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 Note: the OED is out of date; it lacks the usage I noted at the start of this post.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• We don’t know what the outdated “godhead” means, so we’ll use that.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?

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 just a rhetorical term used by evangelical apologists to dismiss or marginalize their theological opponents with one easy stroke, as (to use a Muslim term) “innovators”.

In other words, there’s no such thing. What there are, are more and less popular, connected, related, historical streams of theologizing by various people claiming to be Christians. One can talk about mainstream approaches, of course, and I often call that small-c “catholic” theology – that rough core of theology which is been fairly stable through the history of Catholicism, and which is shared by most Protestants and the Orthodox churches. What is my definition of that, concerning the Trinity? On one level  the creeds.

But these don’t express any one way of thinking about the Trinity. As best I can tell, they give rise to three main approaches: mysterianism, modalism, and something like this (this last, in my experience, never among the laity, but only among sophisticates educated in medieval Catholic theology). And among those versed in recent theology, some “social” approaches – but again, very rarely among the laity.

Among American evangelicals, I believe FSH modalism (or SH modalism) to be the main approach. This is a bummer, as any kind of Son-modalism is ruled out by the New Testament to which evangelicals pledge their allegiance!

There’s a tension here: Theologica’s founder and maintainers, I suppose, don’t want to be responsible for sponsoring dangerous heresy – hence the rule noted above. And yet, they do want a fully open and respectful discussion. I applaud their aim of respectful argument (so often lacking in theological discussion!), and I especially enjoyed this post about Words that Don’t Prove Your Point. Some relevant parts:

Sounds like you’ve been reading X’s heretical garbage.
This has nothing to do with what the person is saying. …

Calvin, Luther, Piper and Joel Olsteen would say you’re wrong.
Ooooh: they’re big and famous and agree with you but, sorry bro, that doesn’t mean your position is right. If there’s equally famous people that disagree with your position then what you’re doing is pretty much name-dropping uselessness.

The majority of Church History would disagree with you so you can’t be right.
Okay, that’s pretty interesting information but it still doesn’t prove the argument wrong. Just because the majority of any group holds a certain position it doesn’t make it right or wrong: it just makes it popular. Now true, the Spirit of God was working throughout Church history but there’s no possible way that you or I can say “Yes, this is most definitely the Hand of God” without some sure sign of heaven.

This last part is a little flip, but I agree with the basic point – that the bolded words don’t constitute an unassailable argument. (I think that they can in some cases be a fairly strong argument.)

But then, why partially exclude (purported) Christians who hold non-mainstream views? I’m guessing that their justification is more a practical than a theoretical one – they want the site to have a catholic focus, and don’t want to have to worry about every Jehovah’s Witness who might become ensconced there.

On the second one, I’m pretty sure, they meant “Osteen”.

And I’m also sure that he’d agree with everything in my post here – and that settles it!

All right, back to reading X’s heretical garbage…

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? It’s a short and pithy – excellent writing. And it is hypothetical, as the Church has not said (yet ) said that black is white. I take it that Loyola picked a case involving sense perception, because he had in mind to defend a controversial claim that seems to be contradicted by sense perception. Ed takes it to be obvious hyperbole because Loyola would be assuming, in Ed’s words, that the “Church does not claim special expertise or authority in purely secular matters”, I take it, like color perception. I’m not sure what Ed is confident that color perception is and must be a “purely secular matter”, or why he think Loyola assumes the believer to be in a position to specify where the Church’s authority to pronounce ends. While Ed would like the quote to be mere hyperbole, I’m not sure that it is. But I don’t think it matters, if Loyola’s point really is that authoritative church teaching trumps the (apparent) sense perception that the thing the priest is putting in your mouth is just a wheat product, and not a human body.
• I’m not sure that Loyola has in mind disputes about transubstantiation. That is plausible, but in any case, I disagree with his implicit claim that Church testimony should trump any other evidence. I see no hint of exceptions, and no hint that this can be confined to “spiritual” matters – however that might be spelled out.
• Now about one’s senses deceiving one: I agree with Ed that this is not a very helpful metaphor for understanding what is supposed to be going on, according to Catholics, with consecrated-wafer perceptions. We have to distinguish epistemic seemings from mere visual (etc.) sensations. These two, I think, have only recently been clearly separated by philosophers – see the paper “What are Seemings?” here by my colleague Andy Cullison. Here’s one way to see the distinction. Suppose there was an alien race, populated in part by little creatures called “Oogs” that look just like the white disk above. Now, imagine that an inhabitant of this planet (not an Oog, but some other inhabitant of that planet) with eyes like ours comes to earth and attends a mass. He’ll have the same visual sensations of the wafer that we will, yet it will not epistemically seem to him that there’s a wafer before him. Instead, it seems to him that the priest has captured one of the inhabitants of his home planet – he’ll think, “They eat Oogs here!” and take pity on the (imagined) little victims. The point of this example is (only) that sensory seemings and epistemic seemings can come apart, and are different. This is not easy to recognize, as normally they go together. But see Andy’s paper for more or this distinction.
• Now imagine two friends attending a mass, and observing wafer consumption – call them Believing Bob and Doubting Dan. Perceptually, their sensations are the same. But they, both being humans, are not like the alien above – it seems to each, and it seems equally strongly to each, that the things being put in mouths by the priest are (merely) little flat breads. They possess equal evidence for this claim. And yet, Bob sincerely says, “What each communicant eats is in fact the body of our Lord”, while Dan says, “As best I can tell, Jesus has not been eaten here.” How can this be? I think it is helpful to imagine how each would evaluate the following inconsistent tetrad:

1. Whatever the Catholic Church requires its members to believe is true.
2. The Catholic Church requires its members to believe that a properly consecrated wafer is the whole body of Jesus.
3. That wafer in the priest’s hand has been properly consecrated.
4. That wafer in the priest’s hand is just a wafer.

• Bob and Dan are equally aware that these four can’t all be true. From any three of them, it follows that the remaining one is false. (Go ahead – try it out – I’ll wait…)
• Moreover, Dan and Bob agree on this – that 2, 3, and 4 each seem to be true. Further, they both agree that they each seem strongly, and about equally strongly to be true. The difference is that because 1 seems true to Bob, Bob dismisses the seeming that 4 is true. He’s aware of it, but ignores it, as in his mind it has been trumped. Herein lies the rub.
• Suppose we rate strength of seemings from one to four, with four being the strongest – the way, e.g. 1+1=2 seems true to us. Now, let’s use a crude bar graph, made with X’s. Bob and Dan agree, then, in how 2-4 strike them. Let’s leave 1 open for the moment.

1. ?
2. XX
3. XX
4. XX

• We could go three X’s all the way down, but the point is that 2-4 are roughly on a footing, as far as strength of seemings goes. The strength isn’t maximal, but it is significant.
• As concerns 1, to Dan, it simply doesn’t seem true. So he believes 2-4, and denies 1.
• But Bob does believe 1 – it strikes him as true. How much so? Surely not with the strength of 1+1=2. At most, 1 will seem true at the next highest level.

1. XXX
2. XX
3. XX
4. XX

• But if this is how things seem to Bob, he is going against reason in his belief in transubstantiation. If the above is how things seem to him, he’ll have to suspend judgement about which of 2-4 are true. He ought to think, of course, that at least one of them is false. But he can’t tell which.
• What Bob needs, to reasonably believe in this instance of the Eucharistic Mystery, is for 2 & 3 to seem more strongly than 4 does, like this:

1. XXX
2. XXX
3. XXX
4. XX

• Here is a reasonable belief in the Catholic doctrine in question. If any one of 1-3 changes, so that it seems less strongly to Bob than does 4, Bob “falls out of” this epistemic situation – he’s then believing in spite of how things on reflection seem to him.
• Now back to my rotten wafer example. Here, I think that my friend Ed misses the point (see the end of his post). Yes, if the Bible clearly asserted that all Volkswagens were really poached eggs (sporting the non-essential features of a German car) then given our perceptions, or rather, our total evidence, understood as seemings, we would be unable to reasonably believe the Bible to be inerrant.
• The point is this. These kinds of seemings – ones resulting from multiple, close up, steady, firm sensations, are not easily trumped. Given habit and I suppose other factors, this is easier to see with hypothetical examples, hence my use of them. In any case, when this is recognized, Bob’s epistemic situation may switch to this:

1. XXX
2. XXX
3. XXX
4. XXX

• or to this

1. XX
2. XXX
3. XXX
4. XXX

• Now if I understand him, Ed would say: “But I’m not like Bob. You see, to me, it doesn’t seem that we’re in the presence of a mere bread product. I’m careful about what I infer from sensory sensations, and it only seems to me that I’m in the presence of the ‘accidents’ of bread – whiteness, brittleness, disc-shape, etc.”
• Ed has a point. If 4 turns out not to seem true at all, or to seem more weakly the each of 1-3, then indeed, his belief in the Eucharistic miracle is reasonable. Moreover, I assume that he’s accurately reporting his belief.
• But we can rule out the first scenario just given – I think that Ed should agree that it does seem to him that the wafer is just a wafer – he does feel the push to believe that, although in the case described he does not believe it. Suppose the priest turned to him and said “When you weren’t looking, someone handed me this wafer, which they just brought in – it hasn’t been consecrated at all.” In this situation, Ed would immediately form the belief that the thing in the priest’s hand was mere bread. Why? Because that’s how it has seemed to Ed all along, only before this surprising turn of events, this seeming was trumped by the seemings of 1-3 above. Take away 3, and now 4 is no longer ignorable, no longer trumped.
• So I think Ed ought to concede to 4 having at least two X’s – that is, that it seems true in the situations we’re assuming, and fairly strongly, and not minimally so. Now go back to the original, more normal scenario (where the priest doesn’t make the surprising statement). If this is right, does 1 really seem to be true more strongly than 4 does?
• Frankly, for a host of reasons 1 doesn’t seem to me to be true.
• But if 1 did seem true to me, I’d be worried that upon careful reflection, it  seems true more strongly than does 4.

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

(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.

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 – the one who says “I am now telling a lie” is both lying and telling the truth! His point is in the last sentence of the quotation.

Now as currently defined, contraries can’t both be true, but they can both be false. Thus, if a man is currently silent, it’ll be false that he’s lying, and false that he’s telling the truth. But Gregory asserts that one or the other of the alternatives here must be true of the one who says “I am lying.” This makes me think that the relevant alternatives he has in mind are really contradictories, not mere contraries – so that the alternatives are “the man is lying” and “it is not the case that the man is lying”. These can be defined modally, as a pair of claims such that necessarily, one is false and the other is true (so necessarily, they are not both true, and necessarily, they are not both false) or syntactically, as being a pair of claim with the form “P or not-P”. If this is indeed what Gregory is thinking, then is he the first known dialetheist in Western thought? I don’t know.

It seems to me that he doesn’t really know what he’s doing here; does he really want to assert that it is possible for contrary claims to both be true? This is saying that there are some claims which can’t possibly both be true, which, by the way, are both true. This is to implicitly assert and deny the same thing (that those claims are both true). Again, it seems to me that to defend against the Arian argument, he doesn’t need the controversial claim that contradictories can be true, either.

The point he really wants to make is at the end of this section – that the Arians’ question “Did the Son exist before he was begotten?” is a “stupid” (his word) one, “For such a question arises only as to matter divisible by time.”

Update: I’m not confident of this interpretation – see the comments below.

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.)

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!

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

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

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”!

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.

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.

It goes like this:

1. There can be at most one omnipotent being. (premise)
2. No being can have more than one token of any property. (premise)
3. At most one token of omnipotence can exist. (2,3)
4. Any token of omnipotence is the same as any token of divinity. (divine simplicity)
5. At most one  token of divinity can exist. (3,4)
6. No token property can be had by more than one being. (premise)
7. 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. First, we ought not think of divine power as the ability to do anything. God can’t lie, or torture innocent kittens merely for the fun of it. But maybe “everything” can be restricted in some way. Let’s suppose Richard is assuming that “everything” doesn’t include what is contradictory or intrinsically wrong.

What, then is he thinking? Richard thinks it obviously true that if a being is omnipotent, then for any other being, whatever this other being can’t do, the omnipotent one can do. Now, suppose there were two omnipotent beings – call them Lenny and Squiggy. By the above principle, it must be true of Lenny, that whatever Squiggy can’t do, Lenny can. But, there is nothing Squiggy can’t do – he too is omnipotent. Richard thinks this scenario is incoherent. But why? I suspect that medieval logic may be to blame here, but I’ll take another stab at what he might be thinking.

If any being is omnipotent, or unlimited in power, then necessarily, there is no more powerful being. It seems one could be omnipotent and be the only real being – just imagine an all-powerful Lenny, alone in reality.  But if there are other beings, and one is omnipotent, none of them will be more powerful than you. So add Squiggy to the picture – it logically follows, from Lenny’s omnipotence, that Squiggy isn’t more powerful than Lenny. But we can’t infer that Squiggy is limited in power – for all we’ve said, he might also be omnipotent. So it seems that there’s nothing incoherent about there being two omnipotent beings – at least, Richard has done nothing to establish this.

We shouldn’t build into the definition of “omnipotent” than there actually are other beings, whose power is surpassed.

One might think that more than one omnipotent being is impossible for other reasons. One might worry about multiple omnipotent beings possibly thwarting one another. Richard Swinburne argues that there could be multiple omnipotent beings who necessarily never clash in their choices and actions.

In any case, I think Richard of St. Victor’s argument falters at premise 1.

Does it have any other problems? Various metaphysicians would deny either 2 or 6, for various reasons.

Many philosophers, like me, do not affirm 4. To be divine, and to be omnipotent, are two different ways of being, or if you like two different properties. While it is conceivable that there could be a being which satisfies the concepts or terms “omnipotent” and “divine” because of one and the same aspect of itself, I think most theistic philosophers have committments that rule this out. That is, most theistic philosophers hold views about God that imply the falsity of the traditional simplicity doctrine. For instance, they think of God as having multiple properties, and as having non-essential ones. And many of us have grave doubts about the ultimate consistency of the divine simplicity thesis. Look at what Richard says near the end of ch. 22:

…like omnipotence, there can be only one divine essence. Not only is what each person is completely the same; but each one is what each other is. And so, supreme simplicity is in each; true and supreme unity is in all together; and marvelous identity is everywhere if you pay attention well. (ch. 22, p. 395)

It’s hard to know what to make of all this talk of identity or sameness. It would be incoherent for Richard to assert that each person is numerically the same as the others, for (1) he holds them to differ, e.g. in origin, and (2) he is clearly thinking of them as many – and yet as in some sense a unity. It’s clear that he thinks there’s only one token of omnipotence, and of deity between them. It would seem to follow that they are numerically one (at least, if we accept 6 above). But he can’t be saying that. Really, the resulting image is a big blur, however marvellous it may be.

If I’m right that he trying to assuage a concern about monotheism in this part of the book, he doesn’t get very far.

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.

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. I try to interpret and analyze it thusly:

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

I insert the word “token” to make clear that we’re talking not about universal properties, which can in principle be had by or instantiated in many things, but rather token properties – features which are particulars, as much as the beings which have or (given divine simplicity) “are” them. My premises 2 & 6 are not stated by Richard; I insert them in the attempt to get a valid argument.

The point of the argument would be: never mind how many divine persons we’ve proven to exist, because we can also prove that there’s at most one God. So there’s your monotheism. And each person “just is” the divine essence/nature/divinity. So each person of the Trinity just is divinity, and each person just is each of the the other two as well. Here’s how Richard ends his chapter:

…there can be only one divine essence. Not only is what each person is completely the same; but each one is what each other is. And so, supreme simplicity is in each; true and supreme unity is in all together; and marvellous identity is everywhere if you pay attention well [, fool]. (p. 395, emphasis and Mr.-T-ism added)

Next time: What shall we make of this argument?

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, that “the Divinity [aka deity, godhead] is one, glory equal, and majesty coeternal.” (p. 394) This creed settles for an apparent contradiction; it states that the Three differ from one another, and that each has all the properties required to be a god, and then simply asserts that “yet there are not three gods, but one God.” But Richard feels compelled to say more. In this chapter, he asserts that the three are truly equals, but he’s aware that so far they would seem to be three co-equal gods. So it’s not clear that he does meet the requirements of orthodoxy, given that it is supposed to entail monotheism. In the next posts, we’ll look at how he addresses this monotheism concern.

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

From 1, 2 and the first obvious truth, we infer that Jesus / the Son / the Word began to exist a finite time ago. From this plus the second obvious truth, we infer that this being is not fully divine. Thus, if you hold to the Logos christology, whether you realize it or not,  you are a subordinationist - someone which thinks that the Son exists because of, and has a lesser status than God, that is, the Father. You deny that the members of the Trinity are fully equal.

Interestingly, this seems to have been a (the?) standard view among catholic intellectuals of this time period. It was not the only view, though, and it was controversial. Also interestingly, this basic scheme of divine creation via a newly “expressed” helper seems due not primarily to John, but to the very Hellenized Jewish theologian Philo of Alexandria, a rough contemporary of Jesus. (See the sources cited here.) Mainstream trinitarian thinking has left Logos theory behind, and Philo’s influence has been almost forgotten.  Yet most theologians read John 1 and Proverbs 8 in almost the same way as Tertullian; they simply take the “expression” or “begetting” or “speaking” of the Word to be a timeless fact.

But is something like this the best way to read those chapters? I hope to get into that in a future series.

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 complex combined arrow connecting each pair to the third; where my chart has one (I got lazy, OK?) it ought to have three – one pointing at each person. But there are more love-fusions than what we’ve mentioned so far.

If the creation is considered, there the cord of love is tripled so that where suspicion concerning a defect of love could arise more easily, certitude is made more firm by greater confederation. (ch. 20, p. 393)

So in their love for the cosmos, imagine three love arrows coming out of the persons, and sort of twisting together to make one thicker, three-strand love arrow. I don’t follow his point here, though I understand the fusion he’s imagining. At the end chapter, he lamely suggests that one unconvinced by all of this would seem to be insane.

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.