Swinburne isn’t what you’d call a theological liberal. He’s not a conservative evangelical either, given his rejection of things like biblical inerrancy. He was, I believe, a life-long Anglican, until 1996 when he converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. As I understand it, at least part of his motivation was his exasperation with anything-goes style Anglicanism (e.g. priests who are not theists). But my point is that he aims to be a “Catholic” Christian, in the sense of one who holds to mainstream orthodoxy – roughly, that core of doctrines held in common by Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and (at least in theory) most Protestants. (Actually, he’s probably a good bit more “Catholic” than that – in that he believes in apostolic succession, and in the authority of The Church to decree the meaning of scriptural texts – see his book Revelation.) This requires some dexterity on his part, and creates the burden of crafting a theory that one can claim fits with the “Athanasian” and Constantinopolitan Creeds.
Swinburne argues that it is uncharitable to read the ecumenical councils’ claim that “there is only one god” as asserting that there’s only one divine individual, as that would contradict their committment to there being three divine individuals. This is a really key move in his theory, and we need to pause over it before moving on.
He’s applying here what he calls elsewhere “the principle of charity”, which is (roughly) when you’re reading a text (any text) you should try to understand it in a way which is self-consistent. Here he remarks,
…no person and no Council affirming something which they intend to be taken with utter seriousness can be read as affirming an evident contradiction. (180)
That is, they’d be irrational to assert that there’s exactly one divine individual, and there ain’t. So we (assuming a minimal level of rationality on their part) should try to find a way to read them which is self-consistent.
Why does he think they’re committed to there being three divine individuals? He’s assuming the indiscernibility of identicals here. These documents refer to “the Father”, “the Son”, and “the Holy Spirit”, and they assert things of each which they deny of the other two. Therefore, they’re assuming that none of the three are numerically identical. He’s on solid ground here – this sort of reasoning is as obviously valid as, say, modus ponens arguments. (One’s with this form: p. if p then q. therefore q) Yes, some uber-sophisticates (cough… Brandon… cough) will challenge this sort of inference, but not to worry – just about every obvious necessary truth (and every properly basic belief) has been so challenged. Carry on, using the mind God gave you.
So in his Swinburne’s view, the doctrine of the Trinity should be understood as three numerically distinct things, each of which is (fully) divine.
Objection: A divine thing is just a god. You’ve got three gods there, Swinburne!
Slow down. Let’s hear him out first, and then return to the issues of tritheism and the creeds (we haven’t yet heard how he proposes to interpret them). Then, we’ll know exactly what we’re objecting to, if we’re so inclined.
Here’s his basic suggestion:
What in denying tritheism, the view that there are three Gods, were the Councils ruling out? I suggest that they were denying that there were three independent divine beings, any of which could exist without the other; or which could act independently of each other. (180)
Next time: functional monotheism.
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Dear Dale,
Let me put it more simply. It’s the same old problem that it seems these three claims are inconsistent:
(1) There’s one God
(2) There are three divine individuals
(3) Every divine individual is God
The only new thing is the idea that the only way to solve this (assuming we do nothing fancy with identity, counting, or predication) is to invoke ambiguity in the predicate ‘God’. This gives us for each claim some reading on which it’s true. But I just don’t know that we want to allow that, e.g. there’s a sense of ‘God’ in which there are three Gods or there’s a sense of ‘God’ in which no divine individual is God. That’s all.
Best,
Joseph
Hey Joseph,
re: 1 – Good point. I think charity is a big consideration for him, but he may well appeal directly to the tradition and its counting three hypostases.
“Put these two questions together.” Arrrgh! Too many negatives! 🙂 You forced me to try to write down a logical analysis, but that didn’t help. Cand you spell this out in terms of an inconsistent triad or something?
About Swinburne’s conception of a “God” – there’s certainly trouble there… I’ll hold off till later in the series.
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Yes, some uber-sophisticates (cough… Brandon… cough) will challenge this sort of inference, but not to worry – just about every obvious necessary truth (and every properly basic belief) has been so challenged. Carry on, using the mind God gave you.
🙂
Actually I wouldn’t reject that particular inference; I would reject the inference underlying the objection to it. Although I don’t like the term ‘individual’, since I think the only thing it could mean in such an inference is “something counted as one,” which is a weaker sense than we usually use the term for, and weaker than Swinburne apparently intends.
Dear Dale,
Here are four quick points.
1. One needn’t use the indiscernibility of identicals. The Cappadocians standardized trinitarian terminology, saying the Father, Son, and Spirit are ‘three hypostaseis with one ousia’. Their pro-Nicene theology and terminology was a key influence on the first council of Constantinople: the second ecumenical council. The way they interpret these terms strongly suggests that the divine Persons are three divine individuals who share one divine nature.
2. There’s reason to think that a God is any divine substance and that a divine substance is any substance that has the divine properties and that any substance is an independent individual, in the sense of an individual that can exist without anything that isn’t part of it. In this sense, there’s one God, the collective whose members are all and only the divine individuals. But in this sense, no divine individual is (a) God. Question: do we want there to be any sense in which no divine individual is a God?
3. This means Swinburne must make a distinction between a divine individual and a God. Indeed, on his view, nothing is both. And he must attribute ambiguity to the Athanasian Creed when it says ‘the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three gods but there is one God’. This must mean, on his take, each of Father, Son, and Spirit is a divine individual (but not an independent divine being), yet there aren’t three independent divine beings (but there are three divine individuals) but there’s one independent divine being (but there’s not only one divine individual). If so, the claims ‘there’s one God’ and ‘there’re three gods’ are ambiguous. On one reading, (that of a God is an independent divine being) for him, the first is true and the second false. And on another reading, (that of a God is a divine individual) for him, the first is false and the second true. Question: do we want there to be any reading of these claims where the first is false and the second true?
4. Put these two questions together. If we want it to be that every divine individual is God and there’s one God and we want it to be that there’s no sense in which no divine divine individual is (a) God and no sense in which there’s not only one God, can we have what we want? It’s hard to see how. Perhaps given what we want, ambiguity is inevitable. Whose we? Well, we are those who commit to at least the first ecumenical council.
Best,
Joseph
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