I read Brian Leftow’s chapter “Anti Social Trinitarian” in The Trinity (edited by Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins).

HT:  Scott Weber

Folks, you need to read Leftow, especially in light of Blake Ostler’s engagement with Swinburne in the third book of his series.

Brian writes,

. . . suppose that Christianity counts as monotheist by meeting conditions on the Persons’ links of origin, necessity of existence, likeness of nature, and agreement in action.  Then if it failed one of these conditions, Christianity would not be monotheist.  Thus, Swinburne’s account entails that since Father and Son always agree, Christianity is monotheist, but if they disagreed (and how much?), it would not be.  This is not plausible.  Deities’ conduct does not seem the sort of thing that makes a religion monotheist.  If it were, there would have to be good answers to such questions as these:  why must gods disagree, rather than just differ in will, to make a religion polytheist?  Just how much divine disagreement makes a religion polytheist?  Is there a sharp cutoff point for monotheism?  (If there is not, then there can be religions which are neither mono- nor poly-theist,  since of course there is a continuous scale of degrees of divine likeness and behavioural conformity.)  Where does it come?  Why just there?  These do not look like questions with plausible answers.