Dallas Willard is one of my favorite authors, and I don’t normally go in for criticizing what he writes. But I found a great example in this (good) book (p. 122) of an idea that is fairly widespread, and which underlies a lot of social trinitarian speculation. This brief passage got me to thinking. He says, …God is love and sustains love for us from… Read More »Are persons essentially relational?
You tell ’em, Joe. An interesting post & discussion: Alexander Pruss’s Blog: Liberal theology I think a lot of liberal theologians don’t have a “high view of reason” – many (not all) of them strike me as lazy drifters on miscellaneous intellectual currents. e.g. Has anyone’s reason really revealed to them, so to speak, that miracles don’t happen, or even that it’s irrational to believe… Read More »Linkage: Pruss on liberal theology (Dale)
Ice, ice, baby. (image credit)
A reader emailed me this question, and I thought others would be interested in my (attempt at) an answer. Also, this is a good chance to review and summarize some of my previous postings on modalism.
I was wondering if you could read [the following] and tell me what I was believing? (I think it might have been a form of Modalism) Also, I search everywhere and find that Modalism is wrong, but no explanations specifically why. Can you help me out on some links explaining that?
…I used to believe there was one God. He sometimes is called Father, sometimes called Jesus, and sometimes called the Holy Spirit. And sometimes called all at the same time. Read More »Reader Question About Modalism
“If I think of pork-products, is that a self-conscious act of thinking?”
What follows is the first of a two part post.
Part 1: The Divine Word as Divine Practical Knowledge
Part 2: If God Weren’t a Trinity, then Creatures Would Necessarily Be Created.
Part 1
In pre-Nicene days (and post-Nicene days) there was much debate about the ontological status and (narrative) identity of the Son of God. One branch of discussion focused on the Apostle John’s claim that the Son of God is the Word of God. In various places in the New Testament the Son of God is identified as the agent through whom the Father creates the world, which is equivalent with saying the Word of the Father and the Father create creatures.
From these sources a ‘Logos-theology’ was born (that you can read about in the history books). The Logos is that by which creatures are created, have their existence and persistence in existing.
Now, Henry takes up the question as to whether the Word is ‘practical knowledge’. Henry generally gets his definitions of kinds of knowledge from Aristotle. From Aristotle we learn about three kinds of knowledge: speculative knowledge, practical knowledge and productive knowledge.
“Is there any Son who does not cause His Father to become a Father and vice versa?”
Here I wish to briefly summarize what I take to be Henry’s position on the question: is the Father constituted by the (personal) property of being ‘ungenerated’ (ingenitum)? Henry’s discussion of this comes from his Summa Quaestionum Ordinariarum 57.1.
Henry engages in a lengthy discussion of ways the word ‘ingenitum’ (not generated) or ‘innascibile’ (not able to be born) can be predicated of the Father, whether negatively, privately, or positively. The upshot of these distinctions is to ask about the precise nature of this property ‘ungenerated’. Is it saying what the Father is not (negation), or is it saying the Father lacks some further property and is potentiality to receive some new property (privation), or is it saying there is some positive property the Father really is constituted by?
Henry rejects predication of the property ‘ingentium’ to the Father by negation and by privation; instead he opts for predication of a positive property. What then is this positive property that the Father has/is?
Read More »HoG: “What does it mean to say the Father is ungenerated?” (Scott)
“My god Spock! Is this the apex of human intellectual production?” “No Captain, look within, do you smell that?”
I apologize for the delay in posting. I have been busy with, among other things, my own work.
In the previous post, I enumerated 40 lines of premises and conclusions that generally summarizes Henry’s philosophical psychology of the Trinity. There are one or two things that ought to be clarified.
I have posted some responses to Dale’s post in the Comments section of his post.
I would like to elaborate on two issues in this post.
1. Why must the divine intellect be perfectly actual? (pace Dale’s 2nd objection)
2. Why must the divine intellect have two powers, an operative power and a productive power?
In regards to 1, Henry generally follows Anselm’s perfect being theology program. In this program, when we attribute some property to God we should follow the rule: ‘whatever it is simply better to have than not have we should attribute to God’. This property that it is simply better to have than not to have in medieval speak is called a ‘pure perfection’. A pure perfection is some property that it is simply better to have than not to have it. A pure perfection is some property x that is not considered as a pure perfection with regard to some species-nature. It is not a question of whether ‘it is better for my fish Nigel to be a Ninja or not’, but whether it is simply better to be a Ninja or not. A comparison to some species is not at issue here. For example, if it is better to be wise than not be wise, we should say that God is wise. If it is better to be loving than not to be loving, we should say that God is loving. If it is better to be stupid than not stupid, we should attribute ‘being stupid’ to God. But, our intuitions lead us to think that being wise and being just are simply better to have than not to have; yet being stupid is something we wouldn’t attribute to God because it is actually better to not be stupid, than to be stupid.
Read More »HoG: Intellectual Production of the Word (Scott)
“Will the real H.o.G. please stand up?”
Henry of Ghent was an eclectic theologian. He fancied new theories and adored old theories. When it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity, Henry was a glutton for old and new doctrines. What was old that he liked? His favourite theologian was Augustine, and his favourite book titled De Trinitate was Augustine’s. Of course, Henry didn’t just read Augustine, he read other De Trinitate texts: Boethius, Ambrose, Hilary, Richard of St. Victor and learned important lessons from these. The primary theological source for psychological doctrines applied to the Trinity comes from Augustine (who contemplated such models as the Father as Memory, Son as Intelligence/Word, and Holy Spirit as Will/Love). Further, Henry takes Richard of St.Victor’s claim about the importance of ‘mutual love’ (of the Father and Son) and applies it as the principiative principle for the production of the Holy Spirit. A ‘principiative principle’ is a fancy phrase for ‘productive power’. Henry seems to use it at times in distinction from a productive power for the production of created essences (e.g. human beings). Still, the the semantic range of this can be applied to ad intra divine productions, and ad extra creaturely productions.
Henry also fancied ‘new’ doctrines of human philosophical psychology, though he was critical of these. What he liked was Aquinas’s developed teaching about what a mental ‘Word’ is, namely, a product that an intellect can produce that is really distinct from the intellect and its operations. This ‘word’ inheres in the intellect as an accident. Further, Henry liked the notion that this product is some sort of ‘final’ act of the intellect. Of course, in the divine case the ‘Word’ won’t ‘inhere’ in the divine essence, but ‘subsist’ in its. This of course is ambiguous (and worthy of another post).Read More »H.o.G.: Philosophical Psychology at Play with the Father and Word/Son (Scott)
“All we need is one substance to cure the ills of our society!” “I have personal experience with substance abuse, and it is wrong.”
Before I start a mini-series on the Trinitarian thought of Henry of Ghent, I thought it would be good to offer a brief survey of the late 13th c. landscape. This is way too brief and fairly focused, but hey, you’ve got to start somewhere. As the scholastics would say, you cannot will to do something, unless you have some sort of knowledge. No voluntary action without knowledge, however imperfect or confused that knowledge is! (As an aside: Jean-Luc Marion, a contemporary philosophical-theologian and former student of Jacques Derrida contests this medieval Aristotelian claim, and argues that acts of will –i.e. to love- does or can precede any knowledge.)
Of all the issues to discuss about the Trinity the one at hand here is the question: what causes or explains why the divine persons are really distinct from each other? We know there are three persons, and one ‘substance’/’ousia’ from Scripture and our orthodox Creeds, but is there anything that we could say that might account for why there are three, and not say five divine persons? Or even, why not say there is a potential infinity of divine persons (on some contestable account of the deification of believers)? You get my point. Why three divine persons and what makes it that there are three, no more and no less?
A simple being containing multiple distinct “persons” – D’oh!
Theologian Lewis Ayres is the author of this worthy book. In it, he hammers the point that the Latin vs. Social trinitarian categories aren’t helpful in understanding post-Constantinople trinitarian theology. I think he’s right about that, though I persist in using the terminology because it is helpful for 20th and 21st century theories. Ayres’s book is a wonderful piece of patristic scholarship, but it is also an extended polemic against social trinitarians. Basically, he thinks that what he aptly calls the pro-Nicene tradition has gotten short shrift in recent theological work on the Trinity, and he very helpfully presents the core of that tradition and bats down a great many mis-readings of it. Obviously, he’s sympathetic to this sort of trinity theory, to put it mildly. This will definitely come up when I discuss social theories.
Here I just wanted to pass on a striking quote, which to me spotlights a central problem that many people have with the mainstream classic Latin or Pro-Nicene tradition.Read More »Quotes: Lewis Ayres on Pro-Nicene 3rd-4th century trinitarianism
“Come on, you tired little brain – don’t fail me now.” (No, I don’t really blog naked – serious thought requires having at least your underpants on.)
Joseph Jedwab does an excellent job (here, comments 3 & 4) pressing me for details, and taking a shot at defending the Brower and Rea theory. I wanted to chew a bit on some issues that Joseph and Ian raise before moving on, offering some corrections and other reflections. (And JT – I want to post your lengthy comment (the second one) as a guest post, so we can discuss the priority issue – email me if you object to this promotion. 
) Any bold type that appears in quotes here has been added by me.
To non-philosophical readers: I apologize for the over-long load of philosopher-lingo that follows. You may want to skip this one! Read More »Constitution Trinitarianism Part 4: pausing and revisiting some issues
I’ve seen this passage quoted by at least three of my favorite Christian philosophers. Unfortunately, they’ve misattributed it to the famous English antitrinitarian John Biddle (also spelled Bidle) (1615-62). I believe it was Keith Yandell who found it in this old book, where it is misattributed to Biddle. Why did the theologian Leonard Hodgson make this mistake? I’ve seen a copy of the book, the… Read More »“an Error in counting…” Who wrote this?
Sometimes, all your main interests converge. Books? Check. Computers? Check. Philosophy and theology? Check. History? Check. The result: http://trinities.org/books.Read More »Books
Before going into objections to “Trinity Monotheism”, I thought it’d be a good idea to say a bit more about their long, meaty chapter in which they (eventually) set out their own theory, in this book. This’ll take a couple of posts, and we’ll allow time for discussion between them. Theologians in particular should find a lot to chew on here;they’re pretty out of step with the theological world on these issues, as we’ll see.Read More »Trinity Monotheism part 2: their set-up, part 1
According to the Arizona Daily Star, ‘Lord’ is fading at some churches, because they think it smacks of patriarchy.
When ideology has taken over to the point that you think it’s inappropriate to describe God almighty in terms that connote power (horrors!)… wow.
And then, what about Jesus?Read More »“Lord” allergies among “mainliners”
The problem I noted last time is well-known by philosophers who work in the history of philosophy (I’m not sure that mainstream philosophers who stick almost entirely to recent stuff are so aware of it). Nor do I exempt myself from this lamentable tendency. I’ll give a real example, with other peoples’ names omitted out of respect. Some years ago, I began reading a Great… Read More »more on theory-driven distortion of texts
My posting has been infrequent lately. That’s because I’ve been working on an old paper of mine which isn’t on philosophical theology. But it’s also because I’ve been working on a couple of very exciting blog-related things behind the scenes – stay tuned.
My recent exchange with Brandon Watson got me to thinking. This is going to be boringly methodological, but I need to think about this issue, as it’ll come up again and again. As a philosopher, I’m interested in evaluating theories on their merits – consistency, fit with the evidence, coherence with what else we believe, explanatory power, and so on. When I look at the history of theological debate, it is very often marred with the ugly weapons of rhetoric Read More »Some thoughts on labeling others’ theories
I was reading famous philosopher of religion John Hick‘s contribution to the 1982 book The Concept of Monotheism in Islam & Christianity, and ran across an interesting idea. Let me put it in context. If you know anything about Hick, you can guess that in his chapter he’s is ultimately trying to promote his unique theory of religious pluralism. Here’s the connection he sees between… Read More »Is the doctrine of the Incarnation prior to & the source of Trinitarian doctrine? – Part 1
Here’s a paper by Ralph Allen Smith, “Against Karl Rahner’s Rule,” which deals with Randal Rauser’s assassination of the much-bandied-about “Rahner’s Rule“. I’ve only skimmed it, but it seems he agrees with Randal. Me too. Technorati Tags: Randal Rauser, Rahner, Rahner’s Rule, Theology, Economic Trinity, Immanent Trinity
Now for another historical interlude – I’ll get back to current philosophy shortly. Regular readers will note that I’ve been insinuating for a while now that the way many people understand the mainstream, so-called “Latin” trinitarian position amounts to a certain variety of modalism (which entails S-modalism, to which I’ve objected). Some of you know that I also work on what philosophers call “early modern”… Read More »Nothing New Under the Sun – Part 1
I’ve been reading Robert Letham’s The Holy Trinity lately. He’s a Reformed kind of guy, and like many contemporary theologians, he’s spent a lot of time thinking about Karl Barth. Now it’s well known that Barth in many places denies that he’s a “modalist” about the Trinity, and yet he says many things like these (these are quoted from Barth’s works by Letham): God is… Read More »yet more on Modes and Modalism: Barth and Letham