trinities

On “godhead” (Dale)

In popular Christian writing, as well as in theology, I’m constantly seeing the word “godhead” being used to mean something like “the three members of the Trinity, considered as a group”. An example context would be discussion “the eternal fellowship of the Godhead”.

Historically, this usage puzzles me. You never see this usage in ancient, medieval, or early modern material.In fact, I’m not sure I’ve seen it in anything before 1980 – anyone out there have a counterexample?

Here’s what our friend the Oxford English Dictionary says about “godhead”:

1. The character or quality of being God or a god; divine nature or essence; deity.

b. As a title: Divine personality. Obs.

2. a. the Godhead: the Supreme Being; the Deity; = GOD n. 5. (Also rarely without article.)

b. A deity or divinity. = GOD n. 1. Now rare. (Oxford English Dictionary online, “godhead”)

Basically, the OED acknowledges two usages of “godhead’ – (1) that which makes God divine – his quality of divinity, and (2) God. (2) is a natural extension of (1) – it’s a case of using a word for a part/aspect/component of the thing to stand for the whole thing – here, God. Note: the OED is out of date; it lacks the usage I noted at the start of this post. The new usage implies a divine community; the old (2) doesn’t – it is like referring to God using a sort of euphemistic title such as “Providence” or “Heaven”. Note that a “Godhead” in the recent usage is never a “him” but always a “they” or an “it” – this is the whole point of the new usage.

My hypothesis is this: Continue Reading »

¶ Posted 09 March 2010 † Dale § Complaints § History § Quotes § Theologians ‡ Comments (4) °

Linkage: Trinity discussions @ Theologica (Dale)

I recently received a friendly note from Daniel Eaton, head moderator at Theologica: a bible, theology, politics, news, networking, and discussion site. It seems they’ve set up a whole section devoted to Trinity discussions, here. Check it out.

Daniel sort of asks me a few questions:

…it would make an interesting discussion as to whether or not the definition we have of “traditional Christianity” on our About Page suggests or encourages [modalism].

Here’s the relevant part of the statement, part of the policy that only real Christians are allowed to blog on their site:

What Theologica Bloggers Believe

… I believe God to reveal himself as three eternal persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Yep – sounds modalist to me; I mean, that’s how many or most will understand it. There’s one being, a person (“himself”) who has “revealed himself as” three eternal persons. This part is extra unclear – are the persons only ways God appears? Or both appears and is? Lives? Three ways he self-reveals? Events involving him? Parts of the one god? You’ll never know. But it looks like some form of eternally concurrent FSH modalism. Nothing unusual here – this is the norm in evangelical circles. If you’re a real Christian, in the eyes of many, you are a modalist. I find it interesting – and disturbing – that this is considered “that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all [real Christians]“.

Daniel also says,

I’d also love to hear how, if you were told to define “historical Christianity”, how you would word a definition of the Trinity.

“Historical Christianity” is Continue Reading »

¶ Posted 05 March 2010 † Dale § Apologetics § Complaints § Heresy & Orthodoxy § Linkage § Modalism § Mystery ‡ Comments (2) °

More on Loyola’s “white is black” passage (Dale)

It seems I touched a nerve, judging by the word count so far (here, and here). First, let me make clear that I have no interest in mocking Catholic doctrine. I’m a non-catholic (and so non-Catholic) Christian, and am in sympathy with the Catholic tradition in many ways. I’m going to avoid some well-worn Catholic-Protestant battle areas here, and try to stick to what I think is so interesting and yet so wrong-headed about Loyola’s implicit mysterianism. Ed is concerned to rebut claims by “skeptics” that Loyola here issues a “jarring call to irrationalist dogmatism”, but to me that is a red herring.

Ed thinks I’m misreading the controversial passage. I don’t think he’s made his case, and I also think he’s also missing the epistemic point I was making.

By “tradition” I meant whatever beliefs the Hierarchical Church asserts to be mandatory for Catholics. I’m well aware that Catholics don’t consider all widespread Christian, even Catholic traditions mandatory.
Loyola’s discussion is not merely about the infallibility of the Church’s judgement or pronouncements. It does assume that, but the notorious passage occurs as a rule for the proper formation of beliefs. So Loyola is on the topic of individual epistemology – he’s giving a rule which in his view will lead us only to correct beliefs. So in my view Ed is mistaken when he asserts that “What is at issue [in the black is white passage] is the epistemological status of the Church’s pronouncements themselves.”
Is Loyola’s claim hyperbole? Continue Reading »

¶ Posted 01 March 2010 † Dale § Apologetics § History § Mystery § Philosophy ‡ Comments (13) °

Linkage: Robin Le Poidevin on metaphysics and the Incarnation @ Philosophy Compass (Dale)

It is well known that silhouetted people are far cooler that non-silhouetted people.

Philosophy Compass is a unique philosophy journal which only publishes survey articles, pieces which aim to summarize recent work. Its aim, as editor Brian Weatherson explains, is to enable people to keep up with a vast, overspecialized, fast-moving, and only somewhat accessible world of philosophical research.

What’s more exciting – they sell the pdfs of the articles for $1.99. They’re trying to be the iTunes of philosophy.The registration process is pretty standard, and the web-based system works well, though not one tenth as slick as the iTunes interface. At $70 / year for 6 issues, I’m tempted to subscribe.

I downloaded a piece on the metaphysics of the Incarnation, by Robin Le Poidevin. On the whole, it was well done – written in plain, clear language, and fair-minded, although oddly it led with a brief discussion of “non-realist” views of the Incarnation. It seemed to me, having read much of the recent literature on this, that a number of things were missing – off the top of my head: work by Davis further pressing the kenotic strategy, Plantinga on abstract vs. concrete understandings of Christ’s “natures”, Hick’s objections to two-minds theories, Merricks on embodiment.

But there was a lot that was good – a summary of Chalcedon, a painless introduction to the relative identity strategy, Senor’s objection to the compositional model of Leftow and Stump, some philosophy of mind objections to the two-minds approach, brief discussion of how four-dimensionalism and the “extended mind” theory might be brought into play.

One problematic assertion Le Poidevin makes is that “fully entering into the human condition includes the possibility of extinction.” (p. 713) I’m not sure why anyone should think that more than the epistemic possibility of one ceasing to exist would be required for Christ sharing our lot – that is, that one can’t rule out one’s future extinction.

But on the whole, it was $1.99 well spent. If you’re a non-philosopher, or a philosopher with another specialty, looking for a path into the recent discussion of the incarnation in philosophical theology, this is a good start

¶ Posted 27 February 2010 † Dale § Christology § Incarnation § Linkage § Philosophy ‡ Comments (0) °

Quote: Loyola – tradition trumps sense perception (Dale)

(click for image credit)

St. Ignatius Loyola (1495-1556) founded the Jesuit order and authored a famous book of Spiritual Exercises. There, in a list of rules for correct belief, we have this:

Thirteenth Rule. To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it, believing that between Christ our Lord, the Bridegroom, and the Church, His Bride, there is the same Spirit which governs and directs us for the salvation of our souls. Because by the same Spirit and our Lord Who gave the ten Commandments, our holy Mother the Church is directed and governed. (emphasis added)

What occasioned this rule was likely the objection, common among 16th-19th c. Protestants, to the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, to the effect that we are more sure, on the basis of sense perception, that the consecrated wafer is just a wafer, than we are (based on Church testimony) that it is really the body of Jesus. God wants us, they would urge, to trust the senses he gave us, and believable miracle-claims let us do this.

I don’t see this sort of objection nowadays. I’m not sure why it went out of style. In any case, Loyola’s answer is clear - tradition ought to trump even a clear, close-up sensory perception. One would think, then, that it would also trump a strong intuition of falsehood – as when a set of claims appears self-inconsistent.

But even Loyola’s sense claim seems unreasonable. Suppose, contrary to fact, that Mother Church had long, strongly asserted that uneaten, consecrated wafers never rot. Then, you’re cleaning up the church, and find a wafer than you remember the priest dropping during Mass some months ago. It is rotten – covered with bread mold. You can feel, smell, and see the rot. Surely, you can (and will) reasonably believe that the wafer is rotten.

¶ Posted 24 February 2010 † Dale § History § Mystery § Quotes ‡ Comments (5) °

Gregory of Nazianzus – an early dialetheist? (Dale)

Awesome... and yet, not awesome. Philosopher Graham Priest is notorious for his claim that there are true contradictions. I have to confess that when I first heard this years ago, I thought the people telling me were pulling my leg. But, they were not. Priest is deadly serious, and has developed paraconsistent logics – logical systems which allow some true contradictions. And he’s vigorously defended his claims against all comers, as in this recent book.

No, he doesn’t say that all contradictions are true – only some of them. And the ones which are true are also false. He claims that this thesis of dialetheism solves the liar paradox and others.

Very rarely, some theologian will come along, and assert that the Trinity doctrine is a true contradiction – not a merely apparent contradiction, but a real one.

Most Christians, though, eschew such a claim. Mysterian James Anderson discusses and rejects this approach to Christian mysteries in his book Paradox in Christian Theology.

Much to my surprise, I recently found a move like Priest’s in Gregory of Nazianzus (d. c. 390), in his Third Theological Oration.

Gregory is considering an argument by Arians, a premise of which is that the Son who the Father begot either was or was not in existence - I take it, prior or “prior” to his being begotten. (It is clear at the end of this section that Gregory takes them to mean literally before.)

Gregory asserts that this claim “contains an absurdity, and not a difficulty to answer.” He then gives a non-too-clear time example, which I’ll skip. Then he argues,

…in regard to this expression, “I am now telling a lie,” admit one of these alternatives, either that it is true, or that it is a falsehood, without qualification (for we cannot admit that it is both). But this cannot be. For necessarily he either is lying, and so is telling the truth, or else he is telling the truth, and so is lying. What wonder is it then that, as in this case [of the liar paradox] contraries are true, so in that case [concerning the Arians' premise above] they [i.e. both alternatives] should both be untrue, and so your clever puzzle prove mere foolishness?

I take it that the “contraries” he mentions would be: “the man is lying” and “the man is telling the truth”. Contraries are often defined nowadays – I’m not sure how they were defined in his day – as claims that can’t both be true. But here, Gregory asserts that both are true Continue Reading »

¶ Posted 22 February 2010 † Dale § History § Logic § Mystery ‡ Comments (4) °

Mysterians at work in Dallas (Dale)

Clearly, the instructor's work has been accomplished.

What I call positive mysterianism about the Trinity is the view that the doctrine, as best we can formulate it, is apparently contradictory. Now many Christian philosophers resort to this in the end, but only after one or more elaborate attempts to spell the doctrine out in a coherent way. On the other hand, some jump more quickly for the claim, not really expanding on or interpreting the standard creedal formulas much at all. These are primarily who I have in mind when I use the label “positive mysterian”.

I ran across a striking version of this recently, in a blog post by theologian C. Michael Patton, who blogs at Parchment and Pen: a theology blog. In his interesting post, he says that all the typical analogies for the Trinity (shamrock, egg, water-ice-vapor, etc.) are useful only for showing what the Trinity doctrine is not.

This contrasts interestingly with what I call negative mysterians. Typically, and this holds for many of the Fathers, as well as for people like Brower and Rea nowadays, they hold that all these analogies are useful, at least when you pile together enough of them, for showing what the doctrine is. Individually, they are highly misleading, and only barely appropriate, but they seem to think that multiplying analogies like these results in our achieving a minimal grasp of what is being claimed. Maybe they think the seeming inconsistency of the analogies sort of cancels out the misleading implications of each one considered alone.

In any case, in Patten’s view, the best you can do is to Continue Reading »

¶ Posted 19 February 2010 † Dale § Complaints § Heresy & Orthodoxy § Mystery § Quotes § Theologians ‡ Comments (2) °

Linkage: Mavericking Mysteries (Dale)

Just be glad I didn't pick a picture of John McCain!

Over at the Maverick Philosopher, Bill Vallicella and some others have been on a tear of philosophical theology, specifically on appeal to mysteries in theology, and on incarnation issues.

Here, atheist philosopher Peter Lupu mounts an argument against positive mysteriansism.

Bill asks: Does inconceivability entail impossibility. (No.) And: Whether Jesus exists necessarily? (No.)

In another post, Bill argues that if a mysterian defense works for belief in the Trinity, it should work for materialists about human beings too.

And here, Bill explains very clearly why the distinction between primary substance and supposit is open to the charge of being ad hoc.

The comments are of very high quality. My only objection is that when I’m busy, it’s hard to keep up with this philosophical hot rod!

¶ Posted 18 February 2010 † Dale § Incarnation § Linkage § Logic § Mystery § Philosophy ‡ Comments (0) °

More on Mysteries (Dale)

Mystery Machine Thanks to Ed Feser for some interesting dialogue on the topic of mysteries in Christian theology. This post is just a bunch of miscellaneous responses to his thoughts posted last week, here and here.

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, Continue Reading »

¶ Posted 15 February 2010 † Dale § Apologetics § Heresy & Orthodoxy § History § Linkage § Mystery § Philosophy ‡ Comments (6) °

Linkage: Feser’s Negative Mysterian Defense of the Trinity (Dale)

No - that's F E S E R. But I can be set to either stun or kill.

At his self-titled blog Edward Feser, the Catholic philosopher & popular author mounts a negative mysterian defense of the Trinity.

It’s worth a read. In my view, most of it is perfectly reasonable, but it goes wrong where he claims that the teaching of Christ as recording in the New Testament logically implies the creedal formulas about the Trinity.

The defense of mystery appeals by comparison with naturalistic “mysterian” theories in non-religious matters is intriguing, and I wish he’d developed it more.

In sum, a well done post – but a stun, not a kill.

Update: the Feser fires another volley (at me, and at the Maverick Philosopher). This one is even more interesting. Ed’s brand of negative mysterianism is highly developed – almost as much as James Anderson’s positive mysterianism, and I will respond in due course. Thanks, Ed, for the good conversation!

Further Update: Ed makes some apt comments regarding charges of ad hoc hypotheses, and takes a stance I think is wrong-headed, rejecting what he calls “theistic personalism” or “neo-theism”, but which most of us just call “theism” or “monotheism”!

¶ Posted 09 February 2010 † Dale § Apologetics § Linkage § Mystery § Philosophy § Theories ‡ Comments (3) °

Linkage: Disproving the existence of Hooloovoo? (Dale)

photo by Ieuan Jenkins - http://www.flickr.com/photos/dijitali/3083227540/

Hooloovoo - as pictured by photographer Ieuan Jenkins.

In a well-argued recent guest post and follow up comment, Greg Spendlove argued that for all we know, there could be a property (feature) which is also a person / self / personal being.

As I explain in my comments there, I’m not convinced - I think we’re on firm ground to deny the alleged possibility, but I loved his example of Hooloovoo – author Douglas Adam’s “hyperintelligent shade of blue”.

Thanks to Ieuan for the use of his beautiful photos here. When I found them, I thought they were a great picture of a Hooloovoo. I’m not sure that’s right, though. A shade of blue is a universal, but the blue thing in any of the pics is a particular (mass of water and ink) or at least a group of particulars. According to the theory of universals, it or they would “instantiate” the shade of blue property, the universal. So, what is in the picture, would not be Hooloovoo himself, but would rather be an instance or instantiation of him. Maybe also an incarnation of him?

Greg also mentioned this contest at the Matters of Substance blog: Alex Pruss is offering the princely sum of $50 in Amazon currency for the best argument that no property is a person.

It seems that Alex is gearing up to take on the strongest entries. Good luck with that!

Not believing in properties, I can’t get too excited about the contest myself; as Alex points out, if there are no properties, then there isn’t any property which is also a self. But I must say that on the assumption of realism about (universal) properties, a number of the arguments strike me as very plausible – so much so that it’d be difficult for a theological argument (that a person is a property) to be as plausible.

¶ Posted 07 February 2010 † Dale § Christology § Linkage § Philosophy ‡ Comments (0) °

Linkage: Vallicella and Lukas on Supposita (Dale)

No, suppositUM - settle down, kitty!

Thanks to Vlastimil Vohánka for referring us to this discussion between Maverick Philosopher Bill Vallicella and Dr. Lukas Novak of Charles University, Prague.

As I understand it, a suppositum is supposed to be an ultimate subject of characteristics / properties, as distinct from non-ultimate subjects. My individual human nature is supposed to be suppositum, but Christ’s is not.

One ought to be a little suspicious of this supposita theory, as apparently it was originally formulated just to deal with Incarnation difficulties, that is, to come up with a coherent reading of the creed of Chalcedon. Apart from this, apparently it’s hard to come up with any metaphysical work for this theory to do.

I confess that I don’t understand how this concept is being applied to come up with a consistent Trinity theory. Should I add a section to the entry?

Dr. Novak says,

Regarding my place in the classification of trinitarian theories in the SEP: frankly, it seems to me that the traditional orthodox position (which I hope I maintain ) is not listed. It is located somewhere under the “Latin trinitarianism”, but none of the modern attempts to capture it seems to do justice to it.

I think, based on what he says in that comment, he’s what I call a negative mysterian, although with some more metaphysical speculations added than the ancient “fathers” thought possible or advisable. As I think of it, mysterianism comes in both kinds and degrees, and is usually combined with another, apparently more positive Trinity theory.

¶ Posted 04 February 2010 † Dale § Theories ‡ Comments (20) °

Richard of St. Victor’s De Trinitate, Ch. 22 – part 2 (Dale)

Last time I tried to analyze Richard’s argument in ch. 22 that his view preserves monotheism. This time, I critically evaluate the argument. Is it sound?

It goes like this:

There can be at most one omnipotent being. (premise)
No being can have more than one token of any property. (premise)
At most one token of omnipotence can exist. (2,3)
Any token of omnipotence is the same as any token of divinity. (divine simplicity)
At most one token of divinity can exist. (3,4)
No token property can be had by more than one being. (premise)
There is at most one God. (5,6)

What shall we make of this argument? Why believe premise 1? Richard says,

…if it is agreed that omnipotence can do everything, it will be able to carry out with ease what any other power would not be able to do. For this reason it is clear that only one omnipotence can exist. (ch. 22, p. 394)

I have a couple of problems with this. Continue Reading »

¶ Posted 30 January 2010 † Dale § History § Monotheism § Philosophy ‡ Comments (0) °

Guest Post: Greg Spendlove on Logos Christology

Below is a guest post by Greg Spendlove, who is an adjunct philosophy instructor at Salt Lake Community College. He received his Master of Arts in Christian Thought with an emphasis in Systematic Theology and a cognate in Philosophy of Religion from Trinity International University in Deerfield, IL in 2005. His Master’s thesis was entitled “A Critical Study of the Life and Thought of Brahmabandhab Upadhyay” and critically assessed Brahmabandhab’s attempt to reconcile Christian theology as expressed by Aquinas with Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta.

In this post, Greg responds here to my recent post: On Logos Christology Subordinationism, which followed up A Gnome’s Tale. I added my weird style of bolding to it. – Dale

I see a couple of objections here.

First, I’m not exactly sure why it’s contradictory for one and the same thing to be another thing’s power at an earlier time and a thing with its own power at a later time. It certainly doesn’t affirm and deny the exact same thing. I think this may have to be fleshed out a bit more.

What it we changed it to something like “It’s impossible for one and the same thing to be the power of another thing and a thing with its own power at the same time.” But even this isn’t explicitly contradictory. And I’m not sure how to make it so.

Secondly, both of the principles above just seem to be plainly false. Take the second one. If it were true, it would seem that it would be impossible for me to ride my bicycle. For, when I ride my bicycle, I am the power of my bicycle and a thing with its own power at the same time. But, of course, it’s not impossible for me to ride my bicycle. I just did it the other day. (Okay, not really! I actually sold it two years ago.) :-)

As for the first principle, consider the following scenario with the Wonder Twins.

Zan and Jayna touch hands and say “Wonder Twin powers, activate.” Jayna then says “Shape of a radio.” Zan says “Form of electricity.” Zan then enters Janya and music starts playing. After listening to their favorite song they transform back into Zan and Janya proper to finish their ping-pong game.

If I learned anything watching the Wonder Twins as a kid , it’s that things like this are possible. And, if that is the case then it seems that it is possible for something to be the power of one thing at an earlier time and then a thing with its own power at a later time.

¶ Posted 27 January 2010 † Dale § Christology § History § Philosophy ‡ Comments (8) °

Richard of St. Victor’s De Trinitate, Ch. 22 – part 1 (Dale)

Has Richard, after these 21 chapters so far of Book III of his On the Trinity (De Trinitate) only succeeded in proving that there are at least three gods? In chapter 22, Richard argues for a negative answer.

First, he refers back to the doctrine of divine simplicity, which is common coin for medieval theists, even, surprisingly, for trinitarians. This needs explaining nowadays – theists now tend to think of God’s nature as something he has, and of God as having, and not being, his attributes. Moreover, we tend to think that God has many attributes.

For a primer on divine simplicity, I can do no better than Bill Vallicella:

[According to this doctrine] God is radically unlike creatures in that he is devoid of any complexity or composition, whether physical or metaphysical. Besides lacking spatial and temporal parts, God is free of matter/form composition, potency/act composition, and existence/essence composition. There is also no real distinction between God as subject of his attributes and his attributes. God is thus in a sense requiring clarification identical to each of his attributes, which implies that each attribute is identical to every other one. God is omniscient, then, not in virtue of instantiating or exemplifying omniscience — which would imply a real distinction between God and the property of omniscience — but by being omniscience. And the same holds for each of the divine omni-attributes: God is what he has. As identical to each of his attributes, God is identical to his nature. And since his nature or essence is identical to his existence, God is identical to his existence. (William Vallicella, “Divine Simplicity”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Richard starts ch. 22 by gesturing back at book I of De Trinitate – his point is that this divine being/essence/nature common to the three is utterly simple. Yet he realizes that this by itself won’t soothe the concern about monotheism. How can we rule out that there are three gods, each of which has is an utterly simple, composition free being? Then he hits on an additional argument. Continue Reading »

¶ Posted 23 January 2010 † Dale § Heresy & Orthodoxy § History § Monotheism ‡ Comments (6) °

Richard of St. Victor’s De Trinitate, Ch. 21 (Dale)

In the preceding chapters, Richard has been arguing for the impossibility of only one divine person. If there’s one, there must be more than one; more than that, there must be at least three.

To do this, he’s used Anselmian perfect being theology – arguing that since God is absolutely perfect, and it would add to his perfection to have certain features, he must indeed have those. It seems that he prefers a three parallel arguments, from perfect goodness, perfect happiness, and perfect glory. (See, e.g. chapter 5.)

As the book goes on, though, it seems to me that he prefers the argument from happiness. Here, in chapter 21, he sums up his case, because he feels some pressure here at the end of the book to explain why all this should be considered monotheism, and not polytheism. More on that next time. Here’s what looks like his summary of his argument:

The fullness of supreme happiness requires fullness of supreme pleasure. The fullness of supreme pleasure requires fullness of supreme charity. The fullness of supreme charity demands fullness of supreme perfection. (p. 393)

This last part isn’t easy to see, but as we’ve been over it, I let it go here. In chapter 21, Richard assumes that perfect being reasoning should be applied to each member of the Trinity. If we do this, then we prove the existence of equally perfect beings, such that “all coincide in supreme equality. In all of them there will be equal wisdom, equal power, undifferentiated glory, uniform goodness, and eternal happiness…” (pp. 393-4, emphasis added)

This, he asserts, meets the requirement of the “Athanasian” creed, Continue Reading »

¶ Posted 21 January 2010 † Dale § Heresy & Orthodoxy § History § Philosophy ‡ Comments (0) °

On Logos christology subordinationism (Dale)

God's expression of his eternal Word - a highly technical and precise diagram.

Now, for a quick break in our Richard of St. Victor series, so that I can explain the point of my implausible yarn about a gnome. Tertullian, Irenaeus, and other late-2nd and early 3rd century catholic thinkers subscribed to what we can all the Logos theory. This christological theory has three main elements:

God’s internal Word (logos) always existed within God.
At some time just prior to creation, God expressed his Word, so that it was now a he, a helper, an agent alongside God.
Having done this, through Wisdom (logos) God created the cosmos.

The idea – the Word has always been around, so is co-eternal with God, and is divine, because he is “from” God, and in some sense “the same stuff” as God. The crucial assumption here is that the “Word” of John 1 and the “Wisdom” of Proverbs 8 are each just Jesus, numerically the same person as Jesus (but in his pre-incarnate, non-bodily and non-human state). Biblically, this is all founded an Proverbs 8 and John 1.

In my view, it runs into serious problems Continue Reading »

¶ Posted 19 January 2010 † Dale § Bible § Christology § Heresy & Orthodoxy § History § Incarnation ‡ Comments (5) °

Richard of St. Victor’s De Trinitate, Ch. 20 (Dale)

three loves graphic As Joseph explained in his last post, in his On the Trinity, Richard of St. Victor asserts the superiority of “shared love” (Latin: condilectus). He holds that it is superior to other loves in value and in the pleasure it involves. He’s imagining something like my chart on the left.

Look at the bottom case, and how the love arrows combine; this seems to be what Richard is imagining (see the quote in the last post). I don’t think it’s coherent, really – affections, or individual love-acts can’t literally fuse. Nor do I understand any non-literal way they can be said to “fuse”.

Still, I’m inclined to agree with Joseph and with Richard Swinburne that there is a unique value in lovers cooperating to love a third party. This is something we recognize, I think, in Mom and Dad’s love for junior, or even in “best friends” graciously including an excluded girl within their circle.

Further, I think Richard of St. Victor is right that there is a relational harmony and cooperation in such cases, and a unique sort of pleasure all around.

Whether this value would provide a perfect person with a compelling reason to create mysteriously originate at least two other divine persons is a further matter.

In chapter 20, Richard makes clear that my chart here is too simple – there should be a Continue Reading »

¶ Posted 15 January 2010 † Dale § Books § History § Philosophy § Theories ‡ Comments (2) °

Richard of St. Victor’s De Trinitate, Ch.19 (Joseph)

Here Richard spells out more fully than before the nature of shared love (condilectus). Here he offers one main argument (A.1-3) from supreme shared love for the Trinity and then a follow-up argument (B.1-3) again from supreme shared love for the Trinity. So (A) consider the nature of shared love:

If one person loves another and only he loves only her, there is love but not shared love.
If two mutually love only each other (if the affection of each goes out to the other), again there is love but not shared love.
Shared love exists only if a third person is loved by two persons jointly:

“Shared love is properly said to exist when a third person is loved by two persons harmoniously and in community, and the affection of the two persons is fused into one affection by the flame of love for the third.” (Richard of St. Victor, On the Trinity, p.392)

(This is as close as we ever get to a characterization of shared love.)

So, in divinity, if there is shared love, there are at least three persons. Continue Reading »

¶ Posted 12 January 2010 † Joseph § Books § History § Theologians ‡ Comments (1) °

Richard of St. Victor’s De Trinitate, Ch.18 (Joseph)

Here is my paraphrase of the argument in ch.18:

It might seem that supreme goodness can exist where one person supremely loves and receives nothing in return from the other person for full happiness. But in fact such supreme goodness can’t even exist where only two persons mutually love each other. Suppose that, in divinity, there are only two persons. Then each gives and receives love, and each gives and receives the pleasure that such love brings. If each is alone, neither receives such love nor such pleasure. So supreme generosity requires three persons. If, in divinity, there are only two, neither shares such pleasure. But each divine person, being perfect, is supremely generous. Therefore, supreme goodness requires that if there are at least two divine persons, there are at least three persons.

Note that the first sentence seems out of place and does no work here. Really the argument here only begins with the third sentence. The only new thing here is the mention of supreme generosity. Supreme generosity requires that each of two divine persons have a third divine person with whom to share love and the pleausre such love brings. Not so to share would be less than supremely generous. But I don’t see that we really have a new argument here for at least three divine persons (if God exists). So that’s ch.18. Next up will be ch.19, which will be my final post for the series.