Posted by 884heid  9/23/2016 3:54 pm | #31 |
John West wrote:
(I'm not saying I think this answer right. Just that I have a lot of sympathy for where it's coming from.)
I agree that this stance is the most promising for a Christian. I am just not sure that this helps the Christian position when it comes to the comparisons of the elucidation of divine simplicity in Judaism and Islam since the former postulates a rather difficult ontological framework to defend in respect to God's simplicity.
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Posted by John West 9/28/2016 8:29 pm | #32 |
I more or less adhered to Aristotelian realism when it came to universals due to Armstrong's almost impenetrable critique of non-trope nominalism on the accusations of coextension and blob theory. But I always thought that strict identity was somewhat implausible along with other issues of realism, which made me welcome the idea of Trope theory being an alternative and viable option.
I meant to add: since you've read Armstrong, something to watch out for is that he thinks universals exist in space. Most philosophers would say that universals are had by particulars in space, but aren't themselves in space.
I've also heard that there is a possibility that many medieval philosophers were more alligned with trope theory than realism of Aristotle.
Ockham probably believed in particularized qualities (tropes).
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Posted by Evander 9/26/2018 12:08 pm | #33 |
As I’ve stated before, my knowledge of philosophy is woefully subpar compared to the other users of this blog. I was wondering if this dissertation deals with any of the problems brought up by this thread. I realize dumping a 300+ page dissertation and asking people to read it is a bit asinine, but for those who are interested it could be worthwhile. For the record I have read some of it but most of the material went over my head.
https://philarchive.org/archive/BRATLP-3
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Posted by Johannes 9/26/2018 1:09 pm | #34 |
Of the 6 trinitarian claims at pp. 37-38, #1 is a wrongly-expressed tautology and #5 is conceptually wrong at the most elementary level. Therefore the dissertation does not deserve any consideration.
Taking advantage of your reactivation of this thread, I will comment on the opening post:
There is a prima facie conflict between the three limbs of the doctrine of the Trinity:
(1) The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God.
(2) The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit, the Father is not the Holy Spirit.
(3) There is exactly one God.
No conflict there, either prima or ultima facie. Each Person is the divine nature in a different mode (*), and there is exactly one divine nature.
(*) It was St. Basil of Cesarea who first distinguished the divine Persons by their modes of being ("tropoi hyparxeos"), a notion that has nothing to do with the "modes of appearing" of the modalist heresy. To note, the use of the term by the Cappadocian Fathers is completely different from its use in the neomodalist (or mitigated modalist or semimodalist, as preferred) heresy of Karl Barth and Karl Rahner. Whereas for the former each Person is the subject of the respective mode of being, which is what distinguishes that Person from the other two, for the latter the only real divine Person is the subject of the three modes of being.
As I wrote at the penultimate post of this thread about the historical formulation of trinitarian doctrine, assuming the Thomistic real distinction between contingent essence and contingent act of being, we can make a general definition of hypostasis that applies to both the divine Persons and the contingent entities and can be used to formulate the dogmas of trinitarian and christological orthodoxy.
Recalling that hypostasis meant the individual, particular, concrete, really existing subject or "hypokeimenon", and adopting the particular (as opposed to universal) sense of ousía:
ousía = essence or form in a particular sense
hypostasis = act of being in a particular mode + ousía
act of being = {Subsistent Act of Being (one), contingent act of being (many)}
modes of the Subsistent Act of Being = {fontal plenitude and paternity, filiation, passive spiration or procession}
modes of a contingent act of being = {created} -- or none at all
divine Ousía (one) = Subsistent Act of Being (one) -- per absolute divine simplicity
God the Father = Subsistent Act of Being in fontal plenitude and paternity mode
God the Son before the Incarnation = Subsistent Act of Being in filiation mode
God the Son after the Incarnation = Subsistent Act of Being in filiation mode + Jesus' human ousía
Holy Spirit = Subsistent Act of Being in passive spiration or procession mode
To note, this is not a Thomistic but a Bonaventuran account of the Trinity. As I explained in this thread, it solves the problem of why the Son does not in turn beget his own son.
Last edited by Johannes (9/26/2018 1:27 pm)
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Posted by John West 9/26/2018 9:06 pm | #35 |
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.)
Last edited by John West (9/27/2018 1:14 am)
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Posted by John West 9/26/2018 9:28 pm | #36 |
I see, looking through my notes, that I ended up distilling a more general argument:
Let e be the Divine Essence, P be the paternity relation (for the Father), S be the filiation relation (for the Son), and H be the procession relation (for the Holy Spirit), where relations are construed as medievals' res respectivae. Let + be the symbol for mereological addition.*
If you identify God with any mereological sum of e, P, S, or H (e.g. e + P + S + H), you lose Simplicity. If, however, you don't identify God with a mereological sum of e, P, S, or H, you have to either identify God with a relation or make the relations meant to account for members of the Trinity external to God.
The argument can be generalized so that e, P, S, and H can be variables for any ontological constituents you like, so that I was sort of wasting ink in the note at the start of this thread.
*I used the broad sense of parts often used in contemporary ontology, which includes both "metaphysical parts" and concrete, thingly parts.
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Posted by John West 9/27/2018 1:10 am | #37 |
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.
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Posted by Johannes 9/27/2018 3:56 pm | #38 |
I see, looking through my notes, that I ended up distilling a more general argument:
Let e be the Divine Essence, P be the paternity relation (for the Father), S be the filiation relation (for the Son), and H be the procession relation (for the Holy Spirit), where relations are construed as medievals' res respectivae. Let + be the symbol for mereological addition.*
If you identify God with any mereological sum of e, P, S, or H (e.g. e + P + S + H), you lose Simplicity. If, however, you don't identify God with a mereological sum of e, P, S, or H, you have to either identify God with a relation or make the relations meant to account for members of the Trinity external to God.
It depends on what you mean by "relation".
A. Subsistent Relation. Then each of Them is the respective divine Person.
B. Personal property. Then each of them is the personal property or mode of Being of the respective divine Person.
In case A, talking about "any mereological sum of e, P, S, or H" does not make sense, because e is the common essence of the divine Persons abstracted from their respective personal properties. While P, S and H Exist, e does not exist apart from, or previous to, Them.
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. Muslims and Jews would probably agree with that, just changing "first" to "first and only". The Christian difference is that we hold that the First Person enunciates his self-knowledge generating a consubstantial Word or Son. The Bonaventuran difference is that we hold that the First Person enunciates because He is First, understanding Firsthood (Primitas) not just as unbegottenness (no one before) but as Fontal Plenitude.
Absolute simplicity, then, is a property of each divine Person and of the divine essence abstracted from the personal properties or modes of being, which, as I said, does not and cannot exist apart from, or previous to, the divine Persons.
Last edited by Johannes (9/27/2018 4:01 pm)
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Posted by Johannes 9/27/2018 4:12 pm | #39 |
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) The subject of each personal mode is the respective Person, not the common nature.
(ii) The Subsistent Act of Being in filiation mode started to actualize Christ's human nature at the moment of the creation of said nature.
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Posted by John West 9/27/2018 4:40 pm | #40 |
I think what is happening, Johannes, is that we're using two different senses of “Simplicity” and “absolutely simple”. I'm using it to mean "something without any ontological parts". (This is, I think, how Aquinas uses it, but different from how a lot of other scholastics use it.)
In case A, talking about "any mereological sum of e, P, S, or H" does not make sense, because e is the common essence of the divine Persons abstracted from their respective personal properties.
If the divine essence has real properties or property-instances, it has ontological parts and is (by definition) complex (i.e. not absolutely simple). If it lacks real properties, then by Simplicity the personal properties are all strictly identical with one another. (Unless we're equivocating on the word property?)
Absolute simplicity, then, is a property of each divine Person and of the divine essence abstracted from the personal properties or modes of being, which, as I said, does not and cannot exist apart from, or previous to, the divine Persons.
The properties don't need to be able to exist apart to import ontological complexity into God.
