So next up ch.17. Here it is short and sweet:<\/p>\n
Supreme happiness requires that if there is at least one divine person, there are at least two divine persons. Suppose, in divinity, there is only one person. Then (1) this person gives supreme love to no one and receives supreme love from no one. (2) Such a person lacks the pleasure of love that one draws from another. (3) But nothing is better than such pleasure. So such a person, who lacks such supreme pleasure, isn\u2019t supremely happy. (4) But any divine person, being perfect, is supremely happy. Therefore, supreme happiness requires that if there is at least one divine person, there are at least two divine persons.<\/p>\n
A few comments:<\/p>\n
Re (1): This assumes again that with a divine person supreme love is only between divine persons, who are equally perfect.<\/p>\n
Re (2): This assumes again that the pleasure of love requires love.<\/p>\n
Re (3) and (4): I wonder what exactly Richard means by happiness. My guess is that he means something like Aristotle\u2019s eudamonia<\/em> where someone is happy only if overall they are a success in life. Richard seems to think that supreme happiness includes supreme pleasure so that someone who has supreme happiness couldn\u2019t have more pleasure. Is that right? I believe that God has pleasure: just because many of his desires are satisfied. But I\u2019m also inclined to think that God suffers, not in the sense that he is affected by things contrary to his will. But rather God suffers in the sense that some of his desires are frustrated, e.g. because we freely do things or things occur as a result of such, that God desires we didn\u2019t do or that didn\u2019t occur. Now just because God suffers doesn\u2019t mean he doesn\u2019t have supreme pleasure. But I can\u2019t help wondering whether if things had gone differently with some of our choices and their results, God might have had more pleausure than he actually does. But I\u2019m also pretty sure that Richard needn\u2019t base the claim that God has the pleasure love brings on the claim that God has supreme pleasure. Couldn\u2019t he get that from the claims that God is supremely good and that the pleasure love brings is a supreme good that God needn\u2019t forego for some contrary good that is equally good?<\/p>\n That’s it. After this, ch.18. Notice again we are building our way up to three divine persons. In ch.16 we had an argument about one divine person. In ch.17 we have an argument for at least two divine persons (if God exists). And in chs.18-19 we will have an argument for at least three divine persons (if God exists).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So next up ch.17. Here it is short and sweet: Supreme happiness requires that if there is at least one divine person, there are at least two divine persons. Suppose, in divinity, there is only one person. Then (1) this person gives supreme love to no one and receives supreme love from no one. (2)… Read More »Richard of St. Victor’s De Trinitate, Ch.17 (Joseph)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"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":[16,14,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-history","category-theologians"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1363"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1364,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions\/1364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}