As for his formulation of the Trinity. It's obvious to me that it isn't right. He was arguing about the Trinity with a Muslim, and while I didn't agree with the Muslim on a lot of things, he kept pointing out that Craig was criticizing the Muslim conception of God for being a concepcion whearin God could only possibly be loving himself while Craig's own conception seem to also be a form of God loving himself.

I was inclined to agree. Craig stopped short of calling the three Persons three *parts* of God, but I think he's so stuck in modern philosophical conceptuality that he has no way of talking about the Persons that doesn't end up being something like a thing-property relation.

He explicitly talks about the Trinity as if it were like a human being except instead of having one site of Personality like I do, it has 3. This does explain how you could successfully comprehend the trinity but its Orthodoxy seems dubious on a number of fronts.

Also, it occurred to me to think, and perhaps this is a problem for all versions of the Trinity rather than just Craig's, that what love requires is an object with a distinct being, not just something with a distinct personality- as I was understanding it, at least as Craig was trying to get me to understand personality, any talk of one person out of God loving another one would amount to a kind of pseudo-external object.

For, I might say that I love the morning star and I love the evening star without knowing that these are the same star, but it would turn out that I in fact only loved the same thing, and it also turned out that I was also both the morning star and the evening star, it would turn out that I was only ever loving myself under different descriptions. And if self love isn't in fact legitimate love  Kama it would turn out that I didn't love anything at all. It does seem to me that the argument for the trinitarian doctrine falls flat if it's quite possible for God to love himself just straightforwardly: after all it seems to me that any God could love himself while doing away with the different personas.

I mean, there at least needs to be a better story. I think German idealism after Fichte struggled with something like this saying that ultimately all self relation involves some kind of splitting of the ego or something like that, so perhaps there is something more that I'm missing. But certainly Craig doesn't have all that I need to figure this story out.

Last edited by iwpoe (4/03/2016 6:32 am)

I have no intention of defending Craig's views, but I don't want to give short shrift to them either. Let = be the identity symbol and

j=the Son
f=the Father
s=the Holy Spirit
(j&f&s)=the Trinity
g=God

Craig argues that j≠g, f≠g, and s≠g, but that (j&f&s)=g. In other words, he argues that no single member of the Trinity is identical to God, but that the Trinity is identical to God:

iwpoe wrote:

As I understand Craig's account, he is both claiming that God's love cannot be of himself and is love of himself.

Craig may be saying that the members of the Trinity all love each other, but that the Trinity doesn't self-love.

iwpoe wrote:

He put it as "creation wasn't always there with God but God is always perfect" but this is inadequate if God is above time in some respect since it's not as if he has a duration where he's alone waiting to create.

I'm not familiar with the argument. The point can, however, be rephrased in terms of creatio ex nihilo and possible worlds without contingent beings.

At minimum I don't think he disagreed with your formulation. I don't think I do either. However, I don't know that he kept things that simple. His interpretation of ≠ in this context strongly suggests the kind of ≠ in 'Part ≠ whole' or 'Attribute ≠ substance'

Well, it's worth noting that Craig rejects Divine Simplicity. Since he rejects Divine Simplicity, I suppose he can give God as many parts as he wants. (On Craig's view, God is one Mind richly endowed enough for three people, whereas you or I are single minds richly endowed enough for only one person each. But I have no idea how to parse that ontologically. Craig would also reject that there are real relations of love, and say that loving is an intentional act of the different components of the Divine Mind directed at the other components of the Divine Mind. I don't know what exactly, in ontological terms, he thinks those components are though.)

He is, I suppose, after the difference between three persons having six asymmetric, two-place "relations" to each other, and their each having reflexive "relations" to themselves.

The thought is that (especially given that each of the persons is not to be identified with God) no aspect of the Persons even in aggregate can the said of God as such, because 6 two term relations don't seem to me to become one, and the whole point of love being a perfection of God, is that is be a perfection possessed of the whole not some subunits of the whole.

Well, all three persons that exhaust the Trinity love something. Hence, all persons of the Trinity love. Hence, the whole Trinity or Divine Mind is in some sense loving. (The Mind isn't performing one big, distinct act of love, but perhaps that every bit of the Mind is engaged in loving is enough for Craig. The whole Mind is in some sense involved in loving.)

However, Craig was not making either your nor my point. He really just claimed, essentially, that there was a duration wherein creation was not but during which time God still needs to be loving something and the Persons of the Trinity are the only option.

Craig has God entering into time simultaneous to His Act of Creation/the beginning of the universe. He's probably playing off that.

Last edited by John West (4/03/2016 2:51 pm)