After having read a recent article (in Spanish) on the ontological argument by a strict-observance Thomistic philosopher, the flaw in modern versions of the argument from Malcolm, Hartshorne and Gödel is quite clear: they confuse logical possibility with physical possibility, or logical necessity with physical necessity, with "physical" used in the scholastic sense of "real" or "actual", not in the modern sense of "material".

It is clear that God cannot (in either the logical or the physical sense of possibility) come to exist, because in that case He would be contingent. Therefore,

- in terms of possibility, even though God's existence is logically possible, if He did not exist his existence would be physically impossible. But physical impossibility does not entail logical impossibility, just as logical possibility does not entail physical possibility.

- in terms of necessity, even though God's nonexistence it not logically necessary, if He did not exist his nonexistence would be physically necessary. But physical necessity does not entail logical necessity, just as logical non-necessity does not entail physical non-necessity.
 

Interestingly, what I wrote in my previous post applies to the very first person hearing an account of the Resurrection: the Apostle Thomas (Jn 20:24-29). Were there rationally apprehensible motives of credibility, i.e. evidence, for Thomas to conclude that the other Apostles were telling him the truth?

The issue can always be framed in terms of the options of the modifed version of Lewis' trilemma: legend, liar, lunatic or Lord.

"Legend" would apply if the other Apostles had said to Thomas: "X and Y told us that Jesus appeared to them". Since what they said was: "We have seen the Lord", it does not apply.

"Liar" meant in this case that the other Apostles had set up a conspiracy in order to dupe Thomas. Since they were the people with whom Thomas had been living for the past two years, to all practical purposes his family, and since they had been gathered as a group by a Teacher Who made a point of telling the truth, the possibility that they had just flatly betrayed Jesus' teaching in order to deceive Thomas (and BTW, for what purpose?) was unthinkable.

"Lunatic" would apply if the other Apostles showed signs of not being in their right minds, e.g. as the result of eating some bad food or of inhaling some strong stuff. But Thomas could (and should) discard this option by just asking the other Apostles some additional questions, both general and specific to Jesus' apparition, and looking at their answers.

Therefore, there were indeed rationally apprehensible motives of credibility, i.e. evidence, for Thomas to conclude that the other Apostles were telling him sincerely the objective truth, and from their testimony to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead.

119 wrote:

[...]
"Protestantism's arguments against Catholicism are identical to Catholicism's arguments against Judaism;"
[...]

Flatly wrong from a factual standpoint, independently from any religious belief or lack thereof.

Protestantism is to Catholicism as Karaite Judaism is to Rabbinic Judaism. It is a question of different paradigms of the proximate medium of divine Revelation.

Rabbinic Judaism & Catholicism: it is a book plus an oral tradition, both interpreted by an authoritative magisterium. (Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy share the Catholic position, differing from it on the identification of the concrete offices who hold magisterial authority.)

Karaite Judaism & Protestantism: It is just a book.
 

John West wrote:

Try to see it from my perspective: You've pounced on a two year old conversation when you knew I wouldn't have time to pay proper attention to it.

The only reason why I entered this thread was to answer Evander's 09/26 post.

And when afterwards I posted in reply to subsequent posts of yours, I did that without assumming that you should or would feel obliged to read and reply to those posts of mine in the short term. I was just posting those replies for any potential future reader of the thread. In fact, I was rather surprised that you kept posting in this thread, given that you had said that you did not have time.

So, to make it clear now, I expect no further reply to this.
 

John West wrote:

Johannes wrote:

2. "The divine essence" in the definition of each Person is numerically the same and is a particular, not a universal [3], which answers Vallicella's objection to the version of the septad suggested by Fr. Matthew Kirby.

The reason Vallicella does that, I assume, is that the persons, as substances, aren't instantiable by the divine essence,

This statement just does not make sense, since in this subject essence = substance = ousía and person = hypostasis, not ousía.

John West wrote:

but the divine essence, if it's a particular, isn't multiply realizable by the persons.

If by "multiply realizable" you mean "multiply instantiated", of course the divine essence isn't multiply realizable. The divine essence is a particular and each divine Person is that one and only particular according to the corresponding idiomaton or personal property, so that each divine Person is absolutely simple. That is, the divine essence does not and cannot exist in isolation of any of the personal properties, just as the divine intellect does not and cannot exist in isolation of the divine will. The personal properties are most definitely not "accidents" of the divine essence.

John West wrote:

You seem to want to make the persons each absolute accidents of the one divine essence (or I'm going to need you to unpack what you mean by the "as" in "the divine essence 'as' paternity"). This, along with divine simplicity, runs into the earlier problem I was worried about. (I assume that now you're backing off the claim that the paternity property is strictly identical to the common essence and moving to the claim that they're merely numerically identical and that the persons are distinguished from each other in some non-numerical way—qualitatively, perhaps.)

As I said above, I most definitely do NOT want to make the Persons "absolute accidents of the one divine essence", since [u][b]each divine Person is absolutely s