Jude 5: Did Jesus deliver the people out of Egypt?
Is it “Lord” or “Jesus” here? What’s a layperson to do?
Is it “Lord” or “Jesus” here? What’s a layperson to do?
This man’s journey reflects and reveals some problems with present-day evangelical teaching.
“My god Spock! Is this the apex of human intellectual production?” “No Captain, look within, do you smell that?”
I apologize for the delay in posting. I have been busy with, among other things, my own work.
In the previous post, I enumerated 40 lines of premises and conclusions that generally summarizes Henry’s philosophical psychology of the Trinity. There are one or two things that ought to be clarified.
I have posted some responses to Dale’s post in the Comments section of his post.
I would like to elaborate on two issues in this post.
1. Why must the divine intellect be perfectly actual? (pace Dale’s 2nd objection)
2. Why must the divine intellect have two powers, an operative power and a productive power?
In regards to 1, Henry generally follows Anselm’s perfect being theology program. In this program, when we attribute some property to God we should follow the rule: ‘whatever it is simply better to have than not have we should attribute to God’. This property that it is simply better to have than not to have in medieval speak is called a ‘pure perfection’. A pure perfection is some property that it is simply better to have than not to have it. A pure perfection is some property x that is not considered as a pure perfection with regard to some species-nature. It is not a question of whether ‘it is better for my fish Nigel to be a Ninja or not’, but whether it is simply better to be a Ninja or not. A comparison to some species is not at issue here. For example, if it is better to be wise than not be wise, we should say that God is wise. If it is better to be loving than not to be loving, we should say that God is loving. If it is better to be stupid than not stupid, we should attribute ‘being stupid’ to God. But, our intuitions lead us to think that being wise and being just are simply better to have than not to have; yet being stupid is something we wouldn’t attribute to God because it is actually better to not be stupid, than to be stupid.
Read More »HoG: Intellectual Production of the Word (Scott)
An apostolic account of what is truly essential to the gospel.
For Justin, is Jesus “distinct in number, but not in substance” from the Father?
Last time we linked interviews with Dr. Crisp about this book. This time, the knives come out… and also some congratulatory bouquets. This Monday, on the next trinities podcast, I discuss libertarian Calvinism and universalism with Dr. Crisp. If you’ve not studied philosophy, here are introductory-level talks about determinism, libertarian freedom, and compatibilist (aka soft determinist freedom). Both author and reviewers are assuming that you have… Read More »Deviant Calvinism roundup 2 – critics and fans
Last time, I explained that Athanasius thinks human fathers procreate sons by giving a part of their substance to the mother, and that bit of substance then becomes an ingredient in the zygote, and the zygote inherits its human nature from that ingredient.
Athanasius thinks this basic model applies to God too, though he is careful to make an important qualification: human fathers beget sons by giving up a part of their substance, but God the Father gives his whole self to his Son, not a part.
Read More »Arius and Athanasius, part 8 – Athanasius on begetting the Son (JT)
Last time, I explained that Arius believes there can only be one unproduced producer, and that’s the Father. The Son, by consequence, is produced, but there’s nothing controversial about saying that. Arius gets controversial when he tries to explain how the Son is produced. As Arius sees it, if the Father produced the Son with any ‘pre-existing ingredients’, he’d either have to use created ingredients, or he’d have to use some ingredient taken from within himself (those are the only two options). But Arius thinks neither of these are open to the Father.
Read More »Arius and Athanasius, part 6 – Arius on the Son’s creation (JT)
In the last two posts, I explained what I mean by ‘pre-existing ingredients’. In the first of those two posts, I said that an ‘ingredient’ in a product is something that is (i) in the product, and (ii) not identical to another ingredient or to the whole product. In the second of those two posts, I explained that an ingredient is ‘pre-existing’ if it’s not… Read More »Arius and Athanasius, part 4 — A definition of creation (JT)
In the last two posts, I explained that Arius believes the Son is created from nothing. Athanasius, for his part, denies this. As he sees it, the Son is begotten, and here, ‘begetting’ (or ‘generating’, as it’s also called) is a technical term for the natural process of procreation, as when living organisms produce offspring. For Athanasius, the Son really is a son; he’s the natural offspring of the Father.
Read More »Arius and Athanasius, part 7 – Athanasius on natural procreation (JT)
So far, we’ve established that something is created from nothing if it’s produced without any pre-existing ingredients (see this one for a quick summary). Arius, for his part, believes that the Son is produced in just this way. In this post, I want to start looking at Arius’ argument for this conclusion.
Read More »Arius and Athanasius, part 5 — Arius on the Unproduced Producer (JT)
In the last three posts, I explained Richard’s argument for why there must be two distinct persons who charitably love each other. Here I want to raise some objections to three of Richard’s claims.
Read More »Richard of St. Victor 5 – Evaluation of the argument thus far (JT)
“You were filming that?”
In the last post, I explained that for Athanasius’s version of the derivation view, when the Father generates the Son, the Father shares his substance with the Son. That means, I took it, that the Father himself becomes a constituent in the Son, similar to the way that a lump of bronze is a constituent in a bronze statue.
One of the things Athanasius wants to do with this idea is explain how the Son is divine/God. The basic idea is that the Father shares his substance, i.e., Divinity, with the Son, and so the Father shares his properties with the Son. That is, to put it the other way around, the Son inherits properties from the Father. This is supposed to account for how the Son gets divine properties. However, this is where we start to run into problems.
Read More »Derivation vs. Generic Theories – part 4: Problems for a Derivation View (JT)
In De Trinitate Book 3.7 Richard summarizes some of what comes beforehand. We have learned that supreme goodness requires supreme love (i.e. supreme love is a necessary condition for supreme goodness), and that supreme love requires more than one person. If supreme love were only self-love, then the total state of affairs “one divine person has self-love” is not as perfect a state of affairs as another total state of affairs, namely “two persons have self-love, and each loves the other person.” Thus,
If there is supreme love, then there is a plurality of persons.
Likewise, Henry infers from what he takes to be the nature of supreme love to entail the equality of the persons in question.
If there is supreme love, then there is an equality of persons.
Below I try to explain just what all this means.
Read More »Richard of St. Victor 6 – Supreme Love Only Among Equals, Again (Scott)
STAGE 2. In this stage, Richard tries to show that perfect charity must be directed at another person. Here’s the quotation:
‘no one is properly said to have charity on the basis of his own private love of himself. And so it is necessary for love to be directed toward another for it to be charity’.
Read More »Richard of St. Victor 3 – Perfect charity must be directed at another person (JT)
Last time, I explained that Athanasius has not made it clear how the Son ‘inherits’ divine properties from the Father. Yet even if Athanasius could explain how the Son ‘inherits’ properties from the Father, there’s still another problem. Like Arius, Athanasius believes that the Father is simple, and so anything ‘in’ the Father is, strictly speaking, identical to the Father. If the Son is going to inherit any properties from the Father, then surely he’d have to inherit them all. As Athanasius himself realizes, it’s not a question of the Son inheriting part of the Father. It’s a question of all or none.
However, there are certain properties the Son cannot inherit from the Father, on pain of contradiction. For instance, the Son cannot inherit the Father’s unbegotteness. The Son is begotten, but the Father is not, so the can’t inherit the Father’s unbegotteness without entailing a contradiction.
Read More »Arius and Athanasius, part 10 – The Father and Son can’t share all their properties (JT)
In the last post, I explained that something is ‘created from nothing’ when it’s produced without any pre-existing ingredients. I also explained that by ‘ingredient’ I mean any sort of constituent which satisfies the following two conditions: first, it exists in the product; and second, it bears its own properties, i.e., it has features that other ingredients in the product do not have, and which the product itself does not have. In this post, I will explain what I mean by ‘pre-existing’.
Read More »Arius and Athanasius, part 3 — Producing something with ‘pre-existing’ ingredients (JT)
Richard of St. Victor is well known for his argument that perfect love must be shared between three persons, and since God’s love is perfect, there must be three persons in God. Richard presents this argument in Book 3 of his De Trinitate, and that’s what we’ll be looking at in this series of posts.
STAGE 1. In this stage, Richard wants to show that God’s perfect goodness somehow requires that God is perfectly charitable. I say ‘somehow requires’ because the logical relation here is not clear. Richard is saying ‘God’s goodness _____ perfect charity’, but what fills in the blank? Is it ‘entails’, ‘presupposes’, or some other logical relation?
Here’s the actual quotation, with the particular claims marked in brackets.
‘[T1] there is [in God] fullness and perfection of all goodness. [T2] However, where there is fullness of all goodness, true and supreme charity cannot be lacking. [T3] For nothing is better than charity; nothing is more perfect than charity’.
Let’s look at T1, T2, and T3 in turn.
Read More »Richard of St. Victor 2 – God’s goodness requires charity (JT)
STAGE 3. Next, Richard tries to establish that God can only charitably love an equal. He introduces this idea by raising the following objection: if God must direct his charitable love at a distinct person, then why couldn’t he direct his charitable love at a created person? That would satisfy T5 from the last post, so that should be enough to perfect God’s charitable disposition, right?
Read More »Richard of St. Victor 4 – Charity is shared by equals (JT)