Richard of St. Victor 8 – A Proposed Constitutional Trinitarian Taxonomy (Scott)

Jul 142009
 
Yeah!! It just might be that constitutional theories are on the rise. Thanks Rick St. Vick!

Yeah!! It just might be that constitutional theories are on the rise. Thanks Rick St. Vick!

Richard of St. Victor is well known for talking about love, and how awesome it is. It might surprise a few people who have only read the popular English translation of Book 3 (the love/ethics? book) that On the Trinity contains six books. The English translation has brought attention to what some contemporary (continental-esque) philosophers would call Richard’s ‘erotics’. What remains to be seen is whatever he says in Books 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6. In this post I’d like to focus on one theme in these other books, which I’ll call Richard’s Constitutional Latin Trinitarianism (= CLT). At the start I must say that I am claiming that Richard suggests a constitutional model of the Trinity and not that he straightforwardly proposes one. At least, Richard can be read to propose such a model–after all, certain later scholastics like Henry of Ghent seem to have read Richard in that way.

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Derivation vs. Generic Theories – part 6: Issues for the Generic View (JT)

May 172008
 

“And the best thing is, we can take these blocks apart!”

In the last post, I introduced the ‘generic view’ of the trinity, namely the claim that Divinity (that which makes the divine persons God/divine) is shared equally by all three persons and so does not belong to any one divine person more than another. In this post, I would like to highlight some of the issues faced by a generic view.

My point of departure is modern day criticism of the generic view such as that of Colin Gunton and John Zizioulas (to name just a few). These authors are not, in my opinion, the most philosophically astute critics, but nevertheless, they do highlight some of the issues relevant for the generic view.

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Derivation vs. Generic Theories – part 5: The Generic View (JT)

May 112008
 

“Gee Hank, it sure is swell that communism won out.
This house belongs to all of us!”

In the last post, I pointed out some of the problems faced by an Athanasian sort of derivation view. If you found such problems to be decisive, then alternatively you could opt for a generic view. In this post, I would like to introduce the generic view.

As I mentioned in the first post, the generic view claims that Divinity belongs equally to the three persons, similar to how three people might jointly own the same house. Divinity thus belongs to no one divine person any more than another. The generic view (let’s call this GV) rejects DV in favor of this:

(GV) Divinity belongs equally to each divine person.

For both the derivation and the generic views of the trinity, Divinity is an entity that’s shared by the persons. On (the Athanasian version of) the derivation view, this shared entity just is the Father, but on the generic view, this shared entity is not the Father. The Father isn’t shared, Divinity is.

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Derivation vs. Generic Theories – part 4: Problems for a Derivation View (JT)

Apr 302008
 

Q stunned

“You were filming that?”

In the last post, I explained that for Athanasius’s version of the derivation view, when the Father generates the Son, the Father shares his substance with the Son. That means, I took it, that the Father himself becomes a constituent in the Son, similar to the way that a lump of bronze is a constituent in a bronze statue.

One of the things Athanasius wants to do with this idea is explain how the Son is divine/God. The basic idea is that the Father shares his substance, i.e., Divinity, with the Son, and so the Father shares his properties with the Son. That is, to put it the other way around, the Son inherits properties from the Father. This is supposed to account for how the Son gets divine properties. However, this is where we start to run into problems.

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Derivation vs. Generic Theories — part 3: The Derivation View (JT)

Apr 232008
 

Stark Trek - Q

Now Q comes with spring arm action
and dyno bud (optional)!

The Nicene Creed claims that

(Q) The Son is begotten from the substance of the Father.

The term ‘begotten’ is just an older English term for ‘generated’. In the ancient world, ‘generation’ was a technical term for biological reproduction (e.g., when humans make baby humans, when trees make baby trees, and so on). In this post, I want to describe how Athanasius takes Q to imply a derivation view of the trinity.

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Derivation vs. Generic Theories — part 2: Arianism and the Trinity (JT)

Apr 132008
 

Arius

“I hate wearing this stupid hat.
They didn’t make me a bishop anyways.
At least the cape’s pretty cool.
It’s got St. George’s Cross going on.”

In my last post, I gave some basic definitions for the ‘derivation view’ and the ‘generic view’ of the Trinity, and I said that the historical background for the ‘derivation view’ rests in the Nicene Creed’s claim that

(Q) The Son is begotten from the substance of the Father.

Of course, the meaning of ‘from the substance of the Father’ is not exactly clear, not in a philosophical sense anyways. What exactly is Q supposed to mean? In this post, I want to explain what one interpreter, namely Athanasius, felt was at stake with Q.

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Derivation vs. Generic Theories — part 1 (JT)

Apr 122008
 

 

Branching Tree

– “Daddy, why do trees branch out?”
– “So you can climb in them, Jimmy.”

Patristic scholars tell us that the doctrine of the trinity was really developed in the 4th century. The question is: what exactly is the ‘development’? If you read many of those scholarly big books on patristic theology, you’ll occasionally come across the idea that there were two major theories of the trinity floating around in the 4th century: the ‘derivation view’ and the ‘generic view’. But what exactly are these two views, and who held them? Continue reading »

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