{"id":881,"date":"2009-06-07T16:39:53","date_gmt":"2009-06-07T20:39:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=881"},"modified":"2009-06-07T16:39:53","modified_gmt":"2009-06-07T20:39:53","slug":"richard-of-st-victor-5-%e2%80%93-evaluation-of-the-argument-thus-far-jt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/richard-of-st-victor-5-%e2%80%93-evaluation-of-the-argument-thus-far-jt\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard of St. Victor 5 \u2013 Evaluation of the argument thus far (JT)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\""Have
"Have you seen this baby? We're dead serious, you know."<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the last three posts, I explained Richard\u2019s argument for why there must be two distinct persons who charitably love each other. Here I want to raise some objections to three of Richard\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

1. First, Richard thinks that a charitable disposition must be manifested<\/em> or realized<\/em> in order to be perfect:<\/p>\n

(T4)\tFor any person x<\/em>, if x<\/em> has a charitable disposition P<\/em>, x<\/em> is not perfect if x<\/em> does not exercise P<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But why should this be so? God has lots of dispositions that aren\u2019t exercised (at least not all the time), e.g., the ability to save sinners, create the world, become incarnate, etc., but those aren\u2019t imperfect. Why should charity be any different?<\/p>\n

2. Second, Richard claims that charitable love must be directed at a distinct person<\/em>:<\/p>\n

(T5)\tFor any person x<\/em>, if x<\/em> has a charitable disposition P<\/em>, x<\/em> is not perfect if x<\/em> does not exercise P<\/em> on some person y<\/em>, where x<\/em> is not identical to y<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have three problems with this.<\/p>\n

(a) First, why can\u2019t perfect charity be directed at oneself? Suppose that my high school basketball team lost the state championship because I missed the last minute jump shot, but after years of therapy, I finally forgave myself, got off the hooch, and finally started feeling better about myself. Wouldn\u2019t I be treating myself charitably there?<\/p>\n

(b) Besides, surely it begs the question to say that charitable love requires another<\/em>. After all, we\u2019re trying to prove<\/em> that there are distinct persons in God, so we can\u2019t just say \u2018by definition, charity must be directed at a distinct person\u2019. That would assume the conclusion right from the start.<\/p>\n

In order to avoid begging the question, Richard would have to come up with a reason why charitably loving another would be better<\/em> than charitably loving oneself. But that leads to my second problem with T5.<\/p>\n

(c) What could a divine person gain from loving another that he wouldn\u2019t get through self-love? Or as Ockham puts it, how could a divine person\u2019s act of loving another divine person be any more or less perfect than their act of loving the divine essence itself? After all, God\u2019s internal acts of love are supposed to all be equally<\/em> perfect.<\/p>\n

I can think of three reasons why loving another would be better than loving only oneself in the human case.<\/p>\n

(i) First, perhaps it\u2019s meritorious to care for those in need. But of course, a divine person is not in need of money, health care, and other such things.<\/p>\n

(ii) Maybe charity is supposed to be better because it is \u2018selfless\u2019. But if that just means acting without regard for one\u2019s own safety, reward, etc., then I can act on myself without regard for my own safety, reward, and so forth too. If \u2018selfless\u2019 just means \u2018not the self\u2019, then we\u2019re begging the question again.<\/p>\n

(iii) Third, maybe loving another gives me an experience that I don\u2019t get from self love. For instance, by loving another, I gain perspective, I learn how someone else sees the world, I learn to be patient, etc. But aside from the fact that we might actually have those same experiences when loving oneself (think about deep, introspective therapy situations), how could this apply to the divine case? The divine persons know each other\u2019s thoughts, so they couldn\u2019t \u2018gain perpective\u2019 or anything like that.<\/p>\n

Maybe we could say that the key here is reciprocation<\/em>. For instance, the Father has the experience of \u2018being loved by the Son\u2019, and the Son does not have this experience. But surely the Son loves himself, so he too would have the experience of \u2018being loved by the Son\u2019. The only unique experience here would have to be \u2018being loved by another<\/em>\u2019, but as I\u2019ve already pointed out, simply asserting that it\u2019s another<\/em> begs the question.<\/p>\n

So what (superior?) qualitative features would loving-another have that loving-oneself would not in God? If Richard can\u2019t answer this, it seems to me that he\u2019s begging the question.<\/p>\n

3. Third, Richard claims that charitable love must be directed at a worthy<\/em> recipient in order to be perfect:<\/p>\n

(T6)\tFor any person x<\/em>, if x<\/em> has a charitable disposition P<\/em>, x<\/em> is not perfect if x<\/em> directs P<\/em> at some person y<\/em>, and y<\/em> does not deserve it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This seems to entail that God could not supremely<\/em> love a creature, for creatures are not equal to God. Is that something Richard really wants to countenance?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the last three posts, I explained Richard\u2019s argument for why there must be two distinct persons who charitably love each other. Here I want to raise some objections to three of Richard\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":882,"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-881","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\/881","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=881"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":902,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881\/revisions\/902"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}