{"id":135,"date":"2007-07-03T13:39:42","date_gmt":"2007-07-03T13:39:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/archives\/135"},"modified":"2007-07-03T13:42:43","modified_gmt":"2007-07-03T13:42:43","slug":"constitution-trinitarianism-part-2-craigs-objections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/constitution-trinitarianism-part-2-craigs-objections\/","title":{"rendered":"Constitution Trinitarianism Part 2: Craig’s objections"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the same issue of Faith and Philosophy<\/em> (22:1, Jan 2005, 77-86) Bill Craig<\/a> has a critical response piece.<\/strong> (Available online here<\/a>.) First, he gives a nice and clear summary of their article, more complete than the one I gave last time<\/a>. Then he proceeds to object. As with most philosophical theories, when you start objecting, things start getting complicated, and you start to understand the theory in question better.<\/p>\n

For starters, what do they mean by “the divine essence”<\/strong>? What sort of thing is this which constitutes the persons? Rea answers in an email which Craig quotes:<\/p>\n

All we mean to commit ourselves to is the idea that maybe the Persons are like a hylomorphic [form plus matter] structure: there’s something…we call it the “divine essence”… that plays the role of commonly shared matter, and, for each Person, something else that plays the role of form. (80)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You see, sometimes we think of things or objects as constituting other objects (as in my Ned and Lumpy example from last time), but also, going back to Aristotle, there’s a tradition of saying that “matter” together with a certain “form” or organization amount to a physical object. So here, an object would be constituted by a portion of matter, and the object would be a “hylomorphic compound” – something which can be analyzed (at least in thought) into two ingredients – the stuff and the shape of that stuff. Brower and Rea want to say that (e.g.) the Son is such a compound – the “form” being Sonship and the “matter” being something like an immaterial stuff, namely “the divine essence”.<\/strong> Of course, they admit, theology ought not posit a material<\/em> stuff in God. They’re just saying that the divine persons are analogous to<\/em>hylomorphic compounds, and so they must share something analogous to<\/em> a stuff. Craig objects that the ancient tradition (Fathers and councils) “did not mean that God or the persons of the Trinity were composed of some sort of spiritual stuff” when they said that the three were “same substance” (homoousias<\/em>). Moreover, Craig objects, the notion of immaterial stuff seems incoherent. (80)<\/p>\n

Brower and Rea hold that the basic puzzle of the Trinity is that there’s only one God, but there are three distinct (non-identical) persons each of which “is” God. They say – no problem – our theory smoothes it all out by saying what that “is” amounts to. Each of the three “is” God<\/strong> in the sense of being numerically the same as (but not identical to) God, as well as to each other. That’s compatible with their only being one God, and with the none of the three being identical to either of the others. Craig says not so fast. One portion of matter can’t simultaneously have incompatible properties<\/strong> – the portion forming Ned the gnome, for instance, can’t simultaneously be gnome-shaped, and shaped like a 747 jet plane. But are not being a Father and being a Son incompatible properties? If so, how can one something-like-an-immaterial-stuff simultaneously have both? (82-3) Why think those properties are incompatible? Craig points out that the Son can truly think “I died on a cross” but the Father cannot truly think that.<\/p>\n

I’ll skip the last two pages of Craig’s critique, as it’s a little compressed, and I’m not sure I follow some of it. The parts I do follow, I’ll raise in a future post.<\/p>\n

Technorati Tags: William Lane Craig<\/a>, Mike Rea<\/a>, Jeff Brower<\/a>, lump and statue<\/a>, identity<\/a>, numerical sameness<\/a>, material constitution<\/a>, form<\/a>, matter<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the same issue of Faith and Philosophy (22:1, Jan 2005, 77-86) Bill Craig has a critical response piece. (Available online here.) First, he gives a nice and clear summary of their article, more complete than the one I gave last time. Then he proceeds to object. As with most philosophical theories, when you start… Read More »Constitution Trinitarianism Part 2: Craig’s objections<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy","category-theories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}