Brian Leftow is recognized as one of the most important living Christian philosophers. Formerly of Fordham University in NYC, he now holds the prestigious Nolloth Chair of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oriel College, Oxford. See Trent Dougherty’s comments here for a list of some of his publications. In person, Leftow is very pleasant and interesting, and his sense of humor also comes out in this wide-ranging interview, first posted on Prosblogion by Trent. In print, he’s a uber-sophisticated, latter-day medieval – I think he’d take that as a compliment! 🙂 Or maybe the lost love child of Aquinas and David Lewis. OK, I’ll stop. My point is: he knows how to put an original argument together.
Leftow’s essay “Anti Social Trinitarianism” (in Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins, eds., The Trinity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999) – linked at the lower right of this blog’s main page) is commonly recognized among Christian philosophers as one of the most important pieces on the subject recently (and I’d say, ever) written. His main point is that social trinitarianism “cannot be both orthodox and a version of monotheism.” (p. 203) I’ll come back to this challenging piece some time when I get around to discussiong social trinitarian theories. Here, I’m going to cover only the start of the essay, where Leftow sets the agenda for his own “Latin” trinitarian theory (LT).
Here’s what he says about his own preferred version of the doctrine:
In LT, there is just one divine being (or substance), God. God constitutes three Persons, but all three are at bottom just God. … [as Aquinas says,] ‘…God begotten receives numerically the same nature God begetting has.’
To make Aquinas’ claim perfectly plain, I introduce a technical term, ‘trope’. Abel and Cain were both human. So they had the same nature, humanity. Yet each also had his own nature, and Cain’s humanity was not identical with Abel’s… A trope is an individualized case of an attribute. Their bearers individuate tropes: Cain’s humanity is distinct from Abel’s just because it is Cain’s, not Abel’s.
With this term in hand, I now restate Aquinas’ claim: while Father and Son instance the divine nature (deity), they have but one trope of deity between them, which is God’s… bearers individuate tropes. If the Father’s deity is God’s, this is because the Father just is God…(203-4, original emphasis in italics)
This part seems clear enough. He’s drawing a contrast; he goes on to point out (204-5) that whereas social trinitarians posit three tropes of divinity, because they posit three numerically distinct Persons, LT posits only one trope of divinity, as it holds that the Father just is (that is, is numerically identical to) the Son (etc.). If this was all he’d said, then I’d say it was modalism, and moreover a kind which is refutable. What would he say, I wonder, to the following argument?
- For any X and Y, if they share a trope of any property, then X = Y.
- The Father and Son share a trope of divinity.
- The Father is numerically identical to the Son. (1,2)
- Whatever is true of the Father is true of the Son (and vice versa). (3 & Leibniz’s Law)
- The Son was crucifed. (New Testament)
- The Father was crucified. (4,5)
Leftow seems committed to 1 & 2. 3 follows from them. 4 is self-evident. Hence, he’s committed to 5 & 6. But this shows that at least one of 1-2 is false – LT just won’t fly.
This doesn’t settle the matter, though, for Leftow goes on to say some other things, which cast doubt on whether he actually accepts 1 & 2, things which I think he develops in a later paper. Immediately following the above passage, he continues:
In LT, then, the numerical identity of God is secure, but one wonders just how the Persons manage to be three. For in LT, the Persons are distinct but not discrete. Instead, LT’s Persons have God in common, though not exactly as a common part. In [Social Trinitarianism], the Persons are distinct and discrete. There is nothing one would be tempted to call a part they have in common. What they share is the generic divine nature, an attribute. (204)
I’m not sure what to make of this passage. But I believe that what he had in mind was something like this (though I don’t think he’d want to use these terms). The Father and Son are both modes of one and the same God. That God is self-identical entity, and has only one trope of divinity, and the Father and Son equally “have” him in the sense of being ways that he lives or exists. The both “are” (are modes of) him, but neither is identical to him; a mode is never, or at least needn’t be, identical to that of which it is a mode. So Father and Son are numerically distinct modes, but they’re modes of one and the same thing, God. So Father and Son are, as he says, “distinct but not discrete”. If this reading of Leftow’s paper is right, then he denies premise 2 of my objection-argument above – neither Father nor Son is the bearer of the trope of divinity. Rather, they’re both modes of the bearer (God) of the one trope of divinity.
If this is right, then in my view, there are still plenty of reasons to reject it. Presumably, on this theory both Father and Son are events. And arguably, events can’t be in loving relationship with one another – only persons (personal substances/entities/individuals) can – and persons are not reducible to events. In general, theological incoherence looms at every turn, once we accept any kind of S-modalism. Further, if being “divine” means being identical to a god, to a certain kind of individual, then in that sense he’s denying that either Father or Son is divine.
Again, in fairness to Leftow, his main purpose in this essay is to bring on the pain for social trinitarians – he isn’t trying to fully develop what he calls LT here. But he does return to that positive task with a vengeance in a later paper, which we’ll look at next time.
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Hi Bob,
Social trinitarianism is based in far more than equivocation. They want a view on which the Father and Son can have an I-Thou relationship, rather than something like a victim of multiple personality disorder having two personalities which are “friends”.
If the Latin point were that obvious, then it’d be incredible how Boethius defines “person” – “an individual substance of a rational nature”. But that definition was accepted as a standard one. Of course, the real trouble isn’t the Latin persona but rather the Greek prosopon and hupostasis – which can mean everything from mask, to person (yes, I think, in the “modern sense”), to individual thing / substance. In theological writing, I think there’s a good amount of hogwash about ancient folk not having our concept of a person, which arose with, say Descartes or someone. If a person is a thing which thinks, reasons, feels, and acts, then Jesus or Paul or Moses each thought he was one of those, just as much as we do nowadays.
Leftow, Brower and Rea, and Swinburne all have their ways of trying to avoid the consequence you mention – that if the Three are each non-modalistic persons, that is just tritheism. I don’t think those moves work as planned, but for various reasons…
What does one do about the fact that the term ‘person’ in trinitarian theology did not initially mean anything like what the English word means today? Social trinitarianism seems to me to be based on a simple equivocation, as though the Latin word ‘persona’ simply meant what ‘person’ in English does. If God is three *persons* in the sense in which you, your sister, and I are three persons, then trinitarianism is tritheism. But the original meaning of ‘persona’ is more likely to slide into modalism than it is into tritheism.
I don’t expect people like Richard Swiburne to bother about things like this, but surely actual theologians know their Latin and know that persona doesn’t mean ‘person.’ So where’s the beef?
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My point is the Bible is written by Jewish people. The Bible was then interpreted by Greek people. They have two wholly different presuppositions when coming to scripture. For a simple example – look how different Philo is, who even was a Jew but threw those glasses off and read as a Greek, as compared to the Jewish writings we have of the same time period (1 Enoch for example). We see Enoch having a WIDELY different viewpoint on the state of affairs in the world than we do Philo. Enoch is expecting a judgment to come from the Son of Man, a Messiah figure. While Philo has done away with the Messiah in his thinking. I think this has vast consequences (like Dale mentioned – Platonism). Justin Martyr called Plato “a Christian before Christ”. St. Gregory of Nyssa, said that the Pagan religions were right – the soul is immortal. Meanwhile all Jewish approaches deny this Hellenization. Look at history – the Maccabeans existed to deny this Hellenization. That is why the Pharisees exist in the times of the NT! To be the keepers of the law – to keep out Greek ideas.
Dale!
Can the charge be made that the church fathers etal got the Bible wrong due to various philosophical commitments? Sure! But, I’m with you: getting the Bible-right or wrong-as you depict it resulted from the thoughts and tools of the day: if they got it wrong at all…
I find myself somewhat cautious in appraising the creeds, for the very reason you suggest: it’d be anachronisitic to only use tools and methods of later developments in evaluating the creeds. I’m in favor of both: what did they understand at the time and what do our tools grant us in better understanding those creeds for our day? It might be helpful to ascertain the pressure of social-political commitments of the day and determine the degree of influence alongside the “various philosophical commitments” that would have contributed to the allegation of distorted interpretations of the Bible.
I’ve found that with the church Fathers and nearly all medieval philosophers, there’s a pervasive influence of neoplatonism (especially on doctrines such as divine eternity, simplicity, negative theology), and often also a whiff of stoicism here and there. But… so what? These things were considered the best thought of the day. The mere fact that they were influenced by these philosophical movements (and quasi-religions) doesn’t show that they got the Bible wrong. To make the charge stick, we have to show that they distorted specific texts under pressure from various philosophical committments. Can this be done?
I nearly accepted a form of social trinitarianism, until God showed me how He is One without modalism. Still, “my” systematic theology/philosophy, Triessentialism, rides the ragged edge of heresy every time I see some new and exciting idea, and attempt to incorporate it. It has given me a far greater appreciation of God and His works than I had before He showed it to me.
I’ve also identified two major Greek influences in Western Christianity: mind-body or spiritual-physical dualism, and the belief that stasis (unchange) is good.
The “Western” worldview is based on the Greek idea of Unchanging=Good, Change=Bad. The “Eastern” worldview has the idea that Change=Good or Change=Acceptable. Thus, in the West, we prefer to worship in buildings; in the East, they worship in parks. I’ve posted an entry on this topic on my other blog, The God-Shaped Hole.
http://godsh.blogspot.com/
JohnO stated “And all the church fathers who tried to understand the bible we all steeped in greek thinking!”
Can you please provide documentation for this. This is an assumption on your part, JWs, LDS, etc. You also need to show, the step from being steeped in something and having that thing effect your interpretation. For example, I can be steeped in atheistic thought (their writings, audio, etc.), but it certainly does not follow that this is going to effect my interpretation of scipture. There is much more you need to prove as as well.
So in your search for the “proper Christian theory of God” I hope we actually take a look at the Jewish Monothiestic view of God, and his Messiah to discover what the Bible really says. Because we all know that all the writers of the Bible are Jewish (except Luke who was a Jewish proselyte). And all the church fathers who tried to understand the bible we all steeped in greek thinking! That is why you’re having such a hard time with it.
Hi Kenny,
Thanks for the good comments. Here are some back at ya.
(1) I’m not convinced either! But I am convinced that any kind of S-modalism is incompatible with the New Testament. Linguistic point: it’d be sheer confusion to use “modalism” as a heresy-label, and then admit that possibly, some forms of it are orthodox. As I explained here though, I’m using the term descriptively. It seems to me an apt term (set of terms) for a family of positions, and when I use it, I’m being neutral about whether it’s true or false, good or bad, heresy or sound doctrine, forbidden or allowed, traditional or not, etc. I then proceed to argue against some forms of it.
(2) It depends on what counts as a “trinitarian” theory. There are theories of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, both before and after Constatinople, which don’t respect its formulas, and are neither tritheism nor modalism. But many would object that they aren’t trinitarian either. Again, a language issue. To be a real stickler, one might insist that only what are usually called “Latin Trinitarian” theories deserve the name “trinitarian” – and I think you’d be on strong historical footing. But STers would cry foul, with justification, that they’ve been branded “Trinity deniers” whilst trying to acheive the opposite. So again, I just say, treat each position on its merits – philosophical, theological, biblical, traditional – and adopt whatever terminology is most helpful in doing that (usually neutral & descriptive – avoiding loaded and/or vague terms). This is to proceed with an eye towards truth, rather than towards boundary-drawing, heretic-exposing, or just sorting what does or doesn’t fit my highly specifc, preconceived idea of what a proper Christian theory of God must look like.
Hmm… I haven’t had time to keep up with your postings recently, but I’ve read the last few and am starting to become concerned with your use of the term modalism. I have two problems:
(1) I’m not convinced that what you call “noumenal” modalism is heterodox.
(2) I’m not convinced that there is any possible theory that you wouldn’t call modalism and I wouldn’t call tritheism.
How is it possible the three Persons be a single substance without running into something you are going to reject as a form of modalism? It’s no longer clear to me that this is possible.
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