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Perichoretic Monotheism: A Defense of a Social Theory of the Trinity

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Trinity | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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Third, analytic philosophers nearly always neglect pre-Nicene catholic theologians.

Trinity | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

They simply have not spent the energy working through the arguments of Justin, Origen, Tertullian, or Novatian that they have spent on, for example, Hume, Descartes, or Aristotle. This is surprising, given the philosophical interests of these early catholic intellectuals, as well as their central concerns with God, Christ, and how they are related. Fourth, they unfortunately repeat the historical mistakes of Christian apologists and theologians.

Fifth, analytic theologians nearly always neglect how one might reason from the Bible to the Trinity. Although they would never trust, for example, historians to tell them what Aristotle or Aquinas really thought, in contrast, when it comes to the Bible, many Christian philosophers simply accept the authority of whoever they consider mainstream scholars.

But such do not speak with one voice. Many conservative Protestant theologians hold the teachings of the Bible to logically imply the Trinity formulas.

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But many early modern and recent Roman Catholic scholars have thought it hopeless to argue for the Trinity from the Bible alone; this, in their view, shows the need for the authoritative teaching and post-biblical traditions of the Church. The Bible, they argue, assumes and asserts the numerical identity of the Father of Jesus, and no one else, with the one true God. From Plato to the trinities. One of his most influential dialogues has been his Timaeus , which contains an original myth about the creation of the cosmos.

It is you, then, who must [make them]…. This will assure their mortality. These forms the craftsman in some sense combines with a sort of featureless receptacle, something like matter, thereby imposing order and proportion on it.

In later centuries, wherever platonic philosophy was influential, so was its assumption that the creator needed some sort of go-between to interact with his material creation, that an unmediated interaction between the creator and the cosmos is metaphysically impossible. This idea is prominent both in the Alexandrian Jewish thinker Philo, a contemporary of Jesus, and in the theology of the early Christian theologian Justin Martyr.

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Elaborating this scheme, in the 1st and 2nd centuries it became popular for platonic philosophers to posit some transcendent triad, three sources of the cosmos, the primary among which is always the ultimate source, with the other two standing between this and the cosmos. In contrast, all uses of trias and trinitas prior to just a few years before that council seem to be plural referring terms, picking out God, his unique Son, and his Spirit or spirit , without implying these to be one being or one god.

Thus, in the late 2nd century, Christians too explicitly preached a trinity of their own, a transcendent triad, but this was not then supposed to be a Trinity i. This concern to insulate God from direct contact with the cosmos was also a primary motivation for seeing the pre-human Jesus as active throughout the theophanies of the Old Testament.

The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity

The creeds, after all, claim that there is a property of divinity godhead, being-a-god which is shared by three somethings. Trinity theories differ significantly on what they take this shared nature to be, and on the status of the ones who share it. The Christian trinity was supposed to have as its members in some sense divine beings, deities.

But when challenged on how their theology could be legitimately viewed as monotheistic, early catholic authors always emphasize the unique status of the Father. The platonic theory of forms introduced another twist. Rather, he must be divinity.

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Thus, the Son and Spirit, as divine, get their degree of divinity ultimately from the Father, that is, from God himself. And for some, the Spirit gets his indirectly, by way of the Son.

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There are two interpretive camps on this issue. The Industry Standard: Nicea and Beyond There is enough doctrinal space between Arianianism and Sabellianism to accommodate a range of theological accounts of the Trinity within the scope of Nicene orthodoxy. The particular point of interest here is the phrase. Newman range of sociological issues. Father and Son are to the divine nature as the statue and pillar are to that portion of matter which simultaneously constitutes both. Such confusions, when it comes to the case of God, are to be expected, and it would be proud or overconfident for us to suppose we can think about the transcendent God without being mired in apparent contradictions paradoxes, mysteries.

This transmission of divinity was first envisioned as occurring a finite time ago, before the creation of the cosmos, but starting with Origen of Alexandria c. It is the result of God either eternally or a long time ago as it were producing inferior copies of himself, putting a degree or amount of his divinity into two others. Another major shift that occurred in much catholic theology of the 2nd and 3rd centuries is an intense focus on the pre-existent divine Logos, putting the historical man Jesus largely in the background.

And the primary locus of his saving work, for many, was shifted from his earthly life, death, and resurrection to the event of his incarnation, when this divine Logos somehow became unified with a man, a human nature, or a human body. Christological controversies continued to pop up in various forms through the 7th century, although a type of standard language was enforced from a.

Exactly what these were is obscure, but a main general thrust of them is that there is a divine nature or being at work in the teaching and miracles of Jesus—and this is just God himself, the Father. These different approaches clashed in a controversy between the Alexandrian presbyter Arius d.

This meeting introduced new and unfortunately vague language, the chief virtue of which was that Arius and his few supporters found it unacceptable. The controversy is often spun as the trinitarian mainstream merely clarifying its terminology in a defense against innovators who denied the full divinity of the Son and Spirit. But recent scholarship has corrected this narrative.

The Trinity

To many this new formula suggested that God had changed, sharing some of his material substance with the Son, or that the Father and Son were numerically the same being. The discussion was forcibly ended by emperor Theodosius I, who in a.

trinities 040 - Dr. Stephen T. Davis on Christians in Philosophy

This was followed by a series of laws that effectively criminalized non-Nicene Christianity. The actual events at the a. But it is clear that this council, convened by Theodosius and presided over him in his capital city, obediently reaffirmed the a. In the course of the controversy in the mids, Nicenes had argued from various scriptural and theological premises that the Son must be the same ousia as God, and eventually these sorts of arguments were reapplied to the Holy Spirit.

And some began to assume that this equality of status made the three the same god. Jewish monotheism was denounced as an erroneous extreme, the opposite of the polytheistic error, with the new trinitarian theology a happy medium between them. From this time Trinity theories dominate the Christian mainstream; truly trinitarian theology which affirms the one God to be the Trinity dates from this time the late s or early s. The unitarian minority report has repeatedly resurfaced, especially since the Protestant Reformation.

Most recent theologians, be they Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Protestant have neither considered changing this traditional language nor much concerned themselves with clarifying its meaning, although individuals continue to speculate on the subject. It is only Christian analytic theology, employing logic, metaphysics, epistemology, and a sober, careful style of argumentation, which has carefully explored several ways in which this traditional language might be understood. To explore some of these recent Trinity theories, we will consider a sort of argument which any Trinity theory constructed by a recent analytic theologian has been designed to survive.

An Argument against the Trinity. This argument renders traditional trinitarian language into precise claims using the tools of logic, with an aim toward showing some central problems any Trinity theory must solve. Similar arguments have been used by analytic theologians as anvils on which to forge their own Trinity theories.

For any x and any y, if x and y are the same god, then x is divine, y is divine, and x just is y. There is some x which is divine, and there is some y which is divine, and x and y are not numerically the same. Therefore, one or more of these is false: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9. While a trinitarian may dispute what is in the second and third columns, nearly all will grant that this argument is valid.

Why accept each premise? Premise 3 is implied by the New Testament and by any trinitarian theology. Premise 9 is uncontroversially a part of trinitarian theology; trinitarianism is supposed to be the uniquely Christian variety of monotheism, the thesis that there is exactly one god. This leaves only premises 4 and 6. Each is plausibly thought to be self-evident, something that any normal adult human knows to be true immediately upon understanding the claim, and so something which is fair to include in any argument. Premise 4 is often called the indiscernibility of identicals or the difference of discernibles.

It is based on the conviction that nothing of any possible sort can be and also not be some one way at a single time or timelessly. Even the mere metaphysical possibility of their differing implies that they are two, that a is not numerically the same as b and vice versa. Premise 6 follows from a widely accepted analysis of statements of numerical sameness. Here then, is the problem. Unaided human reason, quite apart from any theological concerns, seems to demand our assent to both 4 and 6. But the rest follows. And the principles based on reason 4, 6 seem innocent.

Either the Father is not divine 1 is false , or the Son is not divine 2 is false , or the Father and Son have never differed in any way 3 is false , or monotheism 9 is false, or more than one of these claims are false. Analytic Trinity Theories as Refutations of the Argument. All contemporary analytic Trinity theories are designed to show what is wrong with arguments like the one in section 4. We will sort them by which premise s , if any, they deny.

Outside the realm of analytic theology, these concerns are widely avoided and ignored. Or a theologian may gesture unclearly at one or more options. It is admitted that the commitments of trinitarian theology appear to be incoherent self-contradictory , but it is insisted that we are dealing with merely apparent contradictions. The idea is that God has revealed these truths, and knowing this, we ought to affirm them all, because they must be coherent after all, though we have no clue how. What we would initially take as a sign of theoretical failure apparent contradictions , we should instead take as a sign that we really are accessing a reality which far outstrips our mental abilities.

Such confusions, when it comes to the case of God, are to be expected, and it would be proud or overconfident for us to suppose we can think about the transcendent God without being mired in apparent contradictions paradoxes, mysteries. This proposal can be attacked on epistemic grounds. It is not because analytic philosophy makes people foolishly confident in human powers of speculation. Rather, analytic philosophy has many resources which can be deployed to remove apparent contradictions from a theory, and it seems premature to declare that any such will fail, leaving us only with a mysterian defense.

In practice, this sort of mysterian defense arguably amounts to a counsel of serially inconsistent thinking. Is there only one god, or are there at least two? When reading biblical statements of monotheism, the mysterian will think there is exactly one. And then, eventually, we come back to monotheism, and the cycle begins again. But a trinitarian by definition says that the one god is the Trinity; the only god is the tripersonal god.