Philip Clayton

He publishes a ton, and much of his work is in the science and religion genre. Unlike many authors in that genre, Clayton isn’t a scientist – his training is in theology, religious studies, and philosophy.

He’s also a co-founder of this Big Tent Christianity project, which aims in his words “to foster a radically different understanding of the heart of Christian faith” – different, that is, from the theologically and culturally conservative and liberal camps.

But our question is: Is God a self? What saith Clayton? Check out his interview (blue button), and then click here for my take ->

Oh boy, that was a very professorial answer. I’ll try to unpack it some. Clayton undertakes to answer the question “as a metaphysician”, or from the perspective of “the philosopher of today” – as if the question were, can we know by reason alone that God is a self. (That’s a different question.)

Anyhow, in Clayton’s view the up-to-date philosopher should be very concerned about anthropomorphism - in other words, thinking about the Ultimate as too much like a human being. Clayton-as-metaphysician believes in a “ground” of the cosmos – I take it, a something-or-other which is more fundamental than the physical universe, and which explains it, or at least is in some sense or other the source of it.

But is there reason to think it a self? Well, says Clayton, “the metaphysician of today” starts with the view that the “ground” is impersonal – so he says the burden is on him (Clayton), who thinks that the ground is something like a self.

(I wonder if he means something like a self, or if he means something like a human self. The latter could be unequivocally a self. But not the former. Do you see the difference? It’s a big difference.)

Anyhow, why is the burden on the fellow who wants to think the ground isn’t totally impersonal? This part I need to explain.

So, many physicists and cosmologists have noted that there are numerous basic physical constants in the world, such that if any one of them were tweaked ever so slightly, biological life as we know it would be impossible – the cosmos would be too chaotic, too uniform, and so on. The cosmos, they say, look as if it has been “finely tuned” so as to make the evolution of life possible. But has it been?

Theists say yes – the best explanation, we say, is that there’s (at least) one provident self, who exists independently of the cosmos, who intended that the cosmos should contain biological life, and to that end, tweaked all these factors just right. This seems to blow out of the water the “explanation” that those factors just happen to be that way, or the dodge that if they weren’t, we wouldn’t be here wondering about them.

But here’s where it gets weird. There’s another explanation of that apparent fine tuning. Suppose there were some sort of random universe generator which spit out a huge number of cosmoi, each with these constants we referred to randomly tweaked in different ways. Most of these would be lifeless of course. But if there were enough of them, there would be some which were life-friendly. And this could be one of them.

It’s important to understand that this would explain the apparent fine-tuning. The question is, is it the best explanation? I agree with certain Christian philosophers – Stephen T. Davis, and Richard Swinburne come to mind, and especially Robin Collins who is coming out with a big book on this – that the theistic explanation is way better than the “multiverse” one. This, for many reasons. But just consider simplicity alone – one super self vs. an infinity or near-infinity of whole cosmoi plus some nearly inconceivable cosmos-generator thingee.

I take it that Clayton disagrees. Perhaps someone in the comments could point out in which book or article he goes into this. I’m not sure if he thinks the multiverse explanation is just better, so that the “ground” must also be this multi-cosmos-generator, or if he thinks that reason can’t decide between the theistic and multiverse explanations… I assume the former.

In any case, Clayton wants to say that the “ground” we must posit is “mind-like”, by which he means that it has (1) intentionality, (2) awareness, (3) rationality.

“I have omitted any moral dimension,” he says. It is a minimalist claim, no more than is needed to explain the multiverse. Again, this is Clayton speaking as philosopher.

He says that we should acknowledge Buddhist and Hindu theories on which the “ground” has both personal and impersonal characteristics. Really? Why? And, is this eastern insight understood as contradictory, or not?

I think, then, that Clayton’s answer is: yes. If by “God” we mean this “ground” of the multiverse, then we should think it is a self – we just can’t say, from science or metaphysics, whether this self is a good one or not. Then again… does this “ground” perform intentional actions - does it do things for reasons? If not, I’d say it isn’t a self, though it may be a mind… If and not, I think it wouldn’t be capable of entering into a personal relationship with anyone – and I assume that a capacity for that is implied by full-blown selfhood. So actually: I’m not sure.

Now I’m curious what Clayton-the-Christian-theologian’s answer is. If by “God” we mean the Bible’s one God, the God of Abraham and Paul and Jesus – is that being a self? If so, can he be the aforementioned ground? And does this fit with the Bible’s claim that people can know this cosmos to have been designed? Would a multiverse-generator count as a designer of this universe? Does the Bible not assert God to be an agent?

Kudos to theologian James Anderson (blog) for significant correspondence – he’s intellectually honest, smart, tough-minded, and humble – a pleasure to discuss things with. Thanks also to my colleagues for enduring multiple drafts and re-writes.

In this paper, my main task is evaluating the mysterianism of James’s book. My view may be more nuanced that some would guess, based on my earlier work. I concede that in principle it can be reasonable to believe an apparent contradiction. I’m not optimistic about the actual prospects of having such beliefs, though.

It seems that James and I mostly disagree about the Bible, not about epistemology – he strongly endorsing, and me eschewing apparently contradictory interpretations of it regarding God and Christ.

The paper, especially the first part, has a lot to do with this long series here at trinities, though it is more focused.

I hope it’ll be a book chapter some day.

Perhaps the clearest picture of this distinction and union [of the Trinity] is Jesus’ baptism, where the Son is anointed for his public ministry by the Spirit, descending as a dove, with the Father declaring from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:13-17) All three persons of the Trinity are present, and each one is doing something different. (p. 2514a, emphases added)

This is an example of the sheer laziness and sloppy reasoning that so mars contemporary theology. Think about it - how exactly is the unity of the Trinity displayed here – either their oneness of an individual essence (godhead, divine nature) or the sharing of a universal property of deity? Where exactly do we see portrayed here the absolute equality of the three, or the “full divinity” of the Son and Spirit.

Would anything in this episode cause trouble for, say, an “Arian”? Nope. Tritheists? No – they should be OK with coordinated actions by the deities. Consider those unitarians who think the Holy Spirit is a force or divine action, not a person in his own right. They won’t have any problem with this “descending as a dove” – which of course needn’t mean that a literal dove (or something that looks just like a dove) dropped from the sky. Finally, consider modalists, who think that each person of the Trinity is really a personality of the one divine person, or a way that person acts. They’ll just say that this omnipotent, divine person can easily pull off these three actions simultaneously: getting baptized as a man, speaking from heaven, and coming down from heaven to empower the man.

The one sort of Christian theology that would trip on this, would be a strictly serial modalism – which holds that God acts, in sequence, as Father, Son, and Spirit, but only one at a time. But who holds this? (Apparently, not even these guys – see #56.)

In sum, this episode, spiritually inspiring and important to christology though it is, is nearly worthless when it comes to arguing for or just finding evidence for any particular understanding of the Trinity. Theologians should be more nervous about just repeating these tropes. A narrative which is compatible with almost any view of the Trinity neither implies, asserts, assumes, nor even illustrates “the” catholic/orthodox/historical mainstream view of the Trinity.

I was duped. If you are honest with yourself, you will admit that you were too. Duped in what way? Duped into believing that the writers knew what they were doing. Duped into thinking that they were less confused than we were. …Although every viewer was completely confused for six years, this did not matter. The confusion only added to the intrigue. We all trusted that the series finale would give us all the answers. We trusted that they knew what they were doing. …Escalation after escalation only handed us more hope. Confusion became our friend as we would discuss so many questions…

We were all lost and we loved it.

We worked under the valid assumption that all of these questions had answers. Of course, this does not mean that we will like the answers, but it was the risk we were willing to take. …We just wanted answers. That is why we watched the show. And we were trusting enough to wait six years to be satisfied.

But such was not the case. At the conclusion of last night’s episode the horrible reality surfaced. That which we all fear in places we don’t like to go became a reality: The writers did not know the answers either.

Oh, and don’t you try to spin this. Don’t you dare. …The arc we thought was there was an illusion. This series took a risk. It was only as good as the resolution and there was none. The writers did not know what they were doing. Hence concluded the greatest hoax in American television history. Hence the realization that the writers of LOST were just as lost as all of us. (emphases added)

By all means, read the whole thing (and the torrent of comments).

Beyond its eloquence, I enjoyed this for three reasons. First, I’ve been observing this disease in my wife, a Lostee. (Luckily, she wasn’t in for a whole six years, thanks to Netflix.) Already heard her version of the rant. Second, I get to gloat, as I steered clear of this series (sounded like too much work). Third, this rant bears remarkable similarities to rants I’ve indulged in after buying and trying to read an over-priced, poorly written book by a much vaunted theologian who is supposed to be an expert on the Trinity. Those rants sometimes involve some mild form of book abuse. Hopefully, Patton didn’t kick his TV, or attempt to throw it.

Worst job in heaven: being a foot-cherub!

I love study Bibles; at last count, I owned about eight of them. Of them all, the biggest, and most beautifully laid out, is the massive ESV Study Bible. It has wonderful maps and charts, and voluminous notes.

They do, though, have a very noticeable theological bias – really, it should be called the [American] Evangelical Study Bible. I heard a recorded lecture by General Editor Wayne Grudem, and he made it clear that, for example, a concern to save the doctrine of biblical inerrancy influenced some of the translations. In general, the translation itself is basically an update of the RSV. If you want to know how American evangelical theologians read any part of the Bible, the notes, articles, and translations here are  your handy guides – for better and worse.

Here’s some of the worse: to my surprise, the confused realm of Social Trinitarian speculation has invaded an appendix called “Biblical Doctrine an Overview”, in the “Trinity” section. In the four point summary of “the” doctrine of the Trinity, it is conveniently vague as to whether the one divine nature is a universal or a particular. (The former would fit better with ST, although their following entry on Christ makes it sound like his divine nature is a particular.)

But the part which really surprised me is this:

3. Because God is triune, he has eternally been personal and relational in his own being, in full independence from his creation. God has never had any unmet needs, “nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself give to all mankind life and breath and everything (Acts 17:25). Personhood becomes real only within realized relationships, and the reality of relationship can only exist where one has something or someone that is not oneself to relate to; if, then, God had not been plural in himself he could not have been a personal, relational God till he had begun creating, and thus would have been dependent on creation for his own personhood, which is a notion as nonsensical as it is unscriptural. Between the persons of the Trinity, there has always existed total relational harmony and expression; God is, from this standpoint, a perfect society in himself. Apart from the plurality of the Trinity, either God’s eternal independence of the created order or his eternally relational personal existence would have to be denied.

4. The Trinity provides the ultimate model for relationships within the body of Christ and marriage. …

Biblical Christianity stands or falls with the doctrine of the Trinity. (p. 2515b, emphases added)

You’ve got to love that last rhetorical spasm (Everything, I say, depends on this! Either agree with me on this, or you got nothin‘.) You also have to love the careful weaseling about whether God is literally a group – “from this standpoint”. We won’t ask whether God, being a “him”, is a fourth divine person, in addition to the three others which (somehow) compose him. The point urged here, is that God couldn’t possibly be (identical to) a person; rather, he (“he”?) must contain at least one person and someone (“something”??) else for that person to relate to.

We’ve debunked this sort of reasoning before here on trinities, here. The above does nothing whatever to show that either of these scenarios are impossible: a single divine person existed alone in a timeless state “before” creation, or such a person existed for a million years alone but in time (literally) before creation. Yet, this is what the argument is, lamely, trying to do. No reason has been given to accept the implausible premise that “Personhood becomes real only within realized relationships”. This is not obviously true, and further, it positively seems possible that there just be a single self / person in the cosmos, just thinking, e.g. “I’m all that’s here”.

The author is just repeating a common, yet bad, piece of reasoning – it seem to not occur to him or her that this implausible premise even needs to be argued for. Most disturbingly, this is being foisted on the layman as part and parcel of “Biblical Christianity”, in what is a sort of reference source – where speculation would seem out of place.

Things like this somewhat temper my love of study Bibles…

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:

• Since the 1970′s (?) it has become popular, in theological circles, to think of God as irreducibly a group of selves.
• When thinking this way, the word “God” now becomes not the name of a concrete individual, but rather of a collection or group of individuals – which is itself not a concrete individual.
• Problem: “God” clearly names a self, hence a concrete individual in the Bible – in the NT, nearly always the Father, a few times the Son. (Some want to say that it refers to the Trinity, but considered as a concrete entity in its own right.)
• So, we need a new word to refer to the Three together.
• We don’t know what the outdated “godhead” means, so we’ll use that. Thus, the new, “social trinitarian” usage of the word “godhead”.

Is that what happened? What started this new usage?

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 recite the creedal formulas, realize that they are seemingly contradictory (interestingly, he never says how), and then just live with the discomfort. I’m not sure that I understand what he thinks the doctrine is, but if  I had to guess, I’d guess it is the (plainly contradictory and so plainly false) claim that each of the three is numerically identical to God, but none of them is numerically identical to either of the other two.

It struck me that it takes a lot of chutzpah to urge people to believe something like this; shouldn’t the apparent inconsistency make us at least a little afraid that we’re just foisting a theoretical failure on people, so that we don’t tell them that for any coherent version of the doctrine they might ever come up with, it’s wrong? Moreover confusion hurts (mentally), and can and does lead people to abandon Christian belief. Are we then sure it is necessary, and that we want to foster it in people?

I guess he’s just really, really (1) sure that the Bible is inspired, and (2) sure that the Bible really says what I guess above – or whatever apparent contradictions he’d commit to. I understand this view completely, but in the end I don’t think it is reasonable, specifically, the (2) part. (This needs arguing for, but I’ll save that for the book.) Of course, if (2) were reasonable, this would constitute prima facie evidence against (1)!

Here are the remarks that so struck me, which conclude Patton’s post:

It is always best to remember that the Father is God, the Holy Spirit is God, and the Son is God, but they are not each other.

One more thing. I often tell my students that if they say, “I get it!” or “Now I understand!” that they are more than likely celebrating the fact that they are a heretic! When you understand the biblical principles and let the tensions remain without rebuttal, then you are orthodox. When you solve the tension, you have most certainly entered into one of the errors that we seek to avoid.

Confused? Good! That is just where you need to be.

Apparently, analogy-eschewing is popular at Dallas Theological Seminary. Patton’s colleague Dr. Michael J. Svigel, expert on early church history, makes the same claim. He quotes Irenaues insisting that no one but the Father and Son understand the latter’s eternal generation by the former. Of course, Irenaeus was an enthusiastic user of analogies for the Trinity. It sounds to me like Svigel is, like the Fathers he specializes in, more a negative than a positive mysterian (one can be both).

I don’t know about you, but I like the fact that Christians believe in a God who is utterly indescribable, incomprehensible, and unillustratable. Think about it: would you really want to worship and serve a God whose very essence can be accurately described by an egg, a pretzel, or a tube of toothpaste?

What catches my attention there is the “utterly”. Really? Slap me and call me an unsophisticated rube, but I thought the Bible was full of correct descriptions of God, even of some of his essential features. (e.g. knowing all) If I had to guess, I’d say that this is hyperbolic rhetoric on his part – that he doesn’t really think that God is utterly indescribable by human beings. I could be wrong, though.

In any even, in contrast to those early Fathers, Svigel ends his post by disavowing the use of analogies, in much the same way as Patton.

Let’s teach the doctrine of the Trinity accurately. That means dropping all illustrations of the Trinity from your teaching, because every illustration only distorts the unillustratable God.

This is interesting; a hard-core catholic traditionalist could accuse both of departing from the tradition, which has long used various analogies, with the standard caveat that one should take care not to be mislead by any one of them, and taking care to multiply and diversify them. (I don’t make this accusation myself; I’m just interested in how these mysterian defenses are supposed to work.)

1. If one person loves another and only he loves only her, there is love but not shared love.
2. 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.
3. 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. So supreme shared love requires at least three divine persons. Supreme shared love is of a kind that no creature could merit it or be worthy of it from its divine creator.

Next (B) consider further the nature of shared loved as a virtue:

1. Supreme benevolence is supremely great. Supreme harmony is also supremely great. Each such virtue is of great value.
2. Any virtue that results from the combination of each such virtue is also supremely great.
3. But supreme shared love results from the combination of supreme benevolence and harmony. Such a virtue can’t be lacking in what is perfectly good. And supreme shared love can’t exist without at least three persons.

Therefore, in divinity, if there is at least one person, there are at least three persons.

There’s a lot here. Much of it we have in effect already seen. I want to make only one comment about (A1). This doesn’t exactly say what Richard wants to say here. If one person loves another and only the first loves the second, then no one else loves the second. And if, in addition, the first loves only the second, then the first loves no one else. But it’s clear that Richard wants an example of unrequited love to contrast with his second example of mutual love between two persons alone.

For what it’s worth, I think there’s something deeply insightful here about the value of shared love. And even if we don’t think something like the following. The fact that any perfect being is essentially perfectly good is a reason to think that it must be that if there is some perfect being, then there is also another perfect being or even just some created being. Even if we don’t think this, so I say, perhaps we can agree that if there were three divine persons, there would be a distinctive kind of goodness in the world because of the existence of supreme shared love, one which wouldn’t exist if there were only two divine persons or even only one. If so, that is something for a Christian to recognize and celebrate.

That’s it for me on this series. Next up is Dale, who will bring us home: blogging on chs.20-25.

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.

Supreme happiness requires that if there is at least one divine person, there are at least two divine persons. Suppose, in divinity, there is only one person. Then (1) this person gives supreme love to no one and receives supreme love from no one. (2) Such a person lacks the pleasure of love that one draws from another. (3) But nothing is better than such pleasure. So such a person, who lacks such supreme pleasure, isn’t supremely happy. (4) But any divine person, being perfect, is supremely happy. Therefore, supreme happiness requires that if there is at least one divine person, there are at least two divine persons.

A few comments:

Re (1): This assumes again that with a divine person supreme love is only between divine persons, who are equally perfect.

Re (2): This assumes again that the pleasure of love requires love.

Re (3) and (4): I wonder what exactly Richard means by happiness. My guess is that he means something like Aristotle’s eudamonia where someone is happy only if overall they are a success in life. Richard seems to think that supreme happiness includes supreme pleasure so that someone who has supreme happiness couldn’t have more pleasure. Is that right? I believe that God has pleasure: just because many of his desires are satisfied. But I’m also inclined to think that God suffers, not in the sense that he is affected by things contrary to his will. But rather God suffers in the sense that some of his desires are frustrated, e.g. because we freely do things or things occur as a result of such, that God desires we didn’t do or that didn’t occur. Now just because God suffers doesn’t mean he doesn’t have supreme pleasure. But I can’t help wondering whether if things had gone differently with some of our choices and their results, God might have had more pleausure than he actually does. But I’m also pretty sure that Richard needn’t base the claim that God has the pleasure love brings on the claim that God has supreme pleasure. Couldn’t he get that from the claims that God is supremely good and that the pleasure love brings is a supreme good that God needn’t forego for some contrary good that is equally good?

That’s it. After this, ch.18. Notice again we are building our way up to three divine persons. In ch.16 we had an argument about one divine person. In ch.17 we have an argument for at least two divine persons (if God exists). And in chs.18-19 we will have an argument for at least three divine persons (if God exists).

1. Full wisdom and power can exist in only one person. If, per impossibile, there is only one divine person, he can still have fullness of wisdom and power.
2. The pleasures of wisdom and love differ. The pleasure of wisdom can be drawn from oneself. The pleasure of love must be drawn from another. Anyone who loves and desires to be so loved but doesn’t receive such love is displeased. But the pleasure of wisdom is even better when one derives it from oneself.
3. If, in divinity, there is only one person, such a person can have full wisdom. Full wisdom and full power can’t exist without each other. For suppose someone lacks omnipotence. If she doesn’t know how to obtain what she so lacks, then she lacks full wisdom. And anyone who unwillingly suffers some defect of wisdom lacks full power.  Therefore, if, in divinity, there is only one person, such a person can also have full power.

Re 1: I like the implicit distinction here between what is a real and only a conceptual possibility. There can’t really be only one divine person. For, as Richard is trying to demonstrate, there must be at least three divine persons. But the concepts of full wisdom and power don’t conceptually imply the concept of more than one divine person.

Re 2: Wisdom brings pleasure. If you desire wisdom and you have it and believe you have it, then you have the pleasure wisdom brings. And love also brings pleasure. If you desire love and you have it and believe you have it, then you have the pleasure love brings. That’s what you might think Richard would say. But he doesn’t say this exactly. Rather he says this. When you have the pleasure of wisdom, the object of your pleasure is not wisdom but rather yourself under the aspect of being wise. And when you have the pleasure of love, the object of your pleasure is not love but rather your beloved under the aspect of loving you. I like the implicit claim here that there is a kind of pleasure that is factive. If you have a certain kind of pleasure of wisdom, you must exist and be wise in order for you to have such pleasure. Anyone who had an intrinsically identical pleasure-state but was not wise would lack this kind of pleasure. And if you have a certain kind of pleasure of love, your beloved must exist and love you in order for you to have such pleasure. And anyone who had an intrinsically identical pleasure-state but had no beloved or had a beloved who did not love her would lack this kind of pleasure.

Re 3: This is a very interesting section. Do full wisdom and power imply each other? Does full wisdom imply full power? Richard seems to include in full wisdom knowing how to obtain what you lack. Let’s grant this. But Richard seems to assume, without argument, that if one lacks full power that can only be because one doesn’t know how to obtain it. On this assumption, it can’t be that one knows how to obtain full power but doesn’t choose to obtain it or even chooses not to obtain it. That’s not obvious. Does full power imply full wisdom? Again, Richard seems to assume, without argument, that anyone who suffers anything unwillingly lacks full power. Or to put it the other way around: anyone who has full power doesn’t suffer anything unwillingly. Arguably, full power includes irrestible will: so that it must be that what one wills is so. So, arguably, nothing is contrary to what one who has full power wills. But it’s consistent with this that something is so that one who has full power doesn’t will. One might have less than full wisdom, but not will that one have full wisdom. That’s just the kind of thing you’d expect if one really did suffer a defect of wisdom. After all, it’s not obvious that full power implies willing everything that is so. So it still might be that one who has full power suffers something unwillingly, not in the sense that it happens contrary to what he wills, but in the absence of any willing on his part concerning the matter.

Well, that’s enough on ch.16. Next is ch.17.

1. With divine persons, the perfection of one requires another, and so the perfection of a pair requires union with a third. Each such person is perfectly benevolent and so shares his perfection with the other. But if each is perfectly benevolent, then each with equal desire and for a similar reason seeks a sharer of his joy. Why?
2. Well, if two such persons mutually supremely love each other, the love each has for the other includes supreme joy. If only the one is loved by the other, only the one has such joy. And if the second doesn’t have one who shares in love for a third (condilectus), the second lacks the sharing of joy. (We must wait until ch.19 for Richard to spell out more fully the idea of condilectus.) So that each may share such joy, each must share in love for a third.
3. So if those who mutually love each other have perfect benevolence and so they desire that each perfection they have is shared, then it must be that each with equal desire and for a similar reason has a third with whom to share love.

Re 1. This is our conclusion: if there are at least two, there are at least three divine persons.

Re 2. The basic idea is this. The Father and the Son are perfect and perfectly love each other. Naturally, they take perfect delight in such love. The Father enjoys the love the Son has for him and the joy this brings. And so does the Son: the Son enjoys the love the Father has for him and the joy this brings. So each, being perfectly good, wants to share such love with another. The Father wants to share the love the Son has for him and the joy this brings with another. And the Son wants to share the love the Father has for him and the joy this brings with another. So each seeks out a third (the Spirit), one who is also loved by the Son and one who is also loved by the Father and also takes delight in such. To evaluate Richard’s argument here, we must consider what the mark of perfection is here. If perfection involves sharing and a perfect being is loved by another perfect being, will the first also share the perfection of being loved by the second? Richard apparently coins the term ‘condilectus’. We will meet this term again in ch.19.

Re 3. This is a summary of points made already.

In ch.16, there will be a change of gear. There he will go back to the start and work his way up to the claim that if at least one, then there are at least three divine persons. In ch.16 he claims that supreme power and knowledge can exist in a single person. In ch.17 he claims that supreme happiness can’t exist in fewer than two persons. And then in chs.18 and 19 he claims that supreme goodness and shared love can’t exist in fewer than three persons.

Richard has already argued in various ways that if there is so much as one divine person, there are at least three divine persons. But the arguments have all been a bit here and there. So to make the reasons even more evident, he plans to gather them all up into one. So here it is:

Suppose there is only one divine person: P.

1)      Then P doesn’t share his greatness.

2)      Compare two situations. In the first, P is the only divine person. In the second, P is not the only divine person; there is another: Q. In the second situation, P and Q love each other and P has the pleasure that love brings. So in the first situation, P lacks in eternity not only such love but also such pleasure.

3)      Anyone supremely good shares her greatness. (Not so to share is to retain something greedily. But anyone supremely good does nothing greedily.)

4)      Anyone supremely happy has such pleasure. (Not to have such pleasure is not to have an abundance of pleasure. But anyone supremely happy has an abundance of pleasure.)

5)      P is supremely good and happy.

So if there is at least one divine person, there are at least two divine persons.

Suppose there are only two divine persons: P and Q.

6)      Then P shares greatness. But P doesn’t share love or the pleasure that such love brings. (Only a person who has a partner and a beloved in the love shown him has the pleasure of love.)

7)      Anyone supremely happy shares love and the pleasure of love. (Nothing brings more pleasure than love.)

8)      P is supremely happy.

So if there are at least two divine persons, there are at least three divine persons.

Therefore, if there is at least one divine person, there are at least three divine persons.

There are two parts here. Let’s just briefly look at each in turn. So first let’s look at the section that aims to show that if there is at least one, there are at least two divine persons. Here I note only one thing: there’s an ambiguity in (2). It could mean that if there is only one divine person: P, then P doesn’t always love another, i.e sometimes P doesn’t love another. But it’s not clear this is right. This assumes that any creature begins to exist and so is not always around for P to love. But even if any creature does begin to exist, it still doesn’t follow that P doesn’t always love another. For it could be that at every time there is a creature that exists then and so there is someone around for P to love even if every creature begins to exist. It could also mean that if there is only one divine person: P, then P always lacks love of another divine person. This is true, in which case, Richard is not just speaking of love of another, but love of another divine person and so is relying on previous arguments for why the supreme love a divine person has includes love of another divine person.

Secondly, let’s look at the section that aims to show that if there is at least two, there are at least three divine persons. Here I comment on only one matter: a point of interpretation to do with (6). We have seen before Richard’s idea that love always involves a second person and sharing love always involves a third person. And here he seems to rely on what he said previously. I can see that, by Richard’s lights, P doesn’t love and so have the pleasure love brings unless there is a second P loves. And I can also see that, by Richard’s lights, P doesn’t share love unless there is, not only a second (Q) P loves but, a third with whom P shares his love of Q. But Richard says: “He alone possesses the sweetness of such delights who has a partner and a loved one in the love that has been shown to Him”. It’s not clear which of these two things Richard is saying. First, he is saying that P alone has such pleasure who has another to love, in which case the partner is the loved one, and then he later makes the point that to share love involves a third person. Secondly, he is saying that P alone has such pleasure who has a second to love and a third to love, in which case the partner is not the loved one. The problem with the first interpretation is that it makes the statement seem out of place coming as it does right after the claim that if there are only two divine persons, there’s no sharing of the pleasure of love. The problem with the second interpretation is that it makes the statement seem wrong by Richard’s own lights.

Well, this is enough to be getting on with for chapter 14. Next up chapter 15 on the claim that two divine persons must seek out a third divine person with equal desire and for a similar reason.

A rare image from Hitler's little known fro period.

This is one for the history buffs.

Check out this piece from my favorite magazine: Hitler’s Forgotten Library. Skip to the end (last 9-10 paragraphs) for the Trinity stuff – which is (I think, ultimately Hegel-inspired) absolute idealist / monist riffing on the Trinity.

Can’t muster much interest in that genre myself, since I think monism is obviously false. But I note that some theologians are still batting around this sort of stuff.

And the conclusion drawn about Hitler’s motivation at the end is interesting, and perhaps true.

What's all this about Dallas then?

We now turn to Richard’s De Trinitate Book 3, Chapters 14-19

Here’s my formulation of the first part of ch.14:

Suppose there’s at least one divine person: P.

Then (1) P is so benevolent that he wants to have no good that he does not want to share.

And (2) P is so powerful that everything is possible for him.

And (3) P is so happy that nothing is difficult for him.

And (4) if (1)-(3) are true, there are at least three divine persons.

Therefore, (C) If there is at least one divine person, then there are at least three divine persons.

Re 1: I think this means that for every good that P has, he wants to share that good with another, at least if this is so much as possible. But this isn’t exactly what Richard says. If you want to have no good that you don’t want to share, you might satisfy your desire by giving up every good that you have. But, more relevantly, if you want to have no good that you don’t want to share, you might satisfy the first desire by making it so that every good that you have you want to share. But you can have the first desire without satisfying it and so without having the second desire.

Re 2: Surely, not everything is possible. But, as we know, it’s hard to define omnipotence. And I don’t suppose Richard needs anything as strong as that God has the power to bring it about that contradictions are true.

Re 3: I see how a premise about divine happiness could provide, with other premises, an independent line as to why if there’s one, there’s another divine person. But it doesn’t seem necessary to the argument, if we have a premise about divine benevolence already, which should, if what he said in previous chapters is right, with other premises, provide reason to think if there’s one, there’s another divine person. And besides, what’s this about being so happy that nothing is difficult? You might well think this should be linked, not with happiness, but rather with power. God is so powerful that nothing is difficult for him. I suppose there could be a link between happiness and easiness: if you’re happy, things are not difficult for you. Maybe. It might depend on what your happiness consists in. In any case, it’s hard to see how this adds much of anything to the argument. If I were Richard, I would have put something about being so knowing that he uses his power to bring about what he wants. But that’s just me.

Let’s reconstruct:

Suppose there is at least one person: P

Then (1*) P is so knowing, powerful, and good that he shares all that he has that he can.

And (2*) P has a perfect nature that he can share.

So (C1) there are at least two divine persons.

And if (C1), then (3*) P has a perfect love with another divine person that he can share.

Therefore, (C) if there is at least one divine person, there are at least three divine persons.

This could be something like what Richard has in mind, but spelled out a bit more.

Richard, though, says he hasn’t even started the main summary of his argument yet. He says this argument is enough, but he will makes things clearer. So next up, we will look at the clearer presentation. But this would be a good time for people to sum up any objections they have to Richard’s previous arguments that tie in to my proposed reconstruction. I confess I’ve not followed every objection and reply so far. And I suspect there may be more like me.

We might look happy, but we're not. One of us really hated the guy who looks 'asleep'; one of us really loathes someone's antiperspirant. We need love. Please help.

After his initial argument from perfect love for a Trinity of persons, Richard tries to support it by a brief argument from perfect happiness. Here I wish to summarize what I take to be this confirming argument from the plenitude of happiness. [Keep in mind that ‘plenitude’ has that particular meaning of a property of a substance that is not from another substance, but all other substances are from it.] Richard argues that if we are committed to the claim that God is perfectly happy, then we should also be committed to the claim that God is a Trinity of persons. In a nutshell, Richard supposes that perfect love is a necessary condition for perfect happiness. And most of us would suppose God is happy, right?

x = Father; y = Son; z = Holy Spirit

(1) If x has the plenitude of perfect happiness, then x has the plenitude of perfect love.

(2) If x has the plenitude of perfect love, then there is an x, y, and z that mutually love one another. (From his argument from perfect love.)

(3) But if e.g., y does not love x (e.g., because y is unwilling), then x grieves because y does not love x.

(5) If x (forever) grieves, then x is (forever) not perfectly happy.

(6) Thus, x’s not having the plenitude of perfect love entails that x is not perfectly happy.

(7) But surely x, who satisfies the description of the best of all possible beings, is perfectly happy; therefore, x has perfect love.

(8) Therefore, God is a Trinity of persons.

“From this therefore, we gather and grasp by indubitable reasoning that the plenitude of happiness excludes every defect of love, whose perfection demands a Trinity of persons, as has been said, and furthermore shows clearly that it cannot be lacking. Behold how … supreme happiness … proclaims the assertion of the Trinity [of persons].”

In my next (and last) post, I say what I think of these arguments.

Three is perfection, four is redundant. (Un)Fortunately, one of these people gets knocked-off.

In this post I’d like to focus on Richard’s initial argument for why God must be a Trinity of persons. Thus far in his argument he has argued for two divine persons, and now adds a further line of argument to show that God is in fact a Trinity and not a Binity of persons. Why must God be a Trinity of persons? Richard argues from his notion of perfect love.

“Greatest love cannot lack in anything.”

Perfect love requires the following.

(i) A person “wishes another to be loved as oneself.”
(ii) A person “wishes that another person be loved equally by the one whom s/he loves supremely and by whom s/he is supremely loved.”

Translation: For person a, person b, and person c, a has perfect love only if

(1.) a equally loves b, and vice versa.

(2.) a equally loves c, and vice versa.

(3.) a desires that b equally loves c, and that c equally loves b.

(1)-(3) will be jointly sufficient for a‘s perfect love if it turns out that there is a b and a c, and that all the lovin’ obtains between a, b and c as described in (1.)-(3.), especially that b equally loves c, and vice versa.

Recall that ‘equal love’ requires that the persons who ‘equally love’ have the same substance-kind. We might say the intensity (my word) of love is measured by the kind of substance that is the object of love. If I love a human, there’s a certain intensity of my love for a human; but if I love God, then my love is maxed-out because God is the most lovable being. Also, recall that Richard argued in Book 1 of On the Trinity that there can be only one divine substance. Thus, for a to love an equal, b and c, b and c must satisfy the following necessary and sufficient condition:

For divine person a, who has the one divine substance essentially, persons b and c are equal to a if and only if b and c each has the one divine substance essentially.

Notice that a divine person can love a creature ‘perfectly’, but that this love is not ‘love of an equal’ because no creature (besides Jesus) is constituted by the divine substance. So, God can “so love the world that …”, but we might say the quality of this love is fixed by the object of the love. Since divine persons are divine, love for such a person is as intense a love as possible; but love for creatures is less intense simply by reason of the kind of being that a creature is.

The argument from perfect love for a Trinity of persons continues.

(4.) If a has perfect love, then there must be a third person c, otherwise a fails to have perfect love.

(5.) If a fails to have perfect love, then either a is unwilling to have perfect love or is unable to have perfect love.

(5.i) If a is unwilling to have perfect love, then perfect love must be elsewhere. But who else besides a divine person could have perfect love essentially? Nobody. But a person who has the divine substance essentially satisfies the description of ‘the best of all possible beings’ (substances). Therefore, a person, who has the divine substance essentially, has perfect love.

(5.ii) If a, who has the divine substance essentially, is unable to have perfect love, then a does not satisfy the description of the best of all possible beings (substances). But a, who has the divine substance essentially, satisfies the description ‘the best of all possible beings’. But a person who satisfies the description ‘the best of all possible beings’ has perfect love. Therefore, a has perfect love.

(6.) Therefore, there are (at least) three divine persons.

In the next post I survey another argument that Richard employs, namely an argument from perfect happiness.

After an embarrassing amount of time, I’ve finally finished my encyclopedia entry on the Trinity for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (as well as lengthy supplementary documents on the history of Trinity doctrines, Judaic and Islamic objections, and unitarianism).

Since I can’t thank them in the entry, I’d like to thank editors Ed Zalta and Uri Nodelman for their help, and their patience in working through many issues that arose. Also, thanks to SEP philosophy of religion editor Ed Wierenga, for his comments on a draft, and help in figuring up how to divide up the enormous thing.

My thanks to those who offered helpful comments on various drafts, including James Anderson, and trinities bloggers Joseph Jedwab, JT Paasch, and Scott Williams. I also benefited from correspondence with Richard Cross, and with historian Dean Grodzins.

Many parts of the entries are related to my previous posts here at trinities, so I have to also thank everyone who commented on those as well.

It took so long, a couple of sections are already a little out of date!

Finally: become a friend of the SEP. I’m going to I did. Friends get to download really awesome pdfs of the entries, which look & print like book pages.

Update: discussion over at Prosblogion.

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.