Nothing New Under the Sun – Part 1

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” philosophy, specifically English language work from the mid 1600s to the end of the 1700s. It turns out that that were was a lot of debate about the Trinity in those years; for interesting reasons, nearly all of this work is ignored today, and is nearly forgotten. (There are a couple of notable recent exceptions, from a theologian and a historian.)

When looking through material relating to the 1600s, I found that history was repeating itself. Remember William Penn – yeah, the guy Pennsylvania was named after?

You wouldn’t guess it from his many portraits, but he was quite a colorful character! In particular, he was a stubborn ass when it came to his convictions. Here’s a little snippet of history that brings this out:

… in 1667, Penn became a leader in the Society of Friends and engaged in controversial writing. For a pamphlet, A Sandy Foundation Shaken, in which the doctrine of the Trinity was assailed, he was arrested under the Blasphemy Act and committed to the Tower of London in December 1668. He was told he must recant or remain there for life and Stillingfleet (then rector of St. Andrew’s, Holborn; afterwards Bishop of Worcester) was sent to remonstrate with him. Penn said to him: “The Tower is to me the worst argument in the World. My prison shall be my grave before I will budge a jot.” In July, 1669, through the intervention of James, Duke of York, he was released… In 1670, he was tried at the Old Bailey for preaching in the streets, the charge being one of conspiring to address and addressing a tumultuous assembly. He pleaded “not guilty” and disputed the legality of the indictment. Notwithstanding that great pressure was brought to bear upon them by the Bench, the jury, after a trial lasting four days, acquitted Penn. He, however, went to gaol in default of paying a fine imposed for not removing his hat in court.(source)

In that book, which you can find here, Penn gives his account of a meeting in which he and a few Quaker companions tried to answer some vehement Presbyterian critics. By his account, it was a pretty mean and heated “discussion”. But I’ll pass over his colorful descriptions of his oppenents’ rage, to the part this surprised me.

The Question was this, Whether we own’d one God-head, Subsisting in Three Distinct and Separate Persons, as the Result of various Revises and Amendments; which being denied by us, as a Doctrine no where Scriptural, T. V. [the Presbyterian minister Thomas Vincent, now their chief interrogator] frames this Syllogism from the beloved Disciple’s Words. 1 John 5. 7. There are three that bear Record in Heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these Three are one. These are either three Manifestations, three Operations, three Substances, or three somethings else beside Subsistences. But they are not three Manifestations, three Operations, three Substances, nor three any thing else beside Subsistences: Ergo, Three Subsistences.G. W. [Penn’s fellow Quaker George Whitehead] Utterly rejected his Terms, as not to be found in Scripture, nor deduceable from the Place he instanced: Wherefore he desires their Explanation of their Terms, inasmuch as God did not use to wrap his Truths up in Heathenish Metaphysicks, but in plain Language: Notwithstanding we could not obtain a better Explication, than Person, or of Person, than the Mode of a Substance; To all which G. W. and my self urged several Scriptures, proving God’s compleat Unity: And when we queried how God was to be understood, if in an abstractive Sense from his Substance: They concluded it a point more fit for Admiration than Disputation. But a little to review his Syllogism; the Manner of it shews him as little a Scholar, as it’s Matter does a Christian; but I shall over-look the first, and so much of the second, as might deserve my Objection to his Major, and give in short my Reason, why I flatly deny his Minor Proposition. No one Substance can have three distinct Subsistences, and preserve its own Unity: For granting them the most favourable Definition, every subsistence, will have its own Substance; so that three distinct Subsistences, or Manners of Being, will require three distinct Substances or Beings; consequently three Gods. For if the infinite God-head subsists in three separate Manners or Forms, then is not any one of them a perfect and compleat Subsistence without the other two; so parts, and something finite is in God: Or if infinite, then three distinct infinite Subsistence; and what’s this but to assert three Gods, since none is infinite but God? And on the contrary, there being an inseparability betwixt the Substance and its Subsistence, the Unity of Substance will not admit a Trinity of incommunicable or distinct Subsistences.

. . .because G. W. willing to bring this strange Doctrine to the Capacity of the People, compar’d their three Persons to three Apostles, saying, he did not understand how Paul, Peter, and John could be three Persons, and one Apostle, (a most apt Comparison to detect their Doctrine) one— Maddocks, whose Zeal out-stript his Knowledge, bustling hard, as one that had some necessary Matter for the Decision of our Controversie, instead thereof (perhaps to save his Brethren, or show himself) silences our farther controverting of the Principle, by a Syllogistical, but impertinent Reflection upon G. W’s. Person. It runs thus, He that Scornfully and reproachfully compares our Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit, one in Essence, but three in Persons, to three finite Men, as Paul, Peter, and John, is a Blasphemer. But you G. W. have so done. Ergo A strange Way of Argumentation, to beg what can’t be granted him, and take for granted what still remains a Question, viz. That there are three distinct and separate Persons in one Essence: Let them first prove their Trinity, and then charge their Blasphemy: But I must not forget this Person’s self-confutation, who to be plainer, called them three He’s, and if he can find an He without a Substance, or prove that a Subsistence is any other than the Form of an He, he would do well to justifie himself from the Imputation of Ignorance.

And till their Hypothesis be of better Authority, G. W. neither did, nor does by that Comparison design Men’s Invention so much Honour. For ’tis to be remark’d, that G. W. is no otherwise a Blasphemer, than by drawing direct Consequences from their own Principles, and recharging them upon themselves: So that he did not speak his own Apprehensions by his Comparison, but the Sense of their Assertion; therefore Blasphemer and Blasphemy are their own.

I can’t tell that the Quakers’ objections here are either fair or cogent; I suspect they would have benefited from a little (maybe a lot) more “Heathenish Metaphysicks”. The interesting thing is this. When the Quakers demand to know what the trinitarians mean by “subsistence,” they’re told it means “person”. What’s that? They’re told, “A Mode of a Substance.”

How could these 17th century Presbyterians have known of theological advances made in only in the 20th century by Barth and Rahner? Time travel, maybe?

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