{"id":23758,"date":"2015-01-09T12:32:44","date_gmt":"2015-01-09T17:32:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=23758"},"modified":"2015-01-09T13:48:30","modified_gmt":"2015-01-09T18:48:30","slug":"dr-randal-rauser-interviews-dr-michael-c-rea-on-the-trinity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/dr-randal-rauser-interviews-dr-michael-c-rea-on-the-trinity\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Randal Rauser interviews Dr. Michael C. Rea on the Trinity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Rauser interview Rea about the Trinity\" href=\"http:\/\/randalrauser.com\/2014\/12\/does-the-trinity-make-sense-a-conversation-with-michael-rea\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Here<\/strong><\/a><strong>.<\/strong> It&#8217;s an excellent, substantial discussion, posted in December 2014.\u00a0If you don&#8217;t know <a title=\"Mike Rea home page\" href=\"http:\/\/www3.nd.edu\/~mrea\/\" target=\"_blank\">who Dr. Rea is<\/a>, he&#8217;s a leading Christian philosopher, specializing in metaphysics, and co-coiner of the useful\u00a0term<strong> &#8220;analytic theology.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s <strong>a rough\u00a0guide to the interview<\/strong>, in case you want to skip around, or review after the fact, with a few sparse comments<em> in italics<\/em>.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1-12:20 Randal reads quotes about how difficult a subject the Trinity is. Dr. Rea admits that it is <strong><em>apparently<\/em> contradictory<\/strong>, and makes the point that if you have good reasons to believe something, you don&#8217;t reasonably abandon it upon first discovering an apparent contradiction.\n<ul>\n<li><em>Quite true. But can a Christian get to a point where it&#8217;s no longer reasonable?\u00a0Anomalies eventually force one to either suspend judgement, find a way around, or re-evaluate the evidence.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>12:15 &#8211; 15:43 Augustinian <strong>psychological analogies<\/strong>. Bad.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-23759\" src=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/cerberus-dog.jpg\" alt=\"cerberus dog\" width=\"464\" height=\"310\" srcset=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/cerberus-dog.jpg 800w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/cerberus-dog-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/cerberus-dog-420x280.jpg 420w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/cerberus-dog-460x307.jpg 460w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/cerberus-dog-90x60.jpg 90w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 464px) 100vw, 464px\" \/><\/li>\n<li>15:43 &#8211; 19:29 <strong>split brain experiment analogies<\/strong> as discussed by Trenton Merricks, and &#8220;consubstantial.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>19:30 &#8211; 27:06 \u00a0<strong>Cerberus<\/strong> (the mythical three-headed dog) and other <strong>part-whole analogies.<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Dr. Rea says some surprising and interesting things here.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>And he lodges some <strong>strong objections<\/strong> to the Trinity theory of William Lane Craig.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-23760\" src=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/gumby.jpg\" alt=\"gumby\" width=\"192\" height=\"405\" srcset=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/gumby.jpg 354w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/gumby-142x300.jpg 142w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/gumby-90x190.jpg 90w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 192px) 100vw, 192px\" \/><strong>27:07 &#8211; 32:57 Dr. Rea expounds his own view<\/strong>. This is where our friend <strong>Gumby<\/strong> comes into it. \ud83d\ude42 Gumby and his clay are not the same thing, but are the same material object. (He&#8217;s applying his views on the metaphysics of\u00a0<strong>constitution<\/strong> and material objects here.)\u00a0Similarly, we\u00a0count hand and fist as\u00a0one material object (but two things) &#8211; the hand constitutes the fist. Though God is not a material object, he contains something like matter (his divine nature) and form (the defining properties of the Persons) &#8211; so we&#8217;ll count one God, and three Persons &#8211; one divine nature formed in three different ways. Each Person is constituted by the one nature.\n<ul>\n<li><em>It&#8217;s not clear to me, still, whether he means it to be a <a title=\"rational reinterpretation explained\" href=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?s=rational+reinterpretation\" target=\"_blank\">rational reinterpretation<\/a>, or merely one of many half-decent analogies<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>32:58:Dr. Rauser asks: but is this <strong>monotheism<\/strong>? If the whole Greek pantheon is divine, that&#8217;s not monotheism, right? Dr. Rea &#8211; no, it wouldn&#8217;t be. But that nature would be divided &#8211; in the Trinity, the divine nature (the &#8220;Godhead&#8221;) is undivided in space and time (or space-time).<\/li>\n<li>34:25 Dr. Rauser: But isn&#8217;t there a <strong>division<\/strong> in the Incarnation? Dr. Rea: no. What if there were multiple incarnations? Hard to say&#8230; is that even possible? What about the &#8220;<strong>Trinitophany<\/strong>&#8221; in Genesis 18? No incarnation there, much less three of them. Maybe it&#8217; be analogous to human time travel.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>If you want to think through<\/strong> Dr. Rea&#8217;s Trinity theory, here are some materials to work with:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>here&#8217;s his original co-authored paper, <a title=\"Michael C. Rea papers\" href=\"http:\/\/www3.nd.edu\/~mrea\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Material Constitution and the Trinity&#8221;<\/a> (under Research, 2005). See also &#8220;Understanding the Trinity&#8221; there.<\/li>\n<li>here&#8217;s\u00a0<a title=\"relative identity Trinity theories \" href=\"http:\/\/plato.stanford.edu\/entries\/trinity\/#RelIde\" target=\"_blank\">a summary by me<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>And here&#8217;s <a title=\"Constitution Trinitarianism: An Appraisal, by Dale Tuggy\" href=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/dale\/CT%20preprint%20-%20Tuggy.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">my own critical evaluation<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>On belief in apparent contradictions, see this <a title=\"Tuggy on mysterianism\" href=\"http:\/\/plato.stanford.edu\/entries\/trinity\/#Mys\" target=\"_blank\">introduction <\/a>and <a title=\"On Positive Mysterianism\" href=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/dale\/On%20Positive%20Mysterianism.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">this critical evaluation<\/a> of Dr. James Anderson&#8217;s developed mysterianism.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here. It&#8217;s an excellent, substantial discussion, posted in December 2014.\u00a0If you don&#8217;t know who Dr. Rea is, he&#8217;s a leading Christian philosopher, specializing in metaphysics, and co-coiner of the useful\u00a0term &#8220;analytic theology.&#8221; Here&#8217;s a rough\u00a0guide to the interview, in case you want to skip around, or review after the fact, with a few sparse comments&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/dr-randal-rauser-interviews-dr-michael-c-rea-on-the-trinity\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Dr. Randal Rauser interviews Dr. Michael C. Rea on the Trinity<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27047,"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":[15,58,4,33,56,8,20,9,7,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christology","category-creeds","category-heresy-orthodoxy","category-incarnation","category-interview","category-linkage","category-mystery","category-philosophy","category-quotes","category-theories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23758","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=23758"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27050,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23758\/revisions\/27050"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}