podcast 166 – Alvan Lamson’s On the Doctrine of Two Natures in Jesus Christ – Part 2
Is the theory that Jesus has “two natures” more trouble than it’s worth?
Is the theory that Jesus has “two natures” more trouble than it’s worth?
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)
The Clarke-Waterland duel went on for many, many pages in several books, getting increasingly snippy.
Last time I said that I thought Waterland was a social-mysterian-trinitarian. But I’m not so sure about the “social” part! He’s very unclear on whether the “Persons” are selves. They’re different somethings, in any case. But in this series, I’m sticking to an exegetical issue.
Here are excerpts of Waterland’s second salvo about the “only God” texts.
[Clarke] had produced John 17:3, 1 Cor. 8:6, Eph. 4:6, which prove that the Father is styled, sometimes, the one God, or only true God; and that he is the God of the Jews, of Abraham, etc. I asked how those texts proved that the Son was not? You say… “very plainly… Can the Son of the God of Abraham (Acts 3:13) be himself that God of Abraham, who glorified his Son?” But why must you here talk of that God, as if it were in opposition to this God, supposing two Gods; that is, supposing the thing is question. …I tell you that this divine Person is not that divine Person, and yet both are one God… (A Second Vindication of Christ’s Divinity in Waterland’s Vindications of Christ’s Divinity, 422-3, original italics, bold added, punctuation slightly modernized)
This is wheel-spinning. Clarke does, and Waterland does not take the passages in question to identity (assert to be numerically identical) the Father and Yahweh.
Clarke had asked whether Waterland thought that the term “Father” in these texts actually includes, i.e. refers to, the Son as well. Waterland clarifies,Read More »DANIEL WATERLAND ON “THE FATHER IS THE ONLY GOD” TEXTS – PART 2
So next up ch.16. Here’s my version of what goes on in this chapter:
Re 1: I like the implicit distinction here between what is a real and only a conceptual possibility. There can’t really be only one divine person. For, as Richard is trying to demonstrate, there must be at least three divine persons. But the concepts of full wisdom and power don’t conceptually imply the concept of more than one divine person.Read More »Richard of St. Victor’s De Trinitate, Ch.16 (Joseph)
I Can’t Stop Loving You – actually, it’s worse than that – I can’t not love you!
Alexander Pruss is an excellent philosophy of religion dude at Baylor. His second PhD dissertation was on possible worlds. Don’t ask me to explain what his first one was on! 🙂 He’s got about a million original ideas on almost as many topics, a lot of which get posted at his creatively-titled blog, Alexander Pruss’s Blog 🙂 as well as at The Prosblogion.
He recently weighed in (comments #8-9) on my attempted argument against social trinitarian arguments. Here are the most relevant bits:Read More »Pruss on essentially loving beings
He assumes that necessarily, any human, as such, is subject to God.
Can we justify a distinction between the ‘is’ of identity and the ‘is’ of predication
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)
“God is greater than man.“ Job 33:12. Every man. All men. Everywhere. Beginning to end. Forever. — John Piper (@JohnPiper) December 17, 2015 My reply is: let us consider this inconsistent triad. Just as a matter of logic, not all three can be true – at least one must be false. But which? Jesus is God. God is greater than any man. Jesus is a… Read More »Is God greater than any man?
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)
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)
“Dear Christian, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about God and me.”
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 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)
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)