trinities

Time to close out this long series with a brief summary of my own observations on and objections to Trinity Monotheism. These aren’t all the one’s I’ve mentioned, but only the ones I think are the most relevant. And I should say that Joseph has raised some others as well, both in his guest post and in his comments.

Down doggie, down!

• The whole parts issue is a distraction. Their view is that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are God’s three minds or centers of consciousness. We don’t normally think of faculties, abilities, thoughts, or streams of consciousness as parts of a thing, but it doesn’t matter either way, because:
• Trinity Monotheism is a kind of FSH modalism. This fact is obscured by the talk of these “minds” (faculties of thought, or the thoughts which are the exercise of those faculties) as “persons” as “individuals”, and parts of God. It seems to me they’re mind-terminology is a little unclear – a mind can be (1) a thinking thing (soul), or (2) a faculty/ability of a thing, to think, or (3) the exercise of such a faculty. They don’t mean (1), because they hold that God is a soul, but none of the persons are. They’re a little unclear between (2) and (3), but Joseph helped me see that they probably have (3) in mind – a “mind” here is supposed to be a unified collection of God’s thoughts. But either way ((2) or (3)), it’s modalism – the difference is only between one kind of mode (of God) and another. I don’t in saying this dismiss it as heretical, but:
• As such, it’s subject to my objections here and here to any kind of modalism about the Son. I hold these to be fatal. (Also: consider their own objections to Logos christologies, and their objection to Group Mind Monotheism re: “subminds”. Don’t similar objections apply to Trinity Monotheism? If not, why not?)
• Their “persons” aren’t. They can’t be, because a person is a substance, and they are not substances (though they are “individuals” – but any action or event is an individual so defined). They aren’t thinkers, but rather thoughts of a thinker (God). There are probably christology problems lurking here too. Do they hold that a faculty or action of God united with a complete human nature? Will the Chalcedonian creed allow a “nature” to be an action of God?
• As their “persons” aren’t, it is nonsense to say that each is all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful, etc. Thus, the idea that God is all those things because the “persons” are, is incoherent. They may say that each “stream” includes knowledge of all things – but God is the knower there, in each case, so the “omniscience” of these “streams” isn’t prior to God’s, and can’t explain God’s.
• The messing around with the word “divine” is the sort of thing that gives us philosophers a bad name; the disjunctive definition is a mere verbal fix, designed to allow us to say that the Son and God are “equally divine”. Their cat example doesn’t help, it seems to me. Neither does their Cerberus analogy, as my siamese twin case shows. Better to say, “In our view, the Son isn’t fully divine, but he’s a mind of something which is.”
• They wanted to ride the social trinitarian bandwagon, but I wonder if they can. It sounds sort of social trinitarian to say that the Three are so many “minds” (suggesting that their three selves, three thinking things). Also, the “center of consciousness” talk may suggest that. But when they talk of “three centers of self-consciousness, intentionality, and volition”, as best I can tell, that just means that God is conscious and wills in three different ways. So the appearance of social trinitarianism falls away, when you realize that they think the “persons” of the Trinity are just God’s thinking and acting in various ways, which somehow constitute unified streams or “centers” of experience. Then again, reading theologians, it’s none too clear what social trinitarianism is supposed to be!
• As far as I know, no mainstream trinitarian in the history of Christianity would settle for the Son being “fully divine” just in the sense of being a distinctive part of, or a mind of a divine thing. (Although, if you accept divine simplicity, you’ll say all God’s properties are one another, and each is “the same as” God. – but they reject Simplicity, rightly, I think.) Thus even if it succeeds, Trinity Monotheism isn’t a version of or metaphysical elaboration of the historic doctrine, as it aims to be. That doesn’t mean it’s false; rather, it’s just wrong-headed to offer it as anything other than a major doctrinal revision. This is a minor point, as I think they admit it’s a revision, as they ditch divine simplicity, immutability, timelessness, and the generation and procession doctrines. There’s a tension here; if parts of the Catholic Tradition are dispensible, why try so hard to preserve the Athanasian Creed and the Creed of Constantinople?

I conclude that Trinity Monotheism is a bold and brilliant failure.

I’d like to hear in the comments what some of you readers out there think about all this. After a few days, we’ll probably move on to another recent theory.

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