Saith Sudduth,

Krishna is the all-attractive Absolute who is manifested in the different religious traditions of the world. There is merging into impersonal Brahman. There are also distinctly theistic experiences in which the self encounters a personal God.

The ultimate being is either personal or not. Thus, it can’t be that both the aforementioned experiences are veridical, i.e. represent God as God really is.

I think Sudduth agrees; he goes on to explain that “merging” experiences are something like the devotee coming in contract with what some would call the “energies” of God. Of course, Indian philosophers like Sankara would disagree. And I don’t know why we should accept Sudduth’s claim that:

…that transcendental consciousness (the aim of nearly all religious traditions) is in fact variegated in nature.

I don’t know that there is any one general sort of experience which nearly all traditions aim at. Experiences of a loving god are not at all like the sorts of experiences monistic types profess, wherein, they say, there is no subject-object duality, but one just is non-cognitively aware of  the ineffable One.

 It is most fitting that God would seek to experience the love of the devotee in much the same way that he would seek to experience the suffering of the devotee (in the person of Jesus). In Christ God suffers with us. In Chaitanya, God loves with us. In each case, there is an important identification between God and us. God tastes the suffering that distances us from Him and the love that brings us near to Him.

I’d like to hear more about this “identification“. When theologians who’ve read Moltmann start talking like this, I think that more often than not, they’re sorely confused about the various ideas of sameness/identity. I’m assuming that Sudduth, being a philosopher, is not. So, in what sense is God “the same as” (“identified” with) the devotee?

Perhaps the answer is in this part of his letter:

 …the GV tradition specifically views the relationship between God and the self as an inconceivable and simultaneous difference and non-difference (achintya bheda abheda tattva). This strikes a wonderful balance between the monism of Advaita Vedanta and the strong dualism of the Dvaita schools originating from Madhva (and also reflected in most streams of the Christian tradition). As I see it, the ways of unqualified oneness and unqualified separateness (between self and God) each tends ultimately to dissolve the love relationship between the self and God. Love requires a merging of two beings into one, yet without a loss of their individuality. This is inconceivable, but its truth is the precondition for the possibility of real love between the self and God. Consequently, I now accept a panentheistic metaphysics in which the universe and human souls are, to put it roughly, in the being of God.

If I understand him, he’s a negative mysterian about the relationship between God and devotee. It might at first appear contradictory (they’re numerically one, and they are not) but in fact the relation is something which can’t be grasped by us.

Honestly, I don’t see how this can be a “wonderful balance.” The mind has nowhere to rest; as with all negative mysterianism, a commitment has been made to simply think inconsistently, but insist that really, this is sort of just pointing at an inconceivable fact, an ungraspable one. This sort of move insulates one’s claim from refutation, but it also leaves unclear why anyone else should agree with it. (What claim?)

Moving on, Sudduth holds that

…GV has the intellectual resources for a reasonable inclusivist understanding of religion.

This needs some unpacking for non-philosophers. In philosophy of religion, “inclusivism” is the claim that the goal of religion (whatever one thinks that is) can be gotten by people outside the one true, or the one most true religion. (“Can be” – the general position is neutral about how often this happens.) The Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner famously stumps for this, and no small number of analytic Christian philosophers think this must be right.

I would be interested in why Sudduth thinks GV is particularly well off here. Is it better off on this score than Christianity? If so, why? And what sorts of religions might one gain the goal of religion through? And, what is the goal of religion? I would assume it is theistic – like, escaping the cycle of reincarnations and living in the presence of Krishna and his other devotees.

But then, Sudduth says,

…God-realization (or salvation) takes on diverse forms

But what sort of goal is this “God realization”? Is he saying that it takes monotheistic forms (like I just described) and also unitive, absolutist, “merging” forms (the ole drop of water going back into the ocean). What is the genus of which these two ends are the species, I wonder? It seem to me that there must be one, else the “cure” envisioned by his theology is weirdly ad hoc and disjunctive.

Moreover, what separates the sort of inclusivism he wants to endorse from being a type of religious pluralism (the view that the goal of religion can be acheived through all, or all major religions)? I assume there is a difference, which is why he says “inclusivism” and not “pluralism”. But what could it be? Might not Krishna also graciously offer pretty much any goal aimed at by any religious tradition? If not, why not?

Obviously I am not a fellow-traveler with him, but I wish him the best, and will be interested to see his thoughts as he says more about all of this.

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. 

Which of these is false?

1. The Christian God is a self.
2. The Christian God is the Trinity.
3. The Trinity is not a self.

One option is to vote that none are false, since all are true. As I write this, 27% have picked this option. But this is a poor pick. This “is” here is the “is” of numerical identity throughout. Given this, it is impossible that all three be true; they are demonstrably inconsistent. (The logical form is: 1. g=s, 2. g=t, 3. -(t=s).)  At least one must be false.

• If 1 & 2, then not-3. If this God is a self, and is the Trinity, and it must be false that the Trinity is not a self.
• If 1 & 3 then not-2. If God’s a self, and the Trinity isn’t, then it must be false that God just is the Trinity.
• If 2 & 3 then not-1. If God’s the Trinity, but is not a self, then it is false that the Christian God is a self.

Why then do 27% opt for inconsistency (affirming all three)? I’m not sure.

• It could simply be desire for orthodoxy being stronger than the desire to avoid believing falsehoods.
• Or perhaps some imagine that “human logic” can be ignored; inconsistent claims may each be true, at least about God.
• Maybe it’s clinging to the mysterian hope that this must be a merely apparent contradiction, though no one can make that appearance recede.
• Or perhaps they’re misreading 1, as if it said only that the Christian God is personal - not a self, but somehow self-like or closely related to at least one self. (Compare: being a king vs. being kingly.) If this is the case, then when tutored on how “is” is meant here, such folk should probably pick another option. To avoid this confusion, we could rephrase the inconsistent triad thusly:
  1. The Christian God is a certain self.
  2. The Christian God is the Trinity.
  3. The Trinity is not any self.

  This triad has a different logical form (1. Ex (x=g & Sx)  2. g = t, 3. -Ex(x=t & Sx)), but the three are still demonstrably inconsistent. It’s just that the proof is harder. I think this is actually a better way to formulate the inconsistent triad. (Reading the logic I just gave: 1.  There exists some x which just is God and which is a self. 2. God just is the Trinity. 3. It’s not the case that there exists some x such that it just is the Trinity and it’s a self.)

Let’s run through the other options briefly. I list the poll percentages as of the writing of this post.

• If you deny 1 (29%), you’re probably some sort of “social” trinitarian. You think God is a group, a community, communion, a quasi-family, consisting of three divine selves.
• If you deny 3 (11%), you’re probably some sort of modalist. You think that God, that is, the Trinity, has a first-person point of view. He’s a self all right, though he operates in three different ways, as Father, Son, and Spirit, or maybe Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier. He’s group-like perhaps, but is not literally a group. He’s a god, and the only god.
• If you deny 2 (33%), you’re probably some sort of unitarian. You think the one god is the Father, and that the Trinity isn’t a god, but is rather God, God’s Son, and God’s Spirit.

And since one can always tell what is true by consulting simple, tiny-sample internet polls, this shows that unitarianism is true… today.

(click for image credit)

In his comment on my previous post, Brandon points out that he doesn’t assert the case described there to be a counterexample. Rather, he was wondering why it isn’t a counterexample; he was probing to see my response.

Fair enough. I’ve left the title of the post as is just for continuity with part 1.

The case Brandon described, was an omniscient God, who is both subject and object of knowledge of himself. God as knower is subject of knowledge but not object. But God as object is what is known, and not the subject of knowledge. So, don’t we here have something which is and isn’t intrinsically some way (being self-knowing) at a time? If so, the principle is false.

My response is that there is no reason to think this is a counterexample. At best, it just assumes the principle to be false, but doesn’t give us any reason to agree. “God as knower” just is “God as object” – of course, any self-knower just is that which is known by himself.

In Brandon’s original description of the case, he said, that

itself as object can’t have all intrinsic modes in common with itself as subject, because the intrinsic properties of objecthood and subjecthood themselves are different

I want to say that the concepts being an object of knowledge and being a subject of knowledge are different. Yet, it is obvious that one being may simultaneously satisfy both. Now if one satisfies the latter concept, this is because one presently has a certain mode, a certain mental state. But if one is an object of knowledge, this means that someone or other is knowing you, but it needn’t be the case that this is you. But when it is you, when you know yourself, what makes it true that you satisfy the concept of being an object of knowledge is that same mode that makes it true that you’re a subject of knowledge (of you). One could, I think confusingly, describe this as you-as-knower “intensionally differing from” you-as-known. But this is no difference in you, but only in how we refer to or think about you.

Finally, Brandon makes an interesting point:

x=y -> (Fx < -> Fy),

in other words, is only problematic in the cases you’re trying to work around if in those cases it really does matter (for whether F can apply to something) whether you are plugging something into x or plugging it into y. Since, ex hypothesi, we are plugging the same thing into x and y, that means that x and y must be taking the same value in different ways (i.e., they are intensionally different). The original only needs to be reformulated if intensional descriptions, like temporal or epistemic modalities, already can make a difference; if they don’t, your reformulated principle is unnecessary.

It may be unnecessary to get around “intensional descriptions” cases. For example,

1. Bob believes that Meat Loaf rocks.
2. But Bob doesn’t believe that Michael Lee Aday rocks.
3. Therefore, Meat Loaf isn’t Aday.

I think it is enough to point out that Bob does believe, of Aday, that he rocks. He doesn’t believe that the sentence “Michael Lee Aday rocks” is true. If read all de re (concerning the thing itself) 2 is false. If read read de dicto (concerning the sentence) then 3 doesn’t follow. If you read one premise de re and the other de dicto, 3 doesn’t follow.

I am more worried about intrinsic change. A cruder Leibniz’s Law seems to rule this out.

But the main reason I like my narrower principle is that it is sufficient to make my theological point, and by focusing on modes/intrinsic properties people (or most people!) easily see it to be true.

I think I neglected to answer Brandon’s question in a comment, whether or not I consider all modes to be non-relational. Well, I don’t think that any are relations, which as it were “obtain between” things. But a mode may be directed towards something, itself, or something else, even something unreal. Still, a mode is, as it were, within the boundaries of its owner; but like a vector, it may point in a direction. A mode can be “relational” in that it is part of what makes some statement with a relation-term true. e.g. This basketball is bigger than this golfball. What makes this true is that basketball’s mode of being, e.g. 12 inches in diameter, and the golf ball’s mode of being 1.5 inches in diameter.

Bonus video:

Aside for non-philosophers: philosophers are usually after universal principles, truths which hold in all cases, rather than mere non-universal generalizations, i.e. rough rules of thumb which have exceptions. (An example of the latter: Boys love trucks.) Thus, when a philosophers makes a (universal) claim, other philosophers come along and try to show that it is false with “counterexamples” – real, or even merely possible, examples which show the principle to be false (as it doesn’t apply to them). For example, if someone says that all Texans love tacos, a counterexample to this would be a person who is from Texas and doesn’t like them. Just one counterexample is enough to show a universal claim to be false. When provided with a counterexample, of course, one will often refine, as it were, the original claim (e.g. All native Texans love tacos, or All Texans who appreciate Tex-Mex food love tacos) and the game goes on. This is all in the interest of discovering together what is true and what is false. (In my example, of course, those “refinements” would admit of easy counterexamples too.)

So my principle said, to paraphrase, that for any x and y, x just is (=) y, only if they don’t ever intrinsically differ. (I put this in terms of one having a “mode” at a time if and only if the other also has that mode at that time. Others would call these “intrinsic properties.”)

Here our friend, philosopher and blogger Brandon offered a counterexample, in comment #35 on that post.

if there is any entity that necessarily knows itself completely, its being both a subject of self-knowledge and an object of self-knowledge would seem like an intrinsic property. Now, if its complete self-knowledge is genuine, itself as known by itself just is itself as knowing itself. But itself as object can’t have all intrinsic modes in common with itself as subject, because the intrinsic properties of objecthood and subjecthood themselves are different: objecthood and subjecthood are intensionally different and this is essential to what they are. Thus it would seem that itself as subject and itself as object are intensionally different, that this intensional difference is intrinsic. So it seems at first glance that we have itself as subject just being itself as object, and yet itself as subject being distinct as to intrinsic modes from itself as object. I assume you’ve considered cases like this, so the question is, why isn’t this a counterexample?

Brandon is describing a case where, in his view, x = y and yet it is false that one intrinsically is a way if and only if the other is too. In other words, this is supposed to be an example of it being true that x = y and yet x and y differ. In subsequent exchange (comment 47) Brandon accepts my paraphrase of this in terms of God-as-subject and God-as-object. He’s assuming those are numerically identical yet they differ. How so?

That God as subject is subject and God as object is object.

In other words, the first is subject of knowledge but not object of knowledge, and the second is object but not subject.

I’ve granted earlier in the discussion that being a subject of some knowledge (e.g. knowing that pizza usually has cheese) is a “mode” or an intrinsic property of a person. So if there is any actual or possible case in which something simultaneously has and lacks this mode, then my principle is false.

I’m not sure he’s given us this. But let’s see what else he says:

After all, it’s at least enough to distinguish them that we can put God, under the intension of ‘subject’, into x, and God, under the intension of ‘object’, into y, and keep the two distinct all the way through. If this kind of intensional distinction is or can be a distinction in intrinsic modes of subjects as opposed to those of objects, then the consequent equivalence is broken without breaking the antecedent identity. If extensionally identical values of variables can under any circumstances have intensionally distinct intrinsic modes, the conditional doesn’t hold for those.

Whew – the philosophy lingo is coming hard and heavy here! Let me try to translate or paraphrase:

First sentence: we have concepts of being known, and of knowing. And we can think of God in either way – as being known (by himself) or as knowing himself. When we think of God in the first way, let’s call that x, and when we think of him in the second way, call that y.

Second sentence: this x and y differ, and if this can be a difference of mode/intrinsic property, then Dale’s principle is false. (It would be true that x = y, but false that they don’t differ – so the whole thing, that x = y only if they don’t differ, would be false).

Third sentence: the x and y refer to the same thing (are “extensionally identical”) yet x differs from y. Booya!

Brandon continues:

All identity statements have to assume that some intensional distinctions don’t matter. In x=y, we obviously are intensionally treating x and y differently in some sense — they get different letters to indicate that they are different variables and they have different locations in the equation (to the left and the right of the equality sign, for instance). We simply assume that these can be ignored to make sense of the statement as an identity statement; this allows us to focus on purely extensional matters. It’s when we get into the sorts of intensions that are typically handled by things like modal operators that things get tricky. It’s precisely this that causes problems for the standard version of the Indiscernibility of Identicals — it fails in certain kinds of plausible temporal logics, epistemic logics, etc. (because it fails to take the quirks of the relevant intensions into account), which is equivalent to saying that you can propose temporal, epistemic, etc. scenarios that are plausible counterexamples.

I would say yes, an identity sentence treats “x” and “y” as different terms. But this doesn’t assume any difference whatever in that to which those terms refer. But a sentence like “x = y” is not asserting the terms to be one, but rather the things. I don’t think any differences are being ignored; all agree that we can refer to things using different words. About these other alleged counterexamples – let’s just deal with this one first.

I’ll pause here to make sure I’m getting all this right; I’ll respond in my next post.

• someone: Jesus is God.
• me: You mean, Jesus is God himself?
• someone: Yeah.
• me: Don’t you think something is true of Jesus, that isn’t true of God, and vice-versa?
• someone: Yes. e.g. God sent his Son. Jesus didn’t. God is a Trinity. Jesus is not a Trinity.
• me: Right. Then in your view, Jesus is not God.
• someone: But he is.
• me: So, you think he is, and he ain’t?!
• someone: [silent puzzlement]

In this post, I want to explain the part in italics. First: a point of clarification. The second and third lines are important. When many say “Jesus is God” they just mean that in some sense or other Jesus is “divine.” (This could mean a lot of things, depending on one’s assumed metaphysics.) But this sort of person (line 3) understands Jesus to be “divine” in the sense of just being one and the same as God – that Jesus is God himself – one person, so just one (period).

In the italicized line, I’m applying  something called Leibniz’s Law, or the Indiscernibility of Identicals. I sometimes put this roughly as, some x and some y can be numerically identical only if whatever is true of one is true of the other. That’s a sloppy way to put it.

In logic, a more precise way of stating it (used e.g. by Richard Cartwright) is:

(x)(y)(z) ( x= y only if (z is a property of x if and only if z is a property of y))

Literally: for any three things whatever, the first is identical to the second only if the third is a property of the first just in case the third is a property of the second.

The basic intuition is that things are as they are, and not some other way. So if x just is (is numerically the same as) y, then it can’t be that x and y qualitatively differ. This seems undeniable.

There are a few problems, though, with the above formula, which any person trained in philosophy may spot.

First, don’t things change? e.g. Last year you weighed 200, and now you weight 210 lbs. But does this mean that the you of 2010 is not numerically the same as the you of 2011? Ridiculous! Things can qualitatively change while remaining numerically the same. That’s just common sense.

Second, what about this property: being believed by Laverne to be innocent. Suppose that Casey Anthony’s lawyer mounted this defense:

Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury. I submit that we can be sure that Caylee’s killer is not one and the same as my client Ms. Anthony, for the killer has a feature she does not: being believed by Ms. Laverne Shirley of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to be guilty of murder. I’ve got Ms. Shirley right here, so you can just ask her.

This would move the defendant to tears, as it is such an obviously stupid defense.

Strictly, then, there are two sorts of counterexamples to the principle I stated above.

I haven’t concerned myself much with this so far in print or online. I’m more concerned with the fundamental intuition (that is, the evidence) imprecisely gestured at above, than I am with coming up with a counter-example-proof universal principle. When arguing about God and Jesus, I just stick with differences which are at a time (or eternal) and which are intrinsic, or which are relational, but don’t have to do with intentional attitudes of third-parties, like beliefs. (I take mental states or actions or stances to be intrinsic to the self whose they are.)

Thus, one of my favorite examples has been that one night in the Garden of Gethsemane: at that time, Jesus didn’t want Jesus to be crucified (he was asking that this may be averted, if God would so permit) yet God did want Jesus to be crucified (that was his plan all along). Or again: if you think God is triune – that would be intrinsic to God and eternal – either something which holds at all times, or in timeless eternity. If one thing is always triune and the other ain’t – we’re not talking about one thing here.

But here’s a crack at a principle which is necessary, exceptionless, and self-evident: sadly, it requires 4 variables. It requires in addition just one 3-place predicate W (a, b, c). This is to be read: a is a way b is at c, or a is a mode of b at c, or a is how b intrinsically is at c. Here then, is my preferred version of Leibniz’s Law:

(w)(x)(y)(z) ( x = y -> (W(z, x, w) <-> W(z, y, w)))

Literally: for any four things, the second and third are identical only if the fourth is a way the second is at the first just in case the fourth is a way the third is at the first.

Dang, that’s ugly. Perhaps better to use the variables:

For any w, x , y, and z: x just is y only if: z is a way x is at w if and only if z is a way y is at w.

Call these, from left to right: z, y, x. (click for image credit)

This gets around the two sorts of problems noted. This principle would not let us infer that I’m not numerically the same as my slimmer, younger self. Nor would it license a foolish juror to exonerate Anthony on the grounds that the killer, but not she, has the feature being thought by Laverne to be guilty, for that phrase does not pick out any intrinsic way Casey Anthony ever has been, is, or will be.

The predicate W (_,_,_) can be interpreted in different ways. Not believing in properties, but believing in primitive modes of things, I like to understand it as above. But if you like, interpret W in terms of property-instantiations (if you believe in universal properties) or individual properties (tropes) if you believe in those. It is just meant to refer to things we’re all familiar with, like my being happy now, that ball’s present redness, etc.

It seems to me that this formula captures the intuition gestured at above, and that it is self-evident – something a normal, adult human knows to be true upon coming to understand what it means.

Dear reader: you understand it, with a bit of effort, no? And so, does it not have that obvious shine of truth to it that this has:

For any x, y, and z: if x is bigger than y, and y is bigger than z, then x is bigger than z.

You know this to be true not just of the cartoon here, but of any three things there are or could be, right?

And so, if you’re very sure this version of Leibniz’s Law is true, you should be as sure that Jesus and God are two, as you are that they have ever, do, will, or just could differ (be different ways). You too are now a dastardly “denier of the divinity of Christ,” but only in the sense described at the top of this post. Whether Christ is divine in some other sense, e.g. possessing the divine nature, or being the member of a perfect society, is another question.

Back to the conversation above, last two lines. You think them to have differed. Yet, things which have differed can’t be numerically one. Ergo, in a sense, you already believe them to differ. Or at least, you’re already in a sense committed to their non-identity. If you don’t believe this outright, you should, once it is pointed out that it follows by a self-evident truth from things you do believe. You then have a choice – revise those old beliefs, so they no longer imply this new one, or accept this new belief, and adjust other beliefs according. I suggest that your beliefs about = and Leibniz’s Law are not good candidates for revision, though.

Interestingly, I never have these sorts of conversations with people who understand what identity is and believe there are truths about it – i.e. philosophers, philosophy majors, theologians who have studied a bit of philosophy and logic. They simply accept that Jesus and God aren’t one and the same (aren’t identical), and go on to theorize accordingly.

Dear philosophical readers: can you provide a counterexample to my version of Leibniz’s Law?

In his excellent entry “Relative Identity“ veteran logican and philosopher of language Harry Deutsch says about the best that can be said for relative identity theories – that maybe, arguably, they solve or help to solve various metaphysical problems. See his sections 2 and 4 for these. His section 5 is a penetrating analysis of Geach’s very hard to follow arguments.

Deutsch’s point of view is very different from that held by most philosophers. For this, see chapter 1 of Colin McGinn’s Logical Properties. (NDPR review.) This is more or less  the “orthodox” view that most philosophers hold, atheist or theist, trinitarian or not. I largely agree with it, except for its Platonic aspect. I uphold the logic of identity as McGinn understands it, but do not want to commit to the existence of abstracta like relations. I think the truthmaker of a sentence like “Dubya just is George Bush” is going to be a concrete object, the ex-president himself. In this, I’m in the minority; most philosophers find abstracta indispensible.

Another place one can start is Harold Noonan‘s excellent “Identity” entry. He’s an excellent philosopher, and the piece has many virtues; in particular, see his section 2 on Leibniz’s Law vs. substitutivity principles.

The best thing I’ve ever read on identity and relative identity is John Hawthorne’s chapter “Identity” in The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics. A version is available to scribd users here.

• This piece is very rich, and defies easy summary.
• A basic point is that “identity” in a basic, unanalyzable concept, and so we ought not worry about circular definition. Geach’s failure to recognize this is a core problem with his whole project. (p. 122)
• Hawthorne’s section 3.1 brings out the many problems facing Geach’s project. His conclusion: “In sum: it is no mere artefact of philosophical fashion that Geach’s relative identity approach has few adherents.” (p. 123) You’ll have to read the piece to see why.
• Another basic, crucial point, I would paraphrase as follows. (p. 100) We all understand “something is cold and fizzy”. The shows that we have a concept of identity; if that sentence is true, the cold thing just is the fizzy thing. Contrast with the sentence: “something is cold, and something is fizzy.” That we have this concept of identity, of course, doesn’t imply that we understand identity-logic, or have any theoretical opinions on the subject at all.
• Hawthorne’s main point is that “Puzzles that are articulated using the word ‘identity’ are not puzzles about the identity relation itself.” (p. 99) When I think about the many metaphysical treatments I’ve read recently of the puzzles Deutsch discusses, I think this is an emerging consensus. There are always other moves to be made, and all sorts of weird metaphysical doctrines to be brought into play. But the emerging consensus is that identity is to be held constant; the concept of identity is common coin in these disputes, just as is, say, the assumptions that modus ponens is valid, or that no contradiction is true.
• By the examples he gives, it is plain that Hawthorne is well aware that evaluating Trinity and Incarnation theories necessitate careful thinking about identity, but he doesn’t ever entry the fray. (But he almost does – see p. 120 fn. 38.)

Be forewarned; there are pervasive confusions about numerical sameness among Christian theologians nowadays, in particular about personal identity (the relation being the same self as). This is largely due, I think, to uncritical reliance on poorly done philosophy. This is not due to any intrinsic difference between the fields or any commitment intrinsic to Christianity, as there are and have been theologians who are thoroughly clear-headed about identity. The solution is to digest well done philosophy, so as to be able to make clear distinctions and to reason surefootedly; that’s the reason for this post. Don’t give in to the temptation to foolishly heap scorn on “absolute” identity or on Leibniz’s Law, as if they were mere speculations, and things to which you yourself are not committed.

This time, the second and final part of our tale. (Part 1.) It features staggering scientific breakthroughs and moderate fool-pitying, so it should be suitable for all audiences. 

Bill went on to serve for several decades at the Central Police Station, and often enjoyed regaling guests or fellow employees with tales of the two most confused polygamists he’d run across. “Probably too much of the firewater,” he’d opine, “or else, too much metaphysics!” He even gussied up the stories a bit, making the first feature identical triplets, and the second, two sets of conjoined twins. (In the improved version, the man insisted that he’d only two wives, but plainly, he had four – just, in pairs).

But the young Bill never expected the amazing advances in science that took place throughout his career, and for the most staggering alleged polygamy case he could imagine. In brief, it’d been discovered that Aristotelian-Thomist dualists were correct. A human self, it turned out, was the combination of a body and a substantial form, or soul. Both physicalists and Cartesian dualists now receded to the shadows for good, along with phylogiston chemists, ether physicists, and phrenologists. People now laughed at the bad old days when people dismissed souls out of hand as undetectable. Now, souls could easily be detected, and it could now be observed, via instruments, for example, that the soul leaves the body about five minutes and forty seconds after brain waves have ceased. And the rough date of “quickening” was known as well. Early fetuses, it turned out, lacked souls, and so were not human persons, until about mid-way through the third month.

It had been awhile since Bill had seen a polygamy prosecution, but on this particular day, officer Young brought him a distraught young man named Mr. Gill Tea.

“Mr. Tea,” queried Bill, “I see that you’re charged with polygamy.”

“I’m guilty as sin,” bawled the young Mr. Tea.

This is a new one, thought Bill. I guess they don’t all deny it. “Guilty, eh. How many wives do you have?”

“Two, sir. But I didn’t know.”

“What, you couldn’t tell them apart?”

“Yes, well, no. Well, sort of.”

It turned out that Gill had married what he thought was a young woman named Sue. Sometimes, Sue was mellow, slack, almost depressed. And at other times, her life was a manic whirl of activity, and she was the life of the party. At these times, she called herself “Suzie.”

“I thought it was just her style, to use that zippier, more upbeat sounding name when she was ‘up’. And she responded so well to the meds.”

“Medicine?”

“Yes, for manic-depression. When she took that, she was always Sue. Little did I know!”

It turned out that what looked like one woman was in fact two women sharing a body. A human being, everyone now knew, was a soul combined with a body. But thanks to the new soul-detection technology, it was known that this body contained two souls, only one of which could “drive” the body at a time. The medicine in question, it turned out, simply prevented the Suzie-soul from taking the driver’s seat. But it still composed Suzie all along, just as the same body plus a different soul composed Sue.

And the pitiable Mr. Tea had unknowingly married both. After inadvertently courting the both of them, he married Sue is a lovely traditional ceremony. Then, on a trip to Vegas, he was surprised when Suzie insisted on hitting a drive through wedding chapel, and redoing the paperwork and everything with the name “Suzie.” He called this event re-affirming their vows, but he eventually noticed that Suzie simply called it their wedding.

As Bill knew, this was actually a well-known phenomenon. It had turned out that what used to be called “multiple personality disorder” victims (a diagnosis now discarded) fell into two camps: malfunctioning selves, and multiple selves sharing a body. Gill’s wives Sue and Suzie were examples of the latter – their souls two, but with only a body between them.

“I wouldn’t be too worried, Mr. Tea,” said Bill. You’ll just have to divorce one. Society is very tolerant of adultery these days, especially if your spouse has no objection to it.”

“I’m a good Mormon!” blurted Gill.

“I’m sure you are, son. Say, have you ever thought of refuting the charge?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you’re a polygamist only if Sue and Suzie are not the same wife.”

“Yes.”

“But, what if you argued that they are the same wife?” suggested Bill.

“That’s nonsense. A wife just is a certain woman. And we all know that they’re not the same woman, for a woman is a soul-body compound, and Sue is one such compound, and Suzie’s another.”

“Not so fast. What if you admit that a woman just is a certain soul-body compound, but argue that different women can be the same wife?”

“I don’t understand. A wife just is a certain woman. I pity the fool who relies on that argument.”

“Mr. Tea, stop your fool-pitying. I’ve seen a lot of cases like this. Bear with me.”

“I’m listening.”

“See, you admit that Sue is not Suzie, and Suzie isn’t Sue. But you urge that they should be counted as one.”

“What does that mean, though?”

“It means that they share a single body.”

“Yeah, well… that seems like, I don’t know, an abuse of language. I mean, Sue’s a good wife. Suzie is not such a good wife. So, they just can’t be the same wife. If they were, they’d be equally good or bad at wifing.”

“I see your point,” conceded Bill. He gave up his attempt to coach the pitiable Mr. Tea. In the end, Mr. Tea too was convicted, but only of involuntary polygamy, and the judge suspended his fine.

Bonus internet nonsense here.

 Here’s a bit of fresh fiction, possibly part of a future paper or book some day. Of course, there is purpose behind the madness. (See 2.2.2 here.) It is dedicated to philosopher Bill Hasker. Enjoy.

It was a quiet day at the Salt Lake City Central Police Station. Bill looked at the clock and fiddled with his pen. Two hours till quitting time, and he’d only booked two new arrests. Little did he know, it would still turn out to be an interesting day.

“Bill, wake up.” It was officer Smith, escorting a bearded man in handcuffs. “Book this fellow, would you?”

It was a polygamy case. Bill had seen these from time to time. Although the state of Utah had always outlawed polygamy, and the Mormon church had stopped the practice in 1890, ever since, there had been holdouts, people the media called “Mormon Fundamentalists” who insisted on practicing the old Brigham Young lifestyle, usually out in the boondocks.

“But I’m innocent,” insisted the accused, whose name was Mr. Dienay.

“That’s what they all say,” mumbled Bill, filling out a form.

“Seriously, I have but one wife. But they say I have two.”

“Well, Mr. Dienay, you’ll have you chance to prove that in court. Now, who lives with you?”

“There are my children Alma, Nephi, Ether, and Moroni.” Bill recorded their names, dates of the birth, sexes.

“And there’s my wife Polly. And there’s my wife Molly.”

“I thought you said you only had one wife.”

“Oh, they’re the same wife!”

Bill adopted an uncomprehending stare. “The same wife,” he flatly echoed.

“Absolutely.”

“Mr. Dienay,” continued Bill, “please describe them.”

“Well, Molly is a brunette, about as tall as me, and fair-skinned. Polly is a redhead, very short, and has freckles.”

“And they’re the same wife.”

“Yes.”

“If they were the same wife, wouldn’t they be exactly… the same?”

“Oh no, sir. But they’re one wife, all right. I’m a monogamist.”

“That means that you have only one wife, I mean, at a time.”

“I know what “monogamist” means! A monogamist is a man who is married to some woman, and any wife he has is the same wife as her.”

“So, a monogamist can have more than one wife?”

“You’re not listening. Polly and Molly are one wife.”

“Um… what do you mean, what you say that they are one wife.”

“They’re to be counted as one.”

“Yes, I get that… but why?”

“Because, they have exactly the same DNA. Polly and Molly are identical twins. And when the DNA is the same, the wife is the same. They differ, yes, and are two women, but when you understand how to count them, you’ll get the right count, my friend: one. One wife.”

“Good luck with that defense,” laughed Bill. With that, he sent Mr. Deinay to his cell.

As Bill pondered this interesting way of counting wives, officer Smith returned with another arrestee to book. His too was charged with being married simultaneously to two women, and like Mr. Deinay, he denied the charge. His name was Mr. Joyner.

“Mr. Joyner, I need your wives’ names, please.”

“I only have just one wife, sir.”

Bill paused and squinted. “Mr. Joyner, if your one wife puts on a hat, how many hats does she put on?”

“Two.”

“Mr. Joyner, how many full names does your one wife have?”

“Two – Mrs. Jill Joyner and Mrs. Jane Joyner.”

Bill was on to him. “Mr. Joyner, are your wives… I mean, are Jill and Jane identical twins?”

“No, sir. But they are twins.”

“When your one wife puts on a pair of pants, how many pairs does she put on?”

“One – but it’s a special one, with three legs! My wife Jill and Jane are conjoined twins. They share a leg.”

“That’s interesting. I’ve heard of conjoined ladies marrying, but usually it is two two different gentlemen. Anyway, Mr. Joyner, you have two wives. I assume you’re going to plead guilty.”

“No – I’m innocent! How can a monogamist like me confess to bigamy?”

“Mr. Joyner, what do you think a monogamist is?”

“A monogamist, sir, is a man who is married to a woman, and any woman that is his wife has a body not wholly distinct from that woman’s body.”

“So you think that Jill and Jane are one wife.”

“Yes, can you not count?”

“They’re different, so they’re two!”

“Well, two ladies, sure. But you count wives by discrete bodies. If some ladies share a body, or a part of a body, they are exactly one wife. Different wives have non-overlapping bodies.”

Bill had heard enough. “That’s ridiculous. Don’t you know what a wife is?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” shot back Mr. Joyner.

“A wife just is a certain woman, a person, a being with feelings, knowledge, free will.”

“Your point being…?”

“You’ve got two of those. It’s just that they can’t be separated, and they share a body part or two.”

“You’re begging the question,” protested Mr. Joyner.

Both Mr. Joyner and Mr. Deinay lost their cases, and both spent time in Utah low-security penitentiaries.

To be continued…

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.

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.

But if you believe a particular scholar is a sophist, restrict yourself to analyzing the arguments and let the reader draw the conclusion about your interlocutor’s character. Otherwise you merely create another road block to other people hearing and processing your legitimate arguments. (emphasis and link added)

Well said, Randal.

I would add that Jesus has a relevant teaching here:

Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell. (Matthew 5)

(No – I’m not implying that Stark is hell-bound.) I take it that Jesus’s point is about contempt - a settled hatred of, despising of, another. Jesus’ teaching is to leave this behind, even leaving behind (as far as possible) garden-variety anger. These are his standards.

I’m also reminded of this teaching by James:

But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness. (James 3)

This whole attitude is wholly compatible with giving someone’s book or article a thorough refutation. And as Randal points out, a hefty dose of contempt will render your arguments largely ineffective, at least, to the very people you might hope to convince (as opposed to your own cheering section).

Sure, it feels good – but sin almost always does… at first.

Finally, I think of the men who taught me in grad-school – mostly non-Christians, mostly not even theists. They would gladly refute their opponents, and most thoroughly, but would never willingly descend to public abuse. If we are Christians, can our stardards be lower than theirs?

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!

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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.

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I recently mentioned the big impact of Dallas Willard’s work on my thought and spiritual life. I can’t help but share the passage below, which is part of what I had in mind when writing this paper.

Incidentally, I think think this is entirely compatible with the views that God hates evil, and that his wrath is to be feared. His happiness is so vast that despite his perfect sympathy, none of the billions of evils he witnesses ruins his life, which remains an immovably and immeasurably happy one. He is happy to be sure, but his tolerance his its limits.

Still, I agree with Dallas that it is crucial to understand and imagine God to be a being who is thoroughly well off, having as his prized possession a magnificent physical universe populated by an astounding menagerie of creatures. I would add that he doesn’t need it; he’d be well off even without any of it. This is one way in which God is self-sufficient.

From his Divine Conspiracy:

Central to the understanding and proclamation of the Christian gospel today… is a re-visioning of what God’s own life is like and how the physical cosmos fits into it. It is a great and important task to come to terms with what we really think when we think of God. Most hindrances to the faith of Christ actually lie, I believe, in this part of our minds and souls.

…We should, to begin with, think that God leads a very interesting life, and that he is full of joy. Undoubtedly he is the most joyous being in the universe.

…While I was teaching in South Africa some time ago, a young man… took me out to see the beaches near his home in Port Elizabeth. I was totally unprepared for the experience. I had seen beaches, or so I thought. But when we came over the rise where the sea and land opened up to us, I stood in stunned silence and then slowly walked toward the waves. Words cannot capture the view that confronted me. I saw space and light and texture and color and power. . . that seemed hardly of this earth.

Gradually there crept into my mind the realization that God sees this all the time. He sees it, experiences it, knows it from every possible point of view, this and billions of others scenes like and unlike it, in this and billions of other worlds. Great tidal waves of joy must constantly wash through his being.

It is perhaps strange to say, but suddenly I was extremely happy for God and thought I had some sense of what an infinitely joyous consciousness he is and of what it might have meant for him to  look at his creation and find it “very good.”

We pay a lot of money to get a tank with a few tropical fish in it and never tire of looking at their brilliant iridescence and marvelous forms and movements. But God has seas full of them, which he constantly enjoys. (I can hardly take in these beautiful little creatures one at a time.)

…This is what we must think of when we hear theologians and philosophers speak of him as a perfect being. This is his life.

…Now, Jesus himself was and is a joyous, creative person. He does not allow to continue thinking of our Father who fills and overflows space as a morose and miserable monarch, a frustrated and petty parent, or a policeman on the prowl.

One cannot think of God in such ways while confronting Jesus’ declaration “He that has seen me has seen the Father.” One of the most outstanding features of Jesus’ personality was precisely an abundance of joy. This he left as an inheritance to his students, “that their joy might be full” (John 15:11).

…So we must understand that God does not “love” us without liking us – through gritted teeth – as “Christian” love is sometimes thought to do. Rather, out of the eternal freshness of his perpetually self-renewed being, the heavenly Father cherishes the earth and each human being upon it. The fondness, the endearment, the unstintingly affectionate regard of God toward all his creatures is the natural outflow of what he is to the core – which we vainly try to capture with our tired by indispensable old word love. (pp. 63-4, bold emphases added)

A lesson in epistemic humility from a great master of 20th century literature:

‘You are a slow learner, Winston,’ said O’Brien gently.

‘How can I help it?’ he blubbered. ‘How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.’

‘Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.’

(George Orwell, 1984)

Winston here doesn’t get it. It seems to him that 2 + 2 = 4 – always! And always, because it is necessarily so; it seems to Winston impossible that adding two to two not result in four. He can see that it is with his eyes, and “see” that it must be with his mind. Or, so he thinks.

O’Brien explains that the Magisterium of the Party is to be trusted above one’s own intuitions. If they say it is three, then it is three. And should that say it is five, it would be five. If they say it is 3 and 4 and 5 – then so be it. Sanity involves trusting their judgements over your own; theirs trump yours. You must know your place, citizen. Only an extreme individualist would disagree.

Is it an apparent contradiction (aka positive mystery)? Sure. Winston seems to think this is somehow a problem.

But is it any surprise that the collective wisdom of The Party should surpass that of a puny, recently born creature like yourself? After all, the Party consists of humans like you, many of them smarter than you. Surely it is sheer arrogance to think you’ve magically become wiser than the Party – the Mother who birthed you, provided for all your needs, and taught you everything you know. Honestly, what is the chance of that? We should expect that some things she tells us do no make sense to us. Thus, that the Party asserts apparent contradictions is evidence that she speaks only truth.

Poor Winston – he thinks he’s sane. But, that’s how a lot of insane people think of themselves.

Winston might try to argue that he really loves the Party, and would like to reform it for the better. Insanely, he doesn’t realize that the Party is just as it should (now) be. Big Brother has seen to it, and we all trust him – at least, those of us who are sane. If he wants to change the Party, he will, and it will be the right change at the right time. Winston is a citizen, and the place of a citizen is to serve and obey the Party, which requires trusting her judgements, which are of course His judgements as well. Winston keeps forgetting that. Thank Big Brother that we have O’Briens to gently remind us.

Below the fold, a bit more therapy:

Here’s the whole BBC production, starring a young Peter Cushing. It’s good.

I find that I’m still stuck in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It was in the late 1990s that I discovered two Christian authors who were to have a big effect on my thinking. In both cases, I’m still processing their thoughts, still going back to them, still re-reading.

In this post, I’ll discuss the first of these: Dallas Willard, professor of Philosophy and USC, and well-known writer on Christian spirituality. While at Biola I’d heard him talk at an SCP, and was vaguely aware that some profs at Biola had studied with him, such the man who introduced me to philosophy, Del Hanson. His philosophical work that I’ve read is well done and helpful. But his magnum opus is his Divine Conspiracy, clearly the product of many, many years of studying and reflecting on the Bible, and learning to live it out as a disciple of Jesus.

I found this book staggering for many reasons. It took me a long time to read it the first time; each chapter required a lot of thought to process, and I’d read one, then stop to think about it for several days or weeks. To call it a book a Christian spirituality is to shortchange it. It is that, but it’s also a theology of the Kingdom of God, and a practical one at that.It is dripping with insights about the New Testament, about Jesus and God, about human psychology and relationships. Name a Christian classic – Augustine’s Confessions. The Imitation of Christ. C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. I hold that Willard’s book is far superior, and affords far more insight.

Back in the winter of 1999-2000, based on my study of this book, and taking its advice, I went on a spiritual retreat, alone at a Catholic retreat house in Massachusetts. I read through all four gospels, and rededicated my life to God, to discipleship to Jesus. It gave me a huge boost in faith, in trust in God, which saw me through the process of job hunting, c. Oct 1999-April 2000. Most find this process terrifying, but I thought it was fun!

I’ve read it maybe five times or so (I’m reading it again now), and I’ve worked through it with about three groups of people. But I wouldn’t say that I’ve really learned and lived its message. I’m still working on that. Other Christians I’ve read it with have usually either (1) pooped out before the end, or (2) thought it was really neat, but they seemed to go on understanding the message of Jesus and Christianity as they always had – like, in one ear and out the other. These responses, I could never understand.I’d be a happy man if I could be a part of a group of Christians who really got the good news of the Kingdom, and who would throw aside all tradition, if that’s what it took, to get it.

The content of the book is hard to summarize. But he expounds on the good news of the Kingdom of God, which was Jesus’ central message. He shows, I think, how this fits with Paul’s emphases, and with the Old Testament. He provides a reading of the Beatitudes on which they make sense! He expounds at great length on the theme of discipleship to Jesus. He devastatingly critiques the theological Right as well as the theological Left in contemporary America as inadequate “gospels of sin management”. Although Willard writes as an evangelical to evangelicals, in many ways he’s profoundly out of step with them. I don’t think he always realizes to what extent this is so – or at least, he never draws attention to these issues.

Someone – I think it might have been J.P. Moreland – once described Dallas as a sort of Christian Jedi Master. That’s not far off the mark!

One big theme Willard hits is the centrality of God to Jesus’ world view.

Now God’s own “kingdom,” or “rule,” is the range of his effective will, where what he wants done is done. The person of God himself and the action of his will are the organizing principles of his Kingdom, but everything that obeys those principles, whether by nature or b y choice, is within his kingdom. …the kingdom of God is not essentially a social or political reality at all. Indeed, the social and political realm, along with the individual heart, is the only place in all of creation where the kingdom of God, or his effective will, is currently permitted to be absent. (p.25)

You can tell here that he’s no Calvinist. In fact, it turns out later that he’s a sort of open theist, though he doesn’t advertise it. He also, much of the time, sounds like a unitarian – someone who thinks God just is a certain self, namely the Father. It’s  important, he argues, that we think rightly about this magnificent self.

You cannot call upon Jesus Christ or upon God and not be heard. You live in their house… We usually call it simply “the universe.” But they fully occupy it. …Only as we understand this, is the way open for a true ecology of human existence, for only then are we dealing with what the human habitation truly is. And the God who hears is also one who speaks. He has spoken and is still speaking. Humanity remains his project, not its own, and his initiatives are always at work among us. (pp. 32-3)

To [Jesus'] eyes this is a God-bathed and God-permeated world. …Until our thoughts of God have found every visible thing and event glorious with his presence, the word of Jesus has not yet fully seized us. …We should, to begin with, think that God leads a very interesting life, and that he is full of joy. Undoubtedly he is the most joyous being in the universe. (pp. 61-2)

Here, as through the book, God isn’t Jesus – rather, Jesus is someone else, someone other than God, a go-between relating humans to God. He’s quite far from the Jesus-is-God-himself strain of thinking that is so prominent in American evangelicalism. When you go to look at the New Testament, you see that this is how it is – Jesus and God are, as it were, two characters. And God is held up as fundamental and central, although Jesus is exalted to his right hand, to sit on his throne with him.

Just like in the New Testament, Willard often uses “God” to refer to the Father. But totally unlike the New Testament, eventually it becomes clear that Willard is a social trinitarian! For him, God is a group, a society which is a close-knit community of divine persons. (e.g. pp. 382-4)

What? How can God be both a group (so, not a self) and a “He” (a self)? Clearly, Willard thinks the one God is both. If he’s a self, though, he must be a thing, a concrete entity, an individual substance. But at times, Willard describes this “God” community as neither a thing nor a self. He seems to think that the fundamental reality is really a group of three realities, a group which isn’t itself a thing.

…the advantage of believing in the Trinity is that we then live as if the Trinity were real… a self-sufficing community of unspeakably magnificent personal beings… In faith we rest ourselves upon the reality of the Trinity in action – and it graciously meets us. For it is there. And our lives are then enmeshed in the true world of God. (p. 318)

What gives with those last two “it”s? I don’t know! Is the one God an it, or a he? It matters! I see the unfortunate influence of late 20th c. “social trinitarian” theologians here, injecting incoherence into what is otherwise a magnificent scriptural picture. It’s pretty hard to read the New Testament and come away thinking that the Father is either a member or a proper part of the one God. The New Testament is firmly on the “he” side, and assumes that the God of Jesus (the Father) is one and the same as the God of Israel.

If you’ve read my philosophy papers, it’ll probably come as a surprise that my favorite Christian book (outside the Bible) is by a social trinitarian. But I’ve found that subtracting the confused social Trinity theorizing from the book leaves it as valuable as it was; in other words, those theories are inessential to nearly all that Willard says. Even Jedis have their bad days.

Next time, another Christian classic which changed my life.

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.