I'm a hybrid. I'm made of lines, but I also shine (as indicated by more lines).

In the last post, I explained that Nestorians believe that a complete individual human nature is indiscernible from an individual human person.

Monophysites also take this idea very seriously. In fact, the Monophysite takes very seriously the more general claim that a complete individual nature of any kind is indiscernible from the corresponding individual that belongs to that kind (for instance, a complete individual cow-nature just is the individual cow in question). So if there are two natures in Christ, then there will be two individuals that correspond to each of those natures.

But the Monophysite does not want to say that there are two persons in Christ, so he will insist that there is just one nature in Christ. That way, there will just be one person. But since Christ is both human and divine, this one nature must be a special hybrid of divinity and humanity.

The strongest form of Monophysitism would claim that this hybrid Christness-nature has all divine properties, and all human properties. This, however, is incoherent, for it would amount to two persons as well. After all, having all the divine properties is sufficient for membership in God’s-kind, and having all human properties is sufficient for membership in human-kind. There would, then, still be two natures, which contradicts the initial claim that there is just one (allegedly) hybrid nature.

So the more careful Monophysite will want to say that Christ lacks at least some of the properties required for either or both of God’s-kind or human-kind. That way, there will not be two natures (and hence, not two persons).

This allows us to distinguish between various forms of ‘weak’ monophysitism. For example:

(a) One could say that Christ only lacks a human feature (e.g., rationality). That’s Apollinarianism (a weak form of Monophysitism).

(b) One could say that Christ lacks certain divine features (e.g., omnipotence). That’s kenoticism (a weak form of Monophysitism as well).

(c) One could say that Christ lacks certain divine features and certain human features (e.g., an Apollinarian-Kenoticist?), and that would be the weakest form of Monophysitism.

Don't let my flowing white locks fool you. I have sound ideas.

In the last post, I explained that an individual human nature is indiscernible from an individual human person.

The Nestorianism takes this point very seriously. As she sees it, if the Word (= the second person of the Trinity) assumes a complete individual human nature, then the Word assumes a discrete human person too, for a complete individual human nature is completely indiscernible from a discrete human person. But the Word is already a discrete person, namely a divine person, so the question is this: is the divine person identical to the assumed human person?

It would seem that the answer is no. For instance, one could point out that if x and y are the very same thing, then they must share all the same properties. But the divine person and the human person in Christ do not share all the same properties. For example, the divine person does not grow or take in nutrients, while the human person does. So the divine person must not be the same as the human person.

But that means there are two distinct persons in Christ: a divine person and a human person. And that is precisely what Nestorianism claims: there are two natures, and two persons in Christ.

The Borden Company's KLIM (tm) powdered whole milk has everything you need for a nutritious life.

In the last post, I classified Monophysitism, Chalcedonianism, and Nestorianism. All three of these must grapple with a basic philosophical issue, namely this: a complete indvidual human nature brings along with it everything required for being a discrete human person.

Note that ‘individual human nature’ does not mean the humanity in the human in question (readers of scholastic philosophy are often tempted to think that). Rather, it means the humanity plus any individuating features, whatever they might be (a haecceity, a unique collection of accidents, or whatever). That is, an individual human nature is whatever it is that makes an individual human the particular human that it is.

For instance, if some x has a complete individual human nature, then one might say that x has the relevant kind of organic body, the ability to take in and process nutrients, grow, be sentient, think and love, and so on, and all of these things are what being a particular human consists in.

However, these also seem to be the very things that being a particular human person consists in too. After all, it is hard to imagine a human person without the relevant kind of organic body, the ability to process nutrients, be sentient, think and love, and so forth. To be all these things is just what it means to be a particular human person.

So on the face of it, it looks as if being an individual human is the very same as being an individual human person. That is, if one has a complete individual human nature, then they have everything needed to be a discrete human person too. Or, to put it another way, an individual human is completely indiscernible from the corresponding individual human person.

We're here to defend the faith against heresy!

The Council of Chalcedon (451 CE) condemned Monophysitism and Nestorianism. The following table helps to classify Monophysitism, Nestorianism, and Chalcedonianism.

Nestorianism: 2 natures, 2 persons
Chalcedonianism: 2 natures, 1 person
Monophysitism: 1 nature, 1 person

So Nestorians hold that in Christ, there are two natures (discrete divine and human natures), and two persons (discrete divine and human persons).

Chalcedonians hold that there are two natures (discrete divine and human natures) but one person (Jesus Christ).

Monophysites hold that there is one nature (a special divine-human hybrid nature) and one person (Jesus Christ).

In the next post, I will discuss the basic philosophical issue that these various positions grapple with.

If the circle and triangle overlap, that's bad. If they don't overlap, that's bad too.

These days, when analytic philosophers of theology talk about the Incarnation, they often say things like ‘if such-and-such, then such-and-such, but that would be Nestorianism’. The implication, of course, is that landing oneself in Nestorianism would be a very bad thing.

But why? Perhaps a lay person might want to avoid Nestorianism because they were told it was a ‘heresy’. But a hard-core Christian philosopher, I think, would want to be more explicit about saying just what Nestorianism is, and provide some reason for why they want to avoid it (rather than just asserting that some position is Nestorian).

So what, exactly, is the philosophical meat and potatoes of Nestorianism? In this series of posts, I want to explain what Nestorianism is from a philosophical point of view. Monophysitism is also thrown around sometime in these discussions, so I will discuss that too.

(Oh, I think there are still thriving ‘Nestorian’ and ‘Monophysite’ (or to use the politically correct term, ‘Miaphysite’) Christian communities out there, but the beliefs of these communities do not necessarily match up with the Nestorian and Monophysite heresies that were condemned by the early church. In these posts, I am only talking about the condemned heresies.)

"Have you seen this baby? We're dead serious, you know."

In the last three posts, I explained Richard’s argument for why there must be two distinct persons who charitably love each other. Here I want to raise some objections to three of Richard’s claims.

1. First, Richard thinks that a charitable disposition must be manifested or realized in order to be perfect:

(T4) For any person x, if x has a charitable disposition P, x is not perfect if x does not exercise P.

But why should this be so? God has lots of dispositions that aren’t exercised (at least not all the time), e.g., the ability to save sinners, create the world, become incarnate, etc., but those aren’t imperfect. Why should charity be any different?

2. Second, Richard claims that charitable love must be directed at a distinct person:

(T5) For any person x, if x has a charitable disposition P, x is not perfect if x does not exercise P on some person y, where x is not identical to y.

I have three problems with this.

(a) First, why can’t perfect charity be directed at oneself? Suppose that my high school basketball team lost the state championship because I missed the last minute jump shot, but after years of therapy, I finally forgave myself, got off the hooch, and finally started feeling better about myself. Wouldn’t I be treating myself charitably there?

(b) Besides, surely it begs the question to say that charitable love requires another. After all, we’re trying to prove that there are distinct persons in God, so we can’t just say ‘by definition, charity must be directed at a distinct person’. That would assume the conclusion right from the start.

In order to avoid begging the question, Richard would have to come up with a reason why charitably loving another would be better than charitably loving oneself. But that leads to my second problem with T5.

(c) What could a divine person gain from loving another that he wouldn’t get through self-love? Or as Ockham puts it, how could a divine person’s act of loving another divine person be any more or less perfect than their act of loving the divine essence itself? After all, God’s internal acts of love are supposed to all be equally perfect.

I can think of three reasons why loving another would be better than loving only oneself in the human case.

(i) First, perhaps it’s meritorious to care for those in need. But of course, a divine person is not in need of money, health care, and other such things.

(ii) Maybe charity is supposed to be better because it is ‘selfless’. But if that just means acting without regard for one’s own safety, reward, etc., then I can act on myself without regard for my own safety, reward, and so forth too. If ‘selfless’ just means ‘not the self’, then we’re begging the question again.

(iii) Third, maybe loving another gives me an experience that I don’t get from self love. For instance, by loving another, I gain perspective, I learn how someone else sees the world, I learn to be patient, etc. But aside from the fact that we might actually have those same experiences when loving oneself (think about deep, introspective therapy situations), how could this apply to the divine case? The divine persons know each other’s thoughts, so they couldn’t ‘gain perpective’ or anything like that.

Maybe we could say that the key here is reciprocation. For instance, the Father has the experience of ‘being loved by the Son’, and the Son does not have this experience. But surely the Son loves himself, so he too would have the experience of ‘being loved by the Son’. The only unique experience here would have to be ‘being loved by another’, but as I’ve already pointed out, simply asserting that it’s another begs the question.

So what (superior?) qualitative features would loving-another have that loving-oneself would not in God? If Richard can’t answer this, it seems to me that he’s begging the question.

3. Third, Richard claims that charitable love must be directed at a worthy recipient in order to be perfect:

(T6) For any person x, if x has a charitable disposition P, x is not perfect if x directs P at some person y, and y does not deserve it.

This seems to entail that God could not supremely love a creature, for creatures are not equal to God. Is that something Richard really wants to countenance?

Equals. Period. None have been greater.

STAGE 3. Next, Richard tries to establish that God can only charitably love an equal. He introduces this idea by raising the following objection: if God must direct his charitable love at a distinct person, then why couldn’t he direct his charitable love at a created person? That would satisfy T5 from the last post, so that should be enough to perfect God’s charitable disposition, right?

Richard says no. Perfect charity, he says, would be ‘disordered’ if it were directed at someone who didn’t deserve perfect charity. Perfect charity must be directed at an equal. Of course, God’s charity cannot be disordered, so God can only direct his charity at an equal. Here’s the quote:

‘For charity would be disordered if He [God] loved supremely someone who should not be supremely loved. But in that supremely wise goodness it is impossible for charity to be disordered. Therefore, a divine person could not have supreme charity toward a person who was not worthy of supreme love’.

Richard goes on. Since perfect charity is the best possible feature (see T3 above), charity will only be perfect if there’s nothing better than it. Now, if a person loved only themselves, then they wouldn’t be exercising their charity perfectly (see T5 above). But that wouldn’t be the best possible charity, for there could still be a better charity, namely someone who loved another. Here’s the quote:

‘in order that charity be . . . supremely perfect, it is necessary that it be so great that . . . nothing better can exist. However, as long as anyone loves no one else as much as he loves himself, that private love which he has for himself shows clearly that he has not yet reached the supreme level of charity’.

A key notion here is that perfect charity has to be directed at someone worthy of it.

(T6) For any person x, if x has a charitable disposition P, x is not perfect if x directs P at some person y, and y does not deserve it.

In the divine case, the charitable lover is the Father, and the Father is an awesomely perfect divine person. So the recipient of the Father’s charitable love must be at least as perfect as the Father himself, and the only sort of thing that perfect is a divine person. As Richard puts it:

‘But a divine person certainly would not have anyone to love as worthily as Himself if He did not have a person of equal worth. However a person who is not God would not be equal in worth to a divine person’.

Thus, since God is perfectly good, and being perfectly good requires having perfect charity, and since perfect charity requires loving another person who deserves it, and since the only thing that can deserve it would be another divine person, it follows that there is another divine person in God to whom the first can direct his charitable love towards.

‘Therefore, so that fullness of charity might have a place in that true Divinity, it is necessary that a divine person not lack a relationship with an equally worthy person, who is, for this reason, divine’.

And Q.E.D. There are at least two persons in God. Or at least, that’s what the argument is supposed to conclude up to this point. In the next post, I’ll raise some objections to the argument thus far.

“Steven, let’s look over there and pretend like we don’t see that floating head.”

STAGE 2. In this stage, Richard tries to show that perfect charity must be directed at another person. Here’s the quotation:

‘no one is properly said to have charity on the basis of his own private love of himself. And so it is necessary for love to be directed toward another for it to be charity’.

The idea here seems to be that charity is a disposition to love another (in a particular way, though I don’t know what that particular way is, so I’ll leave it undefined here). However, in order for charity to be perfect, it seems to require two things.

First, it must be manifested or realized in order to be perfect. That is, someone with a charitable disposition is not perfect unless they actually act charitably. So

(T4) For any person x, if x has a charitable disposition P, x is not perfect if x does not exercise P.

Second, a charitable disposition cannot be exercised perfectly unless one directs it to a distinct person. In other words, one cannot exercise charity on themselves and be perfect. So:

(T5) For any person x, if x has a charitable disposition P, x is not perfect if x does not exercise P on some person y, where x is not identical to y.

T4 and T5 identify two necessary conditions for charity to be perfectly realized: it must be exercised, and it must be exercised on another person. But these two conditionts are not sufficient for charity to be perfect. There’s still a third condition that must be satisfied too, but that comes up in the next post.

“Listen Luke, Claudia and I have something to tell you. This comes from a good place, because we love you. It’s the 1980s now. Less gel, more blow dry.“

STAGE 1. In this stage, Richard wants to show that God’s perfect goodness somehow requires that God is perfectly charitable. I say ‘somehow requires’ because the logical relation here is not clear. Richard is saying ‘God’s goodness _____ perfect charity’, but what fills in the blank? Is it ‘entails’, ‘presupposes’, or some other logical relation?

Here’s the actual quotation, with the particular claims marked in brackets.

‘[T1] there is [in God] fullness and perfection of all goodness. [T2] However, where there is fullness of all goodness, true and supreme charity cannot be lacking. [T3] For nothing is better than charity; nothing is more perfect than charity’.

Let’s look at T1, T2, and T3 in turn.

(T1) God is perfectly good, so there is as much goodness in God as possible.

Let’s take this as a given, since Richard has already established it earlier in De Trinitate.

(T2) For any x, if x is perfectly good, then x is perfectly charitable.

What exactly does this mean? I see at least two options.

(a) Perfect goodness and perfect charity are two distinct features that are necessarily instantiated together, similar to, say, being human and being able to laugh.

(b) Perfect charity is what makes something perfectly good, i.e, charity perfects goodness, as if something can be really really good, but it won’t be totally good until it becomes charitable.

(T3) Nothing is better than perfect charity.

The thrust of this is also rather unclear. There seem to be two things going on here.

(a) Richard is saying that perfect charity is the best possible feature to have.

(But why perfect charity? Why not cold, hard justice (like what the legendary ‘soldering iron of justice’ issues out)? Or why not being infinite, having aseity, or any other of God’s perfect attributes?)

(b) Richard appears to be stating T3 in order to buttress or prove T2.

(But it’s not evident exactly how T3 is supposed to buttress T2. Is it God’s goodness or God’s perfection which requires that he have all perfect features, the best of which is perfect charity)?

Could Krystle, Blake, and Alexis Carrington NOT have been a dynasty? I think not.

Richard of St. Victor is well known for his argument that perfect love must be shared between three persons, and since God’s love is perfect, there must be three persons in God. Richard presents this argument in Book 3 of his De Trinitate, and that’s what we’ll be looking at in this series of posts.

At the opening of Book 3, Richard explains that he will ask the following questions.

Question 1:
(a) Are there many persons in God?
(b) If so, are there only three persons?

Question 2:
How can those three persons be one God?

Question 3:
(a) Is one person unproduced (‘from himself’; a semetipsa), while the other two are produced (i.e., ‘from another’; ab alio)?
(b) If so, is the producer of the two produced persons itself produced or unproduced?

Question 4:
(a) Are the two produced persons produced in different ways?
(b) If so, which person is produced which way?
(c) Does anything else follow from each being produced in that particular way?

(Note that the English translation does not identify Question 3b. After asking whether two persons proceed from another (i.e., Question 3a), the translator writes ‘We should also see if there are other things we should inquire into related to this same consideration’. This is a mistranslation. Richard actually says ‘we should also ask the same thing about that “other” from which these [produced persons] proceed’, i.e., we should ask whether their producer is likewise unproduced or produced.)

Richard then claims that rational thinking tells him more about how to answer these questions than the Church Fathers do, though not Scripture. (Does this mean Scripture tells him more than rational thinking, or does it mean he’s bracketing Scripture out for the time being?) Richard claims he can answer these questions with rational argumentation, or at least he’ll die trying.

The first core piece of Richard’s argument occurs in Chapter 2 of Book 3, and although it’s stated very briefly and fairly clearly, there are a lot of claims here.

There are three stages to this argument. In the first stage, Richard tries to show that God’s perfect goodness requires that he be perfectly charitable. In the second stage, Richard tries to show that a perfectly charitable God will share his love with another. In the third stage, Richard tries to show that God can only share his love with an equal who is worthy of that love, namely another divine person. And there you go: there are at least two divine persons in the Godhead.

In the next three posts, I’ll look at each of these stages in turn.

Thinking about fatherhood is fun.

In this series of posts, I’ve been discussing the view of Arius that the Son is created from nothing, and the view of Athanasius that the Father begets the Son. All of this illustrates two basic issues that any classical account of the Trinity has to face when it tries to explain how one divine person produces another.

First, we need to think carefully before we identify God with any one divine person. As the old saying goes, that would ‘confound the essence with the persons’. If we do identify God with any one divine person, then we need to explain how the other persons inherit divine properties, and as I hope is clear by now, that’s not necessarily an easy task.

One way to avoid this whole problem is just to say that the Godhood is an ingredient that all three persons share, but which is not identical to any of them. Of course, this entails saying that the Father is not simple, and that he does have a distinct ingredient within himself, namely the Godhood. But I see no problem with this. If it’s okay to say that the Godhood is an ingredient in the Son (as Athanasius claims), then surely it’s okay to say that the Godhood is an ingredient in the Father too.

However, some theologians find this idea worrisome. As they see it, if we say that the Godhood is some distinct ingredient that is not identical to any of the persons, then it looks as if there are four things there, namely the Father, Son, and Spirit, plus the Godhood itself. And that, in turn, makes the persons look irrelevant. After all, all the really good stuff (like omnipotence and omniscience) belongs to the Godhood, so what’s the need for the persons?

The second issue is this: how do we distinguish between producing a divine person and creating something out of nothing? The Creeds are emphatically clear that the Son is not created out of nothing, and so any account of the Son’s production that aims to be faithful to the Creeds must show how the Son is not created.

This is an important question for so-called ‘social views’ of the Trinity. For instance, Richard Swinburne believes that the three divine persons are entirely distinct individuals; they do not share any ‘ingredients’, and they each exemplify the divine properties separately (that is, divine properties are instantiated three times — once in the Father, once in the Son, and once in the Spirit). On this view, it looks as if the Father produces the Son without any ‘pre-existing ingredients’ (in my sense of the word), and by my definition of creation, that would mean that the Son is created from nothing.

One might object that for Swinburne, the Son is necessarily produced eternally, and since the Son is necessary and doesn’t begin to exist at some point in time, he’s not created. However, I’m not convinced that creation can’t be necessary and eternal. As I said earlier, many philosophers throughout history have believed that creation is, in fact, necessary and eternal, so why isn’t Swinburne’s account of the Son’s production a similar case?

To wrap up this whole series, let me just say that although I’ve only discussed what Arius and Athanasius have to say about how the Son is produced, they are not the only theologians with interesting theories about this. Theologians before, during, and after them deserve attention too, and such attention would, I think, enrich our own discussions today.

Indeed, so much of our own philosophical theology focuses its attention on the identity and distinction of the divine persons. While this is certainly an important topic, it is not the only problematic aspect of the doctrine of the Trinity. I hope that my discussion here makes it clear that divine production is another topic that could stand the scrutiny of more sharp minds.

Son, I know you want it, but you just can't have my triangle.

Last time, I explained that Athanasius has not made it clear how the Son ‘inherits’ divine properties from the Father. Yet even if Athanasius could explain how the Son ‘inherits’ properties from the Father, there’s still another problem. Like Arius, Athanasius believes that the Father is simple, and so anything ‘in’ the Father is, strictly speaking, identical to the Father. If the Son is going to inherit any properties from the Father, then surely he’d have to inherit them all. As Athanasius himself realizes, it’s not a question of the Son inheriting part of the Father. It’s a question of all or none.

However, there are certain properties the Son cannot inherit from the Father, on pain of contradiction. For instance, the Son cannot inherit the Father’s unbegotteness. The Son is begotten, but the Father is not, so the can’t inherit the Father’s unbegotteness without entailing a contradiction.

We get a similar problem if we focus our attention on the Father’s fatherhood. If the Son inherited the Father’s fatherhood, he would be the Father of himself. But the Son is not the Father of himself, so we’d get a contradiction here too.

One might interject that the Son only inherits God’s essential properties, and not, say, his fatherhood. Unfortunately, Athanasius frequently says that the Father (who, recall, is God) is essentially a Father. When he says this, he is reacting to Arius. As Athanasius sees it, Arius seems to think that God became a Father when he begat the Son, and that implies that God can change (e.g., from not being a Father to being a Father). But since God cannot change, Athanasius insists that the Father is essentially a Father.

I take it, then, that Athanasius thinks the Father’s essential properties include his fatherhood in addition to divine properties like omnipotence, goodness, and so forth. If the Son inherits the Father’s nature, however, then surely the Son would inherit all the Father’s essential properties (including his fatherhood).

Thus, it looks as if the Father’s simplicity means that the Son must inherit all or none of the Father’s properties. But since there’s at least one or two properties that the Son can’t inherit, it would seem to follow that the Son can’t inherit any of the Father’s properties. Unless Athanasius can offer a principled way to explain why the Son only inherits some of the Father’s properties but not others, then his theory will collapse into contradictions and impossibility.

(I’ve focused my attention here on divine properties like omnipotence and goodness, but those aren’t the only properties I wonder about. What about God’s intellect and will? Does Athanasius think the Son inherits the Father’s intellect and will too? If Athanasius can’t explain how the Son gets his intellect and will, then how could the Son be a person? Surely a person has to have an intellect and will.)

Next time (which is the last post in this series), I will conclude with some general questions about divine production.

The Father and Son look just alike!

In the last two posts, I looked at Athanasius view that the Father begets the Son much like how human fathers beget human sons. But Athanasius’ view raises some interesting questions.

One of the things Athanasius likes about natural procreation is that sons get their natures from one of their ingredients, namely the substance they get from their fathers. For example, in God’s case, the Father is an ingredient in the Son, and the Son inherits his divine properties from that ingredient. However, the Son is not identical to the Father, and it’s not clear to me how the Son is supposed to ‘inherit’ properties from something he’s not identical to.

Consider an analogous case: a statue and the bronze it’s made from. Bronze statues, after all, inherit certain properties from their bronze. For instance, a statue has a certain size, shape, and mass because it’s made from a lump of bronze that has that size, shape, and mass. If we can explain how statues inherit properties from their bronze, then maybe we can explain how the Son inherits properties from the Father.

For convenience, let’s call the statue ‘Athena’, and let’s call the bronze ‘Lumpel’. According to what I will call the ‘standard view’ of material constitution, Lumpel and Athena are two numerically distinct, non-identical objects that share the same material parts (at some level of decomposition), and which coincide in the same region of space.

Now, there are certain properties that Lumpel and Athena do not share. For instance, they don’t share their kind-properties. Lumps of bronze are not the same kinds of things as statues. Nor do Lumpel and Athena share their modal properties. For example, lumps of bronze can survive being melted down and recast, but statues cannot.

But there are other properties that Lumpel and Athena do share. (And here I’m not talking about any of the properties that Lumpel and Athena share with everything. I’m only talking about properties that they share in virtue of the fact that they coincide.) For example, since they share the same material parts, Lumpel and Athena share material properties like size, shape, and mass. Similarly, Lumpel and Athena exist together for a period of time, so they share certain temporal properties too.

On this view, when we say x inherits a property from y, what we mean is that x and y share a property in virtue of the fact that they coincide.

How does this help with the Trinity? One of the questions I have is this: what explains why coinciding objects share certain properties but not others? I think most would say that coinciding objects share certain kinds of properties because they share certain kinds of parts.

For example, Lumpel and Athena share material properties because they share material parts. But we could also say the same thing about temporal parts too. The first quarter and the first half of a Notre Dame football game share certain temporal parts, and that’s why they share certain temporal properties.

Similarly, maybe we could put this to work in the divine case. If we say that the Godhood is like a divine ‘part’, then maybe we could say that coinciding persons who share that divine ‘part’ would also share divine properties. Of course, the Father and the Son share the Godhood (for the Father just is the Godhood, and the Son has it as one of his ingredients), so they would share divine properties too.

Before this strategy could be successful, we’d still have to answer more questions. For one thing, this strategy construes the Godhood as a ‘part’ rather than a constituent, and it’s not obvious that parts are related to their wholes in the way that constituents are related to what they constitute.

Consider Lumpel and Athena again. Now, it’s not exactly clear what Athena’s parts are (perhaps it’s her particles, perhaps it’s her arms, legs, and the like), but whatever they are, is Athena related to them in the same way that she’s related to Lumpel? And in the divine case, is the Godhood more like the particles (or arms, legs, etc.) that Athena is composed of, or is the Godhood more like Lumpel?

Whatever we might want to say about these questions, if we claim that coincident objects (or persons) share certain kinds of properties because they share certain kinds of parts, then we’ve only identified the conditions for shared properties. We haven’t really explained how those properties are shared.

To see this, consider the following question. When we say that Athena and Lumpel share certain properties, what exactly do we mean? Do we mean that those properties are instantiated twice – once in Lumpel, and once in Athena?

If so, then suppose that Lumpel and Athena share the same weight: e.g., 10kg. If this were instantiated twice, then Lumpel would be 10kg, and Athena would be 10kg too. But then the total weight should add up to 20kg, which of course seems odd, because our scales only show a total weight of 10kg.

On the other hand, if Lumpel’s and Athena’s shared properties are not instantiated twice, then they must be instantiated once. So what would they be instantiated in? In Lumpel, or in Athena? Either way, one of the two wouldn’t have a weight, and that seems odd too.

Perhaps one might say that, strictly speaking, shared properties are instantiated in neither Lumpel nor Athena, for properties don’t ‘inhere’ in subjects at all. Rather, what it means for a property to be instantiated by something is just for that property to ‘occur’ in that particular region of space.

But Lumpel and Athena both occur in the same region of space, and so all their properties occur in that same region of space too. Wouldn’t all their properties then be shared? That would lead to contradictions. For instance, Lumpel can, but Athena cannot, survive being melted down, so Athena and Lumpel could not share those features without contradiction.

Now transfer all of this over to the Trinity. When we say that the Father and Son share divine properties, are we saying that those properties are instantiated twice — once in the Father, and once in the Son? Surely that would entail that there are two (coincident) Gods, and I just can’t see Athanasius agreeing to that.

On the other hand, if we think that shared properties are only instantiated once, then who would those properties belong to? The Father, or the Son? Either way, one of them wouldn’t be divine, and Athanasius wouldn’t agree to that either.

Alternatively, if we think that properties don’t ‘inhere’ in subjects but rather simply occur in a particular region of space, then wouldn’t the Father and Son share all their properties? That would lead to contradictions. For example, the Son is begotten and the Father is not, so the Son couldn’t share the Father’s unbegotteness. (I’ll return to this point in a moment.)

Perhaps we could offer Athanasius some help by suggesting that he takes a view where, say, Lumpel and Athena are numerically the same, but not identical. On this view, the Father and the Son would be numerically the same, but not identical, and so there would be one God there, not two, without the Father and Son being identical. Surely that’s just the sort of thing Athanasius is after.

Whatever the merits of this strategy, I still have similar questions. In what sense are divine properties shared? Would it even make sense to say that they’re instantiated twice? I wouldn’t think so, for the Father and Son are one, and presumably their shared properties only occur ‘once’ in some sense too.

But if these shared properties are not instantiated twice, then who or what do they belong to? The Father? The Son? Neither? In what sense, exactly, are these properties shared? And when we say something like ‘the Son is omnipotent’, do we just mean that ‘the Son is numerically the same as, but not identical to, something that is omnipotent (viz., the Father)’?

I’m not suggesting that these questions can’t be answered. On the contrary, I’m sure they can. Here, I’m just pushing for a more detailed metaphysical account of how, precisely, these properties are shared, and asking these sorts of questions is one way of getting our minds to start thinking about that. For the time being, however, it’s not clear exactly how or in what sense Athanasius thinks the Father and Son are supposed to ‘share’ properties.

In the next post, I want to turn to another problem Athanasius faces.

This diagram from the 1970s says it all.

Last time, I explained that Athanasius thinks human fathers procreate sons by giving a part of their substance to the mother, and that bit of substance then becomes an ingredient in the zygote, and the zygote inherits its human nature from that ingredient.

Athanasius thinks this basic model applies to God too, though he is careful to make an important qualification: human fathers beget sons by giving up a part of their substance, but God the Father gives his whole self to his Son, not a part.

The reason for this is that like Arius, Athanasius believes that the Father is simple. There are no ingredients in the Father, so anything that’s in the Father is, strictly speaking, identical to the Father. (Thus, like Arius, Athanasius agrees that the Godhood is not an ingredient in the Father; rather, it just is the Father.)

As we saw before, Arius infers from this that the Father cannot break off a part of himself, and so he concludes that the Father must create the Son out of nothing. Athanasius agrees that the Father cannot break off a part of his substance, but he thinks Arius hasn’t seen all the available options. The Father’s simplicity entails only this: if the Father is going to give any of his substance to the Son, he’s got to give the whole thing, or none at all. It’s not a question of a part; it’s a question of all or none.

Of course, Athanasius denies that the Son is created without any ingredients, so he can’t say the Father gives none of his substance to the Son. Rather, he goes with the former option: the Father gives the Son his whole self.

Like human fathers then, God the Father begets God the Son by giving his substance to the Son. But unlike human fathers, God the Father gives his whole self to the Son, and not just a part of himself. Thus, for Athanasius, the Father himself is an ingredient in the Son.

This allows Athanasius to draw some important conclusions. First of all, by saying that the Son is ‘produced from’ the Father’s substance, Athanasius can say that the Son is not created. Like human sons, God’s Son is produced with at least one pre-existing ingredient, namely the Father himself, and that’s enough to show that the Son is not created from nothing.

Second, Athanasius can say that God’s Son is divine just like his Father. God’s Son inherits his divine properties from the substance he gets from his Father, just as human sons inherit their human properties from the substance they get from their fathers.

But since the Father’s substance is not divided up, the Son is homoousios (same in substance) with his Father in a quite literal sense. God’s Son doesn’t just have the same kind of substance as his Father; he has the numerically same substance.

There’s an important point to notice here. Even though the whole Father is an ingredient in the Son, the Father is not identical to the Son. As I explained above, an ingredient cannot be identical to the product in question, and that applies in God’s case too. Further, if the Father were identical to the Son, that would be modalism, and Athanasius explicitly rejects that (as does Arius).

In the next couple of posts, I want to talk about some problems that I see in Athanasius’ account of the Son’s production.

Hey mom! I got my substance from daddy!

In the last two posts, I explained that Arius believes the Son is created from nothing. Athanasius, for his part, denies this. As he sees it, the Son is begotten, and here, ‘begetting’ (or ‘generating’, as it’s also called) is a technical term for the natural process of procreation, as when living organisms produce offspring. For Athanasius, the Son really is a son; he’s the natural offspring of the Father.

Athanasius does not, so far as I know, ever explain exactly how he understands the process of procreation, but I think we can extract the general picture from three of his comments.

The first comment I want to highlight appears at a point where Athanasius is trying to explain why human fathers can sire many children rather than one. There, he says human fathers beget by losing a part of their substance, but they can regain what they’ve lost by eating some food, at which point they can procreate again.

Apparently, Athanasius believes that once a man has impregnated a woman, he can’t do it again until he’s had a good meal. When a man gives up his seed, he is, in effect, giving up a part of his substance, but when food is broken down and processed in the body, it replenishes the bit of substance that he’s lost, and then the man is able to give up his seed again.

Now, I don’t know what Athanasius means here when he talks about a father’s ‘substance’. The Greek word he uses is ousia, and that of course is a very vague term. Maybe Athanasius has something material in mind; after all, he says it can be replenished by food. On the other hand, maybe he is thinking that it’s an individualized human nature that gets repeated in each child. But these are just guesses. Athanasius does not, so far as I know, ever say just what he means here, so I’m going to retain the ambiguity of ousia by continuing to use the equally vague English term ‘substance’.

In any case, the point to glean from this is that for Athanasius, fathers give a part of their substance to their children. To capture this idea, Athanasius often uses the metaphor of light radiating out of the sun, or water flowing out of a fountain. As Athanasius might put it then, a son ‘comes out of’ or ‘is produced from’ his father’s substance.

The second comment to note about procreation is this: Athanasius often says that creatures and works of art are produced ‘externally’, while sons are produced ‘internally’. Works of art are produced ‘externally’ from other materials, and creatures are produced ‘externally’ from nothing at all. But sons are produced ‘internally’ from their father’s substance.

I think the point here is that the bit of substance a son gets from his father counts as a pre-existing ingredient (in my sense of the word). Thus, when a father gives his seed to a woman, that bit of his substance then becomes one of the ingredients that go into forming a zygote in the mother’s womb.

That’s why sons don’t count as creatures. A son is produced with at least one pre-existing ingredient, namely a bit of his father’s substance, and so a son is not created from nothing.

Third, Athanasius often says that when a father procreates, he produces something that’s the same kind of thing as himself. Creators and artists, on the other hand, make things that are different in kind. And the reason is that sons come from their father’s substance, while creatures and works of art do not.

What I gather here is that however else we want to characterize the bit of substance a human zygote gets from the father’s seed, that bit of substance includes a human nature. That is, it provides the zygote with all the properties it needs in order to be (or develop into) a member of human kind. Thus, human children quite literally get their human natures from their fathers.

This is not so for creatures and works of art. God created Adam, but he did not give Adam his divine nature. Michaelangelo sculpted the David statue, but he did not give the statue a human nature. (Of course, creators and artists can give their image or likeness to a product, but that’s not the same thing as giving it their kind-nature.)

So that’s the basic model of procreation that Athanasius seems to have in mind. In the next post, I’ll look at how Athanasius applies this the production of the Son.

Air dancing is the best!

Last time, I explained that Arius believes there can only be one unproduced producer, and that’s the Father. The Son, by consequence, is produced, but there’s nothing controversial about saying that. Arius gets controversial when he tries to explain how the Son is produced. As Arius sees it, if the Father produced the Son with any ‘pre-existing ingredients’, he’d either have to use created ingredients, or he’d have to use some ingredient taken from within himself (those are the only two options). But Arius thinks neither of these are open to the Father.

The Father couldn’t produce the Son with any created ingredients, because the Son is produced ‘before’ anything else. As the Bible puts it, the Son is the ‘firstborn of all creation’ (Col. 1:15), and so when it comes time to produce the Son, so to speak, there simply isn’t anything laying around that the Father could use.

But the Father couldn’t use any of his own ingredients to produce the Son either, for Arius believes that the Father is simple. That is, the Father doesn’t have any ingredients, so he can’t be broken down or analyzed into anything more fundamental. The Father is just one, indivisible thing.

By way of contrast, consider something that does have distinct ingredients. A pan, for example, can be hot on one side, and it can be cool on the other side. But this is only because the pan has different parts that can have their own features. If a pan were simple (as the Father is), the whole thing would have to be hot, or the whole thing would have to be cold. It couldn’t be partly hot or partly cold.

This highlights what it means for the Father to be simple in the sense that he doesn’t have any ingredients: anything that’s in the Father is, strictly speaking, identical to the Father. We cannot say that one portion of the Father has some feature that another portion, or the Father himself, does not have. Any features that can be found in the Father belong simply to the Father himself, not to some part or portion or ‘ingredient’ in the Father.

This is very important for our whole discussion. Arius believes, of course, that the Father is God; but since the Father is simple, then whatever it is that makes the Father God (and let’s just call it the ‘Godhood’), it cannot be an ingredient in the Father. Rather, it must be identical to the Father. According to Arius then, the Father just is God.

This also means, so far as Arius is concerned, that the Father can’t break off a part of himself and use it as an ingredient in the Son. The Father has no ingredients, so he simply can’t produce the Son with some ingredient taken from within himself.

But that exhausts all the options, and so Arius concludes that the Father therefore has to produce the Son without any pre-existing ingredients at all. And according to the definition of creation I gave above, that means the Son is created from nothing. And there you have it.

Next, I’ll turn to Athanasius.

Son, I know it's hard, but could you just TRY and smile for the camera?

So far, we’ve established that something is created from nothing if it’s produced without any pre-existing ingredients (see this one for a quick summary). Arius, for his part, believes that the Son is produced in just this way. In this post, I want to start looking at Arius’ argument for this conclusion.

Very little of what Arius wrote has survived, so it’s hard to say with any certainty what the details of his position actually are. Apparently, he authored a long poem (or maybe it was a hymn) called the Thalia, but only a few chunks of this have survived. Arius also wrote letters, three of which have survived in their entirety, and Arius makes his clearest statements about how the Father produces the Son in these letters.

His position starts from the assumption that there is only one Unproduced Producer. However many beings there might be in the universe, only one of them is Unproduced. All the others are produced by something else.

Now, I don’t know why Arius believes this. Perhaps he knew of (or worked out himself) a philosophical argument for this conclusion, or maybe he just wanted to be a good monotheist. He doesn’t say. All we know is that he was firmly committed to the idea of a single Unproduced Producer.

In any case, Arius uses this idea in a particular way. He reasons that since there is only one Unproduced Producer, then for any two things, if one of them is not produced, then the other one must be produced.

This goes for the Father and Son too: if one of them is not produced, then the other one must be. They both can’t be unproduced. And obviously the Father is the one who’s not produced, so Arius concludes that the Son must be produced.

We need to be careful about what this claim amounts to. It does not follow, for example, that the Son is somehow a lesser being, or that the Son is a creature. To say that the Son is produced does not entail that the Son is created. Of course, Arius does believe that the Son is created (as we shall see), but it takes a few more steps to get to that conclusion. At this point in the argument, there is no implication that the Son is a creature.

Nor does it follow that the Son comes to exist at some particular point in time. Indeed, throughout history, various philosophers have believed that some productions are eternal. For instance, Christians believe the Son and Spirit are produced eternally, medieval Muslims like Avicenna and Averroes believe that creation is eternal, and so on. The fact that something is produced does not necessarily entail that it’s produced at some point in time.

Now, Arius sometimes says things like ‘before he was begotten, the Son did not exist’. That certainly makes it sound like Arius thinks the Son began to exist at some point in time, and no doubt that kind of language is part of what got Arius into trouble.

But Arius sometimes qualifies these sorts of claims by pointing out that all he means is that the Son is produced. And I think this suggests that what Arius is really trying to say is simply that the Son does not exist apart from his production. It very well may be that Arius just couldn’t seem to find a way of putting this without resorting to temporal language.

Besides, more often than not, Arius says that the Son was produced ‘before the ages’. And by that, I don’t think Arius is saying that the Son was produced, say, 5 minutes before the rest of creation. I think he means to say, as in fact he does say at one point, that the Son was produced outside of or apart from time. So Arius probably believes that the Son is eternal.

Thus, when Arius says that the Son is produced and the Father is not, I think that’s all he’s trying to say at this point in the argument. The point then, is only that the Son is produced, he somehow gets his being from the Father, while the Father is not produced at all.

This is a totally uncontroversial claim. All orthodox Christians maintain that the Father and Son are not two independent Gods up in heaven. As the Creeds say, the Father begets the Son, so there’s nothing controversial about saying that the Son is produced by the Father in some way or other.

The controversial stuff comes next.

God, giving a shout-out to all his hombres. Or he's creating the universe.

In the last two posts, I explained what I mean by ‘pre-existing ingredients’. In the first of those two posts, I said that an ‘ingredient’ in a product is something that is (i) in the product, and (ii) not identical to another ingredient or to the whole product. In the second of those two posts, I explained that an ingredient is ‘pre-existing’ if it’s not produced by the same productive act that brings the product into being.

Now that I’ve made the sense of these terms clear, we can formulate a more precise definition of creation. Earlier, I said that something is created from nothing if it’s produced without any pre-existing ingredients. That’s the loose definition. Here’s the more precise definition: a producer creates a product from nothing if and only if the producer causes the product itself and each of its ingredients to come into being by the same productive act. So:

Creation:
For any x and y, x creates y from nothing
by a productive act P =df iff
(i) x causes y to exist by P, and
(ii) for any ingredient F in y,
x causes F to exist by P.

On this definition then, something is created from nothing if it’s produced without any pre-existing ingredients, and something is not created from nothing if it’s produced with at least one pre-existing ingredient (in my sense of ‘pre-existing ingredients’). It just takes one pre-existing ingredient to show that something is not created.

I presume that this definition also applies to cases where multiple producers work together to create something from nothing. Suppose, for example, that God the Father creates Socrates’ body, and God the Son creates Socrates’ soul. By my definition of creation, the Father alone doesn’t create Socrates. He only creates Socrates’ body. Likewise, the Son doesn’t create Socrates either, for he only creates Socrates’ soul. But taken as a single productive unit, the Father and Son jointly create Socrates from nothing.

With this definition of creation in mind, we can now turn to the disagreement between Arius and Athanasius. As I said above, Arius thinks the Father creates the Son out of nothing, but Athanasius denies this. In the next post, I will turn to Arius.

It's easy to make things with pre-prepared ingredients!

In the last post, I explained that something is ‘created from nothing’ when it’s produced without any pre-existing ingredients. I also explained that by ‘ingredient’ I mean any sort of constituent which satisfies the following two conditions: first, it exists in the product; and second, it bears its own properties, i.e., it has features that other ingredients in the product do not have, and which the product itself does not have. In this post, I will explain what I mean by ‘pre-existing’.

I want to use this term in the following sense: an ingredient is a ‘pre-existing’ ingredient when it is not produced by the productive act that brings the product into being. So, for example, when a mason builds a brick wall, the mason causes the wall to come to exist, but not the bricks. The mason may have produced the bricks himself at some earlier time, in which case the mason is the producer of both the wall and the bricks, but the mason would have produced the bricks by a different productive act, so the bricks would count as ‘pre-existing’ ingredients in my sense of the word.

Alternatively, someone else might have produced the bricks, but again, in this case they would also be produced by a different productive act. The bricks could even have been special eternal bricks that always existed and were never produced at all. But they’d still be ‘pre-existing’ ingredients because they are not produced by the productive act that brings the wall into being, irrespective of time or producer.

Now, I should emphasize that I only use the term ‘pre-existing’ because I think it readily brings to mind a rough idea of the kind of thing I mean. But the term might suggest that pre-existing ingredients must exist at some earlier point in time. I don’t mean to imply that. I mean to use ‘pre-existing’ in a sense that’s neutral to any temporal reference. For our purposes here, a ‘pre-existing’ ingredient can be an ingredient that does indeed exist before the product, but it can also be an ingredient that exists co-eternally with the product.

Further, the term ‘pre-existing’ might suggest that a ‘pre-existing’ ingredient is a contingent ingredient in the sense that it might not have ended up in the product (if, say, history had taken a different course). But I don’t mean to imply that either. I mean to use ‘pre-existing’ with a sense that’s modally neutral. ‘Pre-existing’ ingredients can be contingent, or they can be necessary, in the product in question.

By the same token, I don’t mean to imply that a ‘pre-existing’ ingredient is capable of independent existence. For our purposes here, ‘pre-existing’ ingredients include both ingredients that are separable, and ingredients that are inseparable, from the product in question.

Of course, every time I want to talk about a ‘pre-existing’ ingredient, I don’t want to say ‘an ingredient that is not produced by the productive act that brings the product into being’. That’s far too cumbersome, so instead I’m just calling it a ‘pre-existing’ ingredient. But again, that’s for convenience, and I don’t mean to imply any restrictons on temporality, modality, or separability.

Now that I’ve explained what I mean by ‘pre-existing ingredients’, next time I will give a more precise definition of ‘creating something from nothing’.

Well Dad, I just don't understand why we had to make them so small.

As I said last time, Arius maintains that the Son is created from nothing (ex nihilo), but Athanasius denies this. Much of the discussion depends on what these authors mean by ‘creation’. Before we go any further then, it will be helpful to establish a working definition for ‘creating something from nothing’. This requires some care, because we’re after a definition that both Arius and Athanasius would agree to. But so long as we make the right qualifications, I think that Arius and Athanasius do agree on what it means to create something from nothing.

Just so we have a rough idea of what we’re talking about, let me begin by describing creation in the following way: something is created from nothing if it’s produced without any pre-existing ingredients. Now, that’s a very loose way of putting it, but it makes the basic idea clear enough. We know that things get produced with pre-existing ingredients all the time. Masons build walls with bricks and mortar, cavemen make charcoal with fire and wood, humans procreate with sperm and eggs, and so on. But none of that counts as a creation. Something is created from nothing only when it’s produced without any pre-existing ingredients.

But as I said, that’s a very loose way of putting it, so let me explain more carefully what I mean. In this post, I want to clarify first what I mean by an ‘ingredient’. In the next post, I will turn to what I mean by ‘pre-existing’.

First then, when I talk about some ‘ingredient’ in a product, I mean any sort of constituent which satisfies the following two conditions: first, it exists in the product; and second, it bears its own properties, i.e., it has features that other ingredients in the product do not have, and which the product itself does not have. (I choose these two conditions because they are the conditions that are needed for both Arius and Athanasius to make their theories work.)

As for the first condition, I don’t really have a good definition for what it means to be ‘in’ a product, but this first condition is meant to rule out anything the product is related to outside itself. For instance, some believe that properties are abstract entities which exist somewhere ‘out there’, and particular objects are related to those properties by exemplifying them. Such properties are not in the things that exemplify them, so they don’t count as ingredients in my sense of the word. Properties can only count as ingredients if they are actually in the product. (Thus, immanent universals count as ingredients, and tropes do too.)

(I suppose someone could take the extreme view that a statue and the bronze it’s made from are two entirely distinct objects (sharing no parts) whose only connection is merely that they occupy the same region of space. On this view, the bronze wouldn’t count as an ingredient in the statue, for it’s not really an ingredient at all; it’s a different object altogether that just happens to be in the same spot. Besides, if we said that mere spatial co-incidence were enough to make something an ingredient, then if a ghost (or an angel, or the Holy Spirit, or a kharmic strand, or what-have-you) just happened to be floating through me at this very moment, it would turn out to be an ingredient in me, and I’m not sure I want to say that.)

The second condition is meant to rule out any ingredient that is identical to another ingredient, or which is identical to the whole product. For example, sometimes philosophers talk about ‘improper parts’ as something that’s identical to the whole. Such improper parts would not be ingredients in my sense of the word, for they are identical to the whole.

This also rules out theories where a constituent is identical in some way to what it constitutes. For instance, some hold that when a lump of bronze is shaped like a statue, the bronze just is the statue, even though it’s possible that this particular lump of bronze might not have ended up being this particular statue. On this reading, the bronze wouldn’t count as an ingredient in the statue, for the bronze just is (i.e., is identical to) the statue.

However, when I talk about ingredients that are not identical to other ingredients or to the whole product, I only mean to rule out absolute identity (i.e., the sort of identity where x and y are just the very same thing with all the very same properties). But I wish to allow weaker kinds of identity or sameness.

For instance, some (e.g., Brower and Rea, Lynne Rudder Baker) entertain a kind of sameness where two things can be numerically the same, but not identical. For example, a statue and the bronze it’s made from are numerically the same object, but they are not identical, so the bronze would count as an ingredient in the statue in my sense of the word.

These sorts of lesser identity or sameness are allowed here. All that’s ruled out are ingredients that are completely and absolutely identical to another ingredient or the whole product.

(Note that this blocks problems for the Trinity that arise from the transitivity of identity. If some ingredient were absolutely identical to the Father, and if that same ingredient were also absolutely identical to the Son, then by the transitivity of identity, the Father and Son would be identical to each other. Neither Arius nor Athanasius would allow that.)

This allows a fairly wide range of entities to count as ingredients. Of course, a physical part, or any sort of proper part, counts as an ingredient. For example, the two sides of a pan each count as ingredients in the pan. They are not identical to each other or to the whole pan, and they each have their own features (as is clear when one side of the pan is hot and the other side is cool).

Constituents like Aristotle’s matter and form also count as ingredients in whatever they jointly compose. The lump of flesh and the soul that make up Socrates each count as ingredients in Socrates, for they are in Socrates, but they are not identical to each other or to the whole body-soul composite.

So something is created from nothing if it’s produced without pre-existing ‘ingredients’, where ‘ingredients’ has the sense that I’ve just explained. In the next post, I will explain what I mean by ‘pre-existing’.