“Gee Hank, it sure is swell that communism won out.
This house belongs to all of us!”
In the last post, I pointed out some of the problems faced by an Athanasian sort of derivation view. If you found such problems to be decisive, then alternatively you could opt for a generic view. In this post, I would like to introduce the generic view.
As I mentioned in the first post, the generic view claims that Divinity belongs equally to the three persons, similar to how three people might jointly own the same house. Divinity thus belongs to no one divine person any more than another. The generic view (let’s call this GV) rejects DV in favor of this:
(GV) Divinity belongs equally to each divine person.
For both the derivation and the generic views of the trinity, Divinity is an entity that’s shared by the persons. On (the Athanasian version of) the derivation view, this shared entity just is the Father, but on the generic view, this shared entity is not the Father. The Father isn’t shared, Divinity is.
There are various ways to fill this out. One option is to say that Divinity is like a constituent that’s shared by all three divine persons. So long as Divinity belongs equally to all three persons and so does not belong to one person more than the others, it’s a generic view.
Another option is to say that Divinity is like a kind-nature. Just as the generic set of human properties (e.g., animality, rationality, etc.) make something human, so too would Divinity be a generic set of divine properties/tropes/etc. (e.g., the divine attributes) which make something divine.
The Cappadocians (especially Gregory of Nyssa) probably held this latter view. They are known for the claim that in God there is one ousia and three hypostases, where a hypostasis is a concrete substance/person, and the ousia is the divine kind-nature shared by the three hypostases/persons, similar to the way that three humans (hypostases) share one kind-nature (ousia).
This might suggest that there are three Gods just as there are three humans. Whether or not that’s right depends on Gregory’s views on universals (kind-natures), and there’s a debate about that in the literature. For convenience, let’s just assume that Gregory and the other Cappadocians think Divinity is numerically one undivided thing that is shared by all three persons. What makes theirs a generic view is just that Divinity is shared equally by all three persons and so does not belong to one divine person more than the others.
The Cappadocian ‘generic view’ is very different from Athanasius’ ‘derivation view’. Athanasius was writing in the mid-4th century, and the Cappadocians were writing at the end of the 4th century. Athanasius was writing to defend the Council of Nicea in 325, and the Cappadocians were active around the time of the next major Council, that of Constantinople in 381 (the Council where Q was dropped). It would appear, then, that in the 4th century, there was a general shift from the derivation view to the generic view.
Of course, that’s a very sweeping generalization that a real historian would have solid grounds for denying. It’s not obvious that there was any ‘standard’ view in the 4th century, nonetheless that Athanasius’ and the Cappadocian views were ‘standard’. But still, older patristics textbooks have propogated the story of a shift from the ‘derivation view’ to the ‘generic view’, so we do run into it every once in a while.
In the next post, I will discuss some of the issues faced by a generic view.
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Hi Scott,
You say,
“‘is there something about this shareable property ‘divinity’ that determines that there can and are only three divine persons which divinity constitutes?’”
Right – and here is why this is an uphill climb. “Divinity” is a property, and so this way of reasoning has its roots in how we think about an ontology of properties had by mundane objects. (e.g. the blackness of this chalkboard eraser) Some think of properties as universals. These just don’t have built into them how many instances they can have. Others think of them as tropes. These, it seems, may only be had by one bearer. How then to avoid the “persons” also having a bearer, and so not being substances?
Pointing out the = of divinity with itself isn’t any help, if divinity is a universal. Humanity (if there is such a thing!) is just as = with itself, but it has many instances. You can insist it is a trope, but then, how does a trope somehow get transmitted from f to s and h? A trope is a constituent of a thing, and it is unclear how it could be “shared”. It’s not clear how a trope would fit into psych models, which seem to posit s and h as being (or being somewhat like) f’s faculties or actions, etc.
“If there is one trope, then there is one god.” OK, but as you point out, it would be far from clear how this trope relates to the persons.
I hope you do post soon on the issue of person-constitution.
Dale,
Just a quick thought in response to your question, ‘why couldn’t two gods share a divinity?’ We’d need to ask the question, ‘is there something about this shareable property ‘divinity’ that determines that there can and are only three divine persons which divinity constitutes?’
And, as mentioned much before, the psychological model on the communication of the divine essence to Son and Holy Spirit is one way to say that there can’t be others ‘gods’ than F, S, and HS. But then we might ask, can divinity be instantiated more than once? And by the numerical identity of divinity, there is only one instance (or trope) of divinity.
So, by saying there is something intrinsic to divinity that determines why there are only 3 divine persons, and that there is only one trope/instance of divinity, it follows that there isn’t more than one god. If we count gods, we probably would counts tropes, no? If there is one trope, then there is one god. Then it is a matter of saying how one trope is a constituent of three persons— to which one might be inclined to look at the classic substance/relation metaphysics from Aug. and Boethius. Although, if you are Scotus, you might think that the substance/relation model isn’t the only possible way to talk about the one divine trope being a constituent of three persons.
[Maybe later I’ll post on Henry & Scotus on relative person constitution vs. absolute person constitution.]
I don’t think so – I mean, god is a thing-concept, not an ingredient-concept… I mean, why couldn’t two gods share a divinity, having this one ingredient in common? (This’ll depend on what a divinity is…)
It seems to me that would require some counting funny-business, ala Rea and Brower – we assert that some things shouldn’t be counted by =, but in some sense should be counted as one god (i.e. they’re “numerically the same”, where this is implies non-=).
What I’m saying, I guess, is that sort of odd counting needs an independent motivation, or it looks ad hoc and moreover suspect.
Hi Dale,
To your first question, I agree that ‘sharing the same Divinity equally’ can amount to lots of different things. I would class social views such as C. Plantinga’s and Swinburne’s, as well as Leftow’s ‘Latin’ view, as generic theories, because for all of them, Divinity belongs generically to all three divine persons rather than any one person.
To your second question: sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that a generic theory implies that there are three Gods. I meant that the analogy of three humans implies three Gods. By bringing that up, I just wanted to point out that although Gregory’s analogy, on the face of it, seems to imply three Gods, we shouldn’t jump to that conclusion too quickly without looking into the debate about Gregory’s theory of universals.
But in any case, I agree with your point: a generic theory does not necessarily require some particular theory about how we count Gods.
One point though. You list two options for counting Gods: we count the persons as three individual Gods, or we count all three persons grouped together as one God. Could we have another option? E.g., if Divinity is a constituent (say, the ‘matter’), could we count Gods by counting how many Divinities there are?
Hi JT,
A couple of minor comments. This “equal sharing” of divinity could amount to a lot of different things, as could the claim that “divinity” belongs more properly to the Father than to the others… Wouldn’t C. Plantinga’s social theory be a generic one, as well as, say, Leftow’s “Latin” view?
Second, you say a generic theory “might suggest that there are three Gods just as there are three humans. Whether or not that’s right depends on Gregory’s views on universals (kind-natures)”
But it doesn’t depend on that, does it? Some things will be true of each of the three, that aren’t true of the two others. So whether they share one “divinity” or not, they’ll be non-identical to one another. If each alone is a god, then there are three gods. Or if you want to only call the group of them a god, then they’ll be one god. Either way, I don’t see this issue depends on the nature of that shared thing, “divinity”. (I’m not sure the Capps are able to squarely face this problem…)
Am I missing something? (Feel free to put this off if you want to discuss it in the next post instead.)
What more would you like to say about it?
The question is: what is the ontological definition or description of a divine supposite? It is some X constituted by some properties–but can we say anything more than this?
Not sure I understand what you’re thinking here. I wouldn’t identify a person as a trope. A trope is a particular property, not a person. I would say that D is a trope, and that each personal property is a trope, but the persons are the subjects/bearers of those tropes.
Likewise, I like to let individual substances/supposita be agents, not properties of any description. So I wouldn’t say that a trope is an agent, nor would I say that an abstract Form is an agent. I would say that only the persons are agents.
(So, I wouldn’t say that a divine person is identical to a trope, and that certainly wouldn’t entail that a divine person isn’t an agent, nor that a person is a Platonic Form.)
There are plenty of other models to use for a generic view. One could make D just a shared constituent. One could make D a trope, an immanent universal, or even a full on Russellian property which is bundled with, compresent to, or ‘overlapping’ the persons. One could make D a species, and the personal properties individuating properties. There’s lots of options.
Do you think that denying that a divine person = a trope, entails that a divine person is not a singular *agent*? And, if a divine person is not a singular agent, would this entail a divine person or subject is akin to a Platonic subsisting Form; i.e. the divinity is a subsisting Form that contains paternity, filiation, and passive spiration?
But if we deny this Platonic subsisting Form model, is there another option which doesn’t rely on construing the divine essence as an absolute foundation of each personal property, or a model where divinity is not a genus and personal properties are not a specific species (with some yet to be described individual difference)?
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