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…

In a recent post Brandon takes issue with my recent appeal to the principle that “if every F is a G then there cannot be fewer Gs than Fs”.

Some Trinity theories are inconsistent with the (I think obviously true, self-evident) principle, notably the recent theory by Mike Rea, as well as the much-quoted “Athanasian” Creed. Brandon thinks I’m confused. I am confused, about how he thinks I’m confused. And probably about other things.

Check out our discussion in the comments following Brandon’s post. (Comment there if you’re interested.)

Paul Herrick present a paper analysing and endorsing Richard of St. Victor’s main argument for the Trinity, and we had a good time discussing that. (Stay tuned, by the way, for the end of the series on Richard here.)

I presented a (barely) half-baked paper on constitution trinitarianism. Jeff Brower was kind enough to come to the session and point out that one of my objections was just plain confused. It was great talking to him afterwards. Now, back to the drawing board.

Speaking of Jeff, his plenary session was one of the best I’ve ever seen anywhere. Jeff presented a fascinating and carefully crafted paper, I believe part of a book-to-be on Aquinas on the metaphysics material objects, in which he argued that Aquinas holds a heretofore unexplored version of the substratum theory of concrete particulars. (Complementary) critical comments were given by the inimitable Hud Hudson, and some great dialogue ensued.

To my fellow attendees – hope to see you again next year. To everyone else – don’t miss out next year!

As he mentioned, Ed and I knew each other briefly as students at what is now called Claremont Graduate University. I remember having a conversation in his car once, maybe around 1994. He was pressing me with tough questions about the Trinity, and I was coming back with some lame replies cribbed from the Bible Answer Man radio show. Ed, rightly, wasn’t buying it. I hadn’t thought much about the Trinity then, but I flagged the issue in my mind as needing more looking into. Though I haven’t seen him since then, reading his blog now confirms my memory of him as virtuously pugnacious – a good, Socratic sparring partner, pleasant but also a straight-shooter.

• On Catholic books: my version is probably better than the one Ed links: Joseph Pohle and Arthur Preuss, The Divine Trinity: A Dogmatic Treatise. An old-school Catholic source that says a lot more about mysteries is Scheeben’s The Mysteries of Christianity.
• Suppose a Trinity doctrine is a “mystery” – either negative (as Ed and the Catholic tradition hold) or positive (as various Protestant theologians hold). Is this, by itself, a sufficient reason for someone to reject it? Ed says no, and I agree. But, it is reason to worry, on at least two counts: (1) reject WHAT again? What in the end is this claim which I’m supposed to consider for belief, and is there any believable claim there? (2) Some mysteries, either kind, are surely generated from our own mistaken theorizing. Ever heard of Brahman? The Buddha nature? The schminger of God? Is this one of those, or not?
• About Ed’s 1-7: if you say these claims are implied by the Bible, we need to provide an interpretation of “is”. As Ed knows, if we mean “is numerically identical to” throughout, the set 1-7 is demonstrably inconsistent with itself. They would then provide only an uncharitable reading of the Bible. For this same reason, until we say what “is” means, we can’t infer the creedal formulas from 1-7. (Of course, there’s a pretty hard problem of interpretation with those too!)
• Ed is right when he asserts that Catholic and patristic theologians affirm that the Trinity doctrine is a negative mystery. But it is not true to say without qualification that trinitarian theologians don’t say that the doctrine is apparently contradictory (that is, a positive mystery). Some do say just that, such as my friend James Anderson. While his is a minority view in the broad catholic tradition, it is important to consider.
• I agree that we should expect that we should not be able to fully understand God. But this is a trivial point. Fully understanding God would require understanding all he knows, which is infinite. No theist ever denied that God is “mysterious” in this sense. What is the prior epistemic probability of God’s revelation about himself being either positively or negatively mysterious? As far as we know, God can reveal as much as he wants, and he knows what revelation will and won’t turn out to be mysterious (in either sense) to us. Also, as far as we know, he could have made us with a great range of mental capabilities. But whether a truth is mysterious to us is partly a function of those two factors – not just of God’s nature, as Ed seems to hold. So it’s far from obvious that we should expect true, revealed theology to be mysterious in either sense. I waver between thinking that this prior probability is inscrutable, and thinking that it is low. In brief, it seems that God would not want to confuse us.
• With Aquinas, Ed asserts that God is “Pure Actuality” and “Subsistent Being Itself”. He also says, without qualification, that true talk about God is always analogical, and that God is “outside any possible world” (I think he means, cosmos, i.e. physical universe.) I guess I agree that if you load up on medieval speculations about God, the obscurity of Trinity doctrines can seem like no big deal. I’ll just register my semi-informed opinion that all the claims just mentioned are incompatible with the idea of God contained in the Bible. Like many philosophers, I’m not comfortable with the amount of neo-Platonism that became grafted into medieval Catholic theology.
• Ed says that my characterization of negative mysterianism needs some nuance. I agree – when I revise the entry, I want to make clearer that it comes in degrees. There are, however, extremists around nowadays – I’ll say more about extreme negative trinitarianism in a future post.
• He says I should clarify that the mysterian needn’t be committed to the dubious idea of intrinsically unintelligible truths. I don’t think I suggested that, but in any case, there is an extreme end of Catholic theorizing that seems committed to just that, or to intrinsically unintelligible facts or realities. For instance, there’s John Scotus Eriugena’s argument that God can’t understand himself – ’cause then he’d have an essence, and be a being, while in fact he is more-than-being. (?!) Or there’s this part of the “Mystery” entry, from this book: “mystery, a term that refers to the infinite incomprehensibility of God. God is not provisionally mystery, God is essentially mystery; not just unknown, but unknowable, literally incomprehensible. …Even in the Beatific Vision, God will remain mystery. … ” (p. 900, second emphasis added) She’s unclear here, about whether God is intrinsically unknowable, or just whether he is necessarily unknowable by us. The “essentially” part pushes towards the first reading, the last part of the quote towards the second – it is just a cloudy paragraph.
• I agree that the part Ed quotes from the “Dogmatic constitution on the catholic faith” ch. 4 “Faith and reason” from the first Vatican Council (1869-70) rules out positive mysterianism for Catholics. I’ve quoted this elsewhere  – it is on p. 809 in the newer Tanner translation – and I think it is a significant Catholic-non-Catholic difference.
• I’m not sure what to make of Ed’s discussion of “grades of theological certainty”. Are those really epistemic distinctions, or just a taxonomy of the centrality to or importance of various claim to Catholic theology? He holds that the Trinity formulas are “directly” revealed – I assume he means, via the councils – and are so at the top level of “theological certainty”.
• My main worry about negative mysterianism is something which hasn’t come up in our discussion yet. It is that such moves are dialectical conveniences, handy talk to fend off objectors, that folks really don’t believe, or don’t consistently believe. To bring out this worry, let me ask Ed what precisely about the Trinity formulas he finds to be a negative mystery. Take any statement which is regarded as expressing “the” doctrine, such as: “God is three persons in one being” – and say which terms are the ones which we can barely grasp the meaning of. Typically, following Augustine, people will focus on “persons”. But then in other contexts, it is pretty clear that they think of each of the Three as a self – something with knowledge and will. If that’s so, then the earlier appeal to mystery looks like an insincere smokescreen.
• Update: Ed responds.

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.

In what follows I give a taxonomy  of constitutional Trinitarian theories. I do not say this is an exhaustive taxonomy; nevertheless it helps to isolate the sort of constitutional model that I think can be read off of books 1, 2, 4, and 5.

Genus: Constitutional Models. Every divine person is constituted by two concrete properties, the divine substance and a unique distinguishing personal property.

Species1: For each divine person there is numerically one divinity. (Three persons, three divinities.) E.g., social                   trinitarianism.

Species2: There is numerically one divine substance. (Three persons, one divine substance).

Sub-Species1: Material Constitution Model. Divine persons are the same in virtue of having the divine substance essentially, and the divine substance is like a subject of essential accidental forms.

Difference1: Material Constitution Derivation Model. The Father is identical to the divine substance, and the Son and Holy Spirit have the divine substance derivatively. Hence, there are two essential accidental forms that inhere in the divine substance.

Difference2: Material Constitution Generic Model. No divine person is identical to the divine substance. Hence, every divine person has the divine substance in a unique way analogous to three essential accidental forms of the same substance.

Sub-species2: Non-Material Constitution Model. Divine persons are the same in virtue of having the divine substance essentially, and the divine substance is like an immanent universal nature and not like a subject of accidents.

Difference1: Non-Material Constitution Derivation Model. The Father is identical to the divine substance, and the Son and Holy Spirit each have the divine substance essentially and derivatively in a unique way.

Difference2: Non-Material Constitution Generic Model: No divine person is identical to the divine substance. Every divine person essentially has the divine substance in a unique way.

My proposed interpretation of Richard of St. Victor is as follows:
Genus: Constitution Model
Species: Numerically one divine substance.
Sub-Species: Non-material constitution
Specific Difference: Generic model of the divine substance

I should mention what I take to be a similarity btwn. the material and non-material constitutional models. There is a certain job to be done in each theory to account for how the same divine substance is a constituent of every divine person. This addresses the Christian claim that there is one God, one Creator, one Lord, etc.

On the one hand, the material constitution model proposed by Brower and Rea employs the “sameness without identity” thesis. On the other hand, on my read of Richard’s metaphysics of the Trinity he supposes the divine substance is a singular existing non-divisible universal nature, what Richard Cross has aptly called (in discussing Duns Scotus’s theory) the divine substance’s “being exemplifiable”. If we think the divine substance is exemplifiable, then it cannot be numerically divided up, but it can be a constituent of more than one divine person. Being exemplifiable is a peculiar way that a universal is communicable to many. Another way that a universal is communicable to many is if it is instantiable, then it divisible into numerically distinct occurrences. Richard of St. Victor seems to think of creaturely essences as instantiable, and he in effect denies that the divine substance is instantiable. So, it would seem that we could detect a sameness without identity thesis in Richard too–although it wouldn’t be along the lines of a material constitution model, b/c he doesn’t think of the divine substance like a substance that bears accidental forms (essentially). Nevertheless, on Richard’s view the divine substance is one existing thing that constitutes several divine persons.

Now, what of the personal properties? If a common nature is instantiable, then an instantiated nature entails a non-instantiable personal property; if a common nature is exemplifiable, then the exemplified common nature entails a non-exemplifiable personal property. So, to Richard of St. Victor’s mind, the personal properties are (in effect) non-exemplifiable (what he calls “incommunicable”). Whether or not these personal properties are relations or absolute properties is irrelevant here. What matters is that on Richard’s view every divine person is (in effect) constituted by the divine substance (and since the divine substance is a constituent of every divine person we can say it is ‘a common property’) and by a non-exemplifiable personal property which distinguishes the persons from one another.

One last comparison. On the material and non-material constitutional theories, I take it that both affirm the following:

The name ‘God’ is not a proper personal name, since Father, Son, and Holy Spirit equally satisfy it. Hence, the name ‘God’ does not signify this person, but a certain person, namely the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit. (Of course, you could also use the name ‘God’ at once to refer to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; but this grammar might lead away from a constitution account of the Triune God).

Consider the following suggestive passage from Richard of St. Victor’s On the Trinity Book 4.16 ln.35-49:

It should be kept in mind that existence designates substantial being, but sometimes [a substantial being] from what is common, and other times [a substantial being] from what is an incommunicable property. However, we say a common existence when it is understood to obtain from [1] a common property. But [we say] incommunicable when it is understood to obtain from [2] an incommunicable property. In truth [3] it is proper to the divine substance not to be from some other substance (but only from itself), and in truth [4] it is proper to the person that does not have an origin not to be from some other person. On the one hand, [1.1] [the divine substance] is understood [as] a common property, but on the other hand [4.1] [not-having-an-origin-from-another-person] is an incommunicable property. For it is common to all divine persons to be this substance which is not from some other substance but from itself. Therefore when the divine substance is said or understood to be from itself, [5] the same [property] is common to the existing [persons].

In [1] I take Richard to posit a concrete property; from Book 1 he gives a cosmological argument to the effect that the divine substance can only be numerically one. This property is ‘common’–that is, it is (and so can be) a constituent of more than one divine person.

In [2] I take Richard to posit an incommunicable property, which is a personal property. A personal property belongs (and can belong) only to one person.

In [3] I take Richard to posit that the divine substance as such depends on no other substance for its being. Hence, the singular exemplifiable divine substance has the [abstract] property does not depend on another substance.

In [4] I take Richard to be talking about the Father, and he attributes to the Father the incommunicable property does not depend on any other _person_ for his existence. However, the [abstract] property does not depend on another _substance_ is not an incommunicable property of the Father or any divine person. In [5] Richard makes clear that the [abstract] property not being from another substance is common to every divine person. So, it is not unique to the Father to not depend on another substance.

In [5] Richard concludes by saying the [abstract] property not being from another substance is common to every divine person. The reason it is common to all persons is because the singular divine substance, which is not from another substance, is an essential constituent of every divine person.

By inference, no divine person is identical to the divine substance (cf. [1], [5]). In On the Trinity Book 4.8 Richard makes clear that every divine person is constituted by two properties, a common property and an incommunicable property, or what (borrowing from Richard Cross) I call an exemplifiable immanent universal, and a non-exemplifiable personal property.

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.

The more you think about hard stuff, the more opinions you get. I’ve taught philosophy of religion, modern philosophy, logic, and metaphysics courses, and so I have some fairly developed views. Based on theoretical (and non-theological considerations), here are some things I don’t believe in, because I think they’re impossible:

relative identity relations
constitution relations
group minds
time travel to the past
properties (whether tropes or universals) – yes, I’m a nominalist
persons/selves which are or are “constituted by” relations or relationships
multiple selves that count as one self because they’re so intimately aware of one another’s thoughts

I’m not going to argue these points here. My point is simply that in light of the above metaphysical convictions, I can’t believe in various Rational Reconstructions of the Trinity doctrine. In order corresponding to the above list:

Peter van Inwagen’s or Peter Geach’s relative identity trinitarianism (these we haven’t yet discussed here at trinities)
Brower’s and Rea’s constitution theory
group mind Social Trinitarianism as discussed by Brian Leftow in his “Anti Social Trinitarianism”
Leftow’s version of Latin Trinitarianism
ditto
misc. medieval theories, such as Henry of Ghent’s
some recent versions of Social Trinitarianism

General rule: when any philosopher looks at a Rational Reconstruction of some Christian Doctrine, he finds that Reconstruction unsatisfactory for various reasons. Other than the Two Minds approach to the Incarnation, I can’t think of exceptions to this rule. Anyone? Note that this isn’t even bringing in considerations about the Bible or how the new-fangled theory fits with Tradition.

In sum, one can’t help but admire the cleverness and ingenuity of Rational Reconstructors. Sadly, non-philosophers generally don’t understand such theories or the motivations for them, while other Christian philosophers mostly reject the Rational Reconstruction in question. This is disappointing and disturbing.

Before I move on to Resistance, though, I’d like to ask one more question:

Next time: Why do contemporary theologians ignore all recent Rational Reconstructions?

Technorati Tags: 4 R’s, Rational Reconstruction, Resolution through Rational Reconstruction, Geach, van Inwagen, Rea, Brower, Leftow, Davis, Henry of Ghent, relative identity, constitution, group minds, social trinitarian, time travel, properties, perichoresis

Is Ned in trouble?

Here’s a quick post to wrap up the series on Brower’s and Rea’s constitution theory of the Trinity. First, it’s striking how original and self-consistent their approach is. It is rare to find something this new, and this well thought through on such an old topic. They’ve carefully carved out a unique position, one which has a motivation outside of theology (i.e. solving the reputed problem of material constitution) as well as in. Further, they’re trying to construct a mainstream, orthodox theory.

The above is enough to recommend it in the eyes of some of my fellow philosophers. I’m afraid that I’m not as sympathetic. Here I’ll briefly recap my misgivings and maybe add a few. None of is even close to constituting (sorry) a killer objection, but to me, taken together, they sour the deal. The last four are more important than the first five.

1. You have to be a metaphysician to understand it. Best as I can tell, this theory is totally off the map of theologians. It is probably destined to remain so. You have to be able to get your head around the concept of numerical sameness without identity, and you need to understand why we might want to say there’s such a thing. Why are these points objections? Well, if you think the doctrine of the Trinity is a revealed one, it needs to (1) have been believed by previous Christians, and (2) be understandable fairly widely.
2. To believe it, you have to be a metaphysician who (1) believes in the problem of material constitution, who also (2) accepts the Aristotelian numerical sameness without identity solution. Of course, you might think that the idea of numerical sameness without identity only applies to the Trinity. That’s a consistent position, but it’ll be lacking in motivation, as it’ll look like the only reason you believe in it, is that it provides a consistent reading of the “Athanasian” creed (etc.). It would remain on the level of a mere lawyerly defense, in the manner of van Inwagen’s relative identity approach. Also, if you don’t believe in the theory applied to material objects, you’ll give ‘em the old “blank stare” when they tell you that the Father and the Son are non-identical, and yet they “are to be counted as one”.
3. Sorry, but I don’t have a concept of “immaterial stuff”. You can say that there something in the Trinity which “plays the role of matter”, i.e. which is somewhat like matter in, say, a statue, but I just draw a blank. It’s not that I can’t picture it; it’s that I fear this talk is unintelligible. Compare: Metaphysician Renee tells us that “There’s something that plays the role of a Cartesian soul” in every golf ball.” And you say: “So, it’s a subject of consciousness?” She says, “Nope.” You say, it’s immaterial and extensionless, and she’s says “Nope, and nope. But it is something which is IN the golf ball, and not at all in the way that a sailor is in a ship. Dualism is true, right? Well, there’s something somewhat like a soul in golf balls.” Do we really know what she’s talking about? Nope.
4. Related problem: by calling this something-like-an-immaterial-stuff in the Trinity “the divine essence”, they make the theory look more traditional than it probably is. The church fathers are brimming over with talk of the divine nature, essence, or “godhead”. But – these guys are (sort of) Platonists, not Stoics. Probably few of them thought of homoousios in terms of sameness of stuff.
5. I’m still worried about the problem of “God”, “Yahweh”, and “the creator of the world” being ambiguous. Not sure how big a problem it is, but it seems it is one.
6. It seems to me that they secure monotheism at the price of redefining what is meant by a “god”. This redefinition isn’t totally unmotivated, but it’s still a hard pill to swallow.
7. Bill Craig’s objection stands – how can one portion of matter (or immaterial quasi-matter) simultaneously constitute things with incompatible (present-based, non-modal) properties? (his Venus and David example) Without answering this, the account is at best incomplete, for it’s not clear that it is consistent.
8. This theory does not, despite how it first looks, provide a literal metaphysical account of the Trinity, nor does it try to. It’s all, in the end, an analogy, and one of several incompatible ones they offer in this clear, popular-level paper. In short, the metaphysical fireworks are for the philosphers. To common folk, they preach good, old-fashioned seemingly inconsistent analogies: three men, Ned and Lumpy, and multiple personality disorder. To be fair, they say they think theirs is the best analogy, but the point is, if like Craig you’re holding out for a believable and non-analogical metaphysics of God, you won’t find it here. I realize that some will take this last concern as something to recommend the theory, being convinced (probably by the church fathers) that multiple and admittedly pretty bad analogies are the best we could hope to do.
9. It’s clear from the second paragraph of their popular paper that they accept the common apologetics arguments to the effect that the creedal statements providing the boundaries for trinity doctrines are deducible from the Bible. I think these arguments are quite weak. But that’s a topic for future discussion, or rather, for a whole series of ‘em.

Technorati Tags: Mike Rea, Jeff Brower, numerical sameness, material constitution, form, matter, Athanasian Creed, monotheism, William Lane Craig

Like about everything else these days.

In this post I want to explore what to me is the oddest and hardest part to grasp of the constitution trinitarianism. When I first read their paper, I thought they thought God was a stuff – that is, that the term “God” referred to a certain thing, that immaterial stuff they call “the divine essence”. That was wrong on two counts. For as we’ve seen, “the divine essence” isn’t supposed to be a thing (although they think it wouldn’t be a catastrophe if they admitted it was a thing – see their footnote 10). Hence, it can’t be a thing which is identical to God. Second, they don’t think that “God”, say, when used in a Psalm, refers to that stuff. So, what do they think it refers to? It depends. They hold that it’s a systematically ambiguous term. Why is that?

They say it because the logic of their position forces them to. Consider our old pals Lumpy and Ned. Suppose you point at that old garden gnome and say, “That eyesore was made in China.” We look at the bottom of the gnome, and sure enough, we see “Made in China.” Is what we said true or false? It depends! They hold that the term “That eyesore” is ambiguous. (Forget for a moment that we assume that there are statue, but not clay lump factories; suppose there are clay lump factories, and that they’re darned proud of their work, and frequently stamp the lumps with the name of their country, and that these stamps sometimes survive the lump’s being made into a statue.) Yes, there’s (numerically) one material object there, but there are two non-identical hylomorphic compounds, Ned and Lumpy. Maybe Ned was made in China, but Lumpy was pulled out of the ground in Bombay, India. So we can understand what you’re saying, and whether it’s true or false, only if there’s something about the context of the conversation which disambiguates the term “That eyesore”. (For their compressed consideration of this point, see their p. 66.) Maybe you were discussing the world clay industry. Or maybe you were comparing the origins of various lawn statues you own. Here, the statement would be false, and true, respectively. But if we just walked up and pointed, saying “That eyesore was made in China”, that statement would be too ambiguous to be understood.

Now switch to the Trinity. The term “God”, or “the one God” may according to Brower and Rea refer to any of three non-identical hylomorphic compounds, the three divine persons. If it used in a context insufficient to disambiguate the term, then an ambiguous sentence results, one which doesn’t clearly communicate any one thought. In the New Testament, this doesn’t seem to be a problem, at least in most instances, e.g. “God loved the world so much that he sent his only Son…” or “Greetings in the name of God, [that is,] the Father, and his Son”. Nearly always in the New Testament, it’s clear from either the immediate context or from the way the particular author uses terms, that by “God”, the Father of Jesus is meant. And in a few places, “God” refers to the Son of God. Great, now switch to the Old Testament. “Moses was a friend of God.” Of whom? “David was a man after God’s own heart.” Whose? There’s no way to say! Looks like an incompetent use of language. In an era where it is totally unknown that there are three divine persons constituted by one immaterial stuff, it seems that nothing about the context could ever serve to disambiguate the reference.

Here’s an analogy that’s better than the “Made in China” one: suppose someone who knows only the barest facts about me starts making assertions about “Dale’s kid”, such as “Dale’s kid looks just like him”, “Dale’s kid likes to sing”, and “Dale’s kid has an evil giggle”. “Dale’s kid” is, it turns out, ambiguous – I have three offspring. This being unknown to the asserter, she’s incompetently using language. Her assertions are neither true nor false as they stand; in a sense, she isn’t successfully asserting anything at all.

I can imagine how for some Old Testament usages of “Yahweh”, “Adonai”, and so on, there could be something about the context which disambiguates. Take a prophecy about YHWH’s suffering servant in Isaiah. Why is this suffering servant, the messiah a servant of? Presumably the Father. So maybe there, the God-terms refer to the Father. The problem is, in the vast majority of cases, there’s nothing to disambiguate – whether we consider the original, intended meaning, or the meaning we should assign to the texts now (if that’s different than the original). Take the famous “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Who made them? No way to say. Remember, it can’t be the divine essence, as that’s a mere stuff and stuffs can’t create. Nor can it be “the Trinity as a whole”, as there’s no such self-identical thing, there’s no such personal being.

To me, this is a major downside of their theory, one which is sort of slid past in their piece. I’d like to say that David, Moses and the rest were competent to go around saying lots of true things about God, things which they knew, things like the contents of Psalm 23 or 103, for instance. Unitarians of all kinds and more traditional trinitarians can say this. The Unitarians say, what Moses and David knew about was the Father; Yahweh just is the Father, those are co-referring terms. Traditional trinitarians say that OT characters knew a lot about God, but only in the NT era (or a little later) did they find out that God – the same thing they’d been talking about all along – was tripersonal, or had three “persons” within him.

The best spin I can imagine them putting on this consequence of their theory is something like: Well, the persons of the Trinity are all divine. They’re so alike, that the ambiguities don’t matter. “God is kind and merciful, all-knowing, and everlasting.” That would be true no matter which of the three “God” referred to. In reply, I don’t see how those counterfactual circumstances (wherein one does unambiguously refer) are relevant. It still stands that as a matter of fact, in a sense nothing has been asserted, nothing that can be true or false!

Or maybe they’ll say: ambiguity doesn’t matter when the three things to which the term can refer are all “to be counted as one”. But, plainly it does – as they point out, it’s a difference between truth and falsity. In other words, if the term were to refer to one of the three, the resulting statement would be true, while if it were to refer to another, it’d be false.

Readers, what do you think. Is this a serious objection? If so, do they have a better way around it?

Technorati Tags: constitution trinitarianism, Mike Rea, Jeff Brower, ambiguity, material constitution

Be sure to check out his blog, the title of which is either (1) contradictory, or (2) an example of English (or Utahn?) dry humor. I say the charitable interpretation is (2). – Dale

In the traditional western view of the trinity, e.g., as the likes of Augustine and Aquinas think, the divine essence basically functions as a nature.

Of course, the classical (Aristotelian) sense of ‘nature’ is a little tricky. For most theologians such as Aquinas, a nature in created things is particular in the way that a trope is considered particular. Further, Aquinas would distinguish between nature-tropes and accidental-tropes. Plato’s humanity would be a nature-trope, but Plato’s paleness would be an accidental-trope. Additionally, nature-tropes are instantiated by matter, and that makes a substance (in the sense of an individual object). Accidental-tropes are instantiated by substances.

Here’s the key points about this classical view.

(1) Both of these kinds of tropes are posterior to their subjects (i.e., to their trope-bearers). The reason is that they are instantiated by their subjects, not the other way around. Perhaps another way of putting this is that the natures are posterior to the things that exemplify them.

(2) Also, natures are not individual objects. They do have some extramental reality in the same way that the modern notion of tropes have some extramental reality, but they are not individual objects. They are rather traits or attributes of individual objects. Socrates and Plato are individual objects, while ‘humanity’ is an attribute of Socrates and Plato rather than an individual object in its own right. But nevertheless, ‘humanity’ does have extramental reality because it’s really ‘there’ in Socrates and Plato.

As I said at the beginning of this comment, the divine essence functions in the same way. It is posterior to the persons, just as ‘humanity’ is posterior to Socrates and Plato. And the divine essence is not an individual object, but it does have extramental reality in the divine persons because it’s really ‘there’ in the Father and Son. Likewise, the divine persons are, in some sense, individuals just as Socrates and Plato are individuals.

The major difference between the divine essence and natures in created things is that natures in created things are multiplied by their subjects. Thus, Socrates’ humanity is not identical to Plato’s humanity. As I said, natures in created things are more like tropes because they are particular for each individual instantiator.

The divine essence, on the other hand, is like an immanent universal. It is not divided by each divine person which instantiates it. Thus, each divine person shares the numerically same nature (the divine essence). It would be as if Plato and Socrates shared the numerically same humanity. Apart from that, the divine essence basically operates like a nature.

B&R’s account is pretty much the complete opposite of this. The divine essence is like the subject which instantiates the personal properties.

I wonder about some of the things that this might entail.

(a) One might argue that the divine essence has to be an individual if it is to instantiate anything. This would be an argument similar to Scotus’s argument for individuation: any of the obvious candidates for individuation (e.g., matter, accidents, etc.) are already individual, so they must already be individuated and thus can’t function as individuators. There must, then, be something individual itself (a haecceity) which instantiates any properties and makes them particular.

I myself am not necessarily opposed to saying the divine essence is an individual. I certainly don’t want to identify the divine essence with the father, because that would lead to the ‘derivation’ view of the trinity, which doesn’t seem to me very workable.

(b) One might further argue that on this view, the personal properties have to be like natures in that they are instantiated by the divine essence. B&R certainly seem to talk this way when they say that matter instantiates forms. But if this is right, do we then mean that the personal property being a father is the generic nature paternity? That would seem to go against the whole ‘generic’ view of the classical tradition, where the divine essence is seen as the generic nature of the persons, not the other way around. And what sort of consequences would this entail?

I don’t know how I feel about this particular point. In principle, I see no reason why the personal properties can’t be seen as generic natures.

(c) I have further questions (as does Joseph) about what any of this means for the question ‘one consciousness or three?’ For the classical view, does saying the divine essence is an immanent universal block the inference that there are three consciousnesses? Likewise, for B&R’s view, does saying the divine essence is the subject of the personal properties block the same inference?

With respect to the classical view, I’m inclined to think that there is one consciousness. The divine essence is the thinking and willing power-pack, and since the divine persons are the subjects of that power-pack, there would certainly be three agents which do the thinking and willing. But since they all share the same thinking and willing power-pack, they would all perform the numerically same acts of thinking and willing, and I’m not sure that gives us enough to say there are three distinct consciousnesses. But my mind is not totally made up on that yet.

With respect to B&R, I don’t even know how to go about answering the question. They haven’t really clarified their position enough yet.

Technorati Tags: JT Paasch, Jeff Brower, Mike Rea, constitution trinitarianism, nature, trope, essence

“Come on, you tired little brain – don’t fail me now.” (No, I don’t really blog naked – serious thought requires having at least your underpants on.)

Joseph Jedwab does an excellent job (here, comments 3 & 4) pressing me for details, and taking a shot at defending the Brower and Rea theory. I wanted to chew a bit on some issues that Joseph and Ian raise before moving on, offering some corrections and other reflections. (And JT – I want to post your lengthy comment (the second one) as a guest post, so we can discuss the priority issue – email me if you object to this promotion. ) Any bold type that appears in quotes here has been added by me.

To non-philosophical readers: I apologize for the over-long load of philosopher-lingo that follows. You may want to skip this one! We’ll be back on earth soon – at least after JT’s post!

So, on to business:

[Ian:] …some, like Ted Sider, insist that counting is necessarily, analytically, always by identity

Ian, do you know where Ted says that? That seems right to me. When someone says that x and y are non-identical, and yet “are to be counted as one” – they get the ole blank stare from me. I can see how we might count things by other criteria for various practical purposes, but when we want to know how many things there are, anything other than identity seems irrelevant.

Ian also worries that constitution trinitarianism makes the three divine persons non-ultimate – i.e. the divine quasi-matter (”the divine essence) is “prior to them”. I replied, why can’t they just say that these four – the divine essence, plus the three persons – are equally ultimate – with none “prior” or “posterior to” any other? Responding, Ian says:

I don’t think they can say that all three are equally fundamental since constitution is precisely a kind of metaphysical priority relation – the existence of the three persons depends on, is there in virtue of, or is grounded in (or however you want to say it) the divine essence.

Good point – there does seem to be an explanatory asymmetry there, when we’re talking about physical objects. I wonder if they’ll just parachute out of this problem by saying “it’s just an inadequate analogy – we don’t think there’s literally constitution in any divine persons”? I want to talk about that in a future post, on their other, popular level paper.

On to Joseph’s suggested defenses – any following unmarked quotes are from him.

1. Numerical sameness is an equivalence relation (i.e. reflexive, symmetric, and transitive). I take it that what unifies each numerical sameness relation is that each is an equivalence relation by which we count: which relation we count by depends on which kind the entities we count belong to.

I grant that like a lot of other things we don’t believe in, such as 3rd or 4th truth values, or Geachian relative identity, the notion of numerical sameness without identity can be formally defined. I guess your reply helps me to see what they’re getting at with their chart (which I defaced with the Clintons). I guess then I’d say: “we”? Speak for yourselves! I count by identity. But seriously, one part of their paper which struck me as odd, is where they say that some sorts of sortal-concepts mandate counting by identity, while others admit only of counting only by numerical sameness without identity. (63) They suggest that “technical philosophical sortals like ‘hylomorphic compound’… ‘thing’ or ‘being’…” admit of counting by identity. I’m not sure why they put it in terms of language here; it seems they’re positing different sorts of things. Where to draw this line? Just where it needs to be to preserve trinitarian orthodoxy and the Aristotelean solution to the problem of material constitution? I worry that this is only going to be a theory-saving distinction, and not one grounded in reasonably firm intuitions.

2. The divine essence is either divine stuff or a divine substratum. Either way the divine essence doesn’t qualify as a divine individual, divine Person, or God. So either way it’s false that each divine person ‘is numerically the same divine individual as the divine essence’, for I presume x is numerically the same F as y iff each of x and y is an F. And, as far as I know, B&R never say this (not on p.70 anyway).

I think you’re right on this one – I misread them.

3. I don’t see why B&R need think of an individual in any fancy sense here: it’s an entity, a particular, and a property-bearer for sure, but why think it non-substantial? I see no reason why they need to make a distinction between individuals and substances here, unless, of course, they take the divine essence to be an individual. So, as I see it, for them, each divine Person is an individual and a substance. The only question is whether the divine essence should qualify as an individual but not a substance. But if the divine essence is an individual, it’s not a Person and so not a God. So there’s no question of saying the Persons are individual non-substances but God is an individual substance.

Right – it seems to me that they need to say that the divine essence is an individual, in a less metaphysically-loaded sense – i.e. a real entity that can be referred to using singular terms. They can’t make it a substance, as then they’d be saying that there are three divine persons but only one divine substance, and that’d put on the pressure to identify it with God. Nor do they need to say it’s a substance.

4. Monotheism is the claim that there’s one God. On B&R’s account, there’s one God and so monotheism is true. It all turns on whether one permits their definition of a God: x is a God iff x is a (quasi-) hylomorphic composite whose stuff is some divine essence; x is the same God as y iff each is a God and they share the same stuf; there’s one God iff some God is the same God as every God; and x is God iff x is a God and there’s one God.

As I see it, this definition just brings out the wierdness of their theory. A God is (re-) defined as a being made of a god-stuff, to put it roughly. Really? If there’s immaterial stuff (or something like it) constituting the Father, Son, and Spirit, how do we know that that same kind of stuff or even the same quantity of it couldn’t constitute something other than a god, such as an angel, or something analogous to an immaterial chair? Doesn’t that stuff have to be arranged in the right way to make a god? But how could it be arranged to make three such non-identical gods, given that the stuff isn’t divided among them? Of course, we have no grasp of what “arranged in the right way” would mean here. My point is that only partisans of their theory will accept this definition of “god”. To everyone else, “god” means something like this: a person (personal being) which is greater than any human, and which is worthy of worship by humans. The concept of a god is, it seems to me, a bit vague, but not ridiculously so – it always means a thing with thus and such god-making features, e.g. great power, domain over some portion of the physical world, pure goodness. As far as I know, this is the first time ‘God’ has been defined with reference to the (something like a) stuff it is (something like) constituted by.

5. Why think there’s a sense of ‘God’ on which it means the one and only divine Person? If so, if, in effect, the concepts of a divine Person and God coincide, there can’t be three of one and one of the other: this would be enough to show the doctrine of the Trinity incoherent. On their view, what ‘divine Person’ and ‘God’ mean permits it to be that there are three divine Persons (and one can’t also count one divine Person) and there is one God (and one can’t also count three Gods). So on their view, there’s no sense in which there’s no God.

To the first question, ‘god’ and ‘divine person’ mean the same (vague) thing, just as ‘my child’ and ‘my immature offspring’ do. Pointing this out doesn’t make the doctrine of the Trinity (or at least all versions of it) false by definition, nor does it assume monotheism. Many other trinitarians (following Augustine) will say: “Look, of course God just is a certain person. The Bible is littered with personal pronouns that refer to him. But within this great personal being, there are three something-or-others, which we call ‘persons’ just cause we can’t think of anything better to call them.” In contrast, Rea and Brower have three non-identical divine personal substances, three hylomorphic compounds.

I can imagine a conversation which goes like this:

• Dale: Ya’ll say that Father and Son are two divine persons, right?
• B & R: Right. Two divine, personal substances.
• Dale: So, the Father is a god, and so is the Son in another god.
• B & R: No, you cretin. They’re non-identical substances, but they’re the same god.
• Dale: But isn’t a “god” a divine personal substance? If so, then you’re saying they’re two divine persons, and they’re not.
• B & R: No. A “god” is a substance whose stuff is divine-stuff. Ergo, what we’re saying is consistent.
• Dale: But when people say they believe there’s one and only one God, they mean there’s one and only one divine person, not that there’s only one thing with divine stuff.
• B & R: It’s our theory – we can define “god” however we want to.
• Dale: Well, sure. But when we talk about “monotheism”, don’t we need the standard sort of definition, so we don’t mislead?
• B & R: Not at all.
• Dale: Suppose I denied being a polygamist, and you inferred that there’s at most one human being who is my wife. But, I define “wife” in a way such that sisters from one mother and father only count as one “wife” – they’re “made of the same stuff” after all, in that they derive from the same two sets of genes, from their Mom and Dad. So you find out I’m married to Terri, Toni, and Tiffany. Didn’t lie to you, when I said I wasn’t a polygamist?
• B & R: Yes you did, you dog.
• Dale: And it’d be truthful for me to say: “I’ve got three wives”, but I call them “one wife” because in a sense, they’re made of the same stuff. So ya’ll ought to say: We believe in what most would call three gods, although we think they ought to be called as one god because they’re all made of the same god-stuff. We’re really not monotheists, but we believe it’s correct to say that the Father, Son, and Spirit are ‘one god’.
• B & R: No – we don’t just think the “three” should be called ‘one god’ – we think they should be counted as one. We’re honest gentlemen, really. We’re not saying one thing and thinking another. No, we count persons by identity, but we count gods by numerical-sameness-without-identity, that is, by made-of-the-same-stuff-ness.
• Dale: Suppose I’m one wierdo of a polygamist. Suppose I hold an odd metaphysics of wives – I really think Tiffany, Toni, and Terry are indeed one wife, while being three humans. I think one wife can have three heads and six legs, and can be in three non-contiguous places at once. I’ll swear up and down that it’s a mistake to suppose that a wife is (always) identical to some one human. Still, when speaking publicly, I should say I have three wives, no, so long as my purpose isn’t to deliberately deceive? Similarly, ya’ll should say you believe in what most would think of as three gods, although you hold to a theory that because they share a stuff, they are one god.

Should Brower and Rea announce, not that they’ve discovered a viable theory of the Trinity, but rather, than they’ve discovered (invented?) a new definition of “god”? That would at least clue people in that when they talk of “monotheism”, it’s a different thesis than most people would understand by that term.

Some final points by Joseph:

8. It must be that if one accepts the traditional creeds, one accepts the doctrine of the Trinity and so one should believe that there’s some solution to the logical problem of the Trinity, even if one doesn’t know what it is. But it doesn’t follow from this that one needs to accept B&R’s account.

. . .

2. I don’t think belief that the doctrine of the Trinity is true is essential to salvation, as opposed to belief in the Trinity. I suppose one could hold a view of theological semantic deference. Just as Putnam says we semantically defer to scientists for the meaning of natural kind terms, so we might say we semantically defer to the Church’s theologians for the meaning of Christian doctrinal terms. But we needn’t hold this view. B&R’s account gives us a good analogy here. Folk have many beliefs about material beings: arguably they believe there are statues, lumps, lumps can survive radical change of shape, and statues can’t, but there’s only one material being, at least many are disposed to accept these things. Perhaps they believe these things but they don’t know how it could be that all these things are true together. Either they see no problem or if they do, they don’t know how to solve it. Just so, Christians have many beliefs about God: they believe there is one God, three divine Persons, and each divine Person is God, at least many of them are disposed to accept this. Again, perhaps they see no problem here or do, but don’t see how to solve it. So they accept the doctrine of the Trinity but don’t accept an Aristotelian solution to the logical problem of the Trinity. After all, most have never read any of the relevant writings on the matter. I don’t see why Brower and Rea can’t accept all this. Their solution doesn’t imply that Christians accept this solution, even implicitly.

Re: semantic deference – man, do I wish I could defer to the theologians!

If you think that belief in the doctrine of the Trinity isn’t essential to salvation, you don’t believe in the authority of the “Athanasian” creed.

As to your suggestion at the end, that makes sense only if “the doctrine of the Trinity” is thought of as a set of sentences, rather than of propositions, for it’s only those that Joe Pewsitter, Thomas Aquinas, Swinburne, Rea, and Craig have in common. Can you see some serious “cost” to that move though?

Technorati Tags: Mike Rea, Jeff Brower, numerical sameness, material constitution, form, matter, Athanasian Creed, monotheism

Um, no the Clintons aren’t in the original chart in their paper (71).
And yes, Bill is intrigued by the word “copula”.

It’s fair to say that most philosophers don’t believe there’s any such thing as the part Hilary is glaring at. (II.B.1 and II.B.2) This includes me, I’m afraid. In this blog, and in my published articles, I use “identical”, “one and the same thing as”, and “numerically the same” to all mean the important relation of identity – that weird relation which everything bears only to itself. Here are some random thoughts about their concept of “numerical sameness”, with the aim of helping you understand what they’re thinking.

• “Numerical sameness” is supposed to be symmetric and transitive.
  • symmetric: If x is numerically the same as y, it follows that y is numerically the same as x.
  • transitive: If x and y are numerically the same, and so are y and z, then it follows that x and z are numerically the same as well.) (66-7)
• They think that x and y can be qualitatively different – such that some things are true of x but not of y and vice-versa – and yet be “numerically the same”. They want to say that x and y are not identical, but are such that they (notice the plural) “should be” counted as one thing. While most philosophers think we should always count by identity, they deny that. (62, section 2.2) They suggest that most sorts of things should be counted by numerical sameness without identity, while other sorts of things should be counted by identity. (63)
• You’d think “numerical sameness” would be a one-one relation, i.e. the “two things” that stand in it are really identical. But no – a thing can be “numerically the same as” (say) seven-hundred non-identical things, and they can each be to it as well.
• I don’t grasp why they classify identity and numerical sameness without identity as species under a common genus. To put it differently, I think II.A should rather be III, as I don’t see what II.A and II.B have in common.
• Oddly, items which are “numerically the same” needn’t even be in the same category as each other. Hence, Socrates is in the category of substance, while “Seated-Socrates” is a mere “accidental unity” – not a substance, but rather a “hylomorphic structure” built of a substance (Socrates) and a non-essential property of that substance (seatedness). They hold the Father (etc.) to be “numerically the same divine individual” as the divine essence. (70) What’s an “individual”? I guess a non-substantial but property-bearing particular thing or entity. (This is yet another controversial claim – that there are such things. Again, it’s controversial that something could be “divine” while only being an individual and not a substance.) So again, substance on one side, non-substance on the other.
• Is this really monotheism? Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three non-identical, divine substances, though they are also supposedly “numerically the same without being identical”. What is unique, in the sense that nothing non-identical to it is numerically the same as it? “The divine essence.” But that isn’t a thing (substance) at all, only a stuff, much less a divine thing/entity/substance. Of course, it “constitutes” three distinct but “numerically the same hylomorphic compounds” – the three Persons. But on this theory, there is no divine person which is identical to God. So if by “God” you meant a “unique” divine person, in that sense they hold that there’s no God. Of course, what they want to say, is that the Three are to be counted as one God, in virtue of their sharing that something-like-an-immaterial-stuff. I guess it’s an oddball sort of monotheism, no more odd than many other trinitarian theories have it.
• In the plus column: this theory entirely avoids S-modalism.

That was all just circling around the issue and poking at it a few times. Well, why believe in this “numerical sameness without identity”? Have they been smoking crack? No – worse – they’ve been out behind the barn metaphysicalizing like crazy, about material objects. It goes like this:

1. You have intuitions about material objects like those in my Lumpy and Ned example. You don’t say, “there’s no such thing as Lumpy” (and/or Ned); rather, you believe there can be co-located things, at least if they’re of different kinds.
2. In response to 1, you also want to say that while Ned and Lumpy are non-identical, there’s only one material object over there right now, where that Garden gnome is standing.
3. If you’re still on board, you got what they call a “problem of material constitution” to deal with. (62) (You can join the club of philosophers in this book edited by Mike.)
4. You read Aristotle (see their 60-1 & the sources in their footnote 14) and note his belief in what others have called “kooky objects” like “seated Socrates” – a thing which exists so long as Socrates is seated – and “standing Socrates” – a thing which begins to exist when Socrates stands up, annihilating “seated Socrates”. Maybe you’re not sure if you believe in such things or not (61) but what the heck – you decide that the relation Aristotle posits between Socrates and seated Socrates – “accidental sameness” – might apply to the objects of common sense. Maybe fists and hands are “accidentally the same”, and so are Lumpy and Ned.
5. You note that things which are “accidentally the same” are the “same”, but might not have been. And you say, well, maybe things can be the “same” but are such that they can’t not be the same. So you generalize, hypothesizing that there are two kinds of sameness without identity, the accidental and the essential kind.
6. Happily, this last relation seems fit for duty when it comes to trinitarian theology.

My point in spelling this out, beyond making their motivations clear, is just this: it all hinges on 1. I don’t have those intuitions, so I get off the bus there. While it’s convenient to think and talk about that batch of atoms (or maybe fundamental particles) over there as “Ned” the statue or, maybe for some different purposes as “Lumpy” the lump, I don’t think there are such objects (what Aristotle calls primary substances) in the world. In my view there just a series of causally and spatially related events, which for our purposes we think of as things (which last through time and change). In Buddhist terminology, “Ned” and “Lumpy” are no more than “convenient designations”. Is this a violation of common sense? It depends what you mean by common sense. If it’s the set of things which normal adult humans in normal circumstances know, then I don’t think so. It is against common sense, in that it seems natural to believe at least in things like statues (I not so sure about lunch.) But in any case, how can this be a required Christian belief, when many Christians, such as me, have contrary intuitions, ones which in no obvious way contradict scripture, or even the creeds? And a great mass of others, will simply lack any relevant intuitions. The answer seems to be: it can’t be. But if you’re going for a great-creed-consistent doctrine, it has to be required. (E.g. See the nasty clause at the start of this.)

Technorati Tags: Mike Rea, Jeff Brower, Aristotle, lump and statue, identity, numerical sameness, material constitution, form, matter, Athanasian Creed

Several gents have already blogged about our present theory, so for those of you looking for more, or for a different angle:

Matthew Mullins (here, here, and here)

Brandon

J.T. Paasch (cf. his comments here, #6)

Did I leave anyone out?

Technorati Tags: Jeff Brower, Mike Rea, constitution trinitarianism, numerical sameness

For starters, what do they mean by “the divine essence”? What sort of thing is this which constitutes the persons? Rea answers in an email which Craig quotes:

All we mean to commit ourselves to is the idea that maybe the Persons are like a hylomorphic [form plus matter] structure: there’s something…we call it the “divine essence”… that plays the role of commonly shared matter, and, for each Person, something else that plays the role of form. (80)

You see, sometimes we think of things or objects as constituting other objects (as in my Ned and Lumpy example from last time), but also, going back to Aristotle, there’s a tradition of saying that “matter” together with a certain “form” or organization amount to a physical object. So here, an object would be constituted by a portion of matter, and the object would be a “hylomorphic compound” – something which can be analyzed (at least in thought) into two ingredients – the stuff and the shape of that stuff. Brower and Rea want to say that (e.g.) the Son is such a compound – the “form” being Sonship and the “matter” being something like an immaterial stuff, namely “the divine essence”. Of course, they admit, theology ought not posit a material stuff in God. They’re just saying that the divine persons are analogous tohylomorphic compounds, and so they must share something analogous to a stuff. Craig objects that the ancient tradition (Fathers and councils) “did not mean that God or the persons of the Trinity were composed of some sort of spiritual stuff” when they said that the three were “same substance” (homoousias). Moreover, Craig objects, the notion of immaterial stuff seems incoherent. (80)

Brower and Rea hold that the basic puzzle of the Trinity is that there’s only one God, but there are three distinct (non-identical) persons each of which “is” God. They say – no problem – our theory smoothes it all out by saying what that “is” amounts to. Each of the three “is” God in the sense of being numerically the same as (but not identical to) God, as well as to each other. That’s compatible with their only being one God, and with the none of the three being identical to either of the others. Craig says not so fast. One portion of matter can’t simultaneously have incompatible properties – the portion forming Ned the gnome, for instance, can’t simultaneously be gnome-shaped, and shaped like a 747 jet plane. But are not being a Father and being a Son incompatible properties? If so, how can one something-like-an-immaterial-stuff simultaneously have both? (82-3) Why think those properties are incompatible? Craig points out that the Son can truly think “I died on a cross” but the Father cannot truly think that.

I’ll skip the last two pages of Craig’s critique, as it’s a little compressed, and I’m not sure I follow some of it. The parts I do follow, I’ll raise in a future post.

Technorati Tags: William Lane Craig, Mike Rea, Jeff Brower, lump and statue, identity, numerical sameness, material constitution, form, matter

“Material Constitution and the Trinity” (Faith and Philosophy 22:1, Jan 2005, 57-76) is a difficult and technical article, dense with argument. Philosophers will appreciate how well it’s crafted; I not sure many others can get through it! Here I’ll just lay out the broad lines of it, getting slightly more precise in future installments. Consider Ned the gnome:

How many things are pictured here?

You might say just one – a gnome statue – but many philosophers say there are at least two, the other being the lump of clay of which Ned is made – call it Lumpy. Lumpy existed, in some sort of blobbish form, before it came to constitute Ned. And if we annihilate Ned, by say crushing him flat with a ten-ton weight, Lumpy may still exist (now in a very flat form). And possibly (maybe this is less obvious) we could modify Ned by replacing his parts one after another, so that it is no longer Lumpy which constitutes Ned, but instead some new quantity of clay.

As different things are true of them, we know that Lumpy and the statue Ned can’t be identical. But Brower and Rea would say that the two, though not identical, are “numerically the same”. So even though Lumpy and Ned are non-identical, the correct answer to “How many things are in the picture?” is: one. This, they admit, is odd, but they insist that any plausible metaphysics of material objects is going to say odd, unintuitive things sooner or later. (61-7)

What’s this got to do with the Trinity? Just this. They’re suggesting that God is related to each of the divine persons somewhat as Lumpy is related to Ned. As they put it, the divine essence eternally has the three properties of being a Father, being a Son, and being a Spirit, giving rise to three non-identical persons. They are, however, to be counted as one God, for they are all constituted by the same divine essence. (68-9) The divine essence “constitutes” each of the persons. None of the Three is identical to God, though each is “numerically the same” as the one God. (70) This theory, they claim, meets any reasonable desiderata for an orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, one consonant with natural readings of the Bible and the ecumenical creeds. (58-9, 70) Further, this solution isn’t plucked from thin air; they hold that common sense pushes us to believe that some things are constituted by others, and that there’s such a thing as numerical sameness without identity.

Technorati Tags: constitution trinitarianism, Mike Rea, Jeff Brower, lump and statue, identity, numerical sameness, material constitution

“Constitution” or “Canon” number 1:
1. Confession of Faith
We firmly believe and simply confess that there is only one true God… three persons but one absolutely simple essence, substance or nature. The Father is from none, the Son from the Father alone, and the holy Spirit from both equally, eternally without beginning or end… consubstantial and coequal, co-omnipotent and coeternal; one principle of all things, creator of all things invisible and visible, spiritual and corporeal; who by his almighty power at the beginning of time created from nothing both spiritual and corporeal creatures…
This holy Trinity, which is undivided according to its common essence but distinct according to the properties of its persons, gave the teaching of salvation to the human race through Moses and the holy prophets and his other servants, according to the most appropriate disposition of the times. Finally the only-begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ, who became incarnate by the action of the whole Trinity in common and was conceived from the ever virgin Mary through the cooperation of the holy Spirit, having become true man, composed of a rational soul and human flesh, one person in two natures, showed more clearly the way of life. Although he is immortal and unable to suffer according to his divinity, he was made capable of suffering and dying according to his humanity….
There is indeed one universal church of the faithful, outside of which nobody at all is saved, in which Jesus Christ is both priest and sacrifice. His body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine, the bread and wine having been changed in substance, by God’s power, into his body and blood, so that in order to achieve this mystery of unity we receive from God what he received from us. Nobody can effect this sacrament except a priest… [this sacrament] brings salvation to both children and adults when it is correctly carried out by anyone in the form laid down by the church. …2. On the error of abbot Joachim [of Fiore, c. 1135 – 1202]

We therefore condemn and reprove that small book or treatise which abbot Joachim published… in which he calls Peter Lombard a heretic and a madman because he said in his Sentences, “For there is a certain supreme reality which is the Father and the Son and the holy Spirit, and it neither begets nor is begotten nor does it proceed”. He asserts from this that Peter Lombard ascribes to God not so much a Trinity as a quaternity, that is to say three persons and a common essence as if this were a fourth person. Abbot Joachim clearly protests that there does not exist any reality which is the Father and the Son and the holy Spirit-neither an essence nor a substance nor a nature — although he concedes that the Father and the Son and the holy Spirit are one essence, one substance and one nature. He professes, however, that such a unity is not true and proper but rather collective and analogous, in the way that many persons are said to be one people and many faithful one church, according to that saying : Of the multitude of believers there was one heart and one mind, and Whoever adheres to God is one spirit with him; again He who plants and he who waters are one, and all of us are one body in Christ; and again in the book of Kings, My people and your people are one. In support of this opinion he especially uses the saying which Christ uttered in the gospel concerning the faithful : I wish, Father, that they may be one in us, just as we are one, so that they may be made perfect in one. For, he says, Christ’s faithful are not one in the sense of a single reality which is common to all. They are one only in this sense, that they form one church through the unity of the catholic faith, and finally one kingdom through a union of indissoluble charity. …
We, however, with the approval of this sacred and universal council, believe and confess with Peter Lombard that there exists a certain supreme reality, incomprehensible and ineffable, which truly is the Father and the Son and the holy Spirit, the three persons together and each one of them separately. Therefore in God there is only a Trinity, not a quaternity, since each of the three persons is that reality — that is to say substance, essence or divine nature-which alone is the principle of all things, besides which no other principle can be found. This reality neither begets nor is begotten nor proceeds; the Father begets, the Son is begotten and the holy Spirit proceeds. Thus there is a distinction of persons but a unity of nature. Although therefore the Father is one person, the Son another person and the holy Spirit another person, they are not different realities, but rather that which is the Father is the Son and the holy Spirit, altogether the same; thus according to the orthodox and catholic faith they are believed to be consubstantial. For the Father, in begetting the Son from eternity, gave him his substance, as he himself testifies : What the Father gave me is greater than all. It cannot be said that the Father gave him part of his substance and kept part for himself since the Father’s substance is indivisible, inasmuch as it is altogether simple. Nor can it be said that the Father transferred his substance to the Son, in the act of begetting, as if he gave it to the Son in such a way that he did not retain it for himself; for otherwise he would have ceased to be substance. It is therefore clear that in being begotten the Son received the Father’s substance without it being diminished in any way, and thus the Father and the Son have the same substance. Thus the Father and the Son and also the holy Spirit proceeding from both are the same reality.
When, therefore, the Truth prays to the Father for those faithful to him, saying I wish that they may be one in us just as we are one, this word one means for the faithful a union of love in grace, and for the divine persons a unity of identity in nature… If anyone therefore ventures to defend or approve the opinion or doctrine of the aforesaid Joachim on this matter, let him be refuted by all as a heretic. By this, however, we do not intend anything to the detriment of the monastery of Fiore, which Joachim founded, because there both the instruction is according to rule and the observance is healthy; especially since Joachim ordered all his writings to be handed over to us, to be approved or corrected according to the judgment of the apostolic see. He dictated a letter, which he signed with his own hand, in which he firmly confesses that he holds the faith held by the Roman church, which is by God’s plan the mother and mistress of all the faithful. …

3. On Heretics

We excommunicate and anathematize every heresy raising itself up against this holy, orthodox and catholic faith which we have expounded above. … Let those condemned be handed over to the secular authorities present, or to their bailiffs, for due punishment. Clerics are first to be degraded from their orders. The goods of the condemned are to be confiscated, if they are lay persons, and if clerics they are to be applied to the churches from which they received their stipends. … Let secular authorities, whatever offices they may be discharging, be advised and urged and if necessary be compelled by ecclesiastical censure, if they wish to be reputed and held to be faithful, to take publicly an oath for the defence of the faith to the effect that they will seek, in so far as they can, to expel from the lands subject to their jurisdiction all heretics designated by the church in good faith. Thus whenever anyone is promoted to spiritual or temporal authority, he shall be obliged to confirm this article with an oath. If however a temporal lord, required and instructed by the church, neglects to cleanse his territory of this heretical filth, he shall be bound with the bond of excommunication by the metropolitan and other bishops of the province. …
Catholics who take the cross and gird themselves up for the expulsion of heretics shall enjoy the same indulgence, and be strengthened by the same holy privilege, as is granted to those who go to the aid of the holy Land. Moreover, we determine to subject to excommunication believers who receive, defend or support heretics. We strictly ordain that if any such person, after he has been designated as excommunicated, refuses to render satisfaction within a year, then by the law itself he shall be branded as infamous and not be admitted to public offices or councils or to elect others to the same or to give testimony. He shall be intestable, that is he shall not have the freedom to make a will nor shall succeed to an inheritance. Moreover nobody shall be compelled to answer to him on any business whatever, but he may be compelled to answer to them. If he is a judge sentences pronounced by him shall have no force and cases may not be brought before him; if an advocate, he may not be allowed to defend anyone; if a notary, documents drawn up by him shall be worthless and condemned along with their condemned author; and in similar matters we order the same to be observed. If however he is a cleric, let him be deposed from every office and benefice, so that the greater the fault the greater be the punishment. If any refuse to avoid such persons after they have been pointed out by the church, let them be punished with the sentence of excommunication until they make suitable satisfaction. Clerics should not, of course, give the sacraments of the church to such pestilent people nor give them a christian burial nor accept alms or offerings from them; if they do, let them be deprived of their office and not restored to it without a special indult of the apostolic see. … http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Valley/8920/churchcouncils/Ecum12.htm#Confession%20of%20Faith

Any post-medieval, non-Catholic Christian can probably name a dozen things not to like here. (I reckon that post-Vatican II Catholics would have some complaints as well.) This was also the council that imposed certain anti-semitic measures. But sticking to the Trinity, this document strongly asserts what Brian Leftow says is the characteristic thesis of “Latin” trinitarianism, which is that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit share one token, or one trope of divinity. But it goes beyond that. This one essence/substance “is” each of the three individually, and (in the same sense, apparently) “is” also the whole Trinity. If we read this “is” as identity (which is natural enough), we get a contradictory stance – the same one pictured on the famous Trinity shield.

Needless to say, this “is” cries out to be disambiguated, to reveal whether or not what these sentences are asserting is even possibly true. It seems that we can’t read it as identity, though, as it has properties that differ from those of each of the three persons – this essence thing neither begets, nor is begotten, nor proceeds. On the other hand, “they are not different realities, but rather that which is the Father is the Son and the holy Spirit, altogether the same” seems to imply that Father, Son, and Spirit are just three names for one self-identical thing, presumably this individual essence. Could this be “numerical identity” which isn’t, and doesn’t imply what logicians normally call identity? Hard to say – depends on exactly what relation that is supposed to be.

The proof-texting of the claim that the Father “gave” his whole nature/essence to the Son strikes me as quite dodgy. First, even if the text says that, it would surely amount to reading much later interests back into the text. Second, they seem to be referring to John 10:29, which in the NIV reads: “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.” I take it there’s a problem either with the text or the translation of the Latin Vulgate here, though I haven’t verified this.

The treatment of John 17:11 (“that they may be one as we are one”) seems humorously ad hoc. Well, at least it’d be humorous if they weren’t prepared to have people who disagreed killed, either by the secular authorities, or by professing Christians on a murderous anti-heresy Crusade (in Europe, rather than the Holy Land). As for Joachim, as it says, he managed to cave in quickly and completely enough to save himself.

Technorati Tags: church council, trinity, theology, lateran, Joachim of Fiore, transubstantiation, quaternity, modalism, Latin trinitarian, Pope, Pope Innocent III, crusade, heresy

The creed reads in part,

Whoever wants to be saved should above all cling to the catholic faith. Whoever does not guard it whole and inviolable will doubtless perish eternally. Now this is the catholic faith: We worship one God in trinity and the Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the divine being. For the Father is one person, the Son is another, and the Spirit is still another.  But the deity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, equal in glory, coeternal in majesty. What the Father is, the Son is, and so is the Holy Spirit. Uncreated… infinite… eternal… And yet there are not three eternal beings, but one who is eternal… Almighty is the Father… And yet there are not three almighty beings, but one who is almighty. Thus the Father is God; the Son is God; the Holy Spirit is God: And yet there are not three gods, but one God. …not three lords, but one Lord. As Christian truth compels us to acknowledge each distinct person as God and Lord, so catholic religion forbids us to say that there are three gods or lords. The Father was neither made nor created nor begotten; the Son was neither made nor created, but was alone begotten of the Father; the Spirit was neither made nor created, but is proceeding from the Father and the Son. Thus there is one Father, not three fathers; one Son, not three sons; one Holy Spirit, not three spirits. And in this Trinity, no one is before or after, greater or less than the other; but all three persons are in themselves, coeternal and coequal; and so we must worship the Trinity in unity and the one God in three persons. Whoever wants to be saved should think thus about the Trinity. It is necessary for eternal salvation that one also faithfully believe that our Lord Jesus Christ became flesh… That our Lord Jesus Christ, God’s Son, is both God and man. He is God, begotten before all worlds from the being of the Father, and he is man, born in the world from the being of his mother — existing fully as God, and fully as man with a rational soul and a human body; equal to the Father in divinity, subordinate to the Father in humanity. Although he is God and man, he is not divided, but is one Christ. He is united because God has taken humanity into himself; he does not transform deity into humanity. He is completely one in the unity of his person, without confusing his natures. For as the rational soul and body are one person, so the one Christ is God and man. He suffered death for our salvation. …

I’ve been critical of this much-beloved standard of orthodoxy. In a published article I said,

. . .it is worth asking whether it is a mistake to consider [the so-called Athanasian Creed] document authoritative. To be sure, it is and has been endorsed by many western Christian churches for a long time. Thus many western Christians who see God’s hand in the historical development of the Christian tradition want to affirm it. The problem is that we can find some powerful reasons not to. The main problem is that it seems to put forth contradictory claims. The creed says that each of the three divine persons has at least one property the other two lack (e.g. being “from none”, being “begotten” from the Father, and “proceeding” from the Father and Son). It follows by the indiscernibility of identicals that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not identical, not numerically the same. It also says that each of the three is God, and yet there is only one God. Further, it lacks the kind of pedigree one wants in an authoritative document. It is neither a council document, nor a digest of scriptural teaching, nor from the hand of a church father (we don’t know who wrote it, but it wasn’t Athanasius). Finally, this document makes morally dubious claims, when it asserts that anyone who doesn’t accept its (contradictory?) doctrines is damned to Hell. But doesn’t the merciful God accept many Christians with vague or incoherent trinitarian beliefs (often modalist in essence), Christians before the trinitarian developments of the fourth century, social trinitarians, and those with unique, speculative beliefs about the Trinity?
    Some would argue that the above reasons are outweighed by reasons we have to trust in whatever documents a certain religious body (e.g. the Catholic Church) has affirmed. That looks like a tough row to hoe, but I suggest that the matter deserves more discussion by Christian philosophers, and that it is better to face than to avoid what looks like genuine conflicts between reason and tradition. . . (“Tradition and Believability: Edward Wierenga’s Social
Trinitarianism”, Philosophia Christi, 5:2, 447-56, 2003.)

Now there are apparently consistent ways to interpret this document, for instance, using the doctrine of relative identity, or the concepts of material constitution and “numerical identity” which isn’t the relation which occurs in Leibniz’s Law. How, then, can I assert that the Athanasian Creed seems contradictory? Simply, I’m not convinced that the authors had any of these highly rarefied metaphysical notions in mind, nor am I convinced that God inspired the anonymous author of this creed to write truths the meaning of which he didn’t understand, and that indeed no one would really understand until the 1960s (relative identity) or the 1990s (material constitution and “numerical identity” which ain’t identity). Charity does require us to seek for a consistent interpretation of any document, but doesn’t prevent us from ultimately concluding that an author is confused, when no plausible consistent interpretation presents itself.
    Still, having said that, I must admit that I’ve seen traces of materialistic and quasi-materialistic thinking about God in the era of the church Fathers. Tertullian, I believe, thought (like Hobbes much later) that God is a material object. And others sometimes seem to think of the divine nature (Godhead, deity) as a matter (or something like matter) which might eternally compose three divine persons – a sort of God-stuff. This sort of talk tends to disappear later in the Latin tradition, I’d guess because of the increasing emphasis on the doctrine of divine simplicity, and the Thomistic claim that God is pure act. So I’ll leave the door open to the idea that this creed’s author may have had something like Brower’s and Rea’s constitution trinitarianism in mind, though he’s less than clear about this.
    I don’t think the same kind of historical considerations can help out the relative identity reading of this creed, but in any case, this version of trinitarianism, like any other, deserves to be considered on its own merits. Another day.

Technorati Tags: Athanasian Creed, Quicumque, creed, trinity, theology, identity

There’s a really neat article about these here, complete with some links to real medieval examples. Basically, this sort of Shield of Faith (Latin: scutum fidei) diagram seems to have originated in the high middle ages, with the intention of illustrating the doctrine.

In general, I love diagrams & visual aids when it comes to philosophy and theology. But rather than getting you nodding, though, I think this diagram ought to get you scratching your head. In light of some recent musings, we should ask: what does it mean? How, that is, are we to read this chart?

We naturally assume that “is” (est) means the same thing all around. What then, does it mean in the negative parts, e.g. where it says that the Father “is not” the Son. Presumably, one has noticed that some things are true of the Father, that are not true of the Son, and vice versa. By the kind of reasoning we looked at last time, then, the chart is asserting that Father and Son are not identical.

So far, so good. These three claims of the outer ring seem plausible. Now we turn to the positive parts. (“The Son is God.” etc.) Doh! Does anyone see a problem here?

Sorry to bore the philosophers and logicians out there, but permit me spell it out. Identity is by definition a transitive and asymmetric relation. So these two claims

• The Father is God.
• The Son is God.

Imply

• The Father is the Son.

But on the outside of the chart, that very claim is denied. So the chart, on this interpretation, is asserting contradictory clamis: for each of the Persons, that Person is, and isn’t, identical to each of the others.

Now it must be said that this contradictory interpretation is fine with some people! Its supposed to be a mystery, after all, and many mean a “mystery” to be an apparently contradictory doctrine.

The author(s) of the wikipedia article, though, draw a different conclusion:

Of course, if the diagram is interpreted according to ordinary logic, then it contains a number of contradictions (since the set of twelve propositions listed above is mutually contradictory). However, if the three links connecting the three outer nodes of the diagram to the center node are interpreted as representing a non-transitive quasi-equivalence relation (where the statement “A is equivalent to C” does not follow from the two statements “A is equivalent to B” and “B is equivalent to C”), then the diagram is fully logically coherent and non-self-contradictory. So the medieval Shield of the Trinity diagram could be considered to contain some implicit kernel of the idea of alternative logical systems.

The point here is: maybe the “is” in the chart shouldn’t be read as idenity. Whatever relation it is, it must be non-transitive – then, the doctrine embodied in the chart has a hope of being consistent. The million-dollar question, then, is what exactly is this “quasi-equivalence” relation?

In the current literature, I know of basically two such suggestions:

• Michael Rea and Jeff Brower have suggested: “is constituted by“. So, forexample, the Son is constituted by God, but is not constituted by the Father. What is “constitution”? Something analagous to material constitution – the relation between this mass of clay and this clay pot. See this paper for a nice, readable discussion. Professional philosophers (and not many others!) will want to see this, fuller discussion.
• Relative identity. This goes back to Peter Geach, A.P. Martinich, and others, and has recently been defended by Peter van Inwagen. Even though he’s against it, I suggest looking at Rea’s paper here for an introduction to this approach.

Both of these approaches result in a consistent trinitarianism, although other sorts of objections will crop up. Hopefully within the next month or so, I’ll have time to post on these.

Back to the diagram, about the best that can be said about it, is that it illustrates the problem of the (classic, Latin, Athanasian) version of the doctrine. It puzzles rather than informs, which can lead to a more developed, and possibly a believable version of the doctrine. Or it can lead to embracing an apparently contradictory form of the doctrine, which I call mystery-mongering. But that’s another topic.