{"id":752,"date":"2009-04-08T05:54:18","date_gmt":"2009-04-08T09:54:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=752"},"modified":"2009-12-28T21:01:16","modified_gmt":"2009-12-29T02:01:16","slug":"arius-and-athanasius-part-10-the-father-and-son-cant-share-all-their-properties-jt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/arius-and-athanasius-part-10-the-father-and-son-cant-share-all-their-properties-jt\/","title":{"rendered":"Arius and Athanasius, part 10 – The Father and Son can’t share all their properties (JT)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Son,
Son, I know you want it, but you just can't have my triangle.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last time<\/a>, I explained that Athanasius has not made it clear how the Son ‘inherits’ divine properties from the Father. Yet even if Athanasius could explain how the Son \u2018inherits\u2019 properties from the Father, there\u2019s still another problem. Like Arius, Athanasius believes that the Father is simple, and so anything \u2018in\u2019 the Father is, strictly speaking, identical to the Father. If the Son is going to inherit any properties from the Father, then surely he\u2019d have to inherit them all. As Athanasius himself realizes, it\u2019s not a question of the Son inheriting part of the Father. It\u2019s a question of all or none.<\/p>\n

However, there are certain properties the Son cannot inherit from the Father, on pain of contradiction.\tFor instance, the Son cannot inherit the Father\u2019s unbegotteness. The Son is begotten, but the Father is not, so the can\u2019t inherit the Father\u2019s unbegotteness without entailing a contradiction.<\/p>\n

We get a similar problem if we focus our attention on the Father\u2019s fatherhood. If the Son inherited the Father\u2019s fatherhood, he would be the Father of himself. But the Son is not the Father of himself, so we\u2019d get a contradiction here too.<\/p>\n

One might interject that the Son only inherits God\u2019s essential properties, and not, say, his fatherhood. Unfortunately, Athanasius frequently says that the Father (who, recall, is God) is essentially a Father. When he says this, he is reacting to Arius. As Athanasius sees it, Arius seems to think that God became<\/em> a Father when he begat the Son, and that implies that God can change (e.g., from not being a Father to being a Father). But since God cannot change, Athanasius insists that the Father is essentially<\/em> a Father.<\/p>\n

I take it, then, that Athanasius thinks the Father\u2019s essential properties include his fatherhood in addition to divine properties like omnipotence, goodness, and so forth. If the Son inherits the Father\u2019s nature, however, then surely the Son would inherit all the Father\u2019s essential properties (including his fatherhood).<\/p>\n

Thus, it looks as if the Father\u2019s simplicity means that the Son must inherit all or none of the Father\u2019s properties. But since there\u2019s at least one or two properties that the Son can\u2019t inherit, it would seem to follow that the Son can\u2019t inherit any of the Father\u2019s properties. Unless Athanasius can offer a principled way to explain why the Son only inherits some of the Father\u2019s properties but not others, then his theory will collapse into contradictions and impossibility.<\/p>\n

(I\u2019ve focused my attention here on divine properties like omnipotence and goodness, but those aren\u2019t the only properties I wonder about. What about God\u2019s intellect and will? Does Athanasius think the Son inherits the Father\u2019s intellect and will too? If Athanasius can\u2019t explain how the Son gets his intellect and will, then how could the Son be a person<\/em>? Surely a person has to have an intellect and will.)<\/p>\n

Next time (which is the last post<\/a> in this series), I will conclude with some general questions about divine production.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last time, I explained that Athanasius has not made it clear how the Son ‘inherits’ divine properties from the Father. Yet even if Athanasius could explain how the Son \u2018inherits\u2019 properties from the Father, there\u2019s still another problem. Like Arius, Athanasius believes that the Father is simple, and so anything \u2018in\u2019 the Father is, strictly… Read More »Arius and Athanasius, part 10 – The Father and Son can’t share all their properties (JT)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":792,"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":[29,26,39,24,22],"class_list":["post-752","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-generation","tag-nicea","tag-trinity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752","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=752"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1158,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752\/revisions\/1158"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}