“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! We’ll be back on earth soon – at least after JT’s post!
So, on to business:
[Ian:] …some, like Ted Sider, insist that counting is necessarily, analytically, always by identity
Ian, do you know where Ted says that? That seems right to me. When someone says that x and y are non-identical, and yet “are to be counted as one” – they get the ole blank stare from me. I can see how we might count things by other criteria for various practical purposes, but when we want to know how many things there are, anything other than identity seems irrelevant.
Ian also worries that constitution trinitarianism makes the three divine persons non-ultimate – i.e. the divine quasi-matter (”the divine essence) is “prior to them”. I replied, why can’t they just say that these four – the divine essence, plus the three persons – are equally ultimate – with none “prior” or “posterior to” any other? Responding, Ian says:
I don’t think they can say that all three are equally fundamental since constitution is precisely a kind of metaphysical priority relation – the existence of the three persons depends on, is there in virtue of, or is grounded in (or however you want to say it) the divine essence.
Good point – there does seem to be an explanatory asymmetry there, when we’re talking about physical objects. I wonder if they’ll just parachute out of this problem by saying “it’s just an inadequate analogy – we don’t think there’s literally constitution in any divine persons”? I want to talk about that in a future post, on their other, popular level paper.
On to Joseph’s suggested defenses – any following unmarked quotes are from him.
1. Numerical sameness is an equivalence relation (i.e. reflexive, symmetric, and transitive). I take it that what unifies each numerical sameness relation is that each is an equivalence relation by which we count: which relation we count by depends on which kind the entities we count belong to.
I grant that like a lot of other things we don’t believe in, such as 3rd or 4th truth values, or Geachian relative identity, the notion of numerical sameness without identity can be formally defined. I guess your reply helps me to see what they’re getting at with their chart (which I defaced with the Clintons). I guess then I’d say: “we”? Speak for yourselves! I count by identity. But seriously, one part of their paper which struck me as odd, is where they say that some sorts of sortal-concepts mandate counting by identity, while others admit only of counting only by numerical sameness without identity. (63) They suggest that “technical philosophical sortals like ‘hylomorphic compound’… ‘thing’ or ‘being’…” admit of counting by identity. I’m not sure why they put it in terms of language here; it seems they’re positing different sorts of things. Where to draw this line? Just where it needs to be to preserve trinitarian orthodoxy and the Aristotelean solution to the problem of material constitution? I worry that this is only going to be a theory-saving distinction, and not one grounded in reasonably firm intuitions.
2. The divine essence is either divine stuff or a divine substratum. Either way the divine essence doesn’t qualify as a divine individual, divine Person, or God. So either way it’s false that each divine person ‘is numerically the same divine individual as the divine essence’, for I presume x is numerically the same F as y iff each of x and y is an F. And, as far as I know, B&R never say this (not on p.70 anyway).
I think you’re right on this one – I misread them.
3. I don’t see why B&R need think of an individual in any fancy sense here: it’s an entity, a particular, and a property-bearer for sure, but why think it non-substantial? I see no reason why they need to make a distinction between individuals and substances here, unless, of course, they take the divine essence to be an individual. So, as I see it, for them, each divine Person is an individual and a substance. The only question is whether the divine essence should qualify as an individual but not a substance. But if the divine essence is an individual, it’s not a Person and so not a God. So there’s no question of saying the Persons are individual non-substances but God is an individual substance.
Right – it seems to me that they need to say that the divine essence is an individual, in a less metaphysically-loaded sense – i.e. a real entity that can be referred to using singular terms. They can’t make it a substance, as then they’d be saying that there are three divine persons but only one divine substance, and that’d put on the pressure to identify it with God. Nor do they need to say it’s a substance.
4. Monotheism is the claim that there’s one God. On B&R’s account, there’s one God and so monotheism is true. It all turns on whether one permits their definition of a God: x is a God iff x is a (quasi-) hylomorphic composite whose stuff is some divine essence; x is the same God as y iff each is a God and they share the same stuf; there’s one God iff some God is the same God as every God; and x is God iff x is a God and there’s one God.
As I see it, this definition just brings out the wierdness of their theory. A God is (re-) defined as a being made of a god-stuff, to put it roughly. Really? If there’s immaterial stuff (or something like it) constituting the Father, Son, and Spirit, how do we know that that same kind of stuff or even the same quantity of it couldn’t constitute something other than a god, such as an angel, or something analogous to an immaterial chair? Doesn’t that stuff have to be arranged in the right way to make a god? But how could it be arranged to make three such non-identical gods, given that the stuff isn’t divided among them? Of course, we have no grasp of what “arranged in the right way” would mean here. My point is that only partisans of their theory will accept this definition of “god”. To everyone else, “god” means something like this: a person (personal being) which is greater than any human, and which is worthy of worship by humans. The concept of a god is, it seems to me, a bit vague, but not ridiculously so – it always means a thing with thus and such god-making features, e.g. great power, domain over some portion of the physical world, pure goodness. As far as I know, this is the first time ‘God’ has been defined with reference to the (something like a) stuff it is (something like) constituted by.
5. Why think there’s a sense of ‘God’ on which it means the one and only divine Person? If so, if, in effect, the concepts of a divine Person and God coincide, there can’t be three of one and one of the other: this would be enough to show the doctrine of the Trinity incoherent. On their view, what ‘divine Person’ and ‘God’ mean permits it to be that there are three divine Persons (and one can’t also count one divine Person) and there is one God (and one can’t also count three Gods). So on their view, there’s no sense in which there’s no God.
To the first question, ‘god’ and ‘divine person’ mean the same (vague) thing, just as ‘my child’ and ‘my immature offspring’ do. Pointing this out doesn’t make the doctrine of the Trinity (or at least all versions of it) false by definition, nor does it assume monotheism. Many other trinitarians (following Augustine) will say: “Look, of course God just is a certain person. The Bible is littered with personal pronouns that refer to him. But within this great personal being, there are three something-or-others, which we call ‘persons’ just cause we can’t think of anything better to call them.” In contrast, Rea and Brower have three non-identical divine personal substances, three hylomorphic compounds.
I can imagine a conversation which goes like this:
- Dale: Ya’ll say that Father and Son are two divine persons, right?
- B & R: Right. Two divine, personal substances.
- Dale: So, the Father is a god, and so is the Son in another god.
- B & R: No, you cretin. They’re non-identical substances, but they’re the same god.
- Dale: But isn’t a “god” a divine personal substance? If so, then you’re saying they’re two divine persons, and they’re not.
- B & R: No. A “god” is a substance whose stuff is divine-stuff. Ergo, what we’re saying is consistent.
- Dale: But when people say they believe there’s one and only one God, they mean there’s one and only one divine person, not that there’s only one thing with divine stuff.
- B & R: It’s our theory – we can define “god” however we want to.
- Dale: Well, sure. But when we talk about “monotheism”, don’t we need the standard sort of definition, so we don’t mislead?
- B & R: Not at all.
- Dale: Suppose I denied being a polygamist, and you inferred that there’s at most one human being who is my wife. But, I define “wife” in a way such that sisters from one mother and father only count as one “wife” – they’re “made of the same stuff” after all, in that they derive from the same two sets of genes, from their Mom and Dad. So you find out I’m married to Terri, Toni, and Tiffany. Didn’t lie to you, when I said I wasn’t a polygamist?
- B & R: Yes you did, you dog.
- Dale: And it’d be truthful for me to say: “I’ve got three wives”, but I call them “one wife” because in a sense, they’re made of the same stuff. So ya’ll ought to say: We believe in what most would call three gods, although we think they ought to be called as one god because they’re all made of the same god-stuff. We’re really not monotheists, but we believe it’s correct to say that the Father, Son, and Spirit are ‘one god’.
- B & R: No – we don’t just think the “three” should be called ‘one god’ – we think they should be counted as one. We’re honest gentlemen, really. We’re not saying one thing and thinking another. No, we count persons by identity, but we count gods by numerical-sameness-without-identity, that is, by made-of-the-same-stuff-ness.
- Dale: Suppose I’m one wierdo of a polygamist. Suppose I hold an odd metaphysics of wives – I really think Tiffany, Toni, and Terry are indeed one wife, while being three humans. I think one wife can have three heads and six legs, and can be in three non-contiguous places at once. I’ll swear up and down that it’s a mistake to suppose that a wife is (always) identical to some one human. Still, when speaking publicly, I should say I have three wives, no, so long as my purpose isn’t to deliberately deceive? Similarly, ya’ll should say you believe in what most would think of as three gods, although you hold to a theory that because they share a stuff, they are one god.
Should Brower and Rea announce, not that they’ve discovered a viable theory of the Trinity, but rather, than they’ve discovered (invented?) a new definition of “god”? That would at least clue people in that when they talk of “monotheism”, it’s a different thesis than most people would understand by that term.
Some final points by Joseph:
8. It must be that if one accepts the traditional creeds, one accepts the doctrine of the Trinity and so one should believe that there’s some solution to the logical problem of the Trinity, even if one doesn’t know what it is. But it doesn’t follow from this that one needs to accept B&R’s account.
. . .
2. I don’t think belief that the doctrine of the Trinity is true is essential to salvation, as opposed to belief in the Trinity. I suppose one could hold a view of theological semantic deference. Just as Putnam says we semantically defer to scientists for the meaning of natural kind terms, so we might say we semantically defer to the Church’s theologians for the meaning of Christian doctrinal terms. But we needn’t hold this view. B&R’s account gives us a good analogy here. Folk have many beliefs about material beings: arguably they believe there are statues, lumps, lumps can survive radical change of shape, and statues can’t, but there’s only one material being, at least many are disposed to accept these things. Perhaps they believe these things but they don’t know how it could be that all these things are true together. Either they see no problem or if they do, they don’t know how to solve it. Just so, Christians have many beliefs about God: they believe there is one God, three divine Persons, and each divine Person is God, at least many of them are disposed to accept this. Again, perhaps they see no problem here or do, but don’t see how to solve it. So they accept the doctrine of the Trinity but don’t accept an Aristotelian solution to the logical problem of the Trinity. After all, most have never read any of the relevant writings on the matter. I don’t see why Brower and Rea can’t accept all this. Their solution doesn’t imply that Christians accept this solution, even implicitly.
Re: semantic deference – man, do I wish I could defer to the theologians!
If you think that belief in the doctrine of the Trinity isn’t essential to salvation, you don’t believe in the authority of the “Athanasian” creed.
As to your suggestion at the end, that makes sense only if “the doctrine of the Trinity” is thought of as a set of sentences, rather than of propositions, for it’s only those that Joe Pewsitter, Thomas Aquinas, Swinburne, Rea, and Craig have in common. Can you see some serious “cost” to that move though?
Technorati Tags: Mike Rea, Jeff Brower, numerical sameness, material constitution, form, matter, Athanasian Creed, monotheism
