{"id":94,"date":"2007-05-04T02:31:40","date_gmt":"2007-05-04T02:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/archives\/94"},"modified":"2007-06-09T02:53:44","modified_gmt":"2007-06-09T02:53:44","slug":"guest-post-jedwab-on-trinity-monotheism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/guest-post-jedwab-on-trinity-monotheism\/","title":{"rendered":"Guest Post: Jedwab on “Trinity Monotheism”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m very pleased to introduce Joseph Jedwab<\/strong>, who has some interesting comments on Moreland’s and Craig’s understanding of the Trinity<\/a>. I haven’t had the privilege of meeting him, but given how he spells “center”, I gather he’s English. \ud83d\ude42 Joseph is currently teaching philosophy and finishing his dissertation at Oriel College of Oxford University, on the metaphysics of the Trinity and the Incarnation. And he’s working under the supervision of one of the greatest living philosophers of religion, Richard Swinburne<\/a><\/strong>. Hiring committees take note<\/strong> – he goes on the job market next year! – Dale<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

I agree this is a clear account. I’m a bit worried about how the discussion might influence terminology. Moreland and Craig describe their view as Social Trinitarian and contrast this with an Anti-Social Trinitarian view. This is a mistake. Leftow’s title indicates his paper is against Social Trinitarianism (ST). It’s not supposed to be the name of a Trinitarian view. As you know, the name of the view Leftow defends is ‘Latin Trinitarianism’ (LT). Further, they say that the main commitment of ST is that there are three centres of consciousness, but it’s not clear what a centre is.<\/p>\n

Is it a mental subject (i.e. a subject of mental properties, like you and me)? But what difference is there, if any, between a mental subject and a mental substance? If a substance just is an entity that has a causal power, then it seems ‘mental subject’ and ‘mental substance’ are equivalent, in which case if the one mental substance constitutes three additional mental subjects there are four mental subjects\/substances in all. If a substance isn’t just an entity that has a causal power, what is it such that the mental subjects in the Trinity aren’t substances?<\/p>\n

If a centre isn’t a mental subject, then is it a bundle or composite of conscious mental events that stand in some unity relation to each other alone? But then it’s not easy to see why that should imply there are three persons (i.e. rational mental subjects) and so why this view should qualify as a version of ST, where presumably the persons must at the very least stand in social relations to each other. For such bundles are not persons and we’ve been given no reason to think each bundle constitutes a person.<\/p>\n

Finally, they say the contrast with LT is that on their view God has three faculties of intellect and will. But this depends on how one individuates faculties. Perhaps one might individuate according to the one mental substance and say there’s one such faculty or individuate according to the persons and say there are three. One might even do both, having faculties of different kinds or faculties in different senses.<\/p>\n

The best way I can see to make sense of their view is to use some Lockean metaphysics. Say there’s one infinite spirit (a substance in the sense of a basic item in one’s ontology that is a concrete object, i.e. has a causal power) and say because it has three consciousnesses it constitutes three persons. This makes the view a bit like Merricks’ analogy in ‘Split Brains and the Godhead’, in which case it’s not a million miles away from Leftow’s LT. It’s clear in some ways but could do with a bit more spelling out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m very pleased to introduce Joseph Jedwab, who has some interesting comments on Moreland’s and Craig’s understanding of the Trinity. I haven’t had the privilege of meeting him, but given how he spells “center”, I gather he’s English. \ud83d\ude42 Joseph is currently teaching philosophy and finishing his dissertation at Oriel College of Oxford University, on… Read More »Guest Post: Jedwab on “Trinity Monotheism”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"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":[18,9,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-posts","category-philosophy","category-theories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","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=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}