At long last, we’ve reached the 25th and last chapter of book three of Richard of St. Victor’s De Trinitate! (Here are the other Richard-related posts here @ trinities.)
Richard starts off with the point that for the Persons of the Trinity, unlike the case of any other persons, there is “individuality without plurality” – each is what it is without any plurality of any kind – and “unity without inequality” – I’m not sure what he means by this second phrase. (p. 396)
In contrast, any other person, such as you or me, can be “unequal to himself”, in that we can become greater or lesser over time. (e.g. I’m smarter and morally better now than when I was 14.) And persons like us have multiple properties (we’re not simple). (p. 396) And of a human person, say Barak Obama, we can say that “his power alone is dissimilar to itself… [since] one thing is easy for him, another is difficult and a third is impossible.” (p. 397)
Then he says, “one and the same nature… in one respect is less, in another it is greater, and [so is]… dissimilar and unequal to itself.” (p. 397) So, the same point he made about persons, can also be made about natures. Thus,
…where there is no true simplicity, true equality cannot exist. However in that Trinity, nowhere is anything dissimilar to itself nor is it unequal to any other in anything. (p. 397)
I assume that by “true equality” he means qualitative sameness/equality in the highest degree. Normally, when we call some X and some Y “qualitatively the same” we allow that they differ somewhat (e.g. two golf balls from the same package). But not here – the Father and Son don’t differ in their intrinsic properties, and so are as qualitatively the same as two things could possibly be. (This is just begging to be objected to, but I’ll pass it by.)
After this, he quotes the “Athanasian” creed on the equality of the Persons, and triumphantly ends with one more quote from that creed:
Behold now we have proved by open and manifold reasoning how true that is which we are commanded to believe, namely, that we venerate “one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity.” (p. 397, emphasis added)
I’ll end with just a few observations about our whole Richard series:
- Richard has not persuaded me, by any of his arguments, that a perfect being must be tri-personal, or even that a perfect being must enjoy reciprocated love of an equal. It seems to me possible that perfect being lacks that good, and is nonetheless happy, and perfectly benevolent.
- It’s also clear that Richard has no way to get his arguments (supposing they worked) to stop at three. Unlike Swinburne, he doesn’t even seem aware that he needs to show only three in addition to at least three. He leaves things at the latter.
- If your view of the Trinity is incompatible with the classical doctrine of divine simplicity – and if you call yourself a “social” trinitarian, it probably is, then Richard is not your ally, as he assumes the truth of the doctrine.
- As I explained last time, I don’t think his views on the Trinity are self-consistent. He needs the Persons to intrinsically differ from each other, and yet he insists, so as to remain orthodox, and to avoid tritheism, that they do not. Thus, he needs to appeal to mystery – this self-inconsistency must just be due to the greatness of the subject-matter. It isn’t that he’s trying to have it both ways… He repeatedly sounds (e.g. in ch. 9, 10, 24) what I call negative mysterian notes, but rather half-heartedly – his Anselmian zeal is little cooled by such points.
- Another apparent inconsistency: he crucially appeals to the notion of cooperation. But if X and Y cooperate in a work, they do it together, and each makes his own contribution. Each, that is, exercises his own power. Cooperation involves two exercises of power, to bring about one effect (or various parts of one effect). And yet, given Richard’s views on simplicity, there is between the Persons of the Trinity one power, and so one exercise of power in any alleged case of “cooperation”. Which is to say, it isn’t really cooperation. It’ll just be the action of one god.
“Really looking forward to your podcasts (although I’m still a social trinitarian so far”
Glad to have you, Ben! The show will feature all sorts of perspectives. The editorial stance, so to speak,is: Christian.
Hi Dale,
I don’t know if different persons can literally share a substance in the sense which Richard seems to require. I get the impression from him that it must be so to keep his model afloat. Like I mentioned in the comments below your review of McCall’s book, I think we need to be careful about claiming that every essential property belongs to the common substance. World-indexed properties are a counter-example. Once they’re in play the need to share a common substance, understood as God’s attribute(s) from a simplicity perspective, seems to fade away.
I really enjoyed reading that JAT paper. Funny I didn’t connect the author to this blog! After all, I discovered the JAT because of one of your posts! Really looking forward to your podcasts (although I’m still a social trinitarian so far!).
Thanks for that, Ben. I think one of my co-bloggers mentioned that a translation was in the works, but I never noticed that it had come out. I’ve just ordered a copy.
“Yes, every existence involves a substance. But existences are not identical to substances. Existences can share a substance without being identical”
Such a view must say more about what “substance” is. I was using it, as Boethius was, in the sense of Aristotle’s first ousia – an entity or individual reality, a concrete being. Surely there are those. But is there such a thing as “substance” which can be shared by multiple realities? And does it make sense to talk about a substance sharing a substance?
About that JAT piece – yes, a good piece by my co-blogger Dr. Scott Williams. An episode of the trinities podcast some time this Fall will consist of an interview with him on that article.
Is Richard’s definition of “person” well-motivated? That is certainly something to worry about!
Hi Dale, there are a couple English translations available, some as recently as 2011 – http://www.amazon.com/Richard-Saint-Victor-Trinity-ebook/dp/B006X0MIGU.
Richard’s re-definition of person has (at least) two benefits for Richard. First, on the Boethian definition (individual substance of a rational nature), God is a person. Richard thinks God is a plurality of persons, not a person, and is accordingly motivated to redefine person. Second, Richard postulates “there absolutely cannot be any plurality where there is no difference.” Since each divine persons shares the same substance, Richard infers that there must be a difference that does not belong to the substance (identity of indiscernibles). He opts for using origins to distinguish divine persons who share the same substance. It would seem that for Richard, origin doesn’t belong to the substance.
You wonder whether a Richardean person is also a Boethian person? That’s an interesting thought! Perhaps that is true. Yes, every existence involves a substance. But existences are not identical to substances. Existences can share a substance without being identical (different origin/generation relations). Substances presumably can’t share a substance without being identical. If Richard is correct and one can divorce origin from substance (I doubt it but I’m talking about his views not mine), then there would only be one substance despite the multiple origins of persons. I noticed that there’s a good discussion of Richard’s concept of person in a recent Journal of Analytic Theology article – http://journalofanalytictheology.com/jat/index.php/jat/article/view/jat.2013-1.180219220818a/26
Personally, I think Richard’s argument is driven by his concept of divine simplicity. Why not simply distinguish divine persons by world-indexed properties, like “becomes incarnate in-alpha”? Why worry about the identity of indiscernibles at all? Clearly the persons are not identical in the actual world. It follows that they are not identical in every possible world, including worlds without creation. Differing by origins seems a bit extreme. This leads me to think that Richards definition of person is ill-motivated.
Ben, thank you for this correction. That argument sounds like a tough sell. Do books four and five exist in English translation?
Can you say a bit more about his redefinition of “person”? You say he makes a (dubious) appeal to etymology. But laying that aside, what work is this doing for him? How is “an individual substance of a rational nature” bad, when a “an individual existence of a rational nature.” Given what you say, anything that satisfies the second would satisfy the first, right? Anything which is an “existence” would also be a substance. So then, if each “person” of the Trinity is an “existence”, each would be a “substance” too.
Richard is well aware of the problem of “why not more than three?”. He devotes book four to the concept of a person, generalizing Boethius’ definition “an individual substance of a rational nature” to “an individual existence of a rational nature.” Existence=ex (from) + sistence (substance) which he takes to mean that persons can be distinguished by a) their substance, b) their origin or c) both. Human persons differ in origin (mom and dad) and substance (different bodies, personalities, etc). Angels only differ in substance having been all created by a single divine act and therefore sharing an origin. Divine persons only differ by origin. So for Richard, the filioque is essential to their being more than two divine persons.
Book 5 tries to explain why there are not more than three by a complicated argument involving symmetry considerations. Boiled down, there can’t be an infinite number of persons, there can’t be more than one first and last person, and all the middle-persons have more in common with each other than they do with the first and last person. This is unacceptable (for aesthetic reasons) so the clique of n-2 middle persons must be just one person – the Son. Therefore n=3. Anyway, that’s the gist of it.
Robin Parry tells us:
“OK—here is advance warning of a classic theology text available in English for the first time . . . ever! Richard of Saint Victor, twelfth century Christian mystic, was the author of a book that influenced the shape of the western trinitarian tradition for hundreds of years. That book was De Trinitate. It stands as a masterly example of the theological method of the period and remains a classic. Sadly, only parts of it have ever been translated into English . . . until now. This forthcoming Cascade volume presents 1. an introduction Richard and to De Trinitate 2. a commentary on the argument (accompanied by very helpful charts plotting the shape of the argument) 3. a full translation of the Latin text.”
http://theologicalscribbles.blogspot.com/2011/01/richard-of-saint-victor-on-trinity.html
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