Pictured here are Krishna and his lover Radha. I take it that in Sudduth’s form of Hinduism Krishna is an avatar of Vishnu. Other Hindus consider Krishna to be the high god himself.

There is much art celebrating the love of these two.

The story for me was a bit spoiled when I watched a documentary in which a Hindu, Indian man explained that (at least on some versions) Radha is married to another, and is Krishna’s aunt. Perhaps some would object that I’m not looking at it metaphysically enough.

In another famous episode, Krishna charms a bunch of cow-herding ladies.

I’m curious to read more about Sudduth’s conversion. How does one get from Calvin’s all-determining triune deity to Vishnu? I wonder if it is by way of fairly mainstream trinitarian modalism…

Myself, as I read Sudduth’s interesting narrative of his conversion I’m not sure where, i.e. with what sort of Christianity, he was starting from. I too have taught the Gita in an academic setting, but I have not had experiences like this:

Around 4:20am (Friday morning) September 16th, I woke suddenly from a deep sleep to the sound of the name of “Krishna” being uttered in some way, as if someone was present in my room and had spoken his name out loud. Upon waking I immediately had a most profound sense of Krishna’s actual presence in my bedroom, a presence no less real than the presence of another living person in the room, though I was alone at the time. I responded to this felt presence, first through my thoughts that repeated Krishna’s name (and inquired of his presence), and then verbally out loud by uttering Krishna’s name twice: Krishna, Krishna. I was seized at this moment with a most sweet feeling of completeness and joy. I felt as if Krishna was there with me in my room and actually heard my voice, and that my response had completed a process that began with his name within my mind. I pondered this experience for several minutes, while at the same time continuing to experience a most blissful serenity and feeling of oneness with God, not unlike I had experienced on many occasions in the past in my relationship with the Lord Jesus. It was a most profound sense of both awe and intimacy with God in the form of Lord Krishna.

I should add, and I think this is very important, that I felt I was experiencing the same God that I had experienced on many occasions throughout my Christian life. However, I felt like this being was showing me a different face, side, or aspect to Himself, or – better yet – a different mode of my relationship to Him. I felt a certain validation of my spiritual journey, both past and present. I had gone so far in my Christian faith, but it was now necessary for me to relate to God as Lord Krishna.

If I understand him, he’s saying that he conceived of Jesus as a mode of God – not uncommon among catholic Christians – and now he views Krishna as another mode of God, another way God is and appears. Well, presumably God can be and appear in uncountably many ways. As for me, since I hold that Jesus is a different self than God, I must reject that he’s a mode of God himself; Jesus isn’t a mode at all, but rather a self/person. But back to Sudduth:

After my journey to [the California ashram] Audarya… I can only describe my experience as one of being irresistibly drawn to Sri Krishna, overwhelmed with His power and beauty, convinced of his Godhead – in short overflowing with love for Him as the Supreme Personality of the Godhead, and through him love for all beings, as He resides in the hearts of all beings.

One thing I’m curious about is: does his present faith involve, as most forms of Hinduism do, worship of images? If so, how or why did he change his mind about that? I assume that as a Protestant he viewed idolatry as being forbidden by God.

Sudduth’s account is mostly positive, about his experiences and the charms of his newfound theology. But I guess his conversion must have a negative side as well. I take it he rejects the idea of Jesus as being the best, most complete revelation of the character of the one God, and as being a needed mediator between God and humankind. But if I understand him, Sudduth still believes in one God, albeit one who is related to the cosmos somewhat as a human soul is related to its body. This entails rejecting the idea of God as creator, at least in an ex nihilo sense.

Also, I’m guessing there is a sort of acceptance of mythical lore - something traditional Christianity has always eschewed. However, I do know that a good number of Hindus hold Krishna to be a historical person, as well as an avatar of Vishnu.

Update: more thoughts and a link from the Maverick Philosopher. 

I read most of MacDonald’s Deuteronomy and the Meaning of ‘Monotheism’. I found it helpful, but had some fundamental disagreements with it. Those another time.

The two have very different views of the OT & the issue of monotheism. To oversimplfy, MacDonald thinks that for a long time, Jews were polytheistic, then they became monotheists of a sort and changed older polytheistic OT texts to fit their new views. In contrast, Heiser thinks that all along they believed YHWH to be unique, although many could be called “elohim.” This is a very interesting disagreement, but  I won’t join the fray here.

Just a couple of comments.

Yes, monotheism is the belief that there there exists exactly one god. This sounds silly to say, but this has been denied repeatedly as of late.

Contra MacDonald’s first answer in the interview, the only real unclarity in this is what counts as a god, i.e. the concept of godhood.

The important issue here is the idea of monotheism, not the word “monotheism.” Yes, it is a fairly recent term, but I would argue, a helpful one – at least, once we make clear what is meant by the term “god.”

Heiser says, 

I don’t care for the modern definition as someone who accepts the Judeo-Christian canon.

Eh… how would accepting the authority of the Bible tell you that “monotheism” is or is not a helpful term? What matters, I think, would be theoretical considerations like classification and explanation. The question is: can the term earn its keep?

Heiser again,

The biblical writers used the term elohim to refer to half a dozen figures or entities in the unseen spiritual world (Yahweh, the elohim of Yahweh’s council, “demons” [Deut 32:17], the disembodied human dead [1 Sam 28:13], and angels [at least I’d argue for that on the basis of the plural verb in Gen 35:7 and its referent point]). The fact that they do that should tell us loudly and clearly that that they did not associate the term elohim with a specific set of attributes.

Oh, to the contrary – attributes implied would be: selfhood, being normally invisible, being powerful, being interested in what various humans are doing. What he means to say, is that “god” for the ancient Hebrews was not a kind-term, not assumed to refer to whatever has some metaphysical essence. That is correct, and I think the point applies far beyond ancient Hebrews and the term elohim.

We do that reflexively as moderns—we use “g-o-d” thinking of the singular being we know as the God of the Bible.

No, this is a different point than the previous, but again, he’s right. The point could be put thusly: we use “God” as a name or title for the God of Abraham (etc.).

Elohim is what I like to call a “place of residence” term. It doesn’t tell me what a thing is in terms of attributes; it tells me the proper domain of a thing. All elohim are members of the unseen spiritual world, their place of residence.

I don’t think that’s part of the meaning of “god,” but rather an image or assumption that may accompany it… But again, by his own words, it does imply that the bearer has certain attributes – what he means to say is that it doesn’t attribute any essence to the bearer, or assume that any being to whom the term applies has an certain essence (roughly, defining features).

He does believe monotheism, and that monotheism is assumed in all parts of the Bible. It’s just that they would deny that there was only one elohim, even while holding that one of those elohim was unique.

Stephen Prothero

His latest book, God is Not One, is possibly the best introduction to a variety of religious traditions for the general reader. It’s well-written, informative, humorous, apt at comparing religions, and I would say pretty fair. I recommend it overall. The book is worth it just for his bashing of the soft-headed pluralism that infects so many popular books on religion. (Ch.1)

Less positively, Prothero’s outlook on religion is colored in many ways by the fact that he is an ex-Christian, having been raised as a mainline church. He sports of whole range of attitudes I see as deriving from this, or from this plus our present intellectual scene. Also, it strikes me that his childhood faith he left behind was just that. In any case, he has a nice way of wearing his inclinations on his sleeve. An author should be opinionated.

Here I want to ask: Is Prothero both fair and accurate in how he presents Christian belief? He says:

…the Christianity… of my childhood… was all about the doctrine of the Incarnation, which to me was as mysterious as adult life in general. According to this core Christian teaching, at the fulcrum of world history God took on the form of a helpless baby, born of a frightened young woman and held in the rough hands of a carpenter. “What if God was one of us?” asks the Joan Osborne pop song. Christianity responds, “He was!” (p. 68)

Well, is.

Again, at one level, 

There is the story of Jesus Himself, the God who is born in a manger… and dies on a cross… (p. 72, emphasis added)

So, “God,” presumably the only God (p. 68), is the man Jesus. The painting above is a portrayal of the day God himself died.

But given that Christianity’s is a “soft” monotheism (pp. 68-9), also

…Christians see God as a mysterious Trinity: there persons in one godhead, or as novelist J.C. Hallman brilliantly put it, “triplets perched on the fence between polytheism and monotheism.” (p. 69, emphasis added)

Prothero dutifully summarizes the Nicene creed on that page, but this discussion may confuse. If Jesus is God, and God is the Trinity, then don’t Christians think that Jesus is the Trinity? Or rather: why don’t they think that?

Given how much Christians care about doctrine (pp. 69-70) it would’ve been better say a bit more about, the fully evolved doctrine of Christ’s two-natures, and perhaps generation and procession, and the catholic view that the pre-human Jesus created the cosmos. Probably more too about why many Christians think that because of the atonement, Jesus must be “fully divine.” These things should get a least a mention, if you’re going to devote a couple of pages to Mormonism in the chapter.

He refers often to mystery, but not to the paradoxical beliefs which have so motivated Christians to employ the tools of philosophy and logic to exorcise apparent contradictions. For example, that the all-knowing God was an ignorant baby, or that an essentially immortal divine person died.

Finally, he’s happy to leave things unclear; but it would be worth pointing out, consistent with his emphasis on the “staggering” diversity in Christianity (p. 66) that some Christians understand the Trinity modalistically – as three ways one divine self lives – and others tritheistically – as three divine selves living in harmony.  To others, yes, as an mostly unintelligible mystery – but many thinking Christians are driven to come up with a more articulated view.

To answer my own questions:

• Fair? Yes, I would say fair enough. He’s more concerned to present Christianity at the popular level, than as believed by theorists. Nothing his says me strikes me as a misrepresentation, much less a malicious misrepresentation. 
• Accurate? It could be more accurate, I would say. He tends towards the view that too much interest in doctrine, in theological theories, in finely articulated and true religious beliefs, is… twisted, unhealthy, weird, maybe perverse. I see this attitude constantly popping up in the book. As someone who does philosophical theology and philosophy of religion for a living, I of course don’t agree! But I suggest he should correct for this, including at least the ideas noted above.

A few minor corrections: It’s no longer true that most Catholic Bibles do, but most Protestant Bibles don’t have explanatory notes. (p. 80) About his assertion that the Bible nowhere so much contemplates lesbianism (p. 95), that probably needs qualifying, in light of Romans 1. Mentioning “suburban megachurches and their confident sermons about how Jesus would vote” (p. 99) – that is, I think, largely an unfortunate stereotype based on exceptions rather than the rule. In my experience, which yes, includes some evangelical megachurches, pastors tend to be circumspect and generally non-partisan about politics, especially in the pulpit. Such culture-war rhetoric is out of place in the chapter.

Finally, I emphasize that it’s a very good book, packed with information, in world full of crappy books about religion. He loves his subject, and it shows. And he shows a proper sympathy for the traditions, and for the people within them. Reading it is like taking that good class on world religions or comparative religion that you wished you’d taken in college.

For those who enjoyed my previous posts (here and here) on avatars in Hinduism, here’s something I’ve done recently for a class I’m teaching – excerpts of the long (78 part!) ultra-hit Indian tv series Ramayan into movie form. (Here’s the whole series.) Yes, I watched the whole thing, over a couple of months, so you don’t have to. Grab some popcorn and check it out. My notes in the comment below will help you to bridge the plot-gaps.

This doesn’t directly have to do with Christian theology. My interest here was to illustrate the Hindu tradition for my students, specifically a popular, present-day, devotional Vaishnavite form.

Still, one can fruitfully apply philosophical analysis and comparison with Christian theology here:

• What’s presented here, despite appearances, is supposed to ultimately be monotheism. The one god is Vishnu, and the other gods and goddesses are just manifestations of him, him acting in different forms. This is clear when at one point the three functions of creation, preservation, and destruction are assigned to Vishnu. It’s modalism on a massive scale.
• The series asserts the primacy of Vishnu, even while bending over backwards to exalt Shiva as a great god and proper object of worship (and also the Great Goddess). He’s a perfect self, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, a se.
• Ram (aka Rama, pictured here – but in the movie, he’s not blue) is Vishnu’s manifestation as a human being, Vishnu incarnate, or in their terms, a descent (avatar) of Vishnu. The screenplay reflects the tensions in the various versions of the Ramayan – Does Ram know that he’s Vishnu? Is he merely feigning ignorance? Why does he keep saying he’s just a man? Is he in the end a real human being, or does he only appear to be one? Or does this not matter, since at bottom in some sense everything is Vishnu/Brahman?
• The screenplay repeatedly says that Vishnu and his descent as a man, are unfathomable, mysterious, beyond logic, etc.
• At the end, the movie presents Ram as the one god, the one ultimate being, of which the rest of the Hindu pantheon is a manifestation. (I’m talking about the worship song scene were Ram appears in the middle of a bunch of faces and bodies lined up all together.) But that’s because Ram is supposed to be numerically identical to Vishnu – they are one and the same.
• There are even parts of the series, not included here, in which Vishnu and Shiva seem to enjoy what some Christians call “perichoresis” or perfect fellowship; they worship each other, and dwell in the hearts of one another.
• The third member of the Trimurti (aka the “Hindu Trinity”) Brahma gets short shrift, like the Holy Spirit. While Brahma appears in a number of scenes (floating on a big pink lotus flower), he isn’t really worshiped, at least, not like Vishnu and Shiva are. At any rate, he’s presented as a manifestation of or attribute of Ram/Vishnu. This reflects the practice of Hinduism – my understanding is that Brahma as such (as opposed to as a member of the Trimurti) is not really a focus of devotion there.
• Ram is very much meant as a model of human behavior, an ideal human being, the way that Christians view Jesus. In many or most cases, Christians would agree with Hindus that his behavior in the Ramayana is indeed virtuous, though there would be some disagreements in the areas of filial piety, honor, and idolatry.
• As with Calvinism, here one is saved by grace, through faith. Note the ultimate fate of the villian Ravan here.

No, this doesn’t include anything from the 39-part 1989 follow-up series. I believe this features Ram un-descending back into Vishnu, but I haven’t gotten around to watching that one yet.

Last time I said that I thought Waterland was a social-mysterian-trinitarian. But I’m not so sure about the “social” part! He’s very unclear on whether the “Persons” are selves. They’re different somethings, in any case. But in this series, I’m sticking to an exegetical issue.

Here are excerpts of Waterland’s second salvo about the “only God” texts.

[Clarke] had produced John 17:3, 1 Cor. 8:6, Eph. 4:6, which prove that the Father is styled, sometimes, the one God, or only true God; and that he is the God of the Jews, of Abraham, etc. I asked how those texts proved that the Son was not? You say… “very plainly… Can the Son of the God of Abraham (Acts 3:13) be himself that God of Abraham, who glorified his Son?” But why must you here talk of that God, as if it were in opposition to this God, supposing two Gods; that is, supposing the thing is question. …I tell you that this divine Person is not that divine Person, and yet both are one God… (A Second Vindication of Christ’s Divinity in Waterland’s Vindications of Christ’s Divinity, 422-3, original italics, bold added, punctuation slightly modernized)

This is wheel-spinning. Clarke does, and Waterland does not take the passages in question to identity (assert to be numerically identical) the Father and Yahweh.

Clarke had asked whether Waterland thought that the term “Father” in these texts actually includes, i.e. refers to, the Son as well. Waterland clarifies,

…we do not say, that in these, or the like instances, both persons are included in the term Father; but that the exclusive terms, alone, or only, are not to be so rigorously interpreted, as to leave no room for tacit exceptions. To make this a little plainer to you.

Rev. 19:12 it is said to the Son, “He had a name written, which oudeis, no person, knew but himself.” This was not said in opposition to the Father, or as excluding him from that knowledge; for, it is still tacitly supposed,  that he knew as much as the Son… (A Second Vindication of Christ’s Divinity in Waterland’s Vindications of Christ’s Divinity, 424, original italics, bold added, punctuation slightly modernized)

Clarke pounds the table, insisting that if something is the only F, then there can’t also be other F’s. This is correct, and yes, it is obvious.

But Waterland is also making an important point, though he’s unable to put it clearly. This is that quantitative statements (all, none, at least one, exactly one, etc.) are always relative to some domain of entities, and this is almost never explicitly stated.

Thus, one may truly say: “There is only one redhead” when one is assuming the domain: kids in my class. Of course, it’s false that there’s just redhead in all the universe. But when the teacher asks, “How many red-haired children are here?” it is clear that the domain in which we’re quantifying is: kids in this class. So Waterland’s point is that not all quantification has to be universal, i.e. within the domain of all things whatever, a wholly unrestricted domain. So there can be “exceptions” to true “only” statements. But here’s where he’s muddled. They are not exceptions at all to the assertion, when they are outside the assumed domain.

Thus, in our classroom scenario, if a kid yelled out “What about Carrot Top?” he’d be missing the point. That is not an exception to the truth “There is only one redhead [in our class].”

And in the Revelation passage, the assumed domain should exclude the Father. There’s a background assumption, Waterland correctly points out, that God knows all. And so, if Christ is the only one who knows the name given to him, this must be the only one in the domain including all intelligent beings other than God.

Waterland thinks that Clarke cannot allow these sorts of  ”exceptions” to only-statements, and so will have trouble interpreting various passages.

But Clarke can and does. (e.g. There’s nothing God didn’t create – Clarke doesn’t think this implies, absurdly, that God created himself.) It’s just that in these instances, in the three passages above, unlike the cases Waterland gives, he’s assuming an unrestricted or maximal domain – that is, that the Father is the only God period  - not the only God in Romania, or the only God out of this set: Jimmy Carter, Yahweh, Mickey Mouse, Zeus, Hera, Elvis.

Now, concerning this issue, either Clarke or Waterland is correct; the three texts above either do or do not assume a universal domain. We’ll return to this point eventually.

 In the next post, I’ll try to parse some points Waterland makes about the Father “emphatically” or “primarily” being called “the only God.” 

Daniel Waterland (1683-1740) was by all accounts the most important disputant of Samuel Clarke about the Trinity.

Waterland spent his career at Cambridge, where he rose through the ranks, eventually becoming Vice-Chancellor, and also serving as a Chaplain to the King, and as an Anglican clergyman in a number of cities.

He had a good reputation, and was an energetic, but normally cool-headed controversial/polemical writer (aganist Clarke, and other other theological topics, against other respected men), and he gained somewhat of a reputation in Anglican circles as a defender of catholic orthodoxy.

Many, including himself, contemplating his becoming a bishop, but in 1740 he died after complications, seemingly, from surgeries on an ingrown toenail in one of his big toes! He was survived by his wife of 21 years. (His only children were his books.)

I’d describe Waterland’s views on the Trinity as social, with a liberal dose of negative mysterianism. Like Clarke, he insists that his is the ancient catholic view, and much of the dispute concerns pre-Nicene fathers. Like Clarke, he wants to stick to those fathers and to the Bible, and takes a dim view of medieval theology.

About the pre-Nicene catholic “fathers,” I’d say both Clarke and Waterland somewhat bend the material to their own ends (I mean, they tend to see those authors as supporting their view, and being perhaps more uniform than they were), but I think Waterland bends the materials more. In his view, catholics had always believed the Three to be “consubstantial” in a generic sense, yet which, somehow, together with their differences of origin, makes them but one god. Like Swinburne and Clarke, he agrees that the Father is uniquely the “font of divinity.” He continually hammers Clarke with the claim that there’s no middle ground between the one Creator and all creatures.

In this series, I’ll examine the way he deals with some favorite unitarian proof-texts, which, unitarians think plainly assert the numerical identity of the Father with the one true God, Yahweh. According to Waterland, these unitarians are making a mistake like the one I made.

You [i.e. Clarke] next cite John 17:3, 1 Cor. 8:6, Eph. 4:6, to prove, that the Father is sometimes styled the only true God; which is all that they prove. But you have not shewn that he is so called in opposition to the Son, or exclusive of him. It may be meant in opposition to idols only, as all antiquity has thought; or it may signify that the Father is primarily, not exclusively, the only true God, as the first Person of the blessed Trinity, the Root and Fountain of the other two.

You observe that “in these and many other places, the one God is the Person of the Father, in contradistinction to the Person of the Son.”

It is very certain, that the Person of the Father is there distinguished from the Person of the Son; because they are distincly named: and you may make what use you please of the observation against the Sabellians, who make but one Person of the two. But what other use you can be able to make of it, I see not; unless you can prove this negative proposition, that no sufficient reason can be assigned for styling the Father the only God, without supposing that the Son is excluded.

…As to 1 Cor. 8:6, all that can be reasonably gathered from it, is, that the Father is there emphatically styled one God; but without design to exclude the Son from being God also: as the Son is emphatically styled one Lord; but without design to exclude the Father from being Lord also. Reasons may be assigned for the emphasis in both cases; which are too obvious to need reciting.

…observe… that the discourse there, v. 4, 5, is about idols, and nominal gods and lords, which have no claim or title to religious worship. These the Father and Son are both equally distinguished from: which may insinuate at least to us, that the texts of the Old or New Testament, declaring the unity and excluding others, do not exclude the Son, “by whom are all things…” (Daniel Waterland, A Vindication of Christ’s Divinity: Being A Defence of Some Queries, Relating to Dr. Clarke’s Scheme of the Holy Trinity [1719]  in Van Mildert, ed. The Works of the Rev. Daniel Waterland, Vol. I., pp. 279-80, broken into shorter paragraphs, bold added)

Next time: Is he right about this?

I recently read, and profited much from his “Classifying Mormon Theism.“ Check it out.

It’s part of a book dedicated to the work of the unique Mormon philosopher of religion David Paulsen.

Mosser’s paper is of interest for several reasons:

First, is Mormonism a sort of polytheism, monotheism, or what? You’ll have to read the paper to get Mosser’s answer. But here’s a teaser: “It is inappropriate to classify Mormonism as a polytheistic religion. To do so conveys highly misleading connotations.” (p. 23, emphasis added)

Second, what is monotheism anyway? What is a god?

Third, how did the ancients, including the authors of the Bible use “God” and related terms? For example, how was the Greek theos used? And how does this compare to our usage?

I don’t think I agree with all of Mosser’s conclusions; but there is a lot going on here, and there is much that is useful.

This is my last entry in the discussion; I may or may not comment, but no more posts.

Again, this is what I hear from him:

• Yes, the divine nature is a universal, shared by the Three. But let’s not make any Platonic assumptions about forms/universals being in some other realm than what has them, or being more fundamental.

Indeed, let’s not.

Are the persons parts of the Trinity, for him?

He brings up the Mandelbrot set. This is an abstract object. It doesn’t have parts, but rather members. Is he suggesting that the Trinity is a set, with members rather than parts? That it has infinite members? I don’t know.

Then, a digression about analogy. Of course, my point was: don’t you think God is literally a self? (Not: Is God analogous to a self?)

Perhaps he assumes that all terms that apply to God do so only analogically. I think that’s obviously false; we have terms that express concepts abstract to be satisfied by either God or a creature. e.g. “exists,” “conscious,” “similar to God.”

Or maybe he’s just worried about painting himself into the Quaternity corner.

I think Tuggy is now insinuating that the Trinity devolves into the Quaternity.

There goes that Tuggy again, insinuating things about the doctrine! No, the subject is just: what Steve Hays thinks.

The Trinity would not be a “self” in the same sense that the constituent members are “selves.” The Trinity is not a fourth person, over and above the three persons. Rather, each person is conscious of what the other two are conscious of. Not just that each person is conscious of the other two persons, but conscious of their consciousness.

So no, the Trinity isn’t a self in the same sense each person is. This conveniently leaves it an open question whether or not it is a self in any other sense, and whether it’s literally a self, or only analogous to a self.

But perhaps his final answer is that it (the Trinity) really is an it, not a he.

The “owner” of the “corporate viewpoint” is each member of the Trinity. That’s because each person not only has his own first-person viewpoint, but is also privy to the viewpoint of the other two.

I conclude, then, that in his view there are three, not four conscious beings here, and three points of view. It’s just that each also can (and always does, I assume) adopt the viewpoint of both the others.

About his “data” of revelation; he’s unable to see that some of these are precisely what are at issue. In other words, he begs the question, because he’s not able to adopt the perspective of those he would refute.

Now, finally: I switch to brief criticism:

This looks to me basically like a poorly developed “social” Trinity theory

We have three beings here, each of which fully has the property of divinity. Thus, it looks like we have three gods. Yes, I know that surely he intends it to be monotheistic. So, the theory seems inconsistent.

What is the Trinity? A group? A composite thing? A set with members? A quasi-self? He doesn’t know. But it seems that he wants to deny the one God to literally be a self. If so, he goes hard against the Bible, throughout. God knows, acts, gets mad, makes and carries out plans, stands in an I-thou relationship to Jesus, as well as to disciples of Jesus. Further, I’m willing to bet that like just about all Christians, he interacts with God as a self to a self.

Evidently, Steve hopes that positing perfect mental access between the three deities will somehow imply their being one god. But, that has not been shown. It looks like a picture of three gods with perfect access to each others’ minds.

I think this is all a poor fit with the Bible.

But laying aside that, is it creedally orthodox? Not clear. While the creeds say that all three must be “homoousios”, they also say that the Son is true God from true God. In Steve’s theory, does the Son derive his existence or divinity from the Father? I don’t know. All he’s said is that all three equally and fully possess divinity. So, I don’t know if his theory is orthodox by (small-c) catholic standards.

Update: as of 7/5/11, lots more long posts, with lots of accusations, flailing away to find some obvious confusion in my own views, but never addressing this monotheism objection. To the creedal worry, his answer is that being a Protestant, he doesn’t care if it is creedal or not. Fair enough. I’ve commented quite a bit over there, probably too much.

In sum, the one God is a perfect being, a perfect self, who is the Trinity. He has within himself three parts – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each of these parts fully has the (universal) divine nature, and so, each of the essential divine attributes. Each is a divine self. And these three parts are indistinguishable from one another, or nearly so, though they be numerically distinct.

Steve has now responded twice, here and here. These contain a lot of extraneous material, which I’ll pass by. My question is, what did I get wrong above? Here’s what I hear (bulleted):

• No, the Persons are not exactly alike. Each has a property the other two lack.
• “they share a “numerically identical” nature”

Right – “nearly so.”

Because he says this nature is shared, I’m going to infer that it is a universal – something capable of being had by multiple subjects.

• He wonders why I’m hearing things in terms of part and whole.

Steve, it’s not because you think God has multiple attributes. (Yes, I too reject the classical doctrine of simplicity, though I don’t think God has parts.) Rather, I’m trying to figure out what the relation is, in your view, between God/The Trinity and those three Persons. If it isn’t whole-parts, help me out!

• The Persons are so alike that any one “represents” either of the others.
• I don’t know what Tuggy means by “self.”

Sure you do - this is a rough, vague concept we all have. It is a thing which is conscious (yes, of self as well as other things), which can act for a reason (can choose, has a will), which is intelligent (has knowledge), and which can engage in friendship. If you speak to something, and think it may understand, even speak back, you think it is a self. Thus, I submit that you think God is a self, as I assume you speak to him. You sort of say that any divine person will be only analogous to a human self. Well, sure. But we have a more abstract concept of a self (which doesn’t imply being a human, or even being created, or having a body) which we should both agree is satisfied by, e.g. the Father.

I think I basically got his view right: there are four divine selves: God (The Trinity), the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. This is confirmed by what he says after noting that in his view, each  Person of the Trinity has a first-person point of view:

Finally, wouldn’t their individual viewpoints include a corporate viewpoint? If God is a Trinity, then I’d expect the Son (to take one example) to have both an individual viewpoint (“I’m the Son”) and a corporate viewpoint (“We’re the Trinity”). The constituent members would also have a Trinitarian viewpoint, for they collectively constitute the Trinity.

This “corporate viewpoint” must have an owner, a subject, and that can only be the Trinity – that complex self. Why? e.g. the Son is not a we, but a he. But he adds,

Sorry, but I think this is confused. If I think, as an American, that football beats the crap out of soccer, that’s just another first-person point of view. It is just that the explanation for my having it, we’re assuming, is that I’m an American. The analogy would rather be this: just as each American has a first person perspective, so does America. So in his view, if e.g. the Son has a viewpoint as member of the Trinity, that just means that some subjective state of his is caused or explained by his relations to the Father and Spirit. This would be a three-self view of the Trinity, not a four-self view, which I think Steve holds to. But I’m sticking with the four-self interpretation, which is what I take it he thinks, or usually thinks.

He emphasizes that this is theological speculation, which it surely is. But I was asking what this Trinity theory is, which makes such great sense out of the Bible, better sense than any rival theory. I take it that this is it. If he wants to clarify further the relation between Trinity and the members of it, I’m all ears.

At the end of a recent exchange, I basically said: Dude, I don’t know what you think “the” doctrine of the Trinity is. What, in your view, does it mean to say that God is a Trinity?

He’s now responded here.

In this post, I try to understand just what he’s claiming, in other words, what he takes trinitarianism (rightly understood) to be.

This is a bit risky, because I think he’s confused about the concept of identity, and I’m trying to hear a self-consistent view here.

The first job in critical thinking is carefully listening to what the source at hand is saying. Here I listen carefully, editing out a lot of his methodological musings and terminological quibbles, trying to get to the meat of his view.

I think the meat starts here:

A conventional list of divine attributes would be something like the following: existence, omnipotence, omniscience, timelessness, spacelessness, aseity, love, wisdom, will, justice, mercy, goodness, speech, truth, unity, unicity, triality.

He then points out that in his view, God shares some attributes with other beings, while others are uniquely his. So,

…if a subject possesses even one uniquely-divine attribute, then, by implication, he must posses every uniquely-divine attribute. Likewise, he will posses the unique set of divine attributes.

The divine attributes include psychological attributes, like love, mercy, will, wisdom, justice, and omniscience. This implies a rational, personal agent.

Right. So, the one God is a perfect self – a being with will and intelligence. I agree.

…what does it mean to believe in three persons who are one God?

1) One elementary formula says God is three in person, but one in nature.

2) What is meant by God’s “nature”?

God’s nature is defined by the divine attributes (see above).

3) What is mean by “person”?

A subject possessing the psychological attributes which the Bible ascribes to God (see above).

4) What is mean by “one” in nature?

On God’s nature – we’re in the dark about whether it is a universal (shared by the Persons) or whether it is an individual thing, a component which could only by had by one thing. As the persons of the Trinity, I assume that he wants to say that they each have all the divine attributes, not merely the psychological or mental ones.  Later he says,

…each member [of the Trinity] possesses the sum-total of the divine attributes.

And I’m going to assume that he holds the divine nature to be a universal which is possessed equally by each of the Three.

After 4) he goes on an excursion about monotheism and the Bible. Eventually, of a text in Deuteronomy:

It says only Yahweh can be the true God, but it doesn’t say who can be Yahweh

and on the famous monotheistic passages in the middle of Isaiah:

They contrast Yahweh’s unique knowledge, power, and control with the idol-gods of paganism–who are false gods precisely because they lack these attributes.

But, of course, the Father, Son, and Spirit in Trinitarian theology possess these attributes. Therefore, the exclusive claims of Yahweh in Isa 40-48 don’t exclude the Trinity. They don’t create any presumption against the Trinity. They don’t speak to that issue one way or the other.

We can ask here, of whom is Isaiah speaking? Who is this YHWH? We might well think it is the Father, since the NT plainly presupposes that the Father of Jesus and the one true God Yahweh are one and the same. Of course then anyone else, would not be the one true God.

But if I understand him, Steve thinks Isaiah there speaks of the one perfect Self, who later, we learn, is the Trinity. Isaiah of course doesn’t say anything about whether or not this perfect Self contains or is somehow composed of other selves.

What is more, the NT applies Isaian monotheistic passages to Christ. That’s something he shares in common with the Father.

So in Steve’s view, both Father and Son are taught to “be” Yahweh, that is, to be parts (members?) of this one great Self which is the Trinity. He’s none too clear about this part-whole relationship. But he says,

Bottom line: Trinitarian Protestants are only required to affirm the unicity of God as Scripture describes the unicity of God. Scripture doesn’t tell us that the Father, Son, and Spirit can’t be the “one” God if some things are true of the Father that are not true of the Son and Spirit, or vice versa.

The “unicity of God” I take it stands for the claim that there is exactly one true God, this being YHWH/The Trinity.

Finally, a flurry of three dollar words:

…if I were attempting to explain how it’s possible for God to be three-in-one, I’d invoke enantiomorphism to model the one-over-many relation. The persons of the Godhead mirror each other, in point-by-point correspondence. The internal structure of the Godhead exhibits self-similarity.

Yet mirror symmetries are not interchangeable, for chirality is irreducible. Their interrelation is equipollent, yet irreducibly distinct.

Is a mirror symmetry one or many? That’s a false dichotomy. Enantiomorphism exhibits both properties.

In plain English, I think this amounts to: The Trinity (“the Godhead”) is a complex whole, a compound Self who has three parts (the three divine selves), and these three parts are exactly alike one another.

In sum, the one God is a perfect being, a perfect self, who is the Trinity. He has within himself three parts – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each of these parts fully has the (universal) divine nature, and so, each of the essential divine attributes. Each is a divine self. And these three parts are indistinguishable from one another, or nearly so, though they be numerically distinct.

Steve, is this right? I await correction here or at your blog, before putting forth any objections.

Here, and here.

There’s some heat in addition to light, but it gets better as it goes on, and the inimitable James Anderson weighs in.

We discuss probably the favorite unitarian proof-text, John 17:3, as well as contradictions and methodological things.

Perhaps the most interesting point is Steve’s & James’s desire to somehow separate concern with consistency from exegesis. I think that isn’t, can’t, and ought not be done.

Check it out.

Update: some 4 posts so far. Have left lengthy comments.

Update: next to last installment.

Update: last.

Samuel Clarke (1675-1729) was one of the all-time great philosophical theologians. He was a greatly respected Anglican minister, and probably would have become archbishop of Canterbury if he hadn’t published on the Trinity. He was a younger friend of the famous scientist Isaac Newton, and became the main expositor of Newton’s science and the metaphysics and theology underlying it. He was also a wily metaphysician and an impressively learned scholar, capable of wielding a thousand textual facts to mount an argument.

In 1705 Clarke became famous for his still studied classic, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God. This is a big, developed presentation of a cosmological argument for the existence of exactly one “necessary” and moreover perfect being. In my view, it is not entirely successful, but it is impressive, and the most developed cosmological argument ever.

For whatever reasons, though probably in part, his interactions with his friends Newton and William Whiston, Clarke plunged into the Bible and patristics, and came up with finely honed views on the Trinity, along the lines of the early (c. 150-350) “fathers.”  This he published in his Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, the first edition of which was in 1712. This is his other, neglected, lost classic. It created quite a stir in early 18th c. England. Clarke narrowly avoided losing his job over the controversy. But here I’ll stick to its effect on my thinking.

In the first 35 pages, Clarke lays out some 441 passages in the NT, in which the Father either “is stiled the one or only God” (1), or “wherein he is stiled ‘God’ absolutely, by way of eminence and supremacy” (6), or “wherein he is stiled ‘God’ with some peculiar high titles, epithets, or attributes; which… are (generally, if not) always by way of supreme eminence, ascribed to the person of the Father only” (24). (In this post I’ve modernized Clarke’s words, omitting his early 18th c. use of italics and capitalization.)

After examining all passages concerning the Son and Spirit, and how they related to the Father, as well as all mentions of Father, Son, and Spirit together, Clarke gets theological. There’s a lot I could say about this, but in brief,

There is one supreme cause… of all things [i.e. the Father]; one simple, uncompounded, undivided, intelligent agent, or person; who is the alone author of all being, and the fountain of all power. (122)

And, appealing to some 45 NT texts, he asserts that

The Father alone, is, absolutely speaking, the God of the universe; the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the God of Israel; of Moses, of the Prophets and Apostles; and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He defends all these claims by quoting (in the original language, then translating) numerous church fathers, especially Athanasius, Novation, Origen, Justin, and Tertullian. In short, he believes in 3 divine persons, but only one, the Father is autotheos – divine through or because of himself. This one, is the one God of whom the OT speaks, i.e. Yahweh. In a most manly fashion, without yielding an inch, and yet without ungodly nastiness, he defends these ideas against all comers – people I would call mysterians, tritheists (aka Social Trinitarians), modalists, “Latin” trinitarians, and humanitarian unitarians (“Socinians”) – who, interestingly, he takes to be basically modalists. He does this in nine thick follow up pieces, responses to those few of his many critics Clarke thought worthy of an answer.

This is all a lot to digest. But the main effect all this had on me was to drive me back to the New Testament, to see if what Clarke says about it is true. I found that all the New Testament authors very clearly distinguish between God, a.k.a. the Father, and Jesus. With a few exceptions, “God” refers to the Father, and generally in Paul, “the Lord” is Jesus. (This last can be confusing to us.) But what could hardly be clearer is that Father and Son there are different selves. Clarke also shows that for just about any favorite proof text supposedly showing that Jesus “is God,” in the immediate context, we find that the author seems to assume them to be two.

Now the standard answer to Clarke’s point that Father and Son are different selves is this: Sure, they are two persons, but that’s compatible with their being one God. But Clarke explodes this defense numerous times. A “god” in the Bible is always a self – not a substance, nature, or whatnot. Thus, if Father and Son were the same god, they’d also be the same self, which Clarke would explain, is unacceptable modalism, and just makes nonsense of the New Testament. Just to take one point, the Son can’t be the same person he mediates for – if he’s the mediator between God and man (which the NT says he is), then that precludes his being the same self as God.Further, if you think that “sharing a substance” (whatever that amounts to) makes them one god, you need to say why it is that two gods couldn’t share one substance – and Clarke bets that you can’t show this. Keep in mind that he agrees with the claim of Nicea (325) that Father and Son are homoousios – but he argues that we should accept just the original meaning, which is, essentially, that the two are similar, i.e. both divine. Indeed, that very document plainly assumes them to differ, and so to not be numerically identical. (So, not one self, and not one god – for in either case, they would have to be numerically identical.)

Is this “Arianism“? No. For Clarke, Son and Spirit are uncreated, and there are eternally dependent on God.

Is it Social Trinitarianism? No. It has a number of similarities to it, but the one God isn’t any group, but rather the Father. It was Clarke who cured me of “social” Trinity confusions.

Is it monotheism? Clarke argues that it is. Still, it is not obvious that it is. This is a tortured question, and I’m going to dodge it here – I’ll just say that he and his interlocutors had quite an argument about this.

Is this theory orthodox (i.e. consistent with the creeds, or at least, the creeds which truly summarize the Bible)? Clarke thinks so, and enlists a large number of ancient catholic theologians on his side, such as the great Origen. This too is a tortured question – I’ll only say that it depends on just what traditions you take as normative.

Is it trinitarianism? I would say not, although Clarke urges that this is the best and only biblical way to understand the mainstream catholic tradition on God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. It isn’t trinitarian because the Trinity is not the one God, or any sort of god at all. Rather, the one god is (numerically identical to) the Father, and this is the characteristic, defining thesis of unitarianism, be it ancient, early modern, or present day. So, while Clarke has no intention of being “anti-trinitarian,” and while he has no love at all of Socinus and later unitarians, he is in fact one of the most important unitarian Christian thinkers of all time. I call Clarke a subordinationist unitarian, because for him the Son and Spirit are divine but ontologically subordinate to, eternally dependent for their existence and perfections on the Father. They are not, that is, absolutely co-equal, and that is another reason why, arguably, Clarke is not a trinitarian. Of course, for these same reasons, neither are all the other ancient “fathers” mentioned in this post!

(click for image credit)

Most importantly, is his the best reading of the Bible, and is it true? In my view, not quite – more on that in future posts.

But his key points are true, and are the key to a non-confused reading of the Bible. The one God of both testaments is none other than (i.e. same self, same god, same being as) the Father. And this Father is supposed to be someone other than Jesus. You can take that to the bank.

The price is that you must reject any theory inconsistent with those two points. But any Trinity theory which is self-consistent is not compatible with them. In the end, it is the Bible vs. catholic tradition. For me, the Bible had to win. So, reading Clarke led me to see the unitarianism (again, just the thesis that the Father is one and the same as the one God) in the Bible, and this  made me a unitarian, though I had no desire to be one, and many reasons to not want either that label or that belief. Without going into details, I’ve had some painful life experiences with cranks and conspiracy theorists, and I have no desire whatever to become one, or even to be thought one. That unitarianism is, at least post 4th c. , a minority report is a strike against it, in my view, a barrier it must overcome.

I was fully aware that my evangelical brethren would consider me a traitor and a non-Christian. I knew I’d be accused of arrogance, of thinking I was smarter than so many Great Christians, while in fact being about as smart as that goldfish in the picture above.

I get a sick feeling reading the ancient “fathers” viciously verbally attacking the so-called “Arians” in furious contempt, accusing them of blasphemy, assaulting Jesus, being sub-human, being closet Jews, and so on. (Not because I’m an Arian, although they are unitarians too – another species of subordinationists.) These words are, to be blunt, a disgrace and an offense against the Lord they claimed to be defending; it’s not to strong to say that many of them hated their subordinationist opponents. This is all about theories, mind you – well, about that plus politics – those “fathers” I’m referring to were catholic Bishops desperate to maintain control over their churches, and to enlist the Empire to help them smash their rivals.

Today, while the rhetoric is somewhat less brutal, many Christian thinkers are quite proud of their various Trinity theories, and many hold “the” Trinity doctrine to be the pride of Christianity, its shining jewel and most distinctive and central thesis. And many react harshly to those who would, as it were, show their theories to be theories, and multiple (and mutually incompatible). That is really what most of my published work has been so far, and I’ve been less than clear about my own views. (This because those views were (1) not strictly relevant to the task at hand and (2) still in the process of being formed, and (3) honestly, I was not eager to start taking fire, as it were. Call this last prudence or cowardice – you be the judge.)

But I have decided in recent months that to be ashamed of these truths would be disloyalty to Jesus, whose disciple I endeavor to be. He too taught that the one God, who is both his God and my God, was the one he called “Father.” (John 17:3, 20:17) So did Paul, John, and Peter. So, kick me in the shins and call me a heretic, but I know to whom I must answer. For the record, no, I don’t think I’m smarter than everyone else, and yes, I admit that it’s possible that I’m mistaken. And no, I’m not a “rationalist.” It is the texts which drive me to unitarianism.

Are there difficult texts for this view? A few, yes. But far fewer than for the common evangelical view that Jesus is numerically the same as God (and, of course, also: he’s someone else). This view makes every NT book self-contradictory.

While Clarke convinced me that the one God is the Father, I wasn’t sure that I was a subordinationist unitarian, as described above. There are another class of Christian unitarians, what I call “humanitarian” unitarians. That’s where I find myself. More on that next time.

Thanks be to God, later in the Spring of 2000, I was hired for a tenure track teaching job. I paid my dues prepping numerous classes, bought a more serious winter jacket, and really learned how to shovel snow.

In the Spring of 2001, I wrote the first version of what eventually became my “Unfinished Business” paper, and presented it at an SCP meeting in Rochester, NY. I must have sent this at some point to my friend Stephen Davis, because later in the Spring I received an unexpected email from Richard Swinburne saying he’d been told I had a good paper on the Trinity, and asking me if I wanted to attend an SCP conference in, of all places, Moscow, Russia! My paper was a bit… un-Orthodox. (Short synopsis – social theories don’t work, “Latin” theories don’t work… What gives?) Even the old ladies who translated my paper into Russian said, “Duh, it’s a mystery!”, so I decided I needed to think more about that.

At the end of “Unfinished Business” I allude to a theory that I take to be a neglected, but arguably orthodox Trinity theory. I had in mind a view like Clarke’s (who I discussed briefly last time). But that didn’t work out – more on that next installment.

In Russia I had a few interesting conversations with Swinburne. In one, standing in Red Square, not far from Lenin’s tomb and the Kremlin, I objected that if he was right, then God would have deceived the Jews. He replied that evidently, I hadn’t read his book Revelation. I admitted that I had the book on my shelf, but hadn’t read it. I later did. It’s now in a 2nd edition, and I must say that I don’t entirely know what I think about it.

But regarding the OT, his view is that the meaning of a text is context relative. The Church having accepted the old Jewish scriptures into its canon, for the Church, those books mean what they were understood to mean upon being accepted.

His favorite example, which he told me then, and which I’ve heard him give since, is:

O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us - he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks. (Ps 137:8-9, NIV)

For the Church, he says, this means that we should mercilessly kill off our sins or bad habits, or something like that. It is irrelevant, he argues, what the author may have meant when he wrote it.

I can’t bring myself to agree with this, for many reasons. But even granting this, I couldn’t see how it should soothe my worry, which was that in the OT, God revealed himself to be a great and good person, a god, a self. And if social theorists are right, this was evidently a lie, told  by three co-equal, always co-operating divine selves. What the Jews thought was a god, was really a tightly knit group (of divine persons, a.k.a. gods).

I don’t think all lies are wrong (“Yes ma’am, I do think your daughter makes a lovely bride.”)  - but this one appears to be wrong. I’m still thinking off and on about this issue, because of some helpful interactions with philosopher Bill Hasker, and it is clear to me that this sort of argument doesn’t count against all Trinity theories, and that it depends on the claim that the three always act in concert together – a claim which a trinitarian arguably needn’t hold (though it is a popular and much trumpeted assumption, in theological circles).

In any case, this concern about deception was one thing which pushed me away from any “social” Trinity theory. But a more important factor was that when I really dug hard into the Bible, I couldn’t find this wonderful fellowship, this quasi-family of divine persons there. It’s certainly not taught outright there, and I came eventually to think that it isn’t implied there either.

It’s easy to get off track on this point, because the personal relationship between Father and Son is a central theme of all the four gospels. Conspicuously absent are any portrayal of friendship with the Holy Spirit, and the idea that God just is this perfect community or fellowship.

This statement by John is telling in what it leaves out:

We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 1 John 1:3, NIV

I also found that historically, this idea of the Trinity as a loving community basically isn’t there, isn’t represented in the mainstream catholic (Catholic-Orthodox-Protestant) tradition. The closest things are the Cappadocians’ occasional use of an analogy of three people, and Richard of St. Victor’s arguments in the high middle ages. But in the many Trinity wars – I mean, theological disputes – of the modern era (c. 1550-1850) this idea just isn’t in play. Maybe something like this view was held by the noted early medieval Christian philosopher John Philoponus, but it was quickly condemned as tritheism.

Back to the deception concern, I also found, in reading early modern philosophical theology after my “Deception” paper was done, that I wasn’t the first to raise sort of objection. More on that reading, including Clarke, and its influence on me, next time.

Of all the ancient catholic “fathers” I’ve read, Origen (c.185-254) is the most impressive as a scholar.

It’s not that I usually agree with him – any non-Platonist is going to choke on many of the dishes he’s serving, and I think that most today would take issue for some his ways of interpreting the Bible. But he has vast knowledge, he makes pretty careful distinctions, he knows how to argue, and is just a much more developed and original thinker than most. Any contemporary who was going to square off with him either did or should have considered him a formidable opponent.

He wrote, or rather dictated, a vast amount – evidently, he did little else. Some think he may have been the most prolific person in antiquity. We still have a fair number of texts from him.

He’s historically important for many reasons, but for this post, what’s most important is that in the 3rd century he was considered a stalwart of mainstream (“catholic”, or “proto-orthodox”) Christianity.

Lately I’ve been reading Origen’s Commentary on John, as translated by Ronald E. Heine, who by way, I have found very helpful. He too is a first-rate scholar.

Evidently, passage here is directed against certain monarchians who thought (or at least, were alleged to think) that the Father = the Son, i.e. that the Son is the Father himself and vice versa. This passage struck a nerve with me, as it reminded me of conversations I’ve had.

The references in brackets are from Heine’s footnotes.

Those, however, who are confused on the subject of the Father and the Son bring together the statement,

“God… raised up Christ…” [1 Cor 15:15]

and words like this which show that him who raises to be different from him who has been raised, and the statement,

“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” [John 2:19]

They think that these statements prove that the Son does not differ from the Father in number, but that both being one, not only in essence, but also in substance, they are said to be Father and Son in relation to certain differing aspects, not in relation to their reality. For this reason, we must first quote to them the texts capable of establishing definitely that the Son is other than the Father, and we must say that it is necessary that a son be the son of a father and that a father be the father of a son.

After this, we must say to them that it is not strange for him, who admits that he can do nothing except what he sees the Father doing, and who says that whatever the Father does, the Son likewise also does [Cf. Jn 5:19], to have raised the dead [cf. Jn 11:43-44] (which was the body), since the Father, who we must say emphatically has raised Christ from the dead, grants this to him. Commentary on the Gospel According to John, Books 1-10, sections 246-7, pp. 309-10).

Ah, modalism bashing. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel, no? Both relaxing and fun. And there’s no chance that bullet will ricochet back.

Let’s make it more interesting. It’s abundantly clear from all of Origen’s works that I’ve seen, that he doesn’t believe in a tripersonal God. Rather, the one true God, Yahweh of the Old Testament, is none other than the Father of Jesus. (In the present book, see pp. 41, 79, 83, 302-3.)

Thus, Origen’s passage above is also an argument that Jesus isn’t God.

Yes, he thinks Jesus can be called “God”, and is in some sense “divine”. Many a latter-day reader seizes on these undisputed facts, and adopts the comforting reading that Origen is an almost-trinitarian, or a trinitarian with a few unseemly subordinationist elements. But he’s not a trinitarian at all – he’s a unitarian. The one God just is a certain self (the Father), and so is “unipersonal”, as many nowadays put it.

(Did I mention that he thinks the Holy Spirit to be created by God through the pre-existent Christ? (pp. 114) This may be an eternal process, but Origen may think that about the material cosmos as well.)

Back to Jesus, for Origen, he’s most certainly not the one God himself, the Almighty. (As for the differences between them – he’s very consistent – but that’s another post. In brief, only the Father is divine independently.)

I’ve seen the sorts of arguments Origen refutes here many times.

• The argument goes like this: Text 1 says God did X. Text 2 say that Jesus did X. Therefore, God and Jesus are one and the same (numerically one, numerically identical).
• This, as it stands, is an invalid argument.
• Thus, the more careful add: And surely X is something which only God himself could do.
• Now, the conclusion follows. (Also, this makes the premise that God did X unnecessary – do you see why?)
• But Origen knew this conclusion couldn’t be true, as some things are true of one, which aren’t true of the other. Also, he knew the premise to be false – you don’t have to be God to raise the dead – a man empowered by God can pull that off!
• Thus, assuming the texts to be consistent, Origen finds a way in which both God and Jesus did this action (raising Jesus from the dead), but in different senses. In essence, his point is that the Father did it through the Son – the Son is the instrument of the ultimate agent (i.e. God himself), being empowered by God, and freely cooperating with him.

So he’s made a common philosopher’s move – making a distinction, to get away from a contradiction. And note that his distinction arguably isn’t ad hoc; it’s well motivated – even apart from this issue, there is abundant reason (in the Gospel of John alone) to think that Jesus’s miraculous acts are empowered, enabled by the Father, who works through him.

It’s hard to find anything wrong with his impressive refutation of the claim that Jesus is God himself. I told you he was a pro!

Note that his core point (that it is false that f =s) doesn’t depend on his unitarianism. A present day “social” trinitarian like, say, William Lane Craig, can, would, and should agree with Origen about that. Where Craig, et. al. would disagree is on whether Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament, is numerically the same as the Father. (Origen would have plenty to say about that!)

How many gods are too many?

1? (atheism)

2? (monotheism)

Or: Bring ‘em on – there can never be too many! Woohoo! (polytheism)

On his blog Siris our friend Brandon Watson has been doing a book review of an interesting book by a polytheist named John Michael Greer, called A World Full of Gods.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about monotheism and polytheism, and I think this looks interesting.

Check it out.

The only place I got into was the Claremont Graduate University, then called the Claremont Graduate School. At the time the core faculty there was Al Louch, John Vickers, and Charles Young, and D.Z. Philips for half a year. I was accepted as an M.A. student, who could then be admitted to the Ph.D. if they thought I was up to it. (As it turned out, they did.) I was at CGU for two years (1993-1995), and what I mainly did was plow through yet more early modern philosophy – Locke, Hume, Kant, and now Reid. For me, Thomas Reid was a revelation after reading Hume and Kant. I actually became very interested in the history of the so-called “Common Sense” school, and sought out and read material by thinkers as obscure as Buffier, Oswald, Beattie, and McCosh. But I found that Reid was the best philosopher among them. Around that time Keith Lehrer came out with a book on Reid, but I can say that I was into Reid just a little before it was cool. I bought a reprint of his complete works which is now thoroughly marked up.

I took two rigorous seminars (Locke, Hume) with Edwin McCann of USC, who had also been doing courses at CGU. His knowledge of early modern philosophy was truly impressive, and his empiricist and Wittgensteinian leanings were an interesting counterpoint to my own zeal for traditional metaphysics.This zeal met another critic in Jill Buroker, in a seminar wholly devoted to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

D.Z. Phillips I avoided. I’d read real epistemology (Chisholm, Plantinga, etc.) and was always unimpressed with the later-Wittgenstein approach, especially to the epistemology of religion. Anyway, I heard it all repeatedly from some of my fellow students, who also said that every Phillips class was basically the same line over and over. I never could identify with the quasi-conversion stories some of them related about reading Wittgenstein’s On Certainty.

Another part-timer, who also did computer work for the college, was Dr. Joel Smith, who had been a student of the famous Wilfrid Sellars at Pittsburgh. I took an interesting History of the Philosophy of Science course with him, and he kindly  encouraged my forays into the dense work of Sellars and others.

Finally, one day I marched over to the adjoining Claremont McKenna campus ad introduced myself to Stephen T. Davis. He was as nice as could be, and I ended up taking his undergrad Philosophy of Religion class. This, I gobbled down like a cop eating doughnuts. I sat on the front row, took copious notes, and tape recorded it all to review later. He spent a lot of time on arguments for God’s existence – probably some material that later made it into this book – and I have fond memories of wandering around the Claremont campuses enjoying the metaphysical high after that class, as I pondered whether, say the ontological argument was sound. He was very helpful in his advice, and very kind to me later when I was on the job market. And he was tough- but broad-minded, non-polemical, and properly appreciate of historical philosophy – a good model for me.

What, at this time, did I think about the Trinity? Not much. By listening to some popular apologetics, I was at least a little familiar with the standard evangelical apologetics, I call it, Walter Martin way of arguing:

The Bible sez Jesus is God, the Father is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there is only one God. See: there is the Trinity!

(The cleanest version I’m aware of is this, by Francis Beckwith.) Briefly, I see this way of arguing as just confused and confusing. First, it isn’t clear at all that any creedal Trinity doctrine would follow. Second, it’s not clear that it is consistent (three different things, each being numerically identical to one thing??). It superficially follows a patristic mode of argument, but I don’t think it is the same as any of those ancient arguments. I suspect that Beckwith would not today maintain this way of arguing.

I also remember some basic defensive points, to the effect of: Why would we be surprised if the God of the Universe turned out to by greater that we can comprehend, or to have many persons in him? As I related once before, I tried some of this out on my fellow grad student Ed Feser, and he was unimpressed. (He wasn’t Catholic at that point.) Feser (rightly) not being impressed by my lazy points, I noted that I should think about this issue more some day.

Finally, I do remember privately speculating some about the subject, along the lines of modalism. See, the Holy Spirit would be God’s immanence – the Father his transcendence, and the Son his mercy. Thus, the Trinity would really be three attributes of God. See, I saved monotheism! Actually, I just added a theory to the modalist junk heap. But at least I didn’t air my thoughts in public.

D’oh!

Like many, I had read and been profoundly impressed with Alvin Plantinga’s first two Warrant books. Then I found that my fellow student Dan Speak was applying to Notre Dame for his Ph.D.. Though I had been admitted to CGU’s Ph.D. program, I too caught the Plantinga fever, and also decided that I might as well apply to a bunch of other places too. My CGU profs totally supported me in this. As it turned out, neither Dan nor I got into Notre Dame, but thanks to my recs from CGU, my applications were a little more fruitful this time around.

Next time: other coast.

Forthcoming in Faith and Philosophy: my review of

Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism? Philosophical and Systematic Theologians on the Metaphysics of Trinitarian Theology, by Thomas McCall.

Thanks to Tom for his feedback on my first draft of this, which saved me from several errors.

This is a unique, stimulating and yet unsatisfying book which should be widely read. The answers to the questions in the title, respectively: (1) either a “social” or a constitution theory, (2) Richard Bauckham’s. McCall is a theologian well versed in analytic philosophy. This book attempts, with some success, to bridge the cultural, intellectual, and institutional divides between Christian philosophers and theologians. McCall notes that the book “will at points be less than satisfying to partisans in both camps.” (8)

In chapter 1, he nicely summarizes much recent positive work on Trinity theories by Christian philosophers, as well as some anti-“social”-theory arguments. In the next two chapters he sets out to correct the oversights and misunderstandings of various of these philosophers by endorsing Richard Bauckham’s thesis that the earliest Christians “understood [Jesus] to be included in the identity of the one God” (57). New Testament era Judaism was “strictly monotheistic”, and yet Christians properly worshiped Jesus. In my view McCall is too confident that the New Testament supports all these claims. His treatment of the source material (56-72) is perfunctory, and will be unsatisfying to those familiar with competing interpretations. The last part of chapter 2 gives helpful expositions of what ancient Arianism and modalism really amounted to (as contrasted with the ways some philosophers have thrown around those heresy-terms).

In chapter 3 McCall rejects the apparent modalism of Barth and Rahner (87-9), and returns to the theories of chapter 1. Utilizing the fruits of chapter 2, McCall rebuts Leftow’s charge that a “social” theory is “Arianism”. (95-8) McCall admits that it is unclear how well this “social” approach coheres with the Western tradition, especially the “Athanasian” creed and theories of divine simplicity. (98-103) He rejects relative identity theories because in his view they don’t get us far enough from modalism and metaphysical antirealism, while he dubs the Rea and Brower “constitution” theory “promising” (109); in his view it faces no theological problems, but a few philosophical ones. He rejects Leftow’s “Latin” theory on the grounds of unclarity, misfit with the Bible, and that it likely can’t avoid modalism. (111-21) In chapter 3 and later in the book, McCall defends what most would call a “social” theory; we’ll return below to this positive thrust.

Chapter 4 sympathetically critiques theologian Robert Jenson’s Trinity theory, founded on this non sequitur (in Jenson’s words): “…since the biblical God can truly be identified by narrative, his hypostatic being, his self-identity, is constituted in dramatic coherence.” (132) Thus, “the one God is an event; history occurs not only in him but as his being” and “God is the event of the world’s transformation by Jesus’ love…” (ibid.) McCall points out what is plausibly a confusion about identity underlying Jenson’s project. (132-55) Jensonians will want to take a close look at McCall’s friendly suggestions for amending the theory.

Chapter 5 sympathetically critiques the theological font of much recent social-trinity theorizing, Jurgen Moltmann. McCall convincingly argues that Moltmann’s doctrine of “perichoresis” (applied by him both to intra-Trinity relations, and to God-world relations) “either does ‘not enough’ or does ‘too much’ (157) – that is, it doesn’t do enough to show how the three divine persons amount to one god, and it amounts to a God-world relation that is too close. To help, McCall urges that there are two kinds of perichoresis – one for inter-Trinity relations, and the other for God-cosmos relations, which he defines. (170, 172) This reader was unable to see how these constitute two species under any shared genus.

Chapter 6 enters the recent debate among evangelical theologians concerning whether or not the Son is eternally “subordinate to” the Father. This thesis, he argues, is either trivial or inconsistent with the creedal claim that the two are homoousios. (175-80) Further, proponents like Grudem and Ware on unclear about which version they really want to defend. (188). In the end McCall pleads that this issue be held separate from debates about the proper roles of women in church life.

Chapter 7 discusses Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas’s claims that “nothing in existence is conceivable in itself… since even God exists thanks to an event of communion” (190), “there is no true being without communion” (191), and “love … is constitutive of his [God’s] substance”. (192) McCall discusses these startling claims under the banner “Being as Communion”. They seem to entail that it is metaphysically impossible that there be only one thing, and that it is impossible for there to be a self not in a personal relationship with at least one other self. McCall might have demanded arguments to back these claims up, discussing prima facie counterexamples (respectively: God, a lifelong human hermit atheist – say, Christopher Hitchens raised by wolves).

McCall too is entranced by this picture of God as fundamentally an eternal, perfect, three-way friendship. Thus he accepts “Being as Communion” but argues that it is in conflict with another thesis to which Zizioulas is committed, what McCall dubs the “Sovereignty-Aseity Conviction”. This is the claim that God and only God exists a se – independently, or solely through himself, everything else depending on him. In Zizioulas’s view, only God – that is, the Father – exists a se, and he is radically free – not only creation, but even the existence of the Son and Spirit depend on his free choice. Thus, the Trinity exists contingently, and dependently on the Father. (193, 196)

McCall argues that this ascription of aseity only to the Father amounts to an objectionable subordinationism. In his view, “Traditional affirmations of subordination have revolved around the ‘function’ of the Son.” (198) He argues that Zizioulas should keep the “Being as Communion” thesis, as it is “central to the teaching of Scripture and the Christian tradition.” (205) But he should ascribe aseity not to the Father alone, but rather to the Trinity, holding it to be implied by the property divinity. (207) Further, the notion of aseity should be clarified – we should re-define it to mean a lack of dependence on anything which is not divine. (209) Thus, both the Trinity and each of the Persons exist a se. But, preserving the “Being as Communion” theme, each person depends for his existence on the other two – existing as a person only because of their relation to another.

What happened to the patristic “generation” and “procession” claims, which seem to entail that the Son and Spirit both exist because of the Father? McCall’s response is to redefine the sentence “the Father eternally generates the Son”:

…eternal generation refers us to (a) the incompleteness of the persons as individuals and (b) their complete and irreducible uniqueness in relation to the other persons. Seen this way, the doctrine of eternal generation emphasizes that to be a person – even a divine person – is to be incomplete “alone” or in oneself. (212-3)

Chapter 8 is McCall’s manifesto for trinitarian theology, some “theses for scholastic disputation”. (219) I’ll highlight just a few. We should think critically about alleged social and political implications of trinitarian doctrine. (225-7) Appeals to mystery can’t atone for doctrines which are “obviously inconsistent” (228); Trinity doctrines must be “coherent (or at least not obviously incoherent)” (229) as well as biblically and creedally kosher. But theologians “need not undertake to show how God is three and one. Indeed, to attempt to do so reeks of hubris.” (232) This seems inconsistent with his friendliness towards any attempt to construct a coherent metaphysical model of the Trinity. Doesn’t a response to the threeness-oneness problem entail an answer to the “how” question?

Another important assertion is that “Christian theological commitments should receive priority… if our intuitions about “theism” and “monotheism” conflict with the central elements of Trinitarian doctrine, then so much the worse for our intuitions about such things!” (233) It is hard to argue that if something is known to be divine revelation, it may be reasonably believed even if it conflicts with our prior commitments. But exactly what are these central elements?

McCall nowhere explicitly advances his preferred Trinity theory. But the outlines are clear enough. “The” Trinity theory, for McCall, involves three distinct “centers of consciousness and will” (12, 87-9, 236) – what I would call so many selves – capable of personal relationships with one another. Their status is absolutely (ontologically) equal, and each depends for his existence as a self on the others. These, in some sense are the one, triune God. This “God” is not a self, though it is “truly personal” (93-4), and so it has personal properties – or at least, it has parts which do. (Misleadingly, but following other recent social theorists, McCall refers to it throughout using personal pronouns.) But are not three equally divine selves three gods? No, for it is only Bauckham’s idea (which McCall agrees is also the first century Jewish idea) of monotheism which is relevant and Bauckham thinks it (this special New Testament era ‘monotheism’, the content of which is never spelled out) is consistent with trinitarian developments (233-6), we assume, even “social” ones.

Here most philosophers will balk; Bauckham’s claim cries out for clarification. Is not Jesus portrayed in the New Testament as someone other than God, someone who prays to and depends on God, who does God’s bidding? On the other hand, isn’t Jesus supposed to be “God incarnate”, God himself, in human form? Is God who Jesus is? Bauckham often writes as if God and Jesus are the same self. And yet, Jesus is in his words “included in the identity” of God, which suggests that they are not. He sometimes suggests that the Father is also so included. Through this cloudy lens, McCall would have us view the New Testament witness about God and Christ. But this claim, no less than speculative flights about perichoresis, is in need of careful analysis and evaluation. McCall himself, not holding God to be a self, won’t say that God and Jesus are the same self. In what sense, then, is Jesus “in God’s identity”?

McCall makes some excellent points about monotheism and the Trinity. It won’t imply monotheism, he says, to say merely that there’s one generic divine essence, that there’s only one divine “family”, that there’s only one font of divinity (the Father), or that the Three are united by a mysterious relation of “periochoresis”. (241-2) Amen to all that.

My biggest criticism of the book is its friendliness towards theoretical solutions which crucially depend on bold, arguably ad hoc redefinitions. Yet it is clearly written, sober, insightful, and rich with argument. As intended, it gives theologians and philosophers some important things to argue about together.

(click for image credit)

V.V. Raman is an emeritus professor of Physics at the Rochester Institute of technology, and has written a number of works on science and religion, his Indian heritage, and other subjects relating to the history of science, and the relation of the sciences to the humanities. Also, he’s a poet.

Watch his interview by Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn here (click the blue button) and then click here for my take ->

Raman points out that in Hinduism this question “Is God a Self?” is considered an important question. In the Hindu context, this is a dispute about the nature of the ultimate being that the Upanishads talk about: Brahman.

He might have added that it is a much debated question. (Heavyweight round: Sankara vs. Ramanuja.) But he doesn’t mention the opposition – he gives the Advaita Vedanta school’s answer as “the” Hindu answer. Fair enough; this is the view of most Hindu intellectuals in recent times.

One should be aware, though, that “Hinduism” isn’t so much a religion as a term for (my definition) religions indigenous to the Indian subcontinent which are neither Buddhism nor Jainism. It is notable that the term “Hinduism” only came into popular use when Indians reasserted their own tradition against their British, Christian overlords in the 19th c. Further, some great Hindu thinkers are clearly theists or panentheists, who think that God is a self. But what does Raman say?

“The divine is an abstract principle” which yet “has a personal dimension” through which we can “experience the divine”. So the answer is: no, God is not a self. But, God is self-like in some way. (But see the end of the post for an important qualification.) This is similar, broadly speaking, to what Christian social trinitarians say.

(click for image credit)

But it what way is God “personal”? In what does God’s “personal dimension” consist? God is available, to the less advanced anyhow, through images – pictures, statues. These representations – like Shiva here – which help one to think about God are “personal” in that they represent and resemble human beings, or embodied human persons. This is not sinful idol worship, in his view, for it is the divine which is being worshiped, not the statue or picture.

“The abstract divine principle” is Brahman, which he says has two “natures” or “levels” – nirguna brahman – Brahman without attributes, ineffable, and saguna Brahman – Brahman with attributes, perfections such as omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence. The former is the “highest” – I take it, this is how Brahman is in itself.

Despite what was just said, this higher Brahman is a unique “Cosmic Experiencer”, in other words, one Self inhabiting all things. He describes it is “Pure Awareness” or “Pure Consciousness”.

Kuhn rightly presses for some clarification. He points out that in theism, worshipers relate person-to-person to God. Does this work in Hinduism?

Raman anwers: yes. But this sort of devotion is merely one aspect of religiosity, one gets a deeper understanding of Brahman through meditation, leading to special, non-cognitive experiences (he doesn’t say this last though). The I-thou approach to God is to be cast off, he briefly suggests, by the more advanced. And this, I submit, is because in the end, for Advaita Vedanta Hindu theology, God is not a self. God is instead an attributeless, ineffable, simple, “pure consciousness”.

At the end, he suggests that we ought not limit ourselves to any one conception or experience of God. This probably makes sense, given his anti-realism about religion. Elsewhere, he says:

In the Hindu framework, monism (advaita: non duality) refers to the tenet that ultimately there is no distinction between the individual experiencing entities (jeevaathmans) and the cosmic experiencing entity (paramaathman).

As I see it, monism is the philosophical conviction that there is only one ultimate reality which manifests itself in countless modes. This seems reasonable, but I also regard this as an aesthetic predilection which may or may not have objective validity.

Religious anti-realism is a big subject; basically, it is the view that the real point of religion doesn’t require that traditional religious doctrines be all or mostly true. It is fair to say that most traditional believers, Christian, Hindu, and otherwise, reject this. Or rather – they’ve barely thought of it, but would reject it if they did.

In the end, I think Raman’s view is that he finds it more agreeable to regard God as something other than a self, but that others may differ in their preference. If this is right, then in a sense, he has declined to answer the question.

Philip Clayton

He publishes a ton, and much of his work is in the science and religion genre. Unlike many authors in that genre, Clayton isn’t a scientist – his training is in theology, religious studies, and philosophy.

He’s also a co-founder of this Big Tent Christianity project, which aims in his words “to foster a radically different understanding of the heart of Christian faith” – different, that is, from the theologically and culturally conservative and liberal camps.

But our question is: Is God a self? What saith Clayton? Check out his interview (blue button), and then click here for my take ->

Oh boy, that was a very professorial answer. I’ll try to unpack it some. Clayton undertakes to answer the question “as a metaphysician”, or from the perspective of “the philosopher of today” – as if the question were, can we know by reason alone that God is a self. (That’s a different question.)

Anyhow, in Clayton’s view the up-to-date philosopher should be very concerned about anthropomorphism - in other words, thinking about the Ultimate as too much like a human being. Clayton-as-metaphysician believes in a “ground” of the cosmos – I take it, a something-or-other which is more fundamental than the physical universe, and which explains it, or at least is in some sense or other the source of it.

But is there reason to think it a self? Well, says Clayton, “the metaphysician of today” starts with the view that the “ground” is impersonal – so he says the burden is on him (Clayton), who thinks that the ground is something like a self.

(I wonder if he means something like a self, or if he means something like a human self. The latter could be unequivocally a self. But not the former. Do you see the difference? It’s a big difference.)

Anyhow, why is the burden on the fellow who wants to think the ground isn’t totally impersonal? This part I need to explain.

So, many physicists and cosmologists have noted that there are numerous basic physical constants in the world, such that if any one of them were tweaked ever so slightly, biological life as we know it would be impossible – the cosmos would be too chaotic, too uniform, and so on. The cosmos, they say, look as if it has been “finely tuned” so as to make the evolution of life possible. But has it been?

Theists say yes – the best explanation, we say, is that there’s (at least) one provident self, who exists independently of the cosmos, who intended that the cosmos should contain biological life, and to that end, tweaked all these factors just right. This seems to blow out of the water the “explanation” that those factors just happen to be that way, or the dodge that if they weren’t, we wouldn’t be here wondering about them.

But here’s where it gets weird. There’s another explanation of that apparent fine tuning. Suppose there were some sort of random universe generator which spit out a huge number of cosmoi, each with these constants we referred to randomly tweaked in different ways. Most of these would be lifeless of course. But if there were enough of them, there would be some which were life-friendly. And this could be one of them.

It’s important to understand that this would explain the apparent fine-tuning. The question is, is it the best explanation? I agree with certain Christian philosophers – Stephen T. Davis, and Richard Swinburne come to mind, and especially Robin Collins who is coming out with a big book on this – that the theistic explanation is way better than the “multiverse” one. This, for many reasons. But just consider simplicity alone – one super self vs. an infinity or near-infinity of whole cosmoi plus some nearly inconceivable cosmos-generator thingee.

I take it that Clayton disagrees. Perhaps someone in the comments could point out in which book or article he goes into this. I’m not sure if he thinks the multiverse explanation is just better, so that the “ground” must also be this multi-cosmos-generator, or if he thinks that reason can’t decide between the theistic and multiverse explanations… I assume the former.

In any case, Clayton wants to say that the “ground” we must posit is “mind-like”, by which he means that it has (1) intentionality, (2) awareness, (3) rationality.

“I have omitted any moral dimension,” he says. It is a minimalist claim, no more than is needed to explain the multiverse. Again, this is Clayton speaking as philosopher.

He says that we should acknowledge Buddhist and Hindu theories on which the “ground” has both personal and impersonal characteristics. Really? Why? And, is this eastern insight understood as contradictory, or not?

I think, then, that Clayton’s answer is: yes. If by “God” we mean this “ground” of the multiverse, then we should think it is a self – we just can’t say, from science or metaphysics, whether this self is a good one or not. Then again… does this “ground” perform intentional actions - does it do things for reasons? If not, I’d say it isn’t a self, though it may be a mind… If and not, I think it wouldn’t be capable of entering into a personal relationship with anyone – and I assume that a capacity for that is implied by full-blown selfhood. So actually: I’m not sure.

Now I’m curious what Clayton-the-Christian-theologian’s answer is. If by “God” we mean the Bible’s one God, the God of Abraham and Paul and Jesus – is that being a self? If so, can he be the aforementioned ground? And does this fit with the Bible’s claim that people can know this cosmos to have been designed? Would a multiverse-generator count as a designer of this universe? Does the Bible not assert God to be an agent?

The interviewer suggests, and Flint agrees, that it is a “strange” question whether or not God is a person. Why? They don’t say – but I would guess that people may wonder if it is being asked if God is a human person – a dude or a lady. But what’s being asked is not that, but whether or not God is a self – this is a more abstract concept, which would be satisfied by an angel, an intelligent alien, a human, a god, etc.

Watch the interview here – then click here for my take. ->

Flint smartly beats a strategic retreat on the Trinity issue. He wants to talk instead about the generic, philosophical concepts of a person/self, and of God – the idea of God one encounters in philosophical arguments for God’s existence.

Elaborating on the classic definition of Boethius, he says that a person/self is

1. a substance/individual/entity (ultimate bearer of properties & not similarly in anything else), and
2. a mind – a knower, a thing which thinks, and
3. a willer / chooser – someone able to perform free, intentional actions.

God, though, a self, wouldn’t be a self just like us. For one, he’s perfect. Also, Flint points out that God has no extension (spatial extent), parts, matter.

They get sidetracked onto the means of God’s knowledge – Flint sketches the medieval view of God as not any sort of perceiver, but rather he knows all things through himself – through his own representations, perhaps, of what he’ll create (and if Flint is right, from knowing what any creature will freely do in any possible circumstance – in a nutshell, that’s the theory called Molinism. (Flint, by the way, has written one of the best books defending that theory.)

Towards the end, the interview asks: What does it make you feel when you think of God as a person?

Flint thinks of God as loving, involved, responsive – available for a personal relationship with us.
Anything less, he says, would be inadequate on a religious or spiritual level.

This was interesting. I’m with Flint on all of this (except the Molinism). I wondered if he was going to take a more medieval line, and say that God was really not a being at all, but rather “Being itself”, and only analogically a “person”, or something which *we can think of as* a person.

I’m curious about how he understands the Trinity doctrine, and whether it is compatible with what he says here. On most “social” theories, God is not a self. On some others, I think – in particular modalist construals of the orthodox formulas, God is a (single) self. I know he has highly developed, traditional Catholic views on the Incarnation, but I don’t know his thoughts on the Trinity.

But in any case, I give two big thumbs up to what he says here.