{"id":64,"date":"2006-11-22T14:28:03","date_gmt":"2006-11-22T14:28:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/archives\/64"},"modified":"2006-11-24T20:46:15","modified_gmt":"2006-11-24T20:46:15","slug":"leftow-2-a-latin-trinity-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/leftow-2-a-latin-trinity-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Leftow 2: “A Latin Trinity” – Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brian Leftow’s “A Latin Trinity”<\/strong> (Faith & Philosophy<\/em><\/a> 21:3, July 2004, 304-33) is a theory of the Trinity which aims to be squarely in the tradition of “Augustine, Boethius, Anselm and Aquinas”. (304) He also cites the Athanasian creed<\/a> and the one from Toledo in 675<\/a> as well. I’m going to treat this challenging article in parts, and do some simplifying and summarizing in order to make it more widely understandable.<\/p>\n

After quoting part of the Athanasian creed, Leftow remarks “Such odd arithmetic needs explaining.” (304) His aim, then, is to show how those claims are in fact “coherent” – neither contradictory nor meaningless, but something Christians may reasonably believe to be true. He’s trying to show that his “Latin trinitarianism” is “monotheist and orthodox” as well, in contrast to “social trinitarian” thought. (307) At the start, he reiterates some of his previous language<\/a> (304-6) – here, he’s going to further clarify his position. I think he succeeds in doing that<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Now come the metaphysical fireworks. Here is Leftow’s central “thought experiment”<\/strong> – a supposedly possible event which will by analogy help us to understand how God can be three Persons in one being or essence.<\/p>\n

\"rockette<\/div>\n

Suppose all the Rockettes<\/a> but one called in sick. But the one healthy one, Jane, secures a time-travel machine. Using this, she puts on a great show, one which is normally done with three dancers. She simply performs the left role, then jumps into the machine, comes out, puts her arm around that other stage of herself dancing the left role, and dances the center role. Repeat again with the right role, and the show is saved.<\/p>\n

[The time-travel machine] lets the one Jane be present at one time many times over, in many ways… It gives us one Jane in many personae.<\/em><\/strong> If we give the name “Rockette” to what we see many of, it lets the one Jane be (or be present in) many Rockettes. [The time-travel machine] does this by freeing the events composing Jane’s life from the general order of time.” (308, original emphasis in italics)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, the million-dollar question is, “Is time travel genuinely possible?<\/strong>” (308) I’d say that many different metaphysical committments arguably prevent one from thinking it is – many committments that I have, and that I’d argue are the default or “common sense” ones. That is, if you believe certain things, it logically follows that our time travelling is contradictory. These include theories like presentism, the belief that we endure rather than perdure (so that we lack temporal parts), belief in an “open” future, and belief in incompatibilist freedom. To you non-metaphysicians, I apologize for the preceding load of jargon. My point here is a simple one: it is far from clear that time travel is non-contradictory, that it could even possibly happen. As far as I know, Leftow is consistent; he doesn’t hold any theses which clearly entail that time-travel is impossible. But many philosophers, like me, do. It isn’t too clear, then, what Leftow is really accomplishing. Isn’t this a case of trying (and failing) to illuminate the obscure by using something even more obscure?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s important to see how “low” Leftow is aiming<\/strong> in this piece.<\/p>\n

I want to suggest by analogy with a time-travel case that it is possible that God be a Latin Trinity. That is, I want to suggest that for all we know, this is how it is with God in some metaphysically possible world. …my claim is only that a Latin doctrine of the Trinity has likenesses to something found in some<\/em> metaphysically possible world. (309)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He isn’t exactly, then, offering a model of God’s nature. He’s just saying – here’s a cosmos-situation which seems<\/em> possible, and for all we know, God’s nature is somewhat like that. This is centrally a defensive project. As we’ll see, he’s content to leave much of the “mystery” intact. So no, he’s not<\/em> saying that God is himself a time-traveller. (310) I don’t think Leftow is merely defensive, though – as we’ll see next time, there is positive content to his claims. A little later in the paper, he ratchets down his aims even lower.<\/p>\n

…even if pastward time travel is impossible, talk about it may help us clarify other, genuinely possible things. (311)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not so sure about the utility of admittedly impossible thought-experiments, but the technically-minded can see his appeal to an example involving intuitionist logic. (311)<\/p>\n

Back to time-travel, Leftow acknowledges that a big threat to our thinking it possible<\/strong> is as follows. If we traveled back to our past, it seems we’d have all the powers we enjoy now. We’d be able, then, to kill our earlier self<\/strong>. But that’s contradictory – if we died back then, how’d we exist in the future, so as to be able to travel back and committ that odd sort of suicide we’re imagining? As an example, suppose that Howard Dean decides today that he’s proud of his infamous scream<\/a> – so proud, in fact, that he wishes it were his last act – he wants to end on such a high note, thus securing his place in history. So, he time-travels back to the celebration of his glorious third-place Iowa primary “victory” in early 2004, and kills his earlier self, right after said scream.<\/p>\n

\n

\"deanScream.jpg\"<\/div>\n
But hold the bus -that’s contradictory, right?<\/div>\n

Leftow says sure – but only because we’re supposing that Dean has libertarian (incompatibilist) freedom. But it’s possible for there to be creatures much like us, except without that sort of freedom. And it’s possible that they exist in a deterministic world which is so arranged that time-travellers may not kill their earlier selves. Hence, it is possible that time-travel occurs. In philosophers’ lingo, there’s a “possible world” in which someone travels in time. (309-10)<\/p>\n

Another much-discussed difficulty is the issue of “causal loops”<\/strong>. He gives an example that involves a knife-fight among the Jane-stages in the above Rockette scenario. (310) But here’s what I think is a more vivid example. Suppose I tell you that I’ve learned how to build a time machine. You ask how I learned that, and I tell you that my future self from the year 2020 travelled back in time to inform me. So the later Dale learned from the earlier Dale… and vice-versa! It seems that my knowledge of time-machine-building hasn’t been explained at all, though! So it looks like time-travel opens up the possibility of bizarre causal loops which lack an explanation. Leftow says, if you think they need an explanation, how about this: God upholds the “loop” in which later-Dale informs earlier-Dale, and is also informed by earlier-Dale. (310-1) I told you this guy was tricky! \ud83d\ude42 So again, we can’t say that time travel is impossible. But even if it were, as he’s noted, that’s ok. Next time: OK, what’s the payoff of all this when it comes to the Trinity?<\/strong>
\nTechnorati Tags: Leftow<\/a>, Latin Trinity<\/a>, Latin trinitarian<\/a>, Anselm<\/a>, Augustine<\/a>, Aquinas<\/a>, Toledo<\/a>, time travel<\/a>, causal loops<\/a>, theology<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brian Leftow’s “A Latin Trinity” (Faith & Philosophy 21:3, July 2004, 304-33) is a theory of the Trinity which aims to be squarely in the tradition of “Augustine, Boethius, Anselm and Aquinas”. (304) He also cites the Athanasian creed and the one from Toledo in 675 as well. I’m going to treat this challenging article… Read More »Leftow 2: “A Latin Trinity” – Part 1<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":66,"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":[9,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-philosophy","category-theories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","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=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}