Last time, what I thought I heard from Steve was this (this is my summary):
In sum, the one God is a perfect being, a perfect self, who is the Trinity. He has within himself three parts – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each of these parts fully has the (universal) divine nature, and so, each of the essential divine attributes. Each is a divine self. And these three parts are indistinguishable from one another, or nearly so, though they be numerically distinct.
Steve has now responded twice, here and here. These contain a lot of extraneous material, which I’ll pass by. My question is, what did I get wrong above? Here’s what I hear (bulleted):
- No, the Persons are not exactly alike. Each has a property the other two lack.
- “they share a “numerically identical” nature”
Right – “nearly so.”
Because he says this nature is shared, I’m going to infer that it is a universal – something capable of being had by multiple subjects.
- He wonders why I’m hearing things in terms of part and whole.
Steve, it’s not because you think God has multiple attributes. (Yes, I too reject the classical doctrine of simplicity, though I don’t think God has parts.) Rather, I’m trying to figure out what the relation is, in your view, between God/The Trinity and those three Persons. If it isn’t whole-parts, help me out!
- The Persons are so alike that any one “represents” either of the others.
- I don’t know what Tuggy means by “self.”
Sure you do – this is a rough, vague concept we all have. It is a thing which is conscious (yes, of self as well as other things), which can act for a reason (can choose, has a will), which is intelligent (has knowledge), and which can engage in friendship. If you speak to something, and think it may understand, even speak back, you think it is a self. Thus, I submit that you think God is a self, as I assume you speak to him. You sort of say that any divine person will be only analogous to a human self. Well, sure. But we have a more abstract concept of a self (which doesn’t imply being a human, or even being created, or having a body) which we should both agree is satisfied by, e.g. the Father.
I think I basically got his view right: there are four divine selves: God (The Trinity), the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. This is confirmed by what he says after noting that in his view, each Person of the Trinity has a first-person point of view:
Finally, wouldn’t their individual viewpoints include a corporate viewpoint? If God is a Trinity, then I’d expect the Son (to take one example) to have both an individual viewpoint (“I’m the Son”) and a corporate viewpoint (“We’re the Trinity”). The constituent members would also have a Trinitarian viewpoint, for they collectively constitute the Trinity.
This “corporate viewpoint” must have an owner, a subject, and that can only be the Trinity – that complex self. Why? e.g. the Son is not a we, but a he. But he adds,
This is true even in human social relations, where, by contrast, we’re dealing with truly discrete individuals or separate entities. I have an individual viewpoint as a unique individual with a unique experience, but I also have a corporate viewpoint as a man, a Christian, a baby-boomer, an American, &c.
If both perspectives are sustainable for self-contained beings like me, surely that’s sustainable in the case of God, where the persons of the Godhead are internally related.
Sorry, but I think this is confused. If I think, as an American, that football beats the crap out of soccer, that’s just another first-person point of view. It is just that the explanation for my having it, we’re assuming, is that I’m an American. The analogy would rather be this: just as each American has a first person perspective, so does America. So in his view, if e.g. the Son has a viewpoint as member of the Trinity, that just means that some subjective state of his is caused or explained by his relations to the Father and Spirit. This would be a three-self view of the Trinity, not a four-self view, which I think Steve holds to. But I’m sticking with the four-self interpretation, which is what I take it he thinks, or usually thinks.
He emphasizes that this is theological speculation, which it surely is. But I was asking what this Trinity theory is, which makes such great sense out of the Bible, better sense than any rival theory. I take it that this is it. If he wants to clarify further the relation between Trinity and the members of it, I’m all ears.
Hey Brandon,
I think I agree with your points about the looseness of the words “himself”, “itself” etc. But I think we do have a concept of a self, which is why adults don’t relate to computers or tigers or married couples in the way they relate to adult human persons or gods or aliens. I’m not sure why we should expect to find a natural language word for this concept. It’s a bit abstract, after all.
It seems to me that we don’t have natural lang. words for this concept because it rarely gets used alone. The concept of a normal adult human, for example, implies being a self, as does the concept of being a (polytheistic) god, or the concept of a ghost (e.g. the pissed off soul of grandpa, come back to take revenge). Only when we abstract just a little do we get the pure concept. But I still think it is a natural and near universal one, not a theoretically stipulated one. Theories must deal with the fact that we have this. Early Buddhism, for example, denies that there are selves in just the sense I’m talking about. They have elaborate speculations designed to show that what appears to be a self really isn’t (it reduces to momentary, in some cases non-substantial or even unreal entities – skandhas, etc.).
About Hume, of course, his argument requires the premise, contentious to put it nicely, that we have no concept of a thing unless we have an impression of it. Yet he too admits that many or most believe in selves – he just wants to chalk this up to some mistake, urging that people think they have such an idea, but really don’t. But then, he’s admitting, unlike Brandon? that most think they have an idea of a lasting, substantial self which acts, desires, knows.
Unless you know nothing about tigers at all (in which case you’re not really in a position to count them) I doubt that your concept of tiger is very vague at all; to be sure, there will be things about tigers you will be vague about, and it will largely deal with purely phenomenal features of tigers, but the application of the concept is straightforward and stable. Things are tigers or they are not; there are some gray areas, but what is meant does not change from context to context. It’s clear from the looseness with which we apply the term ‘self’ that this is not the case; we in practice sometimes use to talk about groups, sometimes to exclude them, it just depends, because it’s a placeholder for whatever we’re talking about. You can’t count something that is different in every context. Do tigers count as selves? Do married couples? Is talking about America itself and abstracting from this to talk about the self you’re talking about when talking about America itself coherent? It just depends on what you’re doing.
Where in ordinary language do we ever talk about ‘self’ and its cognates? In purely pronomial contexts: America itself, ourselves, myself. It serves a purely functional purpose, nothing more. People don’t talk about ‘selves’ except as an extrapolation from this, in the same way that people can talk about ‘the I’. This is a constructed concept based on indirect reflexive pronomial usages, not something that starts with any content (beyond ‘whatever it is that we use ‘I’ to indicate pronomially’). Because of this, what it would actually indicate would vary considerably from context to context. Ordinary language shows no evidence of a ‘concept of self’. What it shows is merely a capability of performing pronomial speech acts. And the thing about pronouns is that you don’t have to have a concept of what you are indicating with them; you just need a way to indicate it. One could imagine a philosopher going around saying that we all have this concept, ‘the It’, which we see in expressions like ‘It is raining’ or ‘It’s a nice day’; this would be a perfectly reasonable way to proceed, actually, in a metaphysical discussion of the world or the environment, but the philosopher would be mistaken if he thinks that our talking in such a way indicates any special concept of ‘the It’; the special concept is constructed from our usage, it is not the foundation of it. So with ‘the Self’.
Now, of course, that means we can give such expressions stable content by philosophical refinement and argument. And it does mean that these philosophical concepts have a connection to our everyday linguistic activities. But it would be a serious mistake to think that this means that the philosophical concepts are actually used in our everyday activities; at best the philosophical concepts are useful for explaining after the fact why our everyday activities make sense.
This is the reason, incidentally, for Hume’s famous argument that he looks into his mind and can find no ‘impression of the self’, and why Hume is right as far as that goes. There is no ground whatsoever for saying that we have an ordinary, everyday, intuitive idea of ‘the self’. Any concept of ‘the self’ is philosophically constructed. And there are lots of such constructions.
“you seem to want to treat ‘selves’ in this vague, everyday sense as countable, which it clearly is not, given the level of vagueness ”
Brandon, I don’t follow you. My concept of a tiger is vague, but I can count those.
“‘self’ in this sense is clearly just a placeholder term for whatever happens to meet whatever criteria are relevant at any given moment, without regard to count. And, indeed, this is confirmed by ordinary usage, in which we use ‘self’ and its cognates in a way that is basically pronomial.”
Please explain – I don’t get the placeholder point, or the pronomial point.
I understand your basic claim that *self* is a theoretical concept which must be clearly stipulated, not a natural one with which we find ourselves, but I don’t think that’s right, and I don’t understand stand your grounds for the claim. So, if you have time, please expand.
Sure you do – this is a rough, vague concept we all have.
I’m not convinced there is any such concept. Your four conditions — conscious, acting for reasons, having knowledge, and capable of friendship — are, if taken colloquially (in the vague senses we all are capable of recognizing), easily applicable to human (and animal) groups of any number, but you seem to want to treat ‘selves’ in this vague, everyday sense as countable, which it clearly is not, given the level of vagueness — ‘self’ in this sense is clearly just a placeholder term for whatever happens to meet whatever criteria are relevant at any given moment, without regard to count. And, indeed, this is confirmed by ordinary usage, in which we use ‘self’ and its cognates in a way that is basically pronomial.
So it does look very much like the concept has to be constructed rather than just being intuitive; and if so, Steve’s right at least to the extent that, if you are going to rephrase his view in terms of this concept, you need to tell him how you are constructing it.
oops, a typo in the coding:
Hi Dale, Steve appears to be pointing out that the internal unity of the three persons includes a unified point of view. Perhaps he could explain this more, but I see no confusion in the two respective block quotes. From my perspective, the three divine persons have some degree of unique experiences but they always have the same conclusion apart from the exception of the temporary period when the Son lived on earth with inactive omniscience. Also, if one person of God spoke to creatures then it would be the equivalent of all three speaking as one. The only exception would be the Father and Son dialogs such as the baptism of Jesus that were overheard by others.
Sorry, but I think this is confused.Hi Dale, Steve appears to be pointing out that the internal unity of the three persons includes a unified point of view. Perhaps he could explain this more, but I see no confusion in the two respective block quotes. From my perspective, the three divine persons have some degree of unique experiences but they always have the same conclusion apart from the exception of the temporary period when the Son lived on earth with inactive omniscience. Also, if one person of God spoke to creatures then it would be the equivalent of all three speaking as one. The only exception would be the Father and Son dialogs such as the baptism of Jesus that were overheard by others.
I do not know Steve’s response to this, but the three persons of God and all combinations of them make not a fourfold deity but a sevenfold deity, which is consistent with Revelation 4:5.
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