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Poll – How many divine Persons?

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6 thoughts on “Poll – How many divine Persons?”

  1. That is not what I meant. If we take your symbolic account of the premises, then I am rejecting “I(g,f,s,h)” because it is the wrong account of the unity of the persons. I am also rejecting the third premise because it applies a personal name to divinity.

    However, I also agree with Brandon on the issue of using proper names as constants. So while it is quite true to say that each of the trinitarian members is divine and no two of them are identical, it is nonsense to speak of the divine nature as being something metaphysically distinct from the persons.

  2. Dale,

    Well, I certainly don’t think it’s transparent to everyone that numerical identity, i.e., the identity required to be counted as one, requires Leibniz’s Law. For instance, I am not, by the indiscernibility of identicals, identical to myself one-trillionth of a second ago, but it isn’t obvious to everyone why this should count against numerical identity (even if LL is required for self-identity), since I have to consider myself now and myself one-trillionth of a second ago as the same exact thing for all sorts of reasoning. Either I am doing so purely as a pragmatic convenience, or I really am the same exact thing. The problems raised on either side are complicated and not fully resolved.

    Further, even if we appeal to Leibniz’s Law, that doesn’t help as much as it would seem. Quantification is always relative to a universe of discourse; you can appeal to Leibniz’s Law either for an unrestricted domain or a restricted one. For instance, if x and y differ on some properties G but are exactly equivalent for some properties F, restricting the domain to the relevant properties F would yield us the result that, for that domain, x and y are numerically identical. So you need not just Leibniz’s Law, but an unrestricted domain — you have to be quantifying over everything. But that’s a tricky issue. To quantify over everything, we know we can’t be quantifying over the set of everything, because that leads straightforwardly to contradictions. Then what are we doing? Can we really quantify over everything, or do we simply do so for relevant practical purposes? (This is the flip side of the previous problem; and shows that you can’t get out of the normativity problem by appeal to LL, since the same problem arises here unless you have an account of universal quantification that doesn’t appeal to a set of everything.)

    On the parallel argument, while I think one might question the formulation of (1), I don’t think there’s anything puzzling at all about its meaning. I can be unique visitor x, y, and z, for instance, by using three different computers to view the website. So that’s the least puzzling thing about the parallel. The rest of the argument is much harder to interpret. I don’t think there’s any such thing in natural language as “wearing its logic on its sleeve”; for one thing, it depends on which logic you use and how you’ve used it. For instance, you’ve chosen to treat ‘Father’, ‘Son’, and ‘Holy Spirit’ as constants rather than as predicates, which is a controvertible move, since it’s unclear whether this is the best way to treat proper names. I think we’ve argued that question before. You’re right about your diagnosis if we really can convert ‘Father’ to logical constant f without loss of logical functionality; but there are other positions (for instance, I’m inclined to think that proper names virtually never function logically as constants because they are predicable and constants are not; but there are other positions besides my own on which it would arise).

  3. Hi guys – thanks much for the thoughtful feedback! Matthew says,

    I think that there is another objection to the first premise. One could think that we cannot make any kind of reference to God without referring to one of the trinitarian members.

    I assume the reason for the failure of reference would be that there’s no such thing as a tripersonal God, right? If so, then yes, it would be false to assert that there’s thing thing “God” with those persons in some sense “in” it or him. I take it this is going to be a nontrinitarian view. Of course, there are many such views.

    Brandon: When you say “x maps numerically to y”, do you mean simply that x and y should be counted once? if not that, what do you mean?

    The poll does embody a certain assumption, which you may disagree with. This is that everyone has some grasp of and uses the concept of identity (the kind obeying Leibniz’s Law). Because “same” and “identical” are so vague, when talking in a popular context, I say “numerically the same” – that is, these “two things” are in fact one, and therefore should be counted only once, were you to count them. I guess I think that “numerical identity” does have a precise definition, when used as just explained. Now I’m aware that some philosophers believe in “numerical sameness without identity”. I’ve never understood that; this seems to be the idea that x and y can be such that they should be counted once, even though they are in fact two! I just don’t have any grasp of the kind of normativity that seems to be in play there. Am I missing the point? If so, please help me out!

    About your parallel argument. Isn’t the only puzzling thing the meaning of 1? I don’t understand the alleged ambiguity in 2. As I see it, the argument pretty much wears its logical form on its sleeve, to wit:

    1. Df & Ds & Dh & -(f=s v s=h v f=h) & I(g,f,s,h)

    2. -(f=g v s=g v h=g)

    3. Dg

    4. Therefore, there are at least four divine persons. [too lazy to symbolize this one :-)]

    Seems to me, there’s no logical wiggle room between 1-3 and 4 – that inference has to be valid. The only problem I see is: does 2 follow from 1 or not? It depends on what the predicate “I” means. Am I assuming too much? Can you say more?

  4. I suspect one issue people are having with both 2 and 3 is what it means to say x is ‘numerically identical’ to y; usually we understand it to presuppose that (among other things) x maps numerically to y. Understood in that way 3 would be puzzling. On the other hand, you might not think of numerical identity as requiring such a presupposition; in which case (2) might be puzzling. Numerical identity, after all, has no well-established and rigorous definition, which is why it has tended to be a hot topic in analytic philosophy.

    I think a way to highlight the general character of the problems people are (probably) having is to use an argument of similar form. Consider the following argument:

    (1) x, y, and z are three unique visitors to the website in one person.
    (2) Therefore neither x, y, nor z are numerically identical to that one person.
    (3) This one person is numerically identical to a unique visitor.
    (4) Therefore there are at least four unique visitors.

    Now, this turns out to be a very puzzling argument in many ways. Unique visitors don’t map onto to persons in any regular way; the two are intimately related, but they are counted differently. So a website counter can identify as a single unique visitor many people (e.g., they could all be looking at the website together on one computer), or as two unique visitors one person (e.g., he could look at the website from two different computers). Suppose we set aside the unique visitor as many persons case, and assume that every unique visitor is one and only one person. Then it is true that every unique visitor is a person, and that in each case this person is numerically identical to the thing that that unique visitor is. Thus (2) is ambiguous between “Neither the thing that is x (i.e.,, the referent of ‘x’), nor the thing that is y, nor the thing that is z, is numerically identical to a person,” which is false; and “Neither the thing that is (i.e., the referent of the description) x, qua (description) x, nor the thing that is y, qua y, nor the thing that is z, qua z, is numerically identical to a person,” which is true. A similar ambiguity arises with (3); and (4) doesn’t follow from any of the interpretations of the premises except where (2) and (3) are both interpreted so as to be false. Likewise, someone might question the particular formulation of (1).

    I’m not saying that this is a rigorous parallel, but they are parallel in terms of the questions they raise. For that reason and others, I’m less inclined to think that the rejection of (4) has to be a mistake; it may just have arisen due to the ambiguities of (2) and (3) — (4) doesn’t manifestly follow from (2) and (3) because both are ambiguous, and so someone could quite reasonably not see how (1)-(3) put together would yield (4), even though (1)-(3) might all sound right. It would have to involve some confusion; but the confusion might more a matter of interpreting the premises than drawing the conclusion, and as much due to the argument itself as to the person interpreting it.

  5. I think that there is another objection to the first premise. One could think that we cannot make any kind of reference to God without referring to one of the trinitarian members. Statements such as “God is trinitarian” are simply summaries of statements that do refer to individual members.

    When we seem to make such unqualified references, we are really referring to God the Father. I don’t know how this view would work out precisely, but it was unmentioned. When we speak of God as being personal, we are referring to God the Father.

  6. Very interesting poll results! Let me run through why I think people are objecting to various steps of the argument.

      1. People would deny this for one of two reasons. First, they may take it to simply express the doctrine of the trinity, and they are anti-trinitarian. Second, they may be trinitarians, and think that making each of the three “in” God is a mistake. They may want to say instead that each “is” God.
      2. Objectors here want to retain premise 1. They want to say that 2 doesn’t follow. Whether or not it follows depends on how 1 is understood. If there’s any sort of part/whole relationship between the Persons and God, then it would seem that 2 does follow, for nothing is identical to one of its proper parts.
      3. Deniers of step 3 don’t want to say that God just is a certain divine person, because they realize where the argument is headed (4). So, they deny 3. But in so doing, aren’t they denying theism? Theism says there’s one and only one God, and a God just is a divine personal entity (“personal” in the sense of having a first person point of view, the ability to intentionally act, and knowledge and other mental states).
      4. Simply rejecting 4 won’t work. Why? It manifestly follows from 1-3. This answer, it seems, is just a mistake.

    What’s most interesting about this poll, I think, is that there roughly an even divide between the first three options. As I write this, the score is 29%, 32%, and 32% respectively.

    The poll isn’t closed; feel free to vote, and to post about your vote.

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