Skip to content

Search Results for: "Sabellianism Reconsidered" Considered

“Sabellianism Reconsidered” Considered – Part 8

In this last post in this series, I want to put out a few critical reactions to Baber’s “Neo-Sabellian” Trinity theory.

My thanks to Harriet for this piece and for her interaction with us here.

No doubt, she’ll argue back; and she will probably say something about how her views have changed since she wrote this piece.

So, in no particular order:

  1. I agree with her that it’s suspicious if some philosophical theory should appeal to us only or mainly because it’ll help us in theology. I also agree with her that it’s interesting to at least try to come up with what is in some sense an acceptable Trinity theory which uses only metaphysical doctrines we have other reasons to believe.
  2. Again, I think it is a good aim to produce an intelligible (seemingly consistent) Trinity theory, assuming some such theory is called for. I think she’s correct to complain about the severe obscurity of traditional claims about “eternal generation” and “procession”.
  3. Picky point: I think “Neo-Sabellian” is a misnomer. It’s “Neo” all right, butRead More »“Sabellianism Reconsidered” Considered – Part 8

“Sabellianism Reconsidered” Considered – Part 4

The theory, then, is that God is an everlasting, temporally extended thing with three temporal parts, each of which is a god. But, they’re the same god as God. Yet as we saw last time, how can the Three be gods at all, as each exists at some times but not others?

Without going into the arguments for this controversial thesis, Baber appeals to the claim made by Derek Parfit and others, that “identity is not ‘what matters’ for survival”. (p.6) Thus, a future thing can count as my surviving, though it is not (numerically) identical to me.

Suppose (I’m stealing this thought experiment from Richard Swinburne) some mad scientists, such as Pinkie and the Brain, are going to cut my brain in half, and put the left half in one body, and the right in another. The body which gets the left half will be tortured to death, while the body getting the right half will be given lifetime passes to all NFL games and a lifetime supply of good beer. If I’m to undergo this experiment, I want to know which of these resulting people will be (numerically identical to) me: the unlucky one, the lucky one, or neither.

Baber (following Parfit) wants to say that depending on how exactly the resulting people are related to me, both may count as the continuation of or survival of me. Specifically, she suggests that psychological continuity is enough – it is enough that the later people have the same or nearly the same beliefs, desires, and so on that I have.

I don’t think this is right, but back to the Trinity: In her view, the god which is a God-stage (temporal part of God) called the Father would, just before the Incarnation, be mistaken to think Read More »“Sabellianism Reconsidered” Considered – Part 4

“Sabellianism Reconsidered” Considered – Part 3

To continue Baber’s attempt to retool Sabellianism:

Suppose your car, named KITT, has temporal parts. KITT, then is the sum of, the whole composed of these parts. (KITT at t1, KITT at t2, KITT at t3, KITT at t4…etc.) Further, Baber urges each of these car-stages (temporal parts of a car) is itself a car. So, e.g., KITT at t3 is just as much a car as the whole KITT. But now, suppose David Hasselhoff is driving KITT on, say, Easter. He’s actually, on this metaphysics, driving two cars, for KITT on Easter is a different car than KITT (the sum of KITT-stages).

Not to worry, argues Baber. We simply need a concept of “tensed identity”. This is not numerical identity as normally understood, but is rather the relation between KITT and KITT at Easter, such that they “count as one”. (p.5) Thus, Baber suggests that if we believe in temporal parts, the thesis of “tensed identity” is a “plausible way to avoid over-population.” (p. 5)

Back to God. She’s exploring the idea that God is a whole composed of three temporal parts Read More »“Sabellianism Reconsidered” Considered – Part 3

“Sabellianism Reconsidered” Considered – Part 2

President Bush, President Reagan, President Carter, President Ford, President Nixon
What is this adequate Trinity theory called “Sabellianism”, according to Baber? It is what I’ve called serial, non-essential FSH noumenal modalism – each “person” of the Trinty is a mode of God, a way God is during a period of time. None of these overlap (serial), they supervene on God’s intrinsic features (noumenal), and they are non-essential – if God hadn’t created, there would have been no time, and so no temporal parts to his life.
So the theory is that the one God is an everlasting self with three temporal parts, the Father (up to the time of the Incarnation?), the Son (during the earthly life of Jesus, ending at Pentecost?) and the Holy Spirit (Pentecost and after?). So the three “persons” of the Trinity are in fact person-stages of the one divine person/self, but they are also persons as well.

Following an ancient tradition of mocking modalists as “patripassians”, she seems to think the biggest or the main problem with modalism is that it identifies the Father and the Son. (pp. 1, 3) On her modalist theory, they are temporal parts (person-stages) of one being, but they are not numerically identical – they are different temporal parts of God. As she observes, on this theory, “There is… no time at while f=s.” (p. 3) Thus, her theory doesn’t identify any of the persons with one another, or with God for that matter.

Many metaphysicians, she knows, reject the theory of temporal parts, and the perdurance theory of how a thing can “last” through time.

But moving on, is this theory monotheistic? She urges,

All we need to capture the spirit of monotheism is the doctrine that at any time there is exactly one God. (3)

Huh? She draws an analogy with US Presidents; at any given time, there’s one one.

But imagine this:Read More »“Sabellianism Reconsidered” Considered – Part 2

“Sabellianism Reconsidered” Considered – Part 1

Dr. Harriet Baber (aka H.E. Baber) teaches philosophy at the University of San Diego, and has been active for many years in the Society of Christian Philosophers. She’s published a number of papers on gender, philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and other topics. I met her in the 1990s at an SCP conference in California, and I have always found her to be funny, smart, and… Read More »“Sabellianism Reconsidered” Considered – Part 1

“Sabellianism Reconsidered” Considered – Part 7 (Dale)

Time for the old Spanish Inquisition. Will she survive The (self-administered) Rack?

In the final part of her article “Sabellianism Reconsidered”, Baber turns to theological objections. To wit:

  • The account renders it impossible for the Son to pray to the Father. But the NT says this happened.
  • The account denies that each Person of the Trinity is himself eternal, and has eternally born relations to the other two Persons. (pp. 8-9, paraphrased)

Her answers? Jesus, like his contemporaries, was not a trinitarian. That is, he didn’t realize  that the God to whom he prayed had temporal parts which were gods. Or even if he did, he didn’t intend to teach any trinitarian doctrine. Thus, he addressed not the Father, but God, as “Father”. (p. 10) Thus the term “Father”, in Jesus’ context, referred to God, while nowadays (post 380 CE?) it refers to the Father, the (temporally) first Person of the Trinity.

In response to the second objection, she notes that “a notion of timeless, metaphysically necessary causationRead More »“Sabellianism Reconsidered” Considered – Part 7 (Dale)

“Sabellianism Reconsidered” Considered – Part 6 (Dale)

Switchfoot “are one”. But they are really just five dudes, not one.

Baber observes,

Typically, aggregates of Fs are not themselves Fs. A collection of cats is not itself a cat… an aggregation of persons is not a person. (p. 7, emphasis added)

Still, she thinks this needn’t preclude three gods from themselves being a god. Some sorts of things, it seems, can have other things of that same sort for parts, such as a Sierpinski Triangle. (p. 10) Maybe, then, gods are more like triangles like cats, in that groups of god can be (temporal) parts of a god. At least, we can’t rule out that this is possible.

How many temporal parts does God, on this theory have? There’s no reason to think it is exactly three. Read More »“Sabellianism Reconsidered” Considered – Part 6 (Dale)

“Sabellianism Reconsidered” Considered – Part 5 (Dale)

To be omnipotent, Baber says, “is to be able to do [directly, by fiat] any action… including actions at times other than” the time at which one is omnipotent. (p.6) But consider, say, the action of miraculously inflicting some person with a headache on 1/1/2015. It seems that the Father, on this theory, couldn’t do that, as he wouldn’t exist then (having been superseded by… Read More »“Sabellianism Reconsidered” Considered – Part 5 (Dale)

Linkage: Ian’s search for a new Social Trinitarian theory

…why not say that there is a single substance, God, but that the existence of this substance grounds other, non-fundamental entities [i.e. the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit] that perhaps can be considered parts of God. …the existence of the whole is prior to the existence of the parts. For someone drawn to a social trinitarian sort of view that takes the members… Read More »Linkage: Ian’s search for a new Social Trinitarian theory

podcast 36 – Interview with Dr. Bart Ehrman about his How Jesus Became God – Part 2

Is the author of John confused about Jesus and God? Does he think that two different beings – the Father, and the man Jesus – are numerically the same as the one true God? Some people think so; putting it gently, they talk of the “tensions” (=apparent contradictions) in the book. But is this author that confused? Again, some think that John makes Jesus qualitatively… Read More »podcast 36 – Interview with Dr. Bart Ehrman about his How Jesus Became God – Part 2

“Subordinationism”

grammar-vaderIn the recent and ongoing series, I have been showing that famous early “fathers” are not, contrary to popular accounts, trinitarians at all, once we carefully define the term. They are unitarians, again, carefully defining the term.

But these recent comments by reader “Villanovanus” got me thinking.

He finds it outrageous that I call people like Irenaeus and Origen “unitarians,” even though I also call them “subordinationists.” Isn’t a subordinationist by definition a trinitarian? (When one reads the trinitarian authors of histories of theology, they are usually a little more modest, saying that these folks are sort of, kind of, maybe trinitarians, if not good ones, or fully developed ones, etc.)  Am I not grammatically challenged, or perversely unwilling to look up terms in a dictionary? If a “subordinationist” is by definition a trinitarian, then “subordinationist unitarian” is a contradiction in terms.

He cites a number of dictionary type definitions of “subordinationism”, e.g.

  • [subordinationism] the doctrine that the first person of the Holy Trinity is superior to the second, and the second superior to the third. (© Random House, Inc. 2013)
  • [subordinationism] either of two interpretations of the doctrine of the Trinity, often regarded as heretical, according to which the Son is subordinate to the Father or the Holy Ghost is subordinate to both (Collins English Dictionary – Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition 2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
    Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009)
  • [subordinationism] the theological tenet of progressively declining essence within the Trinity. (-Ologies & -Isms. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc.)

The second definition is too narrow. But making “subordinationism” Read More »“Subordinationism”

The Orthodox Formulas 3: the “Athanasian” Creed

The so-called Athanasian Creed (also known by the Latin words it begins with, Quicunque vult) is considered by many to be the very definition of “the” orthodox doctrine. It is of uncertain origin, although many readers think it has a strongly Augustinian flavor (which if true shows it is not from Athanasius himself, who died before Augustine was converted). It has long been considered authoritative… Read More »The Orthodox Formulas 3: the “Athanasian” Creed

Plato: proto-trinitarian, or the Father of Arianism?

Back in 1983, the excellent scholar of early modern philosophy Sarah Hutton published an interesting little piece called “The Neoplatonic Roots of Arianism: Ralph Cudworth and Theophilus Gale” (in Lech Szczucki, ed. Socinianism and its Role in the Culture of the XVI-th to XVIII-th Centuries (Warsaw: Polish Academy of Sciences, 139-45). Professor Hutton informs me that it will be coming out in a collection of papers on the Cambridge Platonists. I’ll just very crudely summarize the piece, and make my point about it.

 

Read More »Plato: proto-trinitarian, or the Father of Arianism?

“almost impossible to verbalize”?

Can “the doctrine of the Trinity” or “the deity of Christ,” as Dr. Craig understands them, be expressed in New Testament Greek?