across their work who are just incapable of communicating with normal people. 02:54 Sean Finnegan I don't know how else to say that in a nicer way, but as you've done your education over the years, you have been able to retain your ability to communicate with normal everyday folks. 03:06 Sean Finnegan So that's a great advantage. 03:08 Sean Finnegan Is that something that is important to you? 03:10 Sean Finnegan being able to be understandable or accessible, I guess. 03:14 Dustin Smith It's really important because I'm also a person of faith, a believing Christian, and I believe that we're called to obey Jesus and to observe his commandments and to follow after his model. 03:25 Dustin Smith So Jesus had disciples and he taught them, and I think he told us that we need to be making disciples and teaching them to observe all the things that Jesus taught. 03:33 Dustin Smith And so, of course, also being on a college campus and around 03:37 Dustin Smith 18, 19, 20 year olds helps me to keep me a little bit level-headed and at least trying to keep up with their culture, which is just constantly evolving and moving. 03:46 Dustin Smith And I do the best that I can. 03:47 Sean Finnegan Yeah, So a while back, it was actually last month, you had a podcast episode called 437, Most Biblical Scholars Reject Jesus as God. 03:59 Sean Finnegan And I was just listening to that. 04:02 Sean Finnegan I was like, man, I gotta have Dustin on to talk about this. 04:05 Sean Finnegan You talk about this conference that you attended in Italy. 04:11 Sean Finnegan You took a trip to Italy. 04:12 Sean Finnegan What was this conference about and how was your time there? 04:17 Dustin Smith Yeah, I was invited to present a paper at the Enoch seminar, and this is the 25th time that they've gotten together. 04:24 Dustin Smith Enoch seminar is just a scholarly guild, and every year they have 04:29 Dustin Smith a gathering of scholars to present on a particular topic. 04:32 Dustin Smith And so this year, what kind of caught my interest is that the theme of the meetings was from Jewish prophet to a Gentile God, reading Christology within Jewish messianism and monotheism. 04:46 Dustin Smith And they put quotes there around monotheism. 04:49 Dustin Smith So for people to see, those that are listening on the podcast. 04:52 Dustin Smith I offered to present a paper and my paper got accepted and I was actually kind of surprised because 04:57 Dustin Smith Everyone there is like way above me. 05:00 Dustin Smith I'm just surprised that they let me in there. 05:03 Dustin Smith Seasoned scholars, but there are some other people there kind of around my age. 05:06 Dustin Smith It was great. 05:07 Dustin Smith I enjoyed Rome and Italy. 05:09 Dustin Smith It was the most exciting trip that I've been on overseas, and I can't wait to go back again. 05:14 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 05:15 Sean Finnegan What'd you think about the food? 05:16 Sean Finnegan Did you get any Italian food while you were there? 05:18 Sean Finnegan I'm sure you did. 05:19 Dustin Smith A little bit. 05:20 Dustin Smith It seemed like every restaurant has their pasta and their 05:25 Dustin Smith but every restaurant also has their own special thing too. 05:30 Dustin Smith So it was good. 05:32 Dustin Smith Their pasta is a lot better than it is in America. 05:34 Sean Finnegan It sure is. 05:34 Sean Finnegan I was shocked at how good it is because I'm not really a pasta guy, but man, in Rome, it was incredible. 05:40 Sean Finnegan We ended up staying at a hotel that was walkable to the train station in downtown Rome. 05:46 Sean Finnegan And like probably in most cities, this is the case. 05:49 Sean Finnegan Like 05:50 Sean Finnegan Anywhere you can easily walk to from the downtown train station is not a great part of the city, but we found the most amazing food there. 05:58 Sean Finnegan So it worked out. 06:00 Sean Finnegan And each restaurant had their own wine that they made themselves, which I thought was kind of charming too. 06:06 Sean Finnegan All right, so let's talk about this informal poll. 06:11 Sean Finnegan I think you said that Dan McClellan put it together. 06:14 Sean Finnegan A little poll about whether or not the New Testament teaches that Jesus is God. 06:19 Sean Finnegan Talk about this poll and why would he even do that at this event? 06:24 Dustin Smith Yeah, it was really interesting because the way that the conference would work is that we all got the papers ahead of time, about a month ahead of time. 06:32 Dustin Smith And the idea was that we were supposed to read them and then kind of a summary of the paper would be presented and then we would have like an hour to engage respectfully with the paper and with each other. 06:43 Dustin Smith And so it was really, really nice. 06:44 Dustin Smith It was super cool for that. 06:46 Dustin Smith And so after three days of doing that, 06:49 Dustin Smith it was interesting to see the sort of questions that kept coming up. 06:52 Dustin Smith And one of the questions that kept coming up was, what does it mean to say that Jesus is divine? 06:57 Dustin Smith Because it was very clear that everyone in the room had a different definition of what it meant for Jesus to be divine. 07:03 Dustin Smith And of course, if that's the case, then it doesn't really help to say, do you believe in the divinity of Jesus or do you not believe? 07:10 Dustin Smith Because my question is, well, what does that mean? 07:12 Dustin Smith And it was interesting that it was actually my question about 07:17 Dustin Smith depends on what you mean by the divinity of Jesus that actually brought about the question that Dan McCullen had asked. 07:23 Dustin Smith And so at the end of all this, we're kind of done with all the papers and stuff and we were just kind of informally talking. 07:28 Dustin Smith And he asked this particular question. 07:29 Dustin Smith I'm just going to say it very clearly so people can understand what it is. 07:33 Dustin Smith He asked, how many would agree that there are any texts in the New Testament that present Jesus as the very God of Israel, the only true God? 07:44 Dustin Smith there was probably 35 people that were there, but 25 of them were invited to present. 07:48 Dustin Smith So out of the scholars that were actually there, having presented the papers, but also having listened to the papers and had the opportunity to be swayed or persuaded or dissuaded by the papers, only six people, only six of the scholars out of 25 agreed that there are any texts in the New Testament that portray Jesus as 08:09 Dustin Smith the very God of Israel as the only true God, 6 out of 25. 08:12 Dustin Smith And so that's less than 25%. 08:14 Dustin Smith It's 24% by my napkin math, which means that the majority, 76% of those scholars disagree that there are texts that portray Jesus as the very God of Israel. 08:25 Sean Finnegan Right, and these are just not generic scholars. 08:27 Sean Finnegan These are people that are specialists in Christology. 08:32 Dustin Smith Yeah. 08:33 Sean Finnegan So these are people who are trained and are thinking and reading and writing in this field of Christology. 08:40 Sean Finnegan And the majority of them are saying, yeah, the New Testament doesn't say that. 08:48 Sean Finnegan It's kind of weird that we even have to ask that question, right? 08:53 Sean Finnegan Like for Moby Dick, we wouldn't be like, well, was Ahab, like you can make a judgment, like was Ahab a good captain or a bad captain? 09:01 Sean Finnegan Sure, you could say that, but like 09:02 Sean Finnegan was Ahab the captain of the boat? 09:04 Sean Finnegan Like that's not, that's not complicated, but I suppose it is something that we do need to ask, especially today. 09:12 Sean Finnegan What would you say struck you as far as the significance of that? 09:15 Sean Finnegan Like, did you find out the results right away or later on? 09:18 Sean Finnegan And what was the, you know, what was your reaction? 09:20 Dustin Smith We were in a room and it was like, raise your hand if you agree with this. 09:25 Dustin Smith That's how it was like. 09:26 Sean Finnegan So it's just like a very open poll. 09:29 Dustin Smith Oh yeah. 09:29 Dustin Smith Oh yeah. 09:30 Sean Finnegan Something else you mentioned in your previous podcast is that no one was allowed to record. 09:37 Sean Finnegan So there was a sense of safety for people to be a little more honest, right? 09:42 Dustin Smith Yeah. 09:44 Sean Finnegan So nobody was recording the sessions. 09:45 Sean Finnegan Nobody was videotaping anything. 09:48 Sean Finnegan And so maybe somebody would put their job at risk if 09:54 Sean Finnegan back home, they found out that they raised their hand or didn't raise their hand. 09:57 Sean Finnegan But there was like a sense of like, okay, here in Italy, we're in Italy, what happens in Italy stays in Italy. 10:04 Dustin Smith Dan made a video later where he was talking about the very same question, coincidentally along the same time that I was doing this as well, because it was very interesting for him. 10:12 Dustin Smith It was something that he was trying to gather this data, try to understand, you know, what do most biblical scholars think on a variety of topics? 10:19 Dustin Smith And so he was asking these questions throughout the week. 10:21 Dustin Smith It was just, it was kind of interesting. 10:22 Dustin Smith But 10:23 Dustin Smith But there was definitely a sense in which we wanted everyone to be honest. 10:27 Dustin Smith We wanted everyone to be open and to be transparent about things. 10:30 Dustin Smith And even when we disagreed, we were, it was all very respectful. 10:34 Dustin Smith People were listening to each other. 10:37 Dustin Smith It was nice. 10:37 Sean Finnegan All right. 10:38 Sean Finnegan So this is one piece of data. 10:40 Sean Finnegan Sure. 10:41 Sean Finnegan Talk about this other poll, George Barna poll from 10:45 Sean Finnegan April 2025, I came across it online. 10:48 Sean Finnegan It says most Americans, including most Christian churchgoers, reject the Trinity. 10:53 Sean Finnegan Tell us about this poll and the results. 10:56 Dustin Smith Yeah, so George Barne is very famous. 10:57 Dustin Smith He's been doing these polls for a long time and he's been praised for the rigorous aspects of his polls and how objective he is. 11:06 Dustin Smith And so this just last year, 2025, okay? 11:10 Dustin Smith And so he surveyed over 2,000 people. 11:12 Dustin Smith They were Americans. 11:13 Dustin Smith And out of his survey, only 11% of American adults believed in the doctrine of the Trinity. 11:21 Dustin Smith And he was able to break it down into a bunch of other different subcategories. 11:25 Dustin Smith Like for those that were self-professed Christians, that were Christian American adults, it was only 16%, and that's one out of 6. 11:35 Dustin Smith And then he has other categories as well. 11:37 Dustin Smith If they were 11:39 Dustin Smith identified as a born-again Christian, it would be 24%, so like one out of four. 11:44 Dustin Smith If they attended a Protestant church, it was 20%, so that's one out of five. 11:48 Dustin Smith If they attended a Catholic church, surprisingly, it's actually only 9%. 11:50 Dustin Smith That was kind of the lowest group right there. 11:53 Dustin Smith But out of all those, it's very clear that the title of his results is correct. 11:58 Dustin Smith Most Christians, including Christian churchgoers, reject the Trinity in the year 2025. 12:05 Sean Finnegan This is just absolutely 12:07 Sean Finnegan front page news, in my opinion, absolutely front page news. 12:11 Dustin Smith Believers in the Trinity are in the minority in America. 12:15 Sean Finnegan Like every time you say it, I'm just like, is that, is that really true? 12:18 Sean Finnegan Like, it's just so, it's so incredible. 12:21 Sean Finnegan Like I have my suspicions, you know, and I have like anecdotal data because my mom had grown up Southern Baptist in Southern Ohio and Virginia, North Carolina, you know, so, you know, a lot of 12:36 Sean Finnegan a lot of strong Christians there. 12:38 Sean Finnegan And she never believed in the Trinity. 12:40 Sean Finnegan When she was first approached by somebody who questioned her on this, she's like, yeah, I don't believe in that. 12:48 Sean Finnegan She's like, yes, you do. 12:49 Sean Finnegan You're an evangelical. 12:50 Sean Finnegan Like, come on. 12:51 Sean Finnegan And she's like, no, I never learned. 12:53 Sean Finnegan I really don't know what you're talking about. 12:54 Sean Finnegan You know, what is this three in one, three person? 12:57 Sean Finnegan Why is God, why are you calling God a person? 12:59 Sean Finnegan She like, she just didn't get it. 13:01 Sean Finnegan And you know, it's like, well, you know, that's one data point. 13:03 Sean Finnegan But 13:04 Sean Finnegan When we look at these surveys, we're talking about thousands of people. 13:07 Sean Finnegan We're talking about rigorous statistical methodology by professionals like George Barna, the company is absolutely top level as far as like their methodology, right? 13:22 Dustin Smith Yeah. 13:23 Sean Finnegan So I mean, that's huge. 13:24 Sean Finnegan And then you also talked about this other one, 13:27 Sean Finnegan I think it was Ligonier, which was the ministry of RC Sproul, state of theology survey from September of 2025. 13:35 Sean Finnegan What did they find? 13:36 Dustin Smith Yeah, it's interesting. 13:37 Dustin Smith We got two polls on this question in the year 2025. 13:41 Dustin Smith And so it was really, really fun to publish those results. 13:44 Dustin Smith And so this poll was actually far more extensive. 13:47 Dustin Smith They surveyed over 3,000 people. 13:50 Dustin Smith And they would ask various questions about what do you believe about the Father? 13:53 Dustin Smith What do you believe about the Son? 13:55 Dustin Smith What do you believe about the Holy Spirit? 13:56 Dustin Smith And of course, you had to, in order to be qualified as an authentic Trinitarian, 14:03 Dustin Smith you have to agree with a bunch of propositions on all of these different things. 14:06 Dustin Smith So it's not like, do you believe in the Trinity or do you not believe in the Trinity? 14:09 Dustin Smith They found that's not helpful. 14:10 Dustin Smith They asked questions, do you believe something specific about the Father, about the Son, and about the Spirit, and about the three of them? 14:17 Sean Finnegan So you had to have multiple yeses in order for that to qualify as like a possible Trinitarian. 14:22 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 14:23 Dustin Smith That's really smart. 14:24 Dustin Smith So they would ask questions like, do you believe that God is 14:28 Dustin Smith three persons. 14:29 Dustin Smith And they would, do you strongly agree, agree, neutral, somewhat disagree or strongly disagree? 14:34 Dustin Smith Do you believe that Jesus is God? 14:36 Dustin Smith Do you believe that the Spirit is a personal being? 14:38 Dustin Smith And of course, you had to answer yes to all these questions. 14:40 Dustin Smith Those are just a few of them. 14:42 Dustin Smith But out of those that answered yes to all the questions that are required to be a Trinitarian, it turned out that it was only like one in four people. 14:50 Dustin Smith It was like roughly 25%. 14:51 Dustin Smith I think I'm actually rounding up there based on my math. 14:54 Sean Finnegan Okay. 14:55 Dustin Smith 25% of the 3,000 surveyed 14:58 Dustin Smith knew enough of the correct answers to claim to believe in what it takes to be an authentic Trinitarian. 15:06 Sean Finnegan Wow, that's just incredible. 15:08 Sean Finnegan Now contrast that with the Unitarian Christian Alliance data for membership. 15:14 Dustin Smith Yeah, and I need to go look and see what it looks like now in July. 15:19 Dustin Smith I took in that episode that you were talking about, I took what 15:23 Dustin Smith was given at a presentation. 15:25 Dustin Smith I think it was one of the New Zealand presentations. 15:28 Dustin Smith But it just showed that there was just a steady increase over every single month of people that are identifying as Unitarians. 15:37 Dustin Smith They understand that the true God is the Father alone. 15:40 Dustin Smith in that Jesus is the human Messiah, the Son of God, the Christ. 15:45 Dustin Smith And more and more and more people are coming to that understanding. 15:48 Dustin Smith And yet what's interesting is that out of all of these different surveys, whether it's just anecdotal or official surveys, fewer and fewer people are confessing belief and understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. 16:00 Sean Finnegan What does this mean? 16:01 Sean Finnegan What do you think? 16:03 Dustin Smith I can just kind of give you some guesses as to why that's interesting. 16:05 Sean Finnegan I guess none of us really knows for sure, but 16:09 Sean Finnegan I'm just thinking about it. 16:09 Sean Finnegan I'm like, does that mean we're winning? 16:13 Sean Finnegan Sorry, go ahead. 16:15 Dustin Smith It's always interesting to see what the Orthodox people say in regard to those polls that came out. 16:23 Dustin Smith And they said two things in particular that I'm going to repeat right here, and then I'm going to give you my third point. 16:28 Dustin Smith The first one is that they don't think the pastors and the churches understand the Trinity. 16:32 Dustin Smith And so if a pastor doesn't even understand what the doctrine is, then how in the world is he going to be able to teach it 16:38 Dustin Smith to his congregants, okay? 16:41 Dustin Smith I get it. 16:41 Dustin Smith So that was their first point. 16:43 Dustin Smith The other thing is that they don't think that the pastors in the churches, they don't think that those pastors value the Trinity enough in importance in order to teach it. 16:53 Dustin Smith They don't think it's important enough to teach. 16:55 Dustin Smith There are so many other things they could be teaching or preaching about or making a big point on, but they don't understand it or they don't understand it and they don't think it's important enough to teach. 17:05 Dustin Smith So that was kind of 17:06 Dustin Smith their side's understanding of it. 17:08 Dustin Smith But I think there's a third point. 17:09 Dustin Smith I think there's another thing. 17:10 Dustin Smith It's that we do know that more and more people are reading their Bibles. 17:15 Dustin Smith More and more people are actually buying Bibles and Bible sales are actually continuing to rise. 17:21 Dustin Smith Actually, in the last five years, it just continued to get higher and higher and higher. 17:24 Dustin Smith So more people are reading their Bibles and they are seeing that God and Jesus are distinct persons. 17:30 Dustin Smith And of course, we have a variety of ministries, Your Good Ministry, the UCA and others. 17:34 Dustin Smith that are doing their best to make this information available to people that the true God is the father alone. 17:41 Dustin Smith Jesus is a human being. 17:42 Dustin Smith He's the Messiah. 17:43 Dustin Smith He has a God above him. 17:45 Dustin Smith The God of Jesus is the father alone, only one person. 17:48 Dustin Smith And so I think there's a combination of all these things. 17:51 Dustin Smith And like for me, it's very exciting because I feel like when you look back in the last 20 years, we have so much momentum right now. 17:58 Dustin Smith There's so much that's going on right now. 18:00 Dustin Smith I mean, to me, what I tell people is I'm like, put 18:03 Dustin Smith the pedal to the floor. 18:04 Dustin Smith Keep pushing, keep grinding because they're scared, they're panicking, they're running, they're disengaging us from debates because I feel like the information now is out there anymore. 18:16 Dustin Smith It's not being held by, you know, a 15th century, 16th century church from people that can't read or write and don't have the internet and don't have AI to. 18:25 Sean Finnegan Look at these things. 18:26 Sean Finnegan Well, AI is huge too, wouldn't you just say? 18:28 Dustin Smith Yeah. 18:28 Sean Finnegan I mean, because it's trolling the web and it's 18:32 Sean Finnegan it doesn't know that it's supposed to de-platform biblical Unitarians. 18:38 Sean Finnegan So, you know, it's referring people to your work, to my work, to other people's work all the time. 18:44 Sean Finnegan And for better or for worse, BUs, biblical Unitarians, are kind of a loud crew. 18:52 Sean Finnegan You know, we've got our websites and we are putting out stuff all the time. 18:56 Sean Finnegan We're proud of our beliefs and we're trying to tell others about it. 19:01 Sean Finnegan And so there are just so many websites in different languages, YouTube channels, podcasts, whatever. 19:07 Sean Finnegan It is getting out there. 19:09 Sean Finnegan And I think AI is actually like helping us to some degree. 19:12 Sean Finnegan What an exciting time. 19:13 Sean Finnegan Now, what would you say to somebody who says, well, I'm a little embarrassed. 19:18 Sean Finnegan I don't want to, I don't want anyone to know that I don't believe in the Trinity. 19:23 Sean Finnegan What about that kind of person? 19:25 Dustin Smith There is a kind of a sense this Stockholm syndrome or 19:29 Dustin Smith this sort of, this persecuted complex where you feel like, well, you think that you're in the minority because you're told that this is what everyone believes. 19:37 Dustin Smith But the point is, that's not true. 19:39 Dustin Smith It's not true. 19:40 Dustin Smith Belief in the Trinity is the minority position by far in the United States. 19:45 Sean Finnegan I'm sorry, I just want you to say that again. 19:47 Dustin Smith Belief in the Trinity is the minority position in the United States. 19:50 Sean Finnegan Oh, it sounds, every time you say it, I just get, it's like in the Lion King, we said, Mufasa, say it again. 19:58 Sean Finnegan I love that. 19:59 Sean Finnegan Belief in the Trinity is a minority position. 20:01 Sean Finnegan So people are saying, oh, well, I don't want anyone to know that I don't believe in this. 20:06 Sean Finnegan I'm scared or whatever. 20:08 Sean Finnegan You say, well, it's already a minority position. 20:12 Sean Finnegan Wow. 20:12 Sean Finnegan So like either we're winning or they're losing. 20:15 Sean Finnegan Either way, the net result is fewer people holding to this idea. 20:21 Sean Finnegan Now let's now shift to your work with your YouTube channel and the Biblical Unitarian podcast. 20:27 Sean Finnegan this is something you've been focusing on really from the beginning of starting this podcast. 20:32 Sean Finnegan It's all in the name, right? 20:33 Sean Finnegan Biblical Unitarian Podcast. 20:35 Sean Finnegan So why did you like initially say, okay, well, I'm just gonna focus on this one issue. 20:41 Sean Finnegan Comment a little bit about how that's gone for you over the years. 20:45 Dustin Smith Yeah, and I think at that point you had already had your restitutio work going on. 20:49 Dustin Smith So I've been doing it for about 9 years now, just kind of every single week. 20:53 Dustin Smith I publish something on Thursdays. 20:55 Dustin Smith 442 weeks in a row now. 20:58 Dustin Smith And when I initially started it nine years ago, I was looking online and I went to, it was either like iTunes or some sort of podcast program and I typed in Unitarian or biblical Unitarian and it would say no results. 21:14 Dustin Smith I'm like, this is crazy. 21:15 Dustin Smith Like nothing? 21:16 Dustin Smith Like we don't have any sort of voice out here in podcast. 21:19 Dustin Smith And that was when podcasts started to pick up. 21:21 Dustin Smith I'm like, well, let me fill this void. 21:23 Dustin Smith Let me 21:24 Dustin Smith at least provide and he at least gives him something to listen to. 21:27 Dustin Smith And I didn't know what I was doing. 21:28 Dustin Smith I'm just kind of inventing it as I go along and I've learned a lot and I'll go back and listen to old episodes and those are embarrassing. 21:34 Dustin Smith I mean, it's just, I was a kid, like we've moved on, we've learned some things. 21:40 Dustin Smith I've had some good wise counsel saying, hey, you should put the mic right here and not way over there. 21:46 Dustin Smith work on your editing skills and speak more clearly and that sort of stuff. 21:49 Dustin Smith So I was trying to provide something that wasn't there. 21:53 Dustin Smith And one of the things that I've realized is that people are interested in these topics. 21:57 Dustin Smith And I actually am still convinced that despite all of the momentum that we have right now, there are still more people out there that actually are implicit Unitarian readers of the Bible, and they just don't know there's a thing called 22:11 Dustin Smith biblical Unitarianism. 22:12 Dustin Smith They're like, well, that's what I believe because that's what I read in the Bible. 22:15 Dustin Smith They don't know there's a larger movement or these churches or these denominations. 22:18 Dustin Smith And I still feel like there's more work that could be done to get this information out there to the world. 22:23 Dustin Smith We haven't reached our ceiling yet. 22:25 Sean Finnegan Let me ask you about debates for a second because you spanked James White. 22:29 Sean Finnegan Let's just go ahead and say that. 22:30 Sean Finnegan I enjoyed that debate. 22:32 Sean Finnegan Would you say that 22:34 Sean Finnegan I think if you can. 22:40 Dustin Smith Market it the right way, it's good. 22:42 Dustin Smith I think one of the benefits for me in that debate was that it was in person and it was one of the earlier debates in the weekend. 22:50 Dustin Smith And so afterwards, I was able, I mean, I 22:53 Dustin Smith didn't have any time to myself. 22:55 Dustin Smith I had people coming up and asking me like, hey, what do you think about this? 22:57 Dustin Smith And I was able to network with people and to exchange e-mail addresses and to talk to people and to just kind of like promote my brand and the work that I'm doing in my podcast. 23:06 Dustin Smith And I had a lot of people sign up and subscribe just by interacting with that. 23:10 Dustin Smith And then I had good people that took a lot of the clips and they just 23:14 Dustin Smith ran with them. 23:15 Dustin Smith Mike did some really, really good stuff with that. 23:17 Dustin Smith And that was really, really helpful. 23:18 Dustin Smith And then all the time now I'm on TikTok and they're like, oh, we know you. 23:22 Dustin Smith You're the guy that debated James White. 23:24 Dustin Smith Like I just, I run into people and they know me, but I've never met them. 23:27 Dustin Smith I don't know who they are. 23:28 Dustin Smith So it was good. 23:31 Dustin Smith So I think if you have a debate that you can actually take and actually get out in front of other people, 23:37 Dustin Smith That's helpful because that can actually change hearts and minds and persuade people. 23:42 Dustin Smith But it's hard to tell. 23:43 Dustin Smith I mean, debates are a dime a dozen these days. 23:45 Dustin Smith I mean, there's one going on every day, I imagine. 23:47 Sean Finnegan Yeah, I just so enjoyed that debate. 23:49 Sean Finnegan I enjoyed the other one you did with Sam Nissan and what was the other guy? 23:55 Sean Finnegan Will Barlow, Sam Nissan and the other fellow. 23:59 Sean Finnegan What I loved about that one was your conclusion. 24:02 Sean Finnegan Because everyone was so chummy. 24:03 Sean Finnegan And then at the very end, you're like, I raised all these points. 24:07 Sean Finnegan You didn't answer any. 24:08 Sean Finnegan We win. 24:09 Sean Finnegan And I was like, yeah, get him, get him. 24:12 Sean Finnegan You kind of did that with the James White debate too, where you just like put this scoreboard up, which obviously, you know, that's rhetorical. 24:20 Sean Finnegan That's A rhetorical flourish. 24:22 Sean Finnegan But it's also a sad fact. 24:25 Sean Finnegan Two sad facts. 24:26 Sean Finnegan One, that he didn't engage with any of your points. 24:32 Sean Finnegan I mean, that was, that's awful. 24:33 Sean Finnegan Let's think about that for a moment. 24:35 Sean Finnegan Like the point of a debate is to, raise points and then the other person to like engage, maybe you can't refute them all in the moment, but like just engage a little bit. 24:43 Sean Finnegan But also the second sad fact is that you predicted he wouldn't do that because you had to prepare the slides ahead of time and then he did what you predicted. 24:54 Sean Finnegan So what was that like in the moment? 24:56 Sean Finnegan You're like, 24:58 Sean Finnegan I guess it's good that he didn't engage my points because now I can use these slides. 25:04 Dustin Smith No, and my closing, I'm reading from a script. 25:07 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 25:07 Dustin Smith So I, He did exactly what you thought he would do. 25:12 Dustin Smith Well, I mean, I over prepared for that debate. 25:14 Dustin Smith I mean, I had like 100 hours of prep time on it. 25:17 Dustin Smith And I watched every debate that he did over the last 10 years, multiple times, took tons of notes. 25:22 Dustin Smith I knew all the text that he typically brings up and I had written answers for all of them. 25:27 Dustin Smith And I asked questions that I knew that he wouldn't be able to answer. 25:31 Dustin Smith Like, you have to think about it kind of like, okay, based on a particular person, how would they potentially respond to this? 25:37 Dustin Smith And all of this is just guesswork and stuff like that. 25:38 Dustin Smith But yeah, I pick things and he just, he wouldn't engage with it. 25:43 Dustin Smith And you have to remind people, you have to remind people that in a debate, it's not just about cross-examination. 25:48 Dustin Smith I know that's what gets clipped and that's what people like to listen to and stuff like that. 25:51 Dustin Smith But the burden of proof was on him. 25:53 Dustin Smith He took the affirmative, 25:55 Dustin Smith The debate was on, does the Bible teach the Trinity? 25:58 Dustin Smith And he didn't demonstrate that point, not even close. 26:01 Dustin Smith In fact, in his opening statement, he said that the Trinity was just kind of assumed by the biblical authors. 26:08 Dustin Smith So it doesn't teach it. 26:09 Dustin Smith It's just kind of assumed that's there. 26:10 Dustin Smith Well, I think that's begging the question a little bit. 26:13 Sean Finnegan Absolutely. 26:14 Sean Finnegan Yeah, and that's exactly what he accuses 26:18 Sean Finnegan biblical Unitarians of doing is presupposing Unitarianism, right? 26:22 Sean Finnegan But that's what he's doing. 26:23 Sean Finnegan He's accusing us of what he's doing, which is, you know, I think a standard but sad technique. 26:30 Dustin Smith The young kids call that gaslighting. 26:31 Sean Finnegan Gaslighting, there it is. 26:33 Sean Finnegan So let's talk about your channel on YouTube. 26:36 Sean Finnegan It's grown immensely over the last couple of years. 26:39 Sean Finnegan You've now got nearly 55,000 subscribers. 26:43 Sean Finnegan What's going on here? 26:44 Sean Finnegan Like where do you think this growth is coming from? 26:46 Sean Finnegan What are you doing? 26:48 Dustin Smith Yeah. 26:49 Dustin Smith I mean, the best thing that I've found is just to get my name out there because 10 years ago, I was a nobody. 26:55 Dustin Smith I mean, nobody knew who I was. 26:56 Dustin Smith I mean, I had like 1 published book, but everyone can publish a book these days, and I'm a recent graduate. 27:02 Dustin Smith Yeah, but anyone can do that. 27:04 Dustin Smith But I just had to get myself out there and I just, you keep making content over and over. 27:08 Dustin Smith But I noticed that for some people, 27:12 Dustin Smith It's like when they want to have Bible discussions with people, they want to debate on things they disagree with. 27:16 Dustin Smith But I've found it's actually a better approach if I'm meeting somebody. 27:19 Dustin Smith Let's find something we have in common. 27:21 Dustin Smith Let's connect on that. 27:23 Dustin Smith And then you know what, once we've built a relationship, then we can go back and we can talk about things that we see things a little bit differently. 27:28 Dustin Smith So I try to approach and try to meet lots of different people and I'll try to connect on things that we see eye to eye on. 27:34 Dustin Smith I just find that I make a lot more friends that way than just kind of going for the jugular on things that we disagree with. 27:39 Dustin Smith So networking is a huge deal. 27:42 Dustin Smith I've spent a lot of time in the last six months on TikTok, which for some people they just didn't want to do. 27:47 Dustin Smith And I was hesitant about it quite a bit, but that's a whole another age group of people who they're very much interested in the Bible. 27:55 Dustin Smith There's a big Bible debating community there on TikTok, ages between 15 and 40. 28:01 Dustin Smith And so I've been able to connect with a lot of people there that 28:04 Dustin Smith otherwise wouldn't have watched, because they don't get on Facebook. 28:08 Dustin Smith Facebook's for old people. 28:09 Dustin Smith That's the thing. 28:11 Dustin Smith So just kind of connecting again with the next generation. 28:14 Dustin Smith Another thing that I do is that I record my classes. 28:17 Dustin Smith I mean, you have lots of classes on your channel. 28:19 Dustin Smith And I take those classes and I upload them to my channel, but I put them as like private. 28:25 Dustin Smith So like, you know, a subscriber won't be able to see those classes, but there are classes that are there and only the people that have access to it are there. 28:32 Dustin Smith So 28:33 Dustin Smith While they're actually looking at the classes, they're also looking at the other videos, the things that come up at the end. 28:39 Dustin Smith I teach Greek and New Testament basically every semester. 28:42 Dustin Smith So I constantly have a whole bunch of new students that are coming in there. 28:45 Dustin Smith So it's just finding all sorts of different ways to point people towards the channel and then just kind of let them use their God-given free will to decide do they want to keep watching more or do they want to subscribe or do they want to inquire or whatever it may be. 29:00 Dustin Smith But it's not been an overnight thing. 29:02 Dustin Smith I didn't even get any substantial growth until really the last three years. 29:05 Dustin Smith And that's when I started with YouTube shorts. 29:08 Dustin Smith So yeah, I don't know. 29:11 Sean Finnegan Very good. 29:11 Sean Finnegan Well, I think it's good news. 29:13 Sean Finnegan It's good news to see so many people interested in the topic. 29:17 Sean Finnegan You know, it's really gone from something that 29:20 Sean Finnegan I think a lot of people were ashamed of and embarrassed of to really embracing the U-word, for example. 29:27 Sean Finnegan a lot of people don't want to use the word Unitarian because of the Unitarian Universalist. 29:31 Sean Finnegan They're just a bunch of liberals, some of them not even Christian at all. 29:36 Sean Finnegan You know, over time, 29:38 Sean Finnegan we added that B to the beginning of it, biblical Unitarian. 29:41 Sean Finnegan And you were really like the early adopter to just like own that phrase, biblical Unitarian. 29:46 Sean Finnegan Not that you invented it, but like you really just were like, you know what, I'm just gonna go with this. 29:51 Sean Finnegan It's really shown out in the results that that's actually a good strategy not to be like shy about it, but to be upfront about it. 30:00 Sean Finnegan And then, you know, your initial impulse was to be findable. 30:06 Sean Finnegan So as people type in EU word into search engines and now into chat bots for AI, everyone's gonna come across your work because like you were just like there early and you have been consistent and you are on all these different platforms now. 30:22 Sean Finnegan So that's really cool. 30:23 Dustin Smith Well, we couldn't predict that. 30:24 Dustin Smith I mean, we had no idea what AI was gonna look like 10 years ago, but you know, I think it's important to lead with your truths and to be proud of what you believe. 30:33 Dustin Smith And 30:34 Dustin Smith Don't portray yourself as like, I'm anti-Trinitarian. 30:37 Dustin Smith You don't want to be against something. 30:39 Dustin Smith You want to be for something. 30:40 Dustin Smith You want to be pro something. 30:41 Dustin Smith You want to be, again, leading with the things that are super important. 30:44 Dustin Smith And, you know, what's more important than the God of the universe? 30:47 Dustin Smith I can't think of too many things, you know, more important than that. 30:50 Dustin Smith So it's a great topic. 30:51 Dustin Smith And, you know, immediately I am able to make friends with Jews and Muslims and we can connect with that and we can have those conversations and 31:00 Dustin Smith again, it's just about leading and networking and relationships and doing the best you can with that. 31:06 Sean Finnegan So you have 442 episodes out so far. 31:12 Sean Finnegan Are you worried you're going to run out of content? 31:16 Dustin Smith Oh man. 31:18 Dustin Smith I have a Google Doc of like all these potential podcasts, like ideas and episodes and stuff like that. 31:23 Dustin Smith And I don't know, I think I'm good for like 31:27 Dustin Smith Probably the rest of the year, I think. 31:29 Dustin Smith But I come up with new things all the time. 31:31 Dustin Smith you engage with people and you talk with people and you think, okay, I think that this argument should be really convincing, but I find out that maybe it's not. 31:38 Dustin Smith So maybe I need to kind of shore up some of that argument or I need to address things. 31:43 Dustin Smith Or if you're on social media, you'll see videos that come up and like, okay, well, I need to answer this. 31:47 Dustin Smith Or maybe we need to have an answer for this. 31:50 Dustin Smith Or maybe you probably get this as well, where, you know, what do you think about John 17, 5? 31:55 Dustin Smith What do you think about Isaiah 9, 31:57 Dustin Smith And then you're like, okay, at least for you, I mean, you did a whole presentation on Isaiah 96. 32:02 Dustin Smith You could be like, okay, well, I'll just point you to that. 32:03 Dustin Smith So sometimes. 32:05 Dustin Smith I just get the question so often, what do you think about John 1, 1? 32:08 Dustin Smith You just want to have a video. 32:09 Dustin Smith You want to have something there. 32:10 Dustin Smith So like, okay, if you ask the question, hey, I put something comprehensive together, go and listen to this and then come back and let's ask some questions. 32:16 Dustin Smith So providing resources for people and also things that people can share and give to other people if they're trying to evangelize and to participate in biblical Unitarian evangelism. 32:29 Dustin Smith I think giving them the resources I think is really helpful. 32:32 Sean Finnegan Yeah, for sure. 32:33 Sean Finnegan What are you encouraged by in the biblical Unitarian world? 32:36 Sean Finnegan What do you see out there happening that you're like, you know, this is good. 32:39 Sean Finnegan I mean, obviously we talked about the stats and Trinitarianism is on the decline, whereas at least in some corners, Unitarian Christianity seems to be growing or at least becoming more connected and visible. 32:53 Sean Finnegan What else are you encouraged by? 32:55 Dustin Smith It's interesting. 32:56 Dustin Smith I kind of look back on my theological upbringing and 33:02 Dustin Smith we would be reading reference books or reading commentaries and you're like, yo, they're going to interpret it, kind of like a high Christological view. 33:11 Dustin Smith And it's like you knew which books were good and you knew which books were bad. 33:15 Dustin Smith But one of the things that I've kind of seen really over the last 20 years is that it's very rare when actually you'll find like a biblical commentary that's saying the early Christians were Trinitarians. 33:26 Dustin Smith Like that's pretty rare these days. 33:28 Dustin Smith Like most people know better to come out and say something 33:31 Dustin Smith as ludicrous as that with all due respect. 33:33 Dustin Smith And so one of the things that I'm finding is that more and more scholars are being open about, hey, the early Christians, they were subordinationists, okay? 33:41 Dustin Smith They didn't think that Jesus was equal with God, that, you know, Nicaea and Chalcedon were developments from what the early Christians believed. 33:49 Dustin Smith That's pretty common nowadays. 33:51 Dustin Smith And so I feel like some scholars, of course, are going to be denominationally handcuffed and they can't say that kind of stuff at that point. 33:59 Dustin Smith And we're always going to have those works. 34:01 Dustin Smith That's never going to change. 34:03 Dustin Smith But for others, I think you can find that there's a scholarly awareness and an openness now to be honest about these things. 34:09 Dustin Smith Be honest about the fact that the early Christians understood that the true God was the Father alone. 34:15 Dustin Smith They didn't understand the Spirit as a separate person alongside the Father. 34:20 Dustin Smith That Jesus was a human person that was given divine, unending life 34:25 Dustin Smith at his resurrection. 34:27 Dustin Smith The access that we actually have now to the writings of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th century Christians that are now available. 34:35 Dustin Smith Before, you'd have to go get these big massive books, but now you can just get it online for free. 34:39 Dustin Smith So that information is now being accessible to people. 34:42 Sean Finnegan Yeah, and you can actually just ask the AI, just feel like, hey, what did Origin say about this? 34:48 Sean Finnegan Provide source quotations. 34:50 Sean Finnegan I mean, things are just totally accessible in a way that they never were before. 34:56 Sean Finnegan That's an encouragement. 34:58 Sean Finnegan Anything else on the, among like biblical Unitarians ourselves, like that you've seen that's been encouraging? 35:05 Dustin Smith You're constantly meeting more people. 35:07 Sean Finnegan Yeah, you are traveling more, right? 35:09 Dustin Smith Yeah, and I think it's, I had the opportunity to do that. 35:13 Dustin Smith I like those privileges to be able to travel and to meet people. 35:17 Dustin Smith And that's part of the networking that just has to be done. 35:21 Dustin Smith But again, I'm still convinced that there are more people out there that if we just showed them this framework, they would say, yeah, that makes sense. 35:28 Dustin Smith Sign me up. 35:30 Dustin Smith Okay. 35:31 Dustin Smith So I think, again, we've got all this momentum and the gatekeepers, they can't shut off the internet. 35:39 Dustin Smith And that's the only way they can do it. 35:40 Dustin Smith The only way they can try to do this is to control the information, but they can't do that anymore because anyone can go to AI or to YouTube and ask, you know, 35:48 Dustin Smith did the early Christians believe in the Trinity? 35:50 Dustin Smith what did they believe about Jesus? 35:51 Dustin Smith Is the Gospel John Trinitarian? 35:53 Dustin Smith And they're gonna find all sorts of good videos that are helping them out now. 35:57 Dustin Smith And we didn't have that 20 years ago. 35:59 Dustin Smith We didn't have all these resources. 36:01 Dustin Smith We had a couple of books, okay? 36:03 Dustin Smith But I mean, I think in one of your last presentations, I think it was last year, 36:09 Dustin Smith You had pointed out like all the different publications that have come out just recently, and we're not even done. 36:14 Dustin Smith We've got all sorts of things that are still. 36:15 Dustin Smith We're just warming up. 36:17 Dustin Smith Oh yeah, we're like I said, we've got so much momentum right now. 36:22 Dustin Smith It is an exciting time to be a biblical Unitarian. 36:25 Dustin Smith There's no reason why people need to be ashamed. 36:28 Dustin Smith They've got the momentum behind them and they need to be courageous. 36:31 Dustin Smith And I think whatever we can do to encourage people to be brave and to share their faith, 36:37 Dustin Smith I think that's an authentic marker of a Christian to someone that is steadfast in their ability to preach the message and to preach the truth, even in the midst of opposition. 36:48 Sean Finnegan If you were to change one thing, if you could snap your fingers and change one thing among the biblical Unitarian world, what would it be? 36:55 Dustin Smith Oh, that's easy. 36:56 Dustin Smith I would say that they all need to join a biblical Unitarian church. 37:00 Dustin Smith If you're a biblical Unitarian and you don't have a Unitarian church, you really need to seriously consider relocating. 37:07 Dustin Smith If your job allows you to do that and your family allows you to do that, or start your own, okay? 37:12 Dustin Smith But we shouldn't be isolated. 37:13 Dustin Smith We need to gather together because we need your input. 37:17 Dustin Smith We need your gifts in the church. 37:20 Dustin Smith And of course, we need to come together and if we're more organized, we're gonna be more effective. 37:25 Dustin Smith So that's the one thing I would change is that for the isolated Unitarians to be a part of their own 37:32 Dustin Smith believing community of faith. 37:33 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 37:34 Sean Finnegan And you're leading by example. 37:35 Sean Finnegan You're part of a church and being part of any church is going to have some benefits, but it's also going to have some annoyances and some difficulties. 37:44 Sean Finnegan Let's face it, it's easy to just be on your own and just have everything on your terms. 37:48 Sean Finnegan But there are a lot of growth opportunities that happen when you have to deal with people. 37:55 Sean Finnegan So you're leading by example there. 37:57 Sean Finnegan Let's talk about what projects you're currently working on. 38:01 Sean Finnegan What can you tell us about what's in the pipeline? 38:03 Sean Finnegan Of course, you have this event where you're going to be in the London area presenting. 38:09 Sean Finnegan Can you tell us about that and anything else? 38:11 Dustin Smith Yeah, that's the third annual UK UCA conference. 38:15 Dustin Smith And I'll be talking about the Christology of the Book of Revelation and how Jesus, or in particular the Lamb, functions as 38:22 Dustin Smith the agent of the one seated upon the throne. 38:26 Dustin Smith So that'll come out there. 38:28 Dustin Smith As far as like writing projects, my problem now is I just keep saying yes to everything, which is a good problem to have. 38:35 Dustin Smith So I think we're probably at a point where we can start talking about this. 38:39 Dustin Smith So there is a new press called Soterian Press, and I've been invited to write a commentary on 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John. 38:47 Dustin Smith It's A two-year project. 38:49 Dustin Smith And so 38:50 Dustin Smith You won't see it for another 18 months or something like that, but I am slowly working on that for a few hours every single day. 38:56 Sean Finnegan I heard you already have a couple 100 pages done. 38:59 Dustin Smith I've got a lot. 39:00 Dustin Smith I've got. 39:02 Sean Finnegan You're so prodigious in your output. 39:05 Sean Finnegan It's incredible how you do it. 39:07 Dustin Smith I just, I believe in the work. 39:09 Dustin Smith I believe in, you know, and setting aside video games gives you a lot more time to do that. 39:14 Sean Finnegan So, there you go. 39:15 Dustin Smith There's 39:17 Dustin Smith a former presenter from the UCA, Robert Koch and Yessi. 39:21 Dustin Smith And I'm working together with him on a volume. 39:23 Sean Finnegan Hungarian guy, right? 39:24 Dustin Smith Yeah, we're working actually, we're trying to take the Hungarian Unitarian work of a guy named Georgie and Yeti and to make his work available to English readers. 39:35 Dustin Smith So we're working on that. 39:36 Dustin Smith Of course, we have the edited volume by Stephen Nemesh and Keegan Chandler. 39:41 Dustin Smith I've got two essays. 39:42 Dustin Smith They tricked me into writing 2 essays in that. 39:43 Dustin Smith And I think you got an essay in there too. 39:45 Sean Finnegan I think I do, yeah. 39:47 Dustin Smith Yeah, so that's coming out. 39:49 Dustin Smith All the papers that we presented at the Enoch seminar will eventually get published. 39:54 Dustin Smith We're going to take the feedback that we got from the conference and kind of adjust our papers. 39:58 Dustin Smith And so that will be a big deal. 40:01 Dustin Smith And then actually just this last week, I got invited to write forwards for two different Unitarian works. 40:08 Sean Finnegan Nice. 40:08 Dustin Smith So, and then I have an online Greek class that's beginning in September for those that are. 40:13 Sean Finnegan Yeah, go ahead and plug that so people know about it. 40:16 Dustin Smith Yeah. 40:17 Dustin Smith So for people that just want to learn, I would say the first semester of a class of Greek, I do an online class just one night a week for an hour and a half. 40:27 Dustin Smith And then just if you e-mail me, kggospel@gmail.com, I can give you all the information for that. 40:32 Dustin Smith It's also up there on my channel. 40:34 Dustin Smith You can see that. 40:35 Dustin Smith So we just do one night a week on Monday nights and we just go through a chapter and I've been teaching this class 40:42 Dustin Smith This would be like the 12th time I've done it, so I've gotten very, very good at it. 40:46 Dustin Smith I got a good pace for what people can learn when it comes to Greek. 40:49 Dustin Smith But I want to equip people that are interested in trying to learn and understand the New Testament with these tools so that they can dig deeper into the text and they can start to engage some scholarly works and deepen their faith by being able to read and understand and apply the text to their lives. 41:06 Dustin Smith So if you're a new person, it's completely accessible. 41:09 Dustin Smith I've had people as young as 14 years old 41:11 Dustin Smith take this Greek class, reach out to me and I look forward to working with you. 41:15 Sean Finnegan Yeah, and Greek is just such a great tool for understanding and reading the New Testament, right? 41:21 Sean Finnegan Because New Testament was written in Greek and you hear preachers do this where they're like, oh, well, that's really the Greek word such and such. 41:28 Sean Finnegan And then, you know, most people are like, you know, over their heads, what? 41:33 Sean Finnegan Well, why not become an insider? 41:36 Sean Finnegan Why not become somebody who has 41:40 Sean Finnegan the knowledge to read the New Testament in its original language. 41:44 Sean Finnegan everybody puts all this trust in translations and translators are amazing people and most translations are fine works. 41:52 Sean Finnegan But there's always some corner here or there where their bias just like comes through whether they realize it or not. 41:58 Sean Finnegan And so like why not get the raw unfiltered New Testament? 42:03 Sean Finnegan So I definitely encourage folks to take Dustin's class. 42:07 Sean Finnegan And how much does that 42:08 Sean Finnegan How much does that cost to take it? 42:10 Dustin Smith Yeah, it's $200 for three months of lectures. 42:15 Dustin Smith And you get a copy of the BDAG lexicon, an e-book copy of it. 42:19 Dustin Smith So normally that's like $100 in and of itself. 42:21 Dustin Smith And you have lifetime access to all of the videos. 42:25 Dustin Smith So you can go back and watch them over for the rest of your life. 42:28 Sean Finnegan Awesome. 42:28 Sean Finnegan People are paying more than that for their sports packages and for all kinds of other 42:34 Sean Finnegan things that are not going to have the benefits that learning how to read the New Testament, its original language would provide. 42:40 Sean Finnegan So I think that's a very reasonable price. 42:42 Sean Finnegan Where can people follow your work and learn more about you? 42:45 Sean Finnegan Would you say pretty much the Biblical Unitarian Podcast YouTube channel or are there other places people should look? 42:52 Dustin Smith Yeah, primarily on the YouTube side. 42:54 Dustin Smith That's where I kind of spend most of my time. 42:56 Dustin Smith It's youtube.com slash Biblical Unitarian Podcast. 42:59 Dustin Smith And now on all the videos, if you click on the description, 43:02 Dustin Smith It'll have links to everything else, whether it's Twitter, X, TikTok or Instagram or whatever. 43:09 Dustin Smith I kind of dabble in those things, but I put most of my time on the YouTube stuff. 43:14 Dustin Smith And I answer emails if people want to e-mail me. 43:16 Dustin Smith I do the best that I can. 43:18 Dustin Smith I am fairly busy, but if you engage in my work and you have a charitable question, then I'll take the time to answer that question. 43:26 Sean Finnegan And you also have books on Amazon, like A Systematic Theology of the Early Church. 43:32 Sean Finnegan So that's a book that you've got out. 43:34 Sean Finnegan And if somebody goes on Amazon, they can type in Dustin Smith. 43:38 Sean Finnegan They put the R as well, just to distinguish you from other Dustin Smiths, Dustin R. 43:43 Sean Finnegan Smith, just to clarify which Dustin Smith. 43:47 Sean Finnegan I have the same problem, but not as bad as the Smith people. 43:49 Sean Finnegan The Smith people really have a lot of, you are a mighty tribe, let's just say. 43:55 Dustin Smith Oh, it's, there are other Dustin R. 43:57 Dustin Smith Smiths papers on academia.com. 44:00 Dustin Smith So. 44:02 Sean Finnegan Believe it or not, I have that same problem because for whatever reason, like out of all the Finnegans, Sean Finning is like a very common combo. 44:12 Sean Finnegan And then I'm like, all right, now Sean P. 44:13 Sean Finnegan Finnegan. 44:14 Sean Finnegan And yeah, we all have P as the middle name too. 44:18 Sean Finnegan So I feel your pain. 44:21 Sean Finnegan But yeah, systematic theology of the early church. 44:24 Sean Finnegan You've got wisdom, Christology, and the Gospel of John. 44:27 Sean Finnegan What else do you have on Amazon that people could get? 44:31 Dustin Smith I did like 10 years ago, we did a three views book called The Son of God, Three Views of the Identity of Jesus. 44:38 Sean Finnegan And you got a Revelation book too, right? 44:39 Sean Finnegan Paradoxical Conqueror. 44:41 Dustin Smith Yeah, that's just a copy of my dissertation. 44:44 Dustin Smith I probably changed my mind on some of that stuff since then. 44:48 Sean Finnegan And follow Dustin on YouTube. 44:50 Sean Finnegan And how do they find you on TikTok if they're a TikToker? 44:54 Dustin Smith It's called a Biblical Unitarian Podcast. 44:56 Dustin Smith OK, so that's easy. 44:58 Dustin Smith Again, you just like you just you lead with the title. 45:00 Dustin Smith There it is. 45:01 Dustin Smith I don't use my name. 45:02 Dustin Smith I just use my title. 45:03 Dustin Smith So my picture's there. 45:04 Dustin Smith You'll see it. 45:05 Sean Finnegan Yep. 45:05 Sean Finnegan All right. 45:06 Sean Finnegan Anything else we should cover? 45:07 Dustin Smith Not just grateful that you had me on. 45:09 Dustin Smith Nice to catch up with you as always. 45:11 Dustin Smith I appreciate the good work that you're doing. 45:13 Dustin Smith If people aren't already following Sean, you need to hit that subscribe button right now and grab your spouse's phone and go onto their YouTube and click subscribe on their phone as well. 45:22 Sean Finnegan So that's the secret, The twofer. 45:26 Dustin Smith Two for one. 45:26 Sean Finnegan Well, thanks so much for your time today. 45:29 Dustin Smith Yeah, appreciate it. 45:35 Sean Finnegan That draws our interview to a close. 45:37 Sean Finnegan What did you think? 45:37 Sean Finnegan Come on over to restitudio.org and find episode 663, the Trinity now a minority belief in America with Dustin Smith and leave your feedback there. 45:48 Sean Finnegan On last week's episode 662, the Nicene Creed is a forgery with Sam Tiedemann. 45:54 Sean Finnegan We have received a ton of comments on the YouTube channel 46:00 Sean Finnegan including Kenner, 33, who said, you have hinted toward this for a while, Sam, looking forward to this one. 46:07 Sean Finnegan And Roger Dewberry saying, fascinating. 46:11 Sean Finnegan And Andre Aurelius saying, what kind of bull S-H-I-T is this? 46:19 Sean Finnegan The Nicene Creed is as real as the Constitution. 46:24 Sean Finnegan My goodness. 46:25 Sean Finnegan Don't you just love the comments that come in from people who don't actually listen to the episode? 46:33 Sean Finnegan Sam did not make a case that there is no Nicene Creed. 46:38 Sean Finnegan His case is that the Nicene Creed was forged. 46:43 Sean Finnegan And what he means by forged is that, first of all, it did not exist at Nicea. 46:49 Sean Finnegan and the standard consensus that it was actually formulated or adopted or ratified at Constantinople in 381 is also false. 47:01 Sean Finnegan It was actually not brought in as an official declaration of the church until 451 and it was brought in under a forged circumstance. 47:13 Sean Finnegan In other words, it was said to be something it was not. 47:16 Sean Finnegan So we're not saying that it doesn't exist. 47:17 Sean Finnegan We're not saying that churches don't 47:19 Sean Finnegan recite it all over the world, we're just saying that it's not from Nicaea and it's not from Constantinople. 47:26 Sean Finnegan And saying it was at Constantinople is lying. 47:29 Sean Finnegan So that's where the forgery aspect comes in. 47:33 Sean Finnegan Someone using the name, what your pastor didn't tell you. 47:37 Sean Finnegan wrote, good video and a lot of important points. 47:40 Sean Finnegan At around 1430, Sam says that the formal language Trinitarians use now is in direct contradiction to the canons of the Council of Nicaea. 47:49 Sean Finnegan But I don't think that's technically correct. 47:53 Sean Finnegan What I think he is referring to is that the Greek words that Nicaea used is the same Greek words that modern Trinitarian language is based on, but obviously in English. 48:04 Sean Finnegan As Sam knows, modern Trinitarians are using English theological terms, person being substance that map onto the Cappadocian use of 381, not the Nicene usage of 325. 48:16 Sean Finnegan The apparent contradiction only arises if you assume the English word person corresponds to the Greek word hypostasis as it was used at Nicea, but it doesn't. 48:25 Sean Finnegan In 325, hypostasis meant something like individual concrete reality, essentially synonymous with ousia. 48:34 Sean Finnegan If I could just jump in right here, I would say that hypostasis, hypostasis typically just means nature as it's used in the New Testament. 48:45 Sean Finnegan But then, owing to pressure from the Trinitarian controversy, changed meanings to mean person later on. 48:53 Sean Finnegan This commenter continues, in 381 hypothesis was redefined to mean person. 48:59 Sean Finnegan Okay, that's what I just said. 49:00 Sean Finnegan He goes on, modern Trinitarian language follows the 381 definitions, not the 325 definitions. 49:05 Sean Finnegan So there is no doctrinal contradiction, only a shift in terminology. 49:09 Sean Finnegan In other words, Sam is saying Trinitarians use the English words based on the Greek words, but the same Greek words that Nicaea contradict with the Greek words that modern Trinitarians base their usage off of. 49:19 Sean Finnegan The problem, of course, with this phrasing is that saying Greek words are used differently doesn't really mean much because everyone admits that the meaning of Greek words changed over time. 49:30 Sean Finnegan Yes, well, thank you for that nuance there. 49:34 Sean Finnegan I don't think Sam would disagree with you on that. 49:37 Sean Finnegan Signs in the Dust wrote in saying Sam is fortunate that he is irrelevant. 49:42 Sean Finnegan Otherwise, anyone with even a modest competence in historical research 49:46 Sean Finnegan would make short work of claims so grotesquely ignorant that one is left wondering whether they arise from culpable dishonesty or sheer intellectual derangement. 49:56 Sean Finnegan My, It's good to see that the old ad hominem attack is still alive and kicking in the YouTubosphere. 50:05 Sean Finnegan But as ever, this form of attack and critique is by far the least effective because instead of engaging with the argument and trying to deal with the facts that Sam presented, you just insult Sam for being irrelevant and intellectually deranged. 50:23 Sean Finnegan So what are you going to do? 50:26 Sean Finnegan Someone named Life Here and Beyond wrote in saying, the title of the video is a clickbait. 50:32 Sean Finnegan Kind of misleading, LOL. 50:34 Sean Finnegan The Nicene Creed is a forgery. 50:36 Sean Finnegan There should be a question mark at the end. 50:40 Sean Finnegan The so-called development of the doctrine of the Trinity seems akin to the development of RCC dogmas such as the Immaculate Conception, Assumption of Mary, and papal infallibility. 50:52 Sean Finnegan Catholics would say something like, the seeds of the Trinitarian doctrine and biblical Christology were in the faith from the time of the apostles down through the centuries until they were fully developed. 51:04 Sean Finnegan So I definitely want to come clean on this. 51:06 Sean Finnegan The title totally is clickbait. 51:08 Sean Finnegan I'm just going to go ahead and own that. 51:10 Sean Finnegan Sam did not come up with the title, The Nicene Creed is a Forgery. 51:14 Sean Finnegan That was all me. 51:16 Sean Finnegan Really the point of the conversation we had last week in that episode was to discuss whether or not the Trinitarian Creed, typically known as the Nicene Creed, 51:28 Sean Finnegan was spoken at the Council of Constantinople in 381. 51:32 Sean Finnegan Like most conservative Christian church history textbooks would say, and most pastors have been taught in seminary, this is an articulation of the doctrine of the Trinity that happened in the year 381. 51:44 Sean Finnegan That's really what the episode was about. 51:47 Sean Finnegan But since the statement, the confession or creed that we're referring to in this episode, 51:54 Sean Finnegan is commonly known today as the Nicene Creed, it seemed like pretty easy to put together that actually, yes, the Nicene Creed is a forgery. 52:05 Sean Finnegan And again, what we mean by forgery is not to say that it's not real. 52:08 Sean Finnegan It's just that it's not from Nicaea and it's not from Constantinople. 52:12 Sean Finnegan It's not from those two councils. 52:14 Sean Finnegan It's a later development and it was forged. 52:17 Sean Finnegan It was falsely reported to have been a statement of the church 52:23 Sean Finnegan when it wasn't a statement of the church. 52:26 Sean Finnegan And this is something that we see from time to time where the early Christians in the 5th century in particular will look back and say, oh, well, this is the way it has always been, but it has not always been that way. 52:39 Sean Finnegan They're just saying that because they're cherry picking from the past different things and saying, 52:45 Sean Finnegan this is the ruling of the church, this is the majority, or this is what has always been. 52:49 Sean Finnegan And it's not true. 52:50 Sean Finnegan And it's also not hard to demonstrate that it's not true. 52:53 Sean Finnegan So yes, totally guilty of a clickbait title, but that's the world we live in today. 52:58 Sean Finnegan If you don't have a clickbait title, guess what? 53:00 Sean Finnegan You're going to get ignored. 53:01 Sean Finnegan And I'm happy to say that at least on YouTube, this video has been getting quite a few plays and also on the audio podcast, a ton of downloads there too. 53:12 Sean Finnegan Which brings me to my next point. 53:14 Sean Finnegan If you enjoy this podcast with Dustin Smith today, please share it with your friends. 53:19 Sean Finnegan Post it on social media. 53:20 Sean Finnegan Let people know about it so that others can hear and others can engage with the points that are being brought up. 53:53 Sean Finnegan Yolson helper said, thank you gentlemen. 53:56 Sean Finnegan So far as I have been able to research the documents to this, I do not arrive at the same conclusions you do, but I do appreciate the conversation. 54:08 Sean Finnegan Well, that's your prerogative. 54:09 Sean Finnegan You don't have to accept the conclusions, but I don't think Sam really inferred or 54:18 Sean Finnegan developed beyond the facts of the matter. 54:22 Sean Finnegan The whole point of the episode was that he merely laid out the facts of the matter. 54:27 Sean Finnegan Nobody said the Nicene Creed at the Council of Constantinople in 381. 54:32 Sean Finnegan They did say it at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. 54:38 Sean Finnegan And the question is, well, where did they get it from? 54:41 Sean Finnegan And Sam laid out some theories as to where they might have gotten it from, and he was very clear that these are speculations. 54:50 Sean Finnegan But holding the speculations to the side, just because we don't know where they got it from, we do know that they smuggled it in as if it had been the standard language of the ecumenical councils previous, and it was not. 55:06 Sean Finnegan So that's the forgery aspect of what he's saying. 55:09 Sean Finnegan Sleeks4 wrote in, Bravo, Sam and Sean, my own historical research led me to similar conclusions as I found the same source documentation or lack thereof. 55:19 Sean Finnegan It's amazing how much confessional scholarship slash apologetics tries to hide these very embarrassing facts. 55:27 Sean Finnegan Thank you. 55:27 Sean Finnegan Well, that's really the point of the episode, isn't it? 55:29 Sean Finnegan The point of the episode is to show the facts of the matter that the apologists and the people writing the church history textbooks are not telling you. 55:40 Sean Finnegan Coto Kanshii wrote in saying, Epiphanius recites it almost word for word years before Constantinople in 381 because it was oral tradition. 55:50 Sean Finnegan Sure. 55:51 Sean Finnegan That's something that Sam brought out. 55:53 Sean Finnegan I think he said from the year 374, Epiphanius wrote a letter which included a very similar version to what we call today the Nicene Creed. 56:01 Sean Finnegan His point was not that it didn't exist. 56:03 Sean Finnegan His point is that it wasn't adopted in an ecumenical council until 451. 56:09 Sean Finnegan And then it was adopted under false pretenses as if it were previously a 56:16 Sean Finnegan definitional statement of the church when in fact it was not. 56:21 Sean Finnegan I mean, he admitted that certain churches here and there might have already been using it. 56:26 Sean Finnegan That's entirely possible, but that's a far cry from the official doctrine of the majority of churches, which is really what an ecumenical council is supposed to be. 56:36 Sean Finnegan Mr. 56:36 Sean Finnegan Seaman321 wrote in saying, wow, very interesting. 56:39 Sean Finnegan Our God is not a God of confusion. 56:42 Sean Finnegan Well, you're quoting from 56:44 Sean Finnegan The Apostle Paul there, I believe, 1 Corinthians 14, God is not the God of confusion and certainly these people were confused as we're marching through the 4th century into the 5th century, there's a lot of confusion. 56:57 Sean Finnegan Obi Todd Kenobi said, this is blasphemy. 57:01 Sean Finnegan The creed was needed and was created by the Orthodox Church to stop Arianism and from other blasphemies. 57:07 Sean Finnegan What it says is exactly what the ancient church fathers believed. 57:11 Sean Finnegan but when, are we talking about? 57:14 Sean Finnegan Because we're not talking about a Nicaea in 325. 57:16 Sean Finnegan We're talking about Chalcedon 451. 57:18 Sean Finnegan And that's a world of difference. 57:21 Sean Finnegan That's over a century later. 57:24 Sean Finnegan And so, you know, I realize if you're Orthodox, you have to accept all the updates of the church as they roll them out. 57:30 Sean Finnegan Just like Microsoft Windows users have to accept all the updates one after the other, whether you like it or not. 57:36 Sean Finnegan A lot of us here at Rest Studio are restorationists and we're not interested in the updates. 57:41 Sean Finnegan What we're interested in is the source code. 57:43 Sean Finnegan What is the original version of the Apostles and how do we get back to that apart from all of the additions and elaborations and later developments? 57:57 Sean Finnegan Ministry of Truth wrote in, wow, apparently Mike Winger and Wes Huff must have got their information from some fringe book 58:06 Sean Finnegan is now considered scholarship. 58:08 Sean Finnegan I have no respect for Unitarians. 58:10 Sean Finnegan It's A dishonest desire from the beginning. 58:14 Sean Finnegan Well, in response to that, that's not what I said. 58:17 Sean Finnegan What I said is that the typical book that evangelicals use when they study church history is Justo Gonzalez's The Story of Christianity. 58:28 Sean Finnegan I don't know for sure if Mike Winger and Wes Huff used that book or if their seminaries used it, but it's pretty standard among evangelicals. 58:37 Sean Finnegan And my point in referring to that book is to say that most of the controversies have been removed from it and what remains is a very sanitized version of the events. 58:49 Sean Finnegan And I invite you to go get his book and read it and compare it against Early Christianity by Joseph Lynch, which is a much better textbook that is much more honest about church history or other textbooks that are even more recent than that. 59:04 Sean Finnegan My point is simply that if the textbooks themselves don't teach the controversy, then people don't know that it really was a controversy. 59:13 Sean Finnegan Instead, they have a totally false view of what happened historically. 59:18 Sean Finnegan And when you say I have no respect for Unitarians, that really just tells us that you have a problem. 59:27 Sean Finnegan I don't have a dishonest desire. 59:29 Sean Finnegan You can say, oh, you have a dishonest desire from the beginning. 59:32 Sean Finnegan No, it's not a dishonest desire. 59:33 Sean Finnegan I want the truth. 59:35 Sean Finnegan If looking back into the New Testament itself, I found the Trinity, I would not be denying it. 59:40 Sean Finnegan I would not be questioning the history of it. 59:44 Sean Finnegan What instead I find is Jesus saying the Father is greater than I. 59:48 Sean Finnegan What I find Jesus saying is the Father is the only true God. 59:53 Sean Finnegan What I see is 59:55 Sean Finnegan scriptures that say Jesus was tempted at all points as we are, yet without sin. 1:00:00 Sean Finnegan What I see Jesus saying is, I do not know the day and the hour. 1:00:03 Sean Finnegan Only the Father knows, not even the angels or the Son. 1:00:07 Sean Finnegan So this is not dishonest anything. 1:00:09 Sean Finnegan This is an honest heart seeking truth wherever it leads. 1:00:14 Sean Finnegan And believe me, I would much rather be a Trinitarian. 1:00:17 Sean Finnegan Not because I love the doctrine or think it's really great or anything, but because it would just be a much easier world to live in when it's such a dominating view among Christians today. 1:00:30 Sean Finnegan And I would have much more opportunity and influence, but also a much easier career and much less persecution. 1:00:38 Sean Finnegan So it's not a dishonest desire at all. 1:00:41 Sean Finnegan And I can speak for Sam as well. 1:00:43 Sean Finnegan I know that he 1:00:44 Sean Finnegan has suffered a great deal, including being kicked out of multiple churches by intolerant, persecuting Trinitarians with whom he was happy to be at peace. 1:00:54 Sean Finnegan And they said, no, get out of here. 1:00:56 Sean Finnegan So that's the situation today, and it's a sad situation, and it's a situation we're hoping to change. 1:01:02 Sean Finnegan Luke wrote in saying the Unitarian cope is something else, despite their atonement theory making no sense in their human Messiah being unable to save them from anything. 1:01:14 Sean Finnegan there isn't one Unitarian atonement theory, just like there's not a Trinitarian atonement theory. 1:01:20 Sean Finnegan There are lots of atonement theories on both sides of the fence. 1:01:23 Sean Finnegan The main difference being Unitarians don't recognize that God died for our sins. 1:01:28 Sean Finnegan We believe that instead Jesus, the human, died for our sins. 1:01:32 Sean Finnegan And that's a whole interesting topic to discuss and compare and contrast. 1:01:36 Sean Finnegan But on the Trinitarian side, 1:01:39 Sean Finnegan The idea is that no mere man could ever pay for our sins. 1:01:42 Sean Finnegan God himself had to come down and do it. 1:01:44 Sean Finnegan But here's the problem. 1:01:46 Sean Finnegan On Trinitarianism, God himself doesn't die for our sins. 1:01:50 Sean Finnegan God assumes a human nature and that impersonal human nature is what died. 1:01:55 Sean Finnegan And so God soldiers on through the three days in the tomb. 1:01:59 Sean Finnegan He never dies. 1:02:01 Sean Finnegan God the Son never dies. 1:02:03 Sean Finnegan He, maybe you could say, experiences a human death, by which we mean the human nature itself dies and then comes back to life after three days. 1:02:13 Sean Finnegan But that's much, much less significant than a whole person dying as Unitarians see it with our approach to atonement. 1:02:22 Sean Finnegan So I think there's actually much higher value on the atonement from a Unitarian perspective than a Trinitarian one. 1:02:28 Sean Finnegan Username Acts 24.5 said amazing work. 1:02:32 Sean Finnegan Book, book, book. 1:02:33 Sean Finnegan I will send you my notes as I do have some data on some issues regarding the Holy Spirit that you have not shared here. 1:02:40 Sean Finnegan So yeah, I had asked Sam about if he would be turning this into a book and he, I don't know if you noticed this, but he just declined to answer that question. 1:02:50 Sean Finnegan So maybe there'll be a book, maybe not. 1:02:53 Sean Finnegan But that's all the time I have 1:02:55 Sean Finnegan for comments for today. 1:02:58 Sean Finnegan If any of you would like to get on the Restitudio YouTube channel and find the nice increases of forgery with Santita Man and leave your comments there, I'm sure it would be great to have more voices in there that are less antagonistic. 1:03:15 Sean Finnegan So far, this video has well over 1000 views and it keeps going. 1:03:19 Sean Finnegan So we obviously tapped into a nerve and hopefully today's video as well will also 1:03:25 Sean Finnegan do likewise. 1:03:26 Sean Finnegan And more and more people will come to consider these subjects, which are very important. 1:03:31 Sean Finnegan All right, well, that's going to be it for today. 1:03:32 Sean Finnegan If you'd like to support us, you can share this episode with others, either on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube, or you can just go to the website, restitudio.org, and find today's episode, which is 663. 1:03:47 Sean Finnegan If you'd like to support us financially, you can do that on the website, restitudio.org. 1:03:51 Sean Finnegan There's a donation button to allow you to make a monthly recurring contribution, which would be so appreciated. 1:03:57 Sean Finnegan I'll catch you next week, and remember, the truth has nothing to fear.