{"id":100,"date":"2007-06-01T21:57:40","date_gmt":"2007-06-01T21:57:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/archives\/100"},"modified":"2015-01-27T16:48:54","modified_gmt":"2015-01-27T21:48:54","slug":"trinity-monotheism-part-6-attack-of-the-dan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/trinity-monotheism-part-6-attack-of-the-dan\/","title":{"rendered":"Trinity Monotheism part 6: Attack of the Dan"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this post, I’ll take a crack at summarizing a lengthy salvo against Trinity monotheism<\/a> launched by Daniel Howard-Snyder<\/a><\/strong>. Dan is well known and respected for his work on the problem of evil and in theory of knowledge. He has a hard-hitting and thorough style<\/strong>, very Alstonian<\/a> (which is no accident). Generally, Dan is a nice guy, with a good sense of humor to boot. But reportedly this picture was taken of him in his office when he was working on this article.<\/p>\n

\"Daniel
“Daniel Howard-Snyder does not like Trinity Monotheism. I mean, he really does not like Trinity Monotheism!” – Bill Craig (in “Trinity Monotheism Once More: A Response to Daniel Howard-Snyder”, Philosophia Christi 8:1, 2006, 101-13, p. 101)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“Trinity Monotheism” (Philosophia Christi<\/em> 5:2, 2003, 375-403) is long and in parts technical article in which he argues that this theory is an all-around failure. I’ll do my best here to hit the highlights, dumbing down (hopefully accurately!) Dan’s technically precise language.<\/p>\n

Dan sets out what he calls the Challenge of Polytheism<\/strong>. This is: If the Father and Son aren’t identical<\/a>, and yet are each divine, why doesn’t it follow that there are two divinities, that is, two gods? (377) Short answer? According to Moreland and Craig, there are two ways to be “fully divine”<\/strong>. First, one may have the divine nature (God), and second, one may be a part of something which has the divine nature (the Father, etc.). (378-9)<\/p>\n

Dan spends some time puzzling about how their Trinity monotheism could fit with their dualism<\/strong> (belief in souls, in addition to material things). Although they want to say that you and I just are certain souls (immaterial entities), no person of the Trinity is identical with any soul, and so presumably not with any entity at all. (383) This is just to say, that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not things, but rather in some sense modes (my term – not Dan’s or theirs) of a thing, namely, the soul God. That’s right, they are minds, or rational faculties. And God is not, on their view, identical with any person; although it (God) is a soul in which persons or at least “consciousnesses” somehow inhere – that is, it has parts or quasi-parts which are persons. (383-4) Dan highlights other tensions with their dualism as well (383-5), but we need to move on.<\/p>\n

Dan expresses numerous worries about their cat analogy<\/strong> (in the last post<\/a> I put it in terms of a dog), and urges that the analogy does nothing to illustrate a truly orthodox trinitarianism, no matter how it is understood (he goes through several ways.) Basically, he doesn’t know how such an analogy can help them to avoid both polytheism and diminishing the divinity of the persons. (386-90)<\/p>\n

He also claims that the issue of a part\/whole relation is a distraction<\/strong>. Just the Father (etc.) being a part – or something like a part – of the Trinity is not at all what makes the Father wholly divine. Rather, they want to say that the Father is wholly divine because he is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent and so on – because he has the divine attributes. (391-2; cf. 591 of Moreland’s and Craig’s chapter) They want to say that God has these attributes precisely because one or all of the persons do. Moreover, Dan complains, their idea that there are two ways to be “fully divine” remains unclear.<\/strong> (392)<\/p>\n

Yet more objections from Dan:<\/p>\n