{"id":2872,"date":"2011-06-29T11:26:26","date_gmt":"2011-06-29T15:26:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=2872"},"modified":"2015-07-27T15:07:14","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T19:07:14","slug":"what-is-the-trinity-a-dialogue-with-steve-hays-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/what-is-the-trinity-a-dialogue-with-steve-hays-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the Trinity? A Dialogue with Steve Hays &#8211; Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-2873\" title=\"paint_corner\" src=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/paint_corner.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"382\" height=\"367\" srcset=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/paint_corner.jpg 382w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/paint_corner-300x288.jpg 300w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/paint_corner-90x86.jpg 90w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 382px) 100vw, 382px\" \/>Yet <a title=\"Hays post &quot;Blessed Quaternity&quot;\" href=\"http:\/\/triablogue.blogspot.com\/2011\/06\/blessed-quaternity.html\" target=\"_blank\">another round from Steve Hays<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This is my <strong>last entry<\/strong> in the discussion; I may or may not comment, but no more posts.<\/p>\n<p>Again, this is what I hear from him:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Yes, the divine nature <em>is <\/em>a universal, shared by the Three. But let&#8217;s not make any Platonic assumptions about forms\/universals being in some other realm than what has them, or being more fundamental.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Indeed, let&#8217;s not.<\/p>\n<p>Are the persons <em>parts <\/em>of the Trinity, for him?<\/p>\n<p>He brings up the <a title=\"Mandelbrot set\" href=\"http:\/\/mathworld.wolfram.com\/MandelbrotSet.html\" target=\"_blank\">Mandelbrot set<\/a>. This is an abstract object. It doesn&#8217;t have parts, but rather members. Is he suggesting that the Trinity is a set, with members rather than parts? That it has infinite members? I don&#8217;t know.<\/p>\n<p>Then, a digression about analogy. Of course, my point was: <strong>don&#8217;t you think God is <em>literally <\/em>a self?<\/strong> (Not: Is God<em> analogous to<\/em> a self?)<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps he assumes that all terms that apply to God do so only analogically?\u00a0I think that&#8217;s obviously false; we have terms that express concepts abstract to be satisfied by either God or a creature. e.g. &#8220;exists,&#8221; &#8220;conscious,&#8221; &#8220;similar to God.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Or maybe he&#8217;s just worried about<strong> painting himself into the Quaternity corner<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I think Tuggy is now insinuating that the Trinity devolves into the Quaternity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There goes that Tuggy again,<strong> insinuating things<\/strong> about <em>the <\/em>doctrine!\u00a0No, the subject is just: what Steve Hays thinks.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Trinity would not be a \u201cself\u201d in the same sense that the constituent members are \u201cselves.\u201d The Trinity is not a fourth person, over and above the three persons. Rather, each person is conscious of what the other two are conscious of. Not just that each person is conscious of the other two persons, but conscious of their consciousness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>So no, the Trinity isn&#8217;t a self in the same sense each person is<\/strong>. This conveniently leaves it an open question whether or not it is a self in any other sense, and whether it&#8217;s literally a self, or only analogous to a self.<\/p>\n<p>But perhaps his final answer is that it (the Trinity) really is an it, not a he.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The \u201cowner\u201d of the \u201ccorporate viewpoint\u201d is each member of the Trinity. That\u2019s because each person not only has his own first-person viewpoint, but is also privy to the viewpoint of the other two.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>I conclude, then, that in his view there are three, not four conscious beings here<\/strong>, and three points of view. It&#8217;s just that each also can (and always does, I assume) adopt the viewpoint of both the others.<\/p>\n<p>About his &#8220;data&#8221; of revelation; he&#8217;s unable to see that some of these are precisely what are at issue. In other words, he begs the question, because he&#8217;s not able to adopt the perspective of those he would refute.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Now, finally: I switch to brief criticism:\u00a0<\/strong>This looks to me basically like a poorly developed &#8220;social&#8221; Trinity theory.\u00a0We have three beings here, each of which fully has the property of divinity. Thus, it looks like we have <strong>three gods<\/strong>. Yes, I know that surely he <em>intends<\/em> it to be monotheistic. So, the theory seems inconsistent.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What is the Trinity?<\/strong> A group? A composite thing? A set with members? A quasi-self? He doesn&#8217;t know. But it <em>seems <\/em>that he wants to deny the one God to literally be a self. If so, he goes hard against the Bible, throughout. God knows, acts, gets mad, makes and carries out plans, stands in an I-thou relationship to Jesus, as well as to disciples of Jesus. Further, I&#8217;m willing to bet that like just about all Christians, he interacts with God as a self to a self.<\/p>\n<p>Evidently, Steve hopes that positing<strong> perfect mental access<\/strong> between the three deities will somehow imply their being one god. But, that has not been shown. It looks like a picture of three gods with perfect access to each others&#8217; minds.<\/p>\n<p>I think this is all a poor fit with the Bible.<\/p>\n<p>But laying aside that, <strong>is it creedally orthodox? Not clear<\/strong>. While the creeds say that all three must be &#8220;homoousios&#8221;, they also say that the Son is true God <em>from <\/em>true God. In Steve&#8217;s theory, does the Son derive his existence or divinity from the Father? I don&#8217;t know. All he&#8217;s said is that all three equally and fully possess divinity. So, I don&#8217;t know if his theory is orthodox by (small-c) catholic standards.<\/p>\n<p><em>Update: as of 7\/5\/11, lots more long posts, with lots of accusations, flailing away to find some obvious confusion in my own views, but never addressing this monotheism objection. To the creedal worry, his answer is that being a Protestant, he doesn&#8217;t care if it is creedal or not. Fair enough. I&#8217;ve commented quite a bit over there, probably too much.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yet another round from Steve Hays. This is my last entry in the discussion; I may or may not comment, but no more posts. Again, this is what I hear from him: Yes, the divine nature is a universal, shared by the Three. But let&#8217;s not make any Platonic assumptions about forms\/universals being in some&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/what-is-the-trinity-a-dialogue-with-steve-hays-part-3\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">What is the Trinity? A Dialogue with Steve Hays &#8211; Part 3<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2873,"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":[21,6,54,4,38,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible","category-complaints","category-debates","category-heresy-orthodoxy","category-monotheism","category-theories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2872","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=2872"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35830,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2872\/revisions\/35830"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}