Revised version of “Trinity” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

On November 20, 2020 the excellent Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy published my 2020 revision. (Earlier versions: 2009, 2013, 2016.)

My sincere thanks to the anonymous reader and to the editors for their help and patience.

In my misguided quest for completeness, the version I turned in before was significantly longer. But the editors showed me some tough love and required me to shorten it. The sections I had to cut were in my view interesting, and some of them had to do with recent new theories; as 2020 winds down I will post this “cut for length” material on this blog.

Sections 1.4, 1.6, 2.1.4, 2.1.5, 2.3, 2.4, 3, and 5 are completely new. There are significant additions and revisions in many other sections.

About the new theory label in 2.3: I think Richard Swinburne is a truly great man and is one of the greatest living philosophers, and I greatly respect his work, yet we must speak plainly and judge fairly when it comes to this Trinity theory. By the way, his later views and arguments are significantly different than his earlier (1988, 1994) ones – and this section sticks to professor Swinburne’s latest discussions, mostly this one. If you’re still teaching his 1994 book versions, those are a bit different!

Section 3 results from my realization that not all recent theories can be fit into my one-self vs. three-self classification. I do think it is best to classify in some way like this, using the common human concept of a self, rather than the unhelpful and historically inaccurate “Latin” vs “Social” classification that’s been unquestioningly accepted in too much recent work.

I see trends in this analytic theology literature somewhat towards relative identity theories, and towards “metaphysical madness” – Trinity theories which involve bold metaphysical moves, usually inspired by recent work in other areas of metaphysics, but which don’t much engage the ancient texts, especially the Bible. We’re currently in a Golden Age of metaphysical speculation, but it’s easy to see why Philosophy goes through love-hate cycles with metaphysics. “Mad” speculation can both help and hinder the search for truth.

Of course the “social Trinity” (three-self) crowd resists these trends. In my view, they’re on rock-solid biblical ground in their view that the Father and Son of the Bible are supposed to be two selves, but they have arguably not solved the tritheism problem. Three personal beings, each of whom has all the divine attributes (a.k.a. the divine essence): that seems sufficient for the existence of at least three gods, since the divine essence is by definition that because of which its owner is a god, and the differences between the three imply that they can’t be the same god.

The main “social” move here? Deny that any of the Three is a god; say that only the whole Trinity is a god. This is a big change to the traditions deriving from the 325 council at Nicea! Since then (most) trinitarians have been pounding the drum constantly that not only the Father has the divine essence, but the Son has it too – not neither!

Among people who don’t just repeat the words and hope for the best, but actually dare to interpret the traditional Trinity-language (stage 3 trinitarians), there are deep divides. Human creativity continues to find new avenues to explore here. Revelation (or alleged revelation) and Reason are not always easy to hold together. One reconciles them, decides it’s OK to live with the conflict, or decides to re-visit whether the problematic sentences really are a deliverance of divine revelation.

I have not this time revised my long supplements on

• History of Trinitarian Doctrines
• Judaic and Islamic Objections
• Unitarianism