In case B there is no composition because the divine essence cannot exist in a mode-independent way. Even if there were no generation and espiration, the personal God would be the divine essence in unbegotten mode, i.e. first.

I need, I think, to learn more about what you mean by “mode” before I can reply to this part. I had assumed you weren't using “mode” to mean “property-instance” (as a lot of authors, old and new, have), but your previous comments suggest that you were.

Muslims and Jews would probably agree with that, just changing "first" to "first and only".

This could be. I remember reading somewhere that Aquinas was considered to have a really radical view of divine simplicity in his time, even though now when we talk about “Simplicity” and “absolute simplicity” we typically mean his “without any ontological parts”. (If you adopt a view of divine simplicity more like, say, Scotus's, then obviously the mereological argument fails.)

Johannes,

I don't have time to read the series of posts you linked right now, but a couple questions that spring to mind on reading your summary are:

(i) How can something absolutely simple be in both mode M (e.g. the mode of filiation) and mode ~M (e.g. the mode of paternity) without contradiction?
(ii) How can something radically non-temporal be before or after the Incarnation?

I probably won't follow this conversation up, but I give you guys my blessing to use the thread however you want.

This is a really old thread, guys. You can still see Armstrong's influence on me in every line.* (The bulk of the original post was written, as best I can remember, almost two years before I posted it here.)

My goal in this thread wasn't to show the incoherence of the Trinity or the Trinity and Simplicity.* * It was to try to develop an ontological account of the Trinity compatible with Simplicity -- even if it was one that I would ultimately have to use as an analogy.

*You can find a sort of timeline of my influences in this post. I should probably have included Aquinas (or some of his Muslim predecessors) in it for his views on Being. I was -- and still, to a degree, am -- very impressed by the real distinction and idea that there are different modes of Being.
*Whereas I think the problems with the Incarnation drop straight out of the officially accepted dogmas, I always suspected that the problems with the Trinity drop out of using what Brandon calls a "Sunday school" version of it. I differ from Vallicella on this, I think, who has a bunch of posts on the coherence of the Trinity.
*Edit: Looking over the original post, I think I probably meant to write that there is a prima facie conflict between those formulations of the Trinity and Simplicity in those first few lines. (I distinctly recall wanting to avoid making the coherency argument. It doesn't really make sense in relation to the "more precise formulation" I linked (and I remember linking it for that reason).) I'm sorry for any confusion my omission might have caused. (Fortunately, it doesn't seem to have caused any confusion in the original conversation.)

Johannes wrote:

Which applies also to "why not Islam"

The Qur'an denies that there was ever even a guy, Jesus, that was crucified in the first place (4: 157). Muslim scholars reply to the (rather obvious) charge that this disagrees with historical scholarship by proposing that God just made it look like Jesus was crucified when he actually wasn't.

Anyway, I mention it only to say that you may be giving yourself more work than you need to with Islam.

Brian wrote:

As for Valicella's paper, looking for logical inconsistencies in theology doesn't seem like a good method.  Every religion, like Jeremy stated, offers a path towards transformation/transcendence.  Conceptualizing that process is necessarily to speak about Mystery.  Granted, there has to be a certain level of coherence, but I'm not sure the coherence needed is the same sort sought after by analytic philosophers.  I'm also not sure I could explicate what sort of coherence I'm talking about.  My point is that I think any approach towards religion that doesn't accept and embrace Mystery will lead to either liberal theology or fundamentalism, both degenerate forms of religion in my opinion.

It sounds like you think that all religion necessarily involves some mysterianism, and that it was a mistake for me to start the thread by suggesting that Christianity does whereas (as far as I can tell) Judaism and Islam don't. (I'm setting aside my skepticism about theism and atheism for the purposes of this thread.)