{"id":823,"date":"2012-04-03T09:44:23","date_gmt":"2012-04-03T13:44:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=823"},"modified":"2015-03-09T14:24:39","modified_gmt":"2015-03-09T18:24:39","slug":"sabellianism-reconsidered-considered-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/sabellianism-reconsidered-considered-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Sabellianism Reconsidered&#8221; Considered &#8211; Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0051077\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px; border: 11px solid white;\" src=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/three-faces.jpg\" alt=\"Three modes, one mentally ill self.\" width=\"396\" height=\"314\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\"><small><\/small><strong>Dr. Harriet Baber (aka H.E. Baber)<\/strong> teaches philosophy at the University of San Diego, and has been active for many years in the Society of Christian Philosophers. She&#8217;s published <a href=\"http:\/\/home.sandiego.edu\/%7Ebaber\/research\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">a number of papers<\/a> on gender, philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and other topics. I met her in the 1990s at an SCP conference in California, and I have always found her to be funny, smart, and independent-minded. And judging by <a href=\"http:\/\/home.sandiego.edu\/%7Ebaber\/\" target=\"_blank\">her website<\/a> theme, I gather she likes to do shots of&#8230; some sort of grass juice. \ud83d\ude42 More relevantly, I believe she&#8217;s a lifelong Episcopalian.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\">Here I want to review her provocative &#8220;<strong><a title=\"Baber, &quot;Sabellianism Reconsidered&quot; at her home page\" href=\"http:\/\/home.sandiego.edu\/~baber\/research\/sabellianism.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Sabellianism Reconsidered<\/a><\/strong>&#8221; (<em>Sophia<\/em> 41:2, Oct 2002, 1-18.)<\/div>\n<p>Her starting point is this argument:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>1. There is only one God.<br \/>\n2. The Father is God.<br \/>\n3. The Son is God.<br \/>\n4. Therefore, the Father is the Son. (p. 1)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>She (I think, justifiably) brushes aside &#8220;relative identity&#8221; escapes from this argument.\u00a0 (I won&#8217;t open this can of worms here; the curious can see <a title=\"Relative Identity @ SEP &quot;Trinity&quot;\" href=\"http:\/\/plato.stanford.edu\/entries\/trinity\/#RelIdeThe\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.) She argues that a theologically adequate theory of the Trinity must meet<strong> four conditions<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>(i) secure the distinctness of the Persons, (ii) maintain monotheism, (iii) affirm that each&#8230; Person of the Trinity is God and (iv) affirm that the Trinity of Persons is God. Arguably Sabellianism as I shall understand it meets all these conditions and [in contrast to relative identity theories] does not require any <em>ad hoc<\/em> philosophical commitments. (p. 2)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em>Next time: What is this wonderful &#8220;Sabellianism&#8221;?<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr. Harriet Baber (aka H.E. Baber) teaches philosophy at the University of San Diego, and has been active for many years in the Society of Christian Philosophers. She&#8217;s published a number of papers on gender, philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and other topics. I met her in the 1990s at an SCP conference in California, and&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/sabellianism-reconsidered-considered-part-1\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;Sabellianism Reconsidered&#8221; Considered &#8211; Part 1<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":822,"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":[4,5,38,47,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-heresy-orthodoxy","category-modalism","category-monotheism","category-papers","category-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823","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=823"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35068,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823\/revisions\/35068"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}