{"id":2856,"date":"2011-06-28T07:53:39","date_gmt":"2011-06-28T11:53:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=2856"},"modified":"2015-07-27T15:17:54","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T19:17:54","slug":"what-is-the-trinity-a-dialogue-with-steve-hays-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/what-is-the-trinity-a-dialogue-with-steve-hays-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the Trinity? A Dialogue with Steve Hays \u2013 Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-2858\" style=\"border: 20px solid white;\" title=\"listen\" src=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/listen.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"375\" height=\"390\" srcset=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/listen.jpg 375w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/listen-288x300.jpg 288w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/listen-90x94.jpg 90w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 375px) 100vw, 375px\" \/><a title=\"last post\" href=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/archives\/2837\" target=\"_blank\">Last time<\/a>, what I thought I heard from Steve was this (this is my summary):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In sum, the one God is a perfect being, a perfect self, who is the Trinity. He has within himself three parts \u2013 the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each of these parts fully has the (universal) divine nature, and so, each of the essential divine attributes. Each is a divine self. And these three parts are indistinguishable from one another, or nearly so, though they be numerically distinct.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Steve has now responded twice, <a title=\"Parsing the Trinity\" href=\"http:\/\/triablogue.blogspot.com\/2011\/06\/parsing-trinity.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> and <a title=\"Who was Isaiah talking about?\" href=\"http:\/\/triablogue.blogspot.com\/2011\/06\/who-was-isaiah-talking-about.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. These contain a lot of extraneous material, which I&#8217;ll pass by. My question is, <strong>what did I get wrong <\/strong>above? Here&#8217;s what I hear (bulleted):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>No, the Persons are not <em>exactly<\/em> alike. Each has a property the other two lack.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;they share a \u201cnumerically identical\u201d nature&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Right &#8211; &#8220;nearly so.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Because he says this nature is shared, I&#8217;m going to infer that it is a universal &#8211; something capable of being had by multiple subjects.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>He wonders why I&#8217;m hearing things in terms of part and whole.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Steve, it&#8217;s not because you think God has multiple attributes. (Yes, I too reject the classical doctrine of simplicity, though I don&#8217;t think God has parts.) Rather, I&#8217;m<strong> trying to figure out <\/strong>what the relation is, in your view, between God\/The Trinity and those three Persons. If it isn&#8217;t whole-parts, help me out!<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Persons are so alike that any one &#8220;represents&#8221; either of the others.<\/li>\n<li>I don&#8217;t know what Tuggy means by &#8220;self.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sure you do <!--more-->&#8211; this is <strong>a rough, vague concept we all have.<\/strong> It is a thing which is conscious (yes, of self as well as other things), which can act for a reason (can choose, has a will), which is intelligent (has knowledge), and which can engage in friendship. If you speak to something, and think it may understand, even speak back, you think it is a self. Thus, I submit that you think God is a self, as I assume you speak to him. You sort of say that any divine person will be <strong>only analogous<\/strong> to a <em>human<\/em> self. Well, sure. But we have a more abstract concept of a self (which doesn&#8217;t imply being a human, or even being created, or having a body) which we should both agree is satisfied by, e.g. the Father.<\/p>\n<p>I think <strong>I <em>basically<\/em> got his view right<\/strong>: there are four divine selves: God (The Trinity), the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. This is confirmed by what he says after noting that in his view, each \u00a0Person of the Trinity has a first-person point of view:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Finally, wouldn\u2019t their individual viewpoints include a corporate viewpoint? If God is a Trinity, then I\u2019d expect the Son (to take one example) to have both an individual viewpoint (\u201cI\u2019m the Son\u201d) and a corporate viewpoint (\u201cWe\u2019re the Trinity\u201d). The constituent members would also have a Trinitarian viewpoint, for they collectively constitute the Trinity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This <strong>&#8220;corporate viewpoint&#8221;<\/strong> must have an owner, a subject, and that can only be the Trinity &#8211; that complex self. Why? e.g. the Son is not a we, but a he. But he adds,<\/p>\n<div>\n<blockquote><p>This is true even in human social relations, where, by contrast, we\u2019re dealing with truly discrete individuals or separate entities. I have an individual viewpoint as a unique individual with a unique experience, but I also have a corporate viewpoint as a man, a Christian, a baby-boomer, an American, &amp;c.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<blockquote><p>If both perspectives are sustainable for self-contained beings like me, surely that\u2019s sustainable in the case of God, where the persons of the Godhead are internally related.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<p>Sorry, but I think this is confused. If I think, as an American, that football beats the crap out of soccer, that&#8217;s just another first-person point of view. It is just that the explanation for my having it, we&#8217;re assuming, is that I&#8217;m an American. The analogy would rather be this: just as each American has a first person perspective, so does America. So in his view, if e.g. the Son has a viewpoint as member of the Trinity, that just means that some subjective state of his is caused or explained by his relations to the Father and Spirit. This would be a three-self view of the Trinity, not a four-self view, which I think Steve holds to. But I&#8217;m sticking with the four-self interpretation, which is what I take it he thinks, or usually thinks.<\/p>\n<p>He emphasizes that this is <strong>theological speculation<\/strong>, which it surely is. But I was asking what this Trinity theory is, which makes such great sense out of the Bible, better sense than any rival theory. I take it that this is it. If he wants to clarify further the relation between Trinity and the members of it, I&#8217;m all ears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last time, what I thought I heard from Steve was this (this is my summary): In sum, the one God is a perfect being, a perfect self, who is the Trinity. He has within himself three parts \u2013 the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each of these parts fully has the (universal) divine&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/what-is-the-trinity-a-dialogue-with-steve-hays-part-2\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">What is the Trinity? A Dialogue with Steve Hays \u2013 Part 2<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2858,"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":[21,8,38,9,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible","category-linkage","category-monotheism","category-philosophy","category-theories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2856","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=2856"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35834,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2856\/revisions\/35834"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}