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Derivation vs. Generic Theories — part 2: Arianism and the Trinity (JT)

Arius

“I hate wearing this stupid hat.
They didn’t make me a bishop anyways.
At least the cape’s pretty cool.
It’s got St. George’s Cross going on.”

In my last post, I gave some basic definitions for the ‘derivation view’ and the ‘generic view’ of the Trinity, and I said that the historical background for the ‘derivation view’ rests in the Nicene Creed’s claim that

(Q) The Son is begotten from the substance of the Father.

Of course, the meaning of ‘from the substance of the Father’ is not exactly clear, not in a philosophical sense anyways. What exactly is Q supposed to mean? In this post, I want to explain what one interpreter, namely Athanasius, felt was at stake with Q.

Read More »Derivation vs. Generic Theories — part 2: Arianism and the Trinity (JT)

Derivation vs. Generic Theories — part 1 (JT)

 

Branching Tree

— “Daddy, why do trees branch out?”
— “So you can climb in them, Jimmy.”

Patristic scholars tell us that the doctrine of the trinity was really developed in the 4th century. The question is: what exactly is the ‘development’? If you read many of those scholarly big books on patristic theology, you’ll occasionally come across the idea that there were two major theories of the trinity floating around in the 4th century: the ‘derivation view’ and the ‘generic view’. But what exactly are these two views, and who held them?Read More »Derivation vs. Generic Theories — part 1 (JT)

The Importance of Nicea

Not sure what it’s doing on LiveScience.com, but it’s a decent article. We covered this in more theological detail some time back. Update: and there is now an episode of the trinities podcast devoted to the theological significance of the Council of Nicea in 325.

Pruss on essentially loving beings

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

Linkage: Impossible World Site and Blog (Dale)

Check it out: a whole site and blog devoted to art featuring impossible objects! I can’t help but think that the picture above had a trinitarian inspiration: according to the babelfish, it means “You must in such a way live”. (German speaking readers – feel free to correct the translation.) I read this as addressed to the Trinity. If so, this pic would be an… Read More »Linkage: Impossible World Site and Blog (Dale)

modal shootout on the greatest possible being – Part 2


Mike, reloaded – before the smoke has even cleared.

More from Mike Almeida about a premise in an anti-social-trinitarian-argument argument I’ve been exploring. Also, (sorry Mike – actually, sorry everyone) I continue my cheesy cowboy theme. (But as a native Texan, it’s my sacred right, Pardn’r. 🙂 )

Here’s a summary in (attempted) ordinary English of his thoughtful post on infinitely increasing properties @ his PhilRel Blog, followed by my response, which I posted to his comments section.

  • My premise he’s commenting on: 6. If some great-making properties are infinitely increasable, then the concept of a Greatest Possible Being is the concept of an impossible being. (compare: highest possible integer)
  • But what in tarnation, he asks, is an “infinitely increasable property”?Read More »modal shootout on the greatest possible being – Part 2

modal shootout on greatest possible beings – Part 1 (Dale)


“Don’t mess with Texan metaphysicans, pardner.”

In a recent series of posts (uno, dos, tres, quatro, cinco), I’ve been chewing on some philosophical arguments that “social” trinitarians have used for their doctrine. Been finding more gristle than meat.

In my latest installment, I was privileged to get some penetrating critical feedback from fellow philosophy of religion bloggers located in my home state of Texas – Alexander Pruss of Baylor and Mike Almeida of UT San Antonio (here, comments #2, 7-9) These guys are extremely sharp and are doing a lot of creative work in the field, by the way. About perfect beings – I’ve come to find out that Mike has thought a lot about this!

This post is my attempt to process Mike’s feedbackRead More »modal shootout on greatest possible beings – Part 1 (Dale)

Allah = God?

An interesting discussion, with some links, by philosopher Parableman Jeremy Pierce: Muslims Worshiping God But Not Worshiping God. His view, as against some recent pastors and other folks, is that yes, Muslims do refer to the being that Christians acknowledge as the one true God, when they use the word “Allah”. [Saith Jeremy]…it seems completely ludicrous to me to claim that this being that is… Read More »Allah = God?

perfection, the Trinity, and impossible beings (Dale)


“This clears it all up, right?”
Anselm: “Um, no. I must bestow upon it the analytic frown of uncomprehension.”
(image credit)

I used to think I had a great objection to Anselm’s famous ontological argument. (Bear with me – this has something to do with social trinitarianism.) The argument, at least many forms of it, basically goes like this. If it is logically possible that there’s a Greatest Possible Being (i.e. a being such that there’s no logical possibility of there being a greater one), then it is necessary that there’s a Greatest Possible Being. More simply: if it’s possible (non-contradictory) that God exists, then it’s also necessary that God exists (i.e. it is inconsistent to suppose God not existing). (For more, see here and here. For more than you’d ever want to know, here.)

Many critics have replied like this:

I’d be a sucker to grant your premise. Why should I think that the notion of a Greatest Possible Being is the notion of a possible thing at all? Read More »perfection, the Trinity, and impossible beings (Dale)

Trinity Schminity – the music video

He’s baaaaack. A smokier, bluesier, dirtier “Trinity Schminity”. Now in basement music video form! Apparently there’s been some big shakeup in the band. Their website says “we are now a Christian father and son band”. Mother and daughter, we hardly knew ye. 🙁 Thankfully, they’re still “100% monotheist”. And they still ROCK. Get it? Winter has made himself a phony Trinity. “Bobo” and “Hayseed” are… Read More »Trinity Schminity – the music video

on interpersonal love and stick figures (Dale)


Four vivid, moving, memorable depictions of Love.

A post on some previous post commentary – no one can navel-gaze like a philosopher! 🙂 Here’s a pictorial recap, and some additional thoughts on the comments here, in response to Scott and JT. The point of all this: we’re exploring why people who call themselves “social trinitarians” don’t like what they call “Latin” theories, and specifically the claim that those “Latin” theories can’t do justice to the loving relationships between the persons of the Trinity.Read More »on interpersonal love and stick figures (Dale)

Reflections on the Impossibility of a truly lonely Christian God (Dale)


Not possible. But why? (image credit)

Here are some rough-draft thoughts on another line of thinking associated with social trinitarian theories.

God is perfect. Arguably, an absolutely perfect being could not fail to be “well off” – in classical terminology, a perfect being must be happy, must be in a “blessed” condition. Part of perfection is independence. One kind of independence is the kind which comes up when discussing ontological or cosmological arguments for God’s existence – the idea of aseity, or existing but not because of anything else. But here’s another kind of independence or self-sufficiency: not requiring any thing (i.e. any fact not entailed by your existence) to be well off, to have a good life. Perhaps we could call it the divine property of security, or independent or self-sufficient happiness.

Is God as well off as he could possibly be? Arguably not,Read More »Reflections on the Impossibility of a truly lonely Christian God (Dale)

Are persons essentially relational?

Dallas Willard is one of my favorite authors, and I don’t normally go in for criticizing what he writes. But I found a great example in this (good) book (p. 122) of an idea that is fairly widespread, and which underlies a lot of social trinitarian speculation. This brief passage got me to thinking. He says, …God is love and sustains love for us from… Read More »Are persons essentially relational?

Linkage: Pruss on liberal theology (Dale)

You tell ’em, Joe. An interesting post & discussion: Alexander Pruss’s Blog: Liberal theology I think a lot of liberal theologians don’t have a “high view of reason” – many (not all) of them strike me as lazy drifters on miscellaneous intellectual currents. e.g. Has anyone’s reason really revealed to them, so to speak, that miracles don’t happen, or even that it’s irrational to believe… Read More »Linkage: Pruss on liberal theology (Dale)

Brentano and the Trinity, Part 1 (Joseph)

Franz Brentano

What a great beard!

Franz Brentano (1838-1917), a forerunner of the phenomenological movement and the analytic movement, was of great influence on folk such as Edmund Husserl, Alexius Meinong, Anton Marty, Carl Stumpf, and Kasimir Twardowski. He is best known for his work Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint (1874). And in that work he is best known for his view that the mark of the mental is intentionality:

Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, and what we might call, though not wholly unambiguously, reference to a content, direction toward an object (which is not to be understood here as meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity. Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself… (Brentano, Psychology, 88)Read More »Brentano and the Trinity, Part 1 (Joseph)

Reader Question About Modalism


Ice, ice, baby. (image credit)

A reader emailed me this question, and I thought others would be interested in my (attempt at) an answer. Also, this is a good chance to review and summarize some of my previous postings on modalism.

I was wondering if you could read [the following] and tell me what I was believing? (I think it might have been a form of Modalism) Also, I search everywhere and find that Modalism is wrong, but no explanations specifically why. Can you help me out on some links explaining that?

…I used to believe there was one God. He sometimes is called Father, sometimes called Jesus, and sometimes called the Holy Spirit. And sometimes called all at the same time. Read More »Reader Question About Modalism

HoG: The Most Divine Content-Fallacy, and ‘Is the Divine Word Practical Knowledge?’ (Scott)

Wild HoG

“If I think of pork-products, is that a self-conscious act of thinking?”

What follows is the first of a two part post.

Part 1: The Divine Word as Divine Practical Knowledge
Part 2: If God Weren’t a Trinity, then Creatures Would Necessarily Be Created.

Part 1

In pre-Nicene days (and post-Nicene days) there was much debate about the ontological status and (narrative) identity of the Son of God. One branch of discussion focused on the Apostle John’s claim that the Son of God is the Word of God. In various places in the New Testament the Son of God is identified as the agent through whom the Father creates the world, which is equivalent with saying the Word of the Father and the Father create creatures.

From these sources a ‘Logos-theology’ was born (that you can read about in the history books). The Logos is that by which creatures are created, have their existence and persistence in existing.

Now, Henry takes up the question as to whether the Word is ‘practical knowledge’. Henry generally gets his definitions of kinds of knowledge from Aristotle. From Aristotle we learn about three kinds of knowledge: speculative knowledge, practical knowledge and productive knowledge.

Read More »HoG: The Most Divine Content-Fallacy, and ‘Is the Divine Word Practical Knowledge?’ (Scott)

How not to do theology, Or: the theological Vogon (Dale)

newvogon.jpg

Poetry, anyone?

Karen Armstrong is a famous ex-nun who has written, among other things, a puffing biography of the prophet Muhammad. She frequently appears on TV confidently gassing about various religious matters. But I was really taken a back by this, which I ran across in a podcast:

Ms. Armstrong: Well, you see, I think theology is poetry. That’s what my Jewish friend, Chaim Maccabee, told me all those years ago when he quoted Hillel’s golden rule to me and said, “You know, it doesn’t matter what you believe. Theology is poetry.”Read More »How not to do theology, Or: the theological Vogon (Dale)

HoG: “What does it mean to say the Father is ungenerated?” (Scott)

paternity.jpg

 

“Is there any Son who does not cause His Father to become a Father and vice versa?”

Here I wish to briefly summarize what I take to be Henry’s position on the question: is the Father constituted by the (personal) property of being ‘ungenerated’ (ingenitum)? Henry’s discussion of this comes from his Summa Quaestionum Ordinariarum 57.1.

Henry engages in a lengthy discussion of ways the word ‘ingenitum’ (not generated) or ‘innascibile’ (not able to be born) can be predicated of the Father, whether negatively, privately, or positively. The upshot of these distinctions is to ask about the precise nature of this property ‘ungenerated’. Is it saying what the Father is not (negation), or is it saying the Father lacks some further property and is potentiality to receive some new property (privation), or is it saying there is some positive property the Father really is constituted by?

Henry rejects predication of the property ‘ingentium’ to the Father by negation and by privation; instead he opts for predication of a positive property. What then is this positive property that the Father has/is?

Read More »HoG: “What does it mean to say the Father is ungenerated?” (Scott)

HoG: Intellectual Production of the Word (Scott)

laptop_desk_moving_model.jpg

“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)