In the same issue of Faith and Philosophy (22:1, Jan 2005, 77-86) Bill Craig has a critical response piece. (Available online here.) First, he gives a nice and clear summary of their article, more complete than the one I gave last time. Then he proceeds to object. As with most philosophical theories, when you start objecting, things start getting complicated, and you start to understand the theory in question better.
For starters, what do they mean by “the divine essence”? What sort of thing is this which constitutes the persons? Rea answers in an email which Craig quotes:
All we mean to commit ourselves to is the idea that maybe the Persons are like a hylomorphic [form plus matter] structure: there’s something…we call it the “divine essence”… that plays the role of commonly shared matter, and, for each Person, something else that plays the role of form. (80)
You see, sometimes we think of things or objects as constituting other objects (as in my Ned and Lumpy example from last time), but also, going back to Aristotle, there’s a tradition of saying that “matter” together with a certain “form” or organization amount to a physical object. So here, an object would be constituted by a portion of matter, and the object would be a “hylomorphic compound” – something which can be analyzed (at least in thought) into two ingredients – the stuff and the shape of that stuff. Brower and Rea want to say that (e.g.) the Son is such a compound – the “form” being Sonship and the “matter” being something like an immaterial stuff, namely “the divine essence”. Of course, they admit, theology ought not posit a material stuff in God. They’re just saying that the divine persons are analogous tohylomorphic compounds, and so they must share something analogous to a stuff. Craig objects that the ancient tradition (Fathers and councils) “did not mean that God or the persons of the Trinity were composed of some sort of spiritual stuff” when they said that the three were “same substance” (homoousias). Moreover, Craig objects, the notion of immaterial stuff seems incoherent. (80)
Brower and Rea hold that the basic puzzle of the Trinity is that there’s only one God, but there are three distinct (non-identical) persons each of which “is” God. They say – no problem – our theory smoothes it all out by saying what that “is” amounts to. Each of the three “is” God in the sense of being numerically the same as (but not identical to) God, as well as to each other. That’s compatible with their only being one God, and with the none of the three being identical to either of the others. Craig says not so fast. One portion of matter can’t simultaneously have incompatible properties – the portion forming Ned the gnome, for instance, can’t simultaneously be gnome-shaped, and shaped like a 747 jet plane. But are not being a Father and being a Son incompatible properties? If so, how can one something-like-an-immaterial-stuff simultaneously have both? (82-3) Why think those properties are incompatible? Craig points out that the Son can truly think “I died on a cross” but the Father cannot truly think that.
I’ll skip the last two pages of Craig’s critique, as it’s a little compressed, and I’m not sure I follow some of it. The parts I do follow, I’ll raise in a future post.
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For the record, I want to make some comments about the historical side of things, because some of this stuff isn’t entirely new.
Craig describes the church fathers as affirming that the divine essence is like the generic nature of, rather than the immaterial stuff of, the persons. But in fact, there are many predominant patristic theologians who would fall into the ‘stuff’ camp rather than the ‘generic nature’ camp.
For example, Tertullian sees the shared divine essence as a kind of ‘thinking gas’ (or at least an immaterial body), and this seems to come close to saying the divine essence is the common ‘stuff’ of the divine persons.
Also, many theologians before the Cappadocians and Augustine held that the divine essence just is the Father. Once we say that, then the Father is conceived as a substance. What, then, does it mean to say that the Son is produced ‘from the Father’s substance’?
One option is to say the Father breaks off a piece of his substance and gives that to the Son. Many such as Arius and Paul of Samosata found this absurd because the Father’s substance can’t be broken up into parts (since it is simple), so they argued instead that the Son was created as a different substance.
Still others such as Athanasius found that unacceptable, so they proposed a ‘derivation view’ of the trinity. A good analogy is a bronze statue. The bronze is the Father, and the Son is the statue. The Son shares all the Father’s properties (the properties of the bronze), but has some of his own (the properties of the statue). In this way, the divine essence (being just the Father) is the ‘stuff’ of the Son.
But all of these views assume that the ‘substance’ of the Father (and the Son if it is shared) is like some ‘stuff’. It wasn’t until the Cappadocians that the divine essence became clearly identified as the shared generic nature of the divine persons rather than the ‘stuff’ of the persons (see, for example, Gregory of Nyssa’s ‘Letter to Ablabius’ and ‘Letter 38’ (previously ascribed to Basil of Caeserea)). Augustine followed suit.
The Western Church predominantly followed Augustine and the Cappadocians, but there are still notions in the Eastern Church of the divine essence being identical to the Father, and that could easily lend itself to the ‘stuff’ views assumed by Arius and Athanasius.
Notably, Henry of Ghent argued for the hylomorphic view in the 13th century, and this sparked a lively debate for the 13th-14th century in the Latin Church. Apart from Henry and his followers, and Brower and Rea, I don’t know of anyone else in the Western tradition who supports the hylomorphic view, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more. Does anybody know of anyone else? Perhaps any of the Protestant scholastics?
In any case, my point is that the divine-essence-as-generic-nature is not the obvious position of the church fathers. It was the position of the Cappadocians and Augustine (and most of the Latin scholastics), but this is not necessarily the case for all of the early church, nor is it necessarily the case for the Eastern Church.
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