Richard of St. Victor 10 – Perfect Happiness Requires Perfect Love (Scott)

Aug 102009
 
We might look happy, but we're not. We hated the guy in the upper left corner; so he's not around anymore.

We might look happy, but we're not. One of us really hated the guy who looks 'asleep'; one of us really loathes someone's antiperspirant. We need love. Please help.

After his initial argument from perfect love for a Trinity of persons, Richard tries to support it by a brief argument from perfect happiness. Here I wish to summarize what I take to be this confirming argument from the plenitude of happiness. [Keep in mind that ‘plenitude’ has that particular meaning of a property of a substance that is not from another substance, but all other substances are from it.] Richard argues that if we are committed to the claim that God is perfectly happy, then we should also be committed to the claim that God is a Trinity of persons. Continue reading »

Richard of St. Victor 9 – Perfect Love Requires Three Persons (Scott)

Jul 282009
 
Three is perfection, four is redundant. (Un)Fortunately, one of these people gets knocked-off.

Three is perfection, four is redundant. (Un)Fortunately, one of these people gets knocked-off.

In this post I’d like to focus on Richard’s initial argument for why God must be a Trinity of persons. Thus far in his argument he has argued for two divine persons, and now adds a further line of argument to show that God is in fact a Trinity and not a Binity of persons. Why must God be a Trinity of persons? Richard argues from his notion of perfect love. Continue reading »

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.

Continue reading »

Richard of St. Victor 7 – The Same Divine Substance (Scott)

Jun 272009
 
There is only one.

There is only one.

Up to this point in Book 3 Richard has told us several things about love (caritas). We have wondered at his saying there isn’t a perfectly good person if he doesn’t love. We have sorted through some necessary conditions for love such that we wonder whether a perfectly good person p must love another person q if p is to be perfectly good. You might say we’ve been contemplating some divine ethics, or aesthetics, or whatever.

In the previous post I suggested how we might interpret what Richard means by saying (two) divine persons are equal and similar to one another, namely the divine persons have the same disposition of love and the same acts of love (see [T4’] and [T5’]). In the next part of Richard’s argument he returns to his metaphysics of the divine substance which he discussed in Books 1 and 2. Continue reading »

Richard of St. Victor 6 – Supreme Love Only Among Equals, Again (Scott)

Jun 122009
 
Hey bro. I'm JR Ewing. (Forget Dynasty, Dallas - the best kind of city -is awesome.) Just because you don't love me doesn't mean I don't love you.

Hey bro. I'm JR Ewing. (Forget Dynasty, Dallas - the best kind of city -is awesome.) Just because you don't love me doesn't mean I don't love you.

In De Trinitate Book 3.7 Richard summarizes some of what comes beforehand. We have learned that supreme goodness requires supreme love (i.e. supreme love is a necessary condition for supreme goodness), and that supreme love requires more than one person. If supreme love were only self-love, then the total state of affairs “one divine person has self-love” is not as perfect a state of affairs as another total state of affairs, namely “two persons have self-love, and each loves the other person.” Thus,

If there is supreme love, then there is a plurality of persons.

Likewise, Henry infers from what he takes to be the nature of supreme love to entail the equality of the persons in question.

If there is supreme love, then there is an equality of persons.

Below I try to explain  just what all this means.

Continue reading »

Richard of St. Victor 5 – Evaluation of the argument thus far (JT)

Jun 072009
 
"Have you seen this baby? We're dead serious, you know."

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

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

Continue reading »

Richard of St. Victor 4 – Charity is shared by equals (JT)

Jun 022009
 
Equals. Period. None have been greater.

Equals. Period. None have been greater.

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

Continue reading »

Richard of St. Victor 3 – Perfect charity must be directed at another person (JT)

May 202009
 
“Steven, let’s look over there and pretend like we don’t see that floating head.”

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

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

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

Continue reading »

Richard of St. Victor 2 – God’s goodness requires charity (JT)

May 162009
 
“Listen Luke, Claudia and I have something to tell you. This comes from a good place, because we love you. It’s the 1980s now. Less gel, more blow dry.“

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

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

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

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

Let’s look at T1, T2, and T3 in turn.

Continue reading »

Richard of St. Victor 1 — Introduction (JT)

May 132009
 
Could Krystle, Blake, and Alexis Carrington NOT have been a dynasty? I think not.

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

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

Continue reading »

Switch to our mobile site