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. (In the English translation the term ‘plenitudo’ is translated as ‘fullness’, which might be misleading because it is a technical term in contrast with ‘participation’ (participatio). So I stick with ‘plenitude’.) In Book 3.8 Richard reminds us that

R1: In mutually loved and mutually loving persons, in order that supreme love might exist worthily, there must be in each both supreme perfection and the [plenitude] of all perfection.

In Book 1 Richard distinguished between ‘plenitude’ and ‘participation’.

R2: If p has a plenitude of X, then p has X independently of all other substances.

R3: If p has a participation of X, then p has X dependently on another substance.

Think of the plenitude of X as the original X, and participation as contingently having a likeness of X. So,

R4: If each divine person p and q has the plenitude of supreme love, then p and q have supreme love independently of any other substance.

In Book 1 Richard argued that there can be only one substance that is eternal and causally depends on no other substance; all other existing substances are either sempiternal (roughly co-eternal) causally from another substance (e.g., angels), or temporal and causally from another substance (all material creatures); there is no substance that is temporal and not causally from another substance.

Given R1, R2, and R4, it looks like there are two persons that have numerically the same substance. But what level of generality or individuality is this substance? Some (Aristotelian secondary) substances are quite general like animal, and some are quite specific like human. Even still, there are individual humans like Dale, Joseph, and JT. So, on what level ought we to take the divine substance? Well, none of these. Instead, in Book 2.12, which I consider to be one of the most overlooked and under-appreciated sections of Richard’s De Trinitate, he declares that some substances by definition are singular, non-repeatable, non-instantiable (I explain ‘instantiable’ and ‘non-instantiable’ a bit more in the next post). That is, if we consider the person Daniel, he is constituted by the substance Danielitas (Richard borrows from Boethius’s Platonitas). If a person is constituted by Danielitas, then he is the person Daniel. Having made this distinction Richard applies it to the divine substance by calling it divinitas. If a person is constituted by divinitas, then he is a divine person. (I return to the ‘constitution’ issue in the next post.) Notice that divinitas is a substance and there cannot be further instantiations of it. So, the two divine persons (at this point in the argument) have numerically the same singular substance called divinitas.

Next Richard gives us some rhetorical helps. Consider a human person. On Richard’s view she is composed of two substances: a bodily substance and a rational substance, and yet she is one person. Why think it impossible then if in God there is one substance and yet more than one person? Crazier things happen….

“Explain to me, I implore you, how there is personal unity in so great a dissimilitude and diversity of substances, and I will tell you how there is a substantial unity in so great a similitude and equality of [divine] persons. You say, ‘I do not grasp it; I do not understand; but even if the understanding does not grasp it, nevertheless experience itself per suades me.’ Well said indeed and rightly too! But if experience teaches you that something exists in human nature that is above understanding, should it not also have taught you that something exists above your understanding in divine nature? And so a person can learn from himself, by way of opposites as it were, what he ought to think concerning those things which are proposed to him for believing concerning his God.” (Book 3.10)

Before moving on to Richard’s initial argument for why there must be a trinity and not a duality of divine persons based on what he takes as the nature of perfect love I want to mention one hitherto overlooked issue in contemporary Trinitarian discussions. This issue will certainly be discussed after this current series on Book 3 of Richard’s De Trinitate. That is, Richard’s apparent constitutional Latin trinitarianism [= CLT] which I take as a different stream of Latin trinitarianism than the one Brian Leftow has called “a Latin Trinity” or “the Latin Trinity”. I take Richard and those who rightly interpret him or agree with him (e.g., Henry of Ghent and Duns Scotus) to follow CLT, but those who are less interested in Richard’s own view or just misinterpret him to satisfy Leftow’s LT, or what I would call non-constitutional Latin trinitarianism [= NCLT]. If this is right, as I believe it is, then Brower and Rea have some new (non-Dominican) comrades.

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.

Richard says that divine persons are equal and similar to one another. It is somewhat unclear what he means by this distinction, but the best sense I can make is this.

(T4’)    Divine persons are equal if they have the same dispositions (wisdom, goodness, etc.).

(T5’)    Divine persons are similar if they exercise their same dispositions.

So, a divine person is perfect if this person satisfies (T4) (= For any person x, if x has a charitable disposition P, x is not perfect if x does not exercise P ) and (T5) (= For any person x, if x has a charitable disposition P, x is not perfect if x does not exercise P on some person y, where x is not identical to y.). And, if any divine persons x and y are equal and similar to one another, then x and y satisfy (T4’) and (T5’).

At this point there is ambiguity about the precise meaning of ‘same’ in (T4’) and (T5’). I will talk about this issue in the next post.

Richard believes that the love between divine persons is supreme love. But what does it mean to ‘love supremely’? Here is what I think Richard is getting at.

Beings come in (substance) kinds. For example, there are rocks, tree, cats, cars, humans, angels, and God. Each of these is worthy of a certain kind of love. If I love a creature in the way I love God, then there is something gone wrong. A human being is certainly lovable, but there might be things about a human being that are not so lovable, e.g., sin, imperfection, etc. Or again, suppose humans never fell into the state of sin. Is a righteous human creature equally lovable to God? Well, no. Consider one of the 10 Commandments, “you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul, and you shall have no other gods before me.” Or again, rational creatures might require discursive reasoning to acquire beliefs and knowledge, and so depend on other things for these. But God does not require discursive reasoning, nor does God depend on others for these things. The point here is that our love for God is of a different kind than our love for any creature, no matter the righteous or unrighteous state (or actions) or powers of the creature in question.

So, if a divine person is going to love another person, this divine person could love a creature, or another divine person. But all creatures, whatever kind they are, are contingent, lesser in kind, and so less lovable than God. So if this divine person loves a creature, then this divine person has love for a less lovable kind of being (though of course, still lovable! We might say, ‘x is lovable in proportion to the kind of being x is’.). But Richard claims that for a divine person to have supreme love, the supreme love must be love for an equal. This equal must be co-eternal, because the first divine person is eternal. So, necessarily the first divine person always loves this other person. But suppose God eternally creates. In this case, a divine person might love a co-eternal creature. Nevertheless, any creature is a lesser kind than every divine person, and so a divine person’s love for a creature is not supreme love. Supreme love is relative to kinds. But divinity is the highest kind, thus every divine person is most lovable. Thus,

(T7)    Supreme love should be directed at the highest kind of lovable beings.

Besides, the first divine person is no fool because this first divine person is wise, good, etc. So, this divine person knows that if there is to be supreme love for the highest kind of lovable beings, then this divine person will love another divine person, otherwise it won’t be supreme love, but love for a lesser kind. So,

(T8)    “Supremely wise goodness guides discretion.” (“Who ya’ gonna love?”)

The first divine person is not ignorant, but directs love for another at another divine person.
At this point in the argument the first divine person has self-love and lover for another divine person. Moreover, if divine persons are equal and similar, then there will be mutual love between them.

Consider the following possible state of affairs:

(S1)     A divine person x (1) has self-love and (2) loves divine person y, and (3) y has             self-love but (4) y does not love x.

The only bad part in (S1) is (4). Thus, we might analyze (S1) as a case where x’s love for y is balanced off by y’s not loving x. (S1) overall is a good total state of affairs, but there could be a better one.

Consider another possible state of affairs:

(S2)    A divine person x (1) has self-love and (2) loves divine person y, and (3) y has             self-love and (4) y loves x.

By comparison we might say that the possible states of affairs (S2) is better than (S1) because (S2) has all good parts and no bad parts.

But, if (S2) is an overall great state of affairs, is it indefeasibly the greatest overall possible state of affairs? Could there be another total state of affairs (S3) that is better than (S2) such that (S2) can lose the title “the greatest state of affairs”? As we will see several posts from this one, Richard concedes that there is an (S3) such that (S2) is not indefeasibly the greatest overall possible state of affairs. Before moving onto the question of (S3), Richard solidifies what he takes “the same” to mean in (T4’) and (T5’), and this will be the subject of the next post.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have three problems with this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Equals. Period. None have been greater.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s look at T1, T2, and T3 in turn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

(T3) Nothing is better than perfect charity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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