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“Gee Hank, it sure is swell that communism won out. In the last post<\/a>, I pointed out some of the problems faced by an Athanasian sort of derivation view. If you found such problems to be decisive, then alternatively you could opt for a generic view. In this post, I would like to introduce the generic view.<\/p>\n As I mentioned in the first post<\/a>, the generic view claims that Divinity belongs equally to the three persons, similar to how three people might jointly own the same house. Divinity thus belongs to no one divine person any more than another. The generic view (let’s call this GV) rejects DV in favor of this:<\/p>\n (GV) \tDivinity belongs equally to each divine person.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n For both the derivation and the generic views of the trinity, Divinity is an entity that’s shared by the persons. On (the Athanasian version of) the derivation view, this shared entity just is the Father<\/em>, but on the generic view, this shared entity is not the Father. The Father isn’t shared, Divinity is.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There are various ways to fill this out. One option is to say that Divinity is like a constituent that’s shared by all three divine persons. So long as Divinity belongs equally to all three persons and so does not belong to one person more than the others, it’s a generic view.<\/p>\n Another option is to say that Divinity is like a kind-nature. Just as the generic set of human properties (e.g., animality, rationality, etc.) make something human, so too would Divinity be a generic set of divine properties\/tropes\/etc. (e.g., the divine attributes) which make something divine.<\/p>\n The Cappadocians<\/a> (especially Gregory of Nyssa) probably held this latter view. They are known for the claim that in God there is one ousia<\/em> and three hypostases<\/em>, where a hypostasis<\/em> is a concrete substance\/person, and the ousia<\/em> is the divine kind-nature shared by the three hypostases<\/em>\/persons, similar to the way that three humans (hypostases<\/em>) share one kind-nature (ousia<\/em>).<\/p>\n This might suggest that there are three Gods just as there are three humans. Whether or not that’s right depends on Gregory’s views on universals (kind-natures), and there’s a debate about that in the literature. For convenience, let’s just assume that Gregory and the other Cappadocians think Divinity is numerically one undivided thing that is shared by all three persons. What makes theirs a generic view is just that Divinity is shared equally by all three persons and so does not belong to one divine person more than the others.<\/p>\n The Cappadocian ‘generic view’ is very different from Athanasius’ ‘derivation view’. Athanasius was writing in the mid-4th century, and the Cappadocians were writing at the end of the 4th century. Athanasius was writing to defend the Council of Nicea<\/a> in 325, and the Cappadocians were active around the time of the next major Council, that of Constantinople<\/a> in 381 (the Council where Q was dropped). It would appear, then, that in the 4th century, there was a general shift from the derivation view to the generic view.<\/p>\n Of course, that’s a very sweeping generalization that a real historian would have solid grounds for denying. It’s not obvious that there was any ‘standard’ view in the 4th century, nonetheless that Athanasius’ and the Cappadocian views were ‘standard’. But still, older patristics textbooks have propogated the story of a shift from the ‘derivation view’ to the ‘generic view’, so we do run into it every once in a while.<\/p>\n In the next post, I will discuss some of the issues faced by a generic view.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Gee Hank, it sure is swell that communism won out. This house belongs to all of us!” In the last post, I pointed out some of the problems faced by an Athanasian sort of derivation view. If you found such problems to be decisive, then alternatively you could opt for a generic view. In this… Read More »Derivation vs. Generic Theories \u2013 part 5: The Generic View (JT)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":316,"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":[4,14,13,3],"tags":[29,26,25,30,31,28,24,27,23,22],"class_list":["post-315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-heresy-orthodoxy","category-history","category-theologians","category-theories","tag-arius","tag-athanasius","tag-creed","tag-derivation-view","tag-generic-view","tag-gregory-of-nyssa","tag-nicea","tag-the-cappadocians","tag-theology","tag-trinity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThis house belongs to all of us!”<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n