Trinity Monotheism part 5: “divine”

In what sense, according to Craig and Moreland, are the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit each “divine”? Well, consider Rover.

They’d say that the following four things are canine:

1. Rover
2. Rover’s nose
3. Rover’s tail
4. Rover’s left ear

So, just as the parts of a dog are just as canine as the dog, so maybe “we could think of the persons of the Trinity as divine because they are parts of the Trinity, that is, parts of God.” (591)

I have to say that this looks like a cheap, merely verbal solution. Rover and Rover’s tail certainly may both be called “canine”. But Rover is canine in a way that the tail ain’t, and it would be misleading at best to say that Rover and Rover’s tail are “equally canine”. In their view God is divine in one sense and the Son is divine in another; God (the Trinity) instantiates the property of divinity (i.e. is numerically identical to a god), whereas the Son is called “divine” because he’s a part (or something like a part) of God. I’m sorry, but I don’t think that most defenders of the Son being “fully divine” or just as divine as the Father, will accept this verbal smooth-over. “Divine” just doesn’t normally mean “being a god or a part of (faculty of?) one”.

In any case, they hasten to add that they don’t mean the persons to be (spatio-temporal?) parts of God, however “it seems undeniable that there is some sort of part-whole relation obtaining between the persons of the Trinity and the entire Godhead.” (591, original emphasis) The emphasis here should be on “some sort of”; it really isn’t clear what they’re asserting here.

Is this traditional, that is, part of, or even close to the mainstream medieval Catholic tradition? Heck no. They admit this (591-3) but claim that their view is compatible with the Bible (593).

Next, they bring up our buddy Cerberus, saying that this three-headed dog “does seem to represent what Augustine called an image of the Trinity among creatures.” (593) Ur… I guess they mean, among mythical creatures? Cerberus the three-headed dog, they say, would have “three consciousnesses”, but would be one being because he has one body. (593) If those “consciousnesses” were rational, then he’d be tri-personal. (I love this; only philosophers would consider hypotheticals about imaginary entities!) While sharing a singe body might make Rover, Bowser and Spike (their names for the three… consciousnesses in Cerberus, associated with its three heads) into one being, that is one dog, it isn’t clear what would be make three non-embodied minds (which they say the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are, pre-incarnation) constitute one being. (593)

In essence, they suggest that

…God is a soul [immaterial substance, immaterial individual] which is endowed with three complete sets of rational cognitive faculties, each sufficient for personhood. Then God, though one soul, would not be one person but three, for God would have three centers of self-consciousness, intentionality, and volition, as social trinitarians maintain. God would clearly not be three discrete souls because the cognitive faculties in question are all faculties belonging to just one soul, one immaterial substance. God would therefore be one being that supports three persons… Such a model of the Trinity monotheism seems to give a clear sense to the classical formula “three persons in one substance.” (594, emphasis added)

Although their model is strictly neutral about the issue, they suggest ditching the doctrines of generation and procession, as (1) they lack biblical support, and (2) they seem incompatible with the “full deity” of Christ, and presumably, of the Holy Spirit as well. (594) Finally, they give (too quickly) an argument that God’s being a perfect being implies that “God is a triad of persons”. (594-5)

Now by way of a quick comment, their proposal is pretty revisionary. They’re not so much philosophically saving the mainstream Catholic Trinity doctrine, as replacing it with another, broadly similar one. Among the non-trivial differences: they deny divine simplicity, they say that the persons and God stand in “some sort of part-whole” relation, they don’t identify or come anywhere close to identifying each person with God or with the divine nature, and they ditch the generation and procession doctrines. They take a very protestant stance, as if the Trinity doctrine need only be grounded in the Bible and reason. But one wonders – can the Bible really support their theory, even granting the way they read it? (575-7) Finally, a philosophical worry. What is a “soul” here? It is, in their theory, something which may “support” one or more minds. I, a fellow dualist along with them, thought a soul was a thing which thinks – a conscious entity – not a thing which (may or may not?) support one or more things which think. Again, a worry that our guest-poster Joseph Jedwab raised: what is a “center of consciousness”?

Next time. Attack of the Dan!