{"id":1376,"date":"2010-01-15T04:17:33","date_gmt":"2010-01-15T09:17:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=1376"},"modified":"2010-01-16T22:36:24","modified_gmt":"2010-01-17T03:36:24","slug":"richard-of-st-victor%e2%80%99s-de-trinitate-ch-20-dale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/richard-of-st-victor%e2%80%99s-de-trinitate-ch-20-dale\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard of St. Victor\u2019s De Trinitate, Ch. 20 (Dale)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"threeAs Joseph explained in his last post<\/a>, in his On the Trinity<\/em><\/a>, Richard of St. Victor asserts the superiority of “shared love”<\/strong> (Latin: condilectus<\/em>). He holds that it is superior to other loves in value and in the pleasure it involves. He’s imagining something like my chart on the left.<\/p>\n

Look at the bottom case, and how the love arrows combine; this seems to be what Richard is imagining (see the quote in the last post). I don’t think it’s coherent<\/strong>, really – affections, or individual love-acts can’t literally fuse. Nor do I understand any non-literal way they can be said to “fuse”.<\/p>\n

Still, I’m inclined to agree with Joseph and with Richard Swinburne that there is a unique value in lovers cooperating to love a third party<\/strong>. This is something we recognize, I think, in Mom and Dad’s love for junior, or even in “best friends” graciously including an excluded girl within their circle.<\/p>\n

Further, I think Richard of St. Victor is right that there is\u00a0a relational harmony and cooperation in such cases, and a unique sort of pleasure all around.<\/p>\n

Whether this value would provide a perfect person with a compelling reason to create<\/span> mysteriously originate at least two other divine persons is a further matter.<\/p>\n

In chapter 20, Richard makes clear that my chart here is too simple<\/strong> – there should be a complex combined arrow connecting each pair to the third; where my chart has one (I got lazy, OK?) it ought to have three – one pointing at each person. But there are more love-fusions than what we’ve mentioned so far.<\/p>\n

If the creation is considered, there the cord of love is tripled so that where suspicion concerning a defect of love could arise more easily, certitude is made more firm by greater confederation. (ch. 20, p. 393<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So in their love for the cosmos, imagine three love arrows coming out of the persons, and sort of twisting together<\/strong> to make one thicker, three-strand love arrow. I don’t follow his point here, though I understand the fusion he’s imagining. At the end chapter, he lamely suggests that one unconvinced by all of this would seem to be insane. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Joseph explained in his last post, in his On the Trinity, Richard of St. Victor asserts the superiority of “shared love” (Latin: condilectus). He holds that it is superior to other loves in value and in the pleasure it involves. He’s imagining something like my chart on the left. Look at the bottom case,… Read More »Richard of St. Victor\u2019s De Trinitate, Ch. 20 (Dale)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1375,"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":[16,14,9,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-history","category-philosophy","category-theories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1376","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=1376"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1385,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1376\/revisions\/1385"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}