{"id":860,"date":"2009-05-13T12:00:26","date_gmt":"2009-05-13T16:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=860"},"modified":"2009-05-13T12:00:26","modified_gmt":"2009-05-13T16:00:26","slug":"richard-of-st-victor-1-introduction-jt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/richard-of-st-victor-1-introduction-jt\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard of St. Victor 1 — Introduction (JT)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Could
Could Krystle, Blake, and Alexis Carrington NOT have been a dynasty? I think not.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Richard of St. Victor is well known for his argument that perfect love must be shared between three persons, and since God\u2019s love is perfect, there must be three persons in God. Richard presents this argument in Book 3 of his De Trinitate<\/em>, and that\u2019s what we’ll be looking at in this series of posts.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

At the opening of Book 3, Richard explains that he will ask the following questions.<\/p>\n

Question 1:<\/em>
\n(a) Are there many persons in God?
\n(b) If so, are there only three persons?<\/p>\n

Question 2:<\/em>
\nHow can those three persons be one God?<\/p>\n

Question 3:<\/em>
\n(a) Is one person unproduced (\u2018from himself\u2019; a semetipsa<\/em>), while the other two are produced (i.e., \u2018from another\u2019; ab alio<\/em>)?
\n(b) If so, is the producer of the two produced persons itself produced or unproduced?<\/p>\n

Question 4:<\/em>
\n(a) Are the two produced persons produced in different ways?
\n(b) If so, which person is produced which way?
\n(c) Does anything else follow from each being produced in that particular way?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Note that the English translation does not identify Question 3b. After asking whether two persons proceed from another (i.e., Question 3a), the translator writes \u2018We should also see if there are other things we should inquire into related to this same consideration\u2019. This is a mistranslation. Richard actually says \u2018we should also ask the same thing about that \u201cother\u201d from which these [produced persons] proceed\u2019, i.e., we should ask whether their producer is likewise unproduced or produced.)<\/p>\n

Richard then claims that rational thinking tells him more about how to answer these questions than the Church Fathers do, though not Scripture. (Does this mean Scripture tells him more than rational thinking, or does it mean he\u2019s bracketing Scripture out for the time being?) Richard claims he can answer these questions with rational argumentation, or at least he\u2019ll die trying.<\/p>\n

The first core piece of Richard\u2019s argument occurs in Chapter 2 of Book 3, and although it\u2019s stated very briefly and fairly clearly, there are a lot of claims here.<\/p>\n

There are three stages to this argument. In the first stage, Richard tries to show that God\u2019s perfect goodness requires that he be perfectly charitable. In the second stage, Richard tries to show that a perfectly charitable God will share his love with another. In the third stage, Richard tries to show that God can only share his love with an equal who is worthy of that love, namely another divine person. And there you go: there are at least two divine persons in the Godhead.<\/p>\n

In the next three posts, I\u2019ll look at each of these stages in turn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richard of St. Victor is well known for his argument that perfect love must be shared between three persons, and since God\u2019s love is perfect, there must be three persons in God. Richard presents this argument in Book 3 of his De Trinitate, and that\u2019s what we’ll be looking at in this series of posts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":861,"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":[14,9,13,3],"tags":[40,41,22],"class_list":["post-860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-philosophy","category-theologians","category-theories","tag-richard-of-st-victor","tag-social-trinitarianism","tag-trinity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860","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=860"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":890,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860\/revisions\/890"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}