On 2: That might be right that ’separate’ is redundant. In that case the stress falls on ‘beings’. But here he should say that the Persons are entities and concreta, but not beings (in their own right) in the sense of (independent) substances. Now we’re back to what the difference is between a concretum and a substance. But there are things to say here. And as to ‘mind’, the word is used in so many ways; it’d be good for him to say more. I think you interpret it as a mental power. I think Craig uses it differently to mean a consciousness or a centre of consciousness or a person or some such.

Maybe Bill would be kind enough to join in with our Bill-exegesis?

Yeah, it’s “Cerberus” - sorry, I think I mis-spelled it here a couple of times.

re: 1 - He tries to get around this divine-things inflation problem by appealing to the narrower notion of “distinctive” (defining?) parts. (110 - can’t find the page where he introduces that) So a cat-liver would be a part that only cats have, and so be distinctive, but a carbon atom, though a part of a cat, wouldn’t be a distinctive part. I’m willing to give him this move.

re 2: He says the persons “are clearly not three separate beings on the model”. (110) I guess I’m reading “separate” as redundant. And: “The persons are the minds of God.” (101)

re 3: That is a bit mysterious. How could have three powers to think of China, when all my powers to think of anything are grounded in one set of parts (brain + soul)?

‘Cerberus’ rather than ‘Cerebus’?

I have three worries:

1. If the Son is divine only in the sense that he’s part of God, then any other part of God is divine in the same sense and as divine (in that sense) as the Son is. So if God has properties (universals or tropes) or if God has a substratum and these are non-spatiotemporal parts of God, these are divine in the same sense as and as divine as the Son is, which seems counter-intuitive.

2. I don’t see them as saying that the persons are faculties of God, but that God constitues three persons in virtue of having three faculties. This is interesting in that normally with constitution, an object has every intrinsic, non-temporal, and non-modal property of the substance that constitutes it. For example, a statue has the same mass, size, and shape, as the lump of clay that constitutes it. But in this case, each person lacks two of the faculties that God has.

3. If faculties are properties (powers or dispositions) and properties are universals (not tropes), how could a substance have three distinct but intrinsically identical faculties? That’s like an object being red thrice over.

Best,

Joseph