The following is an extract from a post I wrote on one of my old blogs back in March of this year, and represents one of my countless attempts, over the years, to make sense of the traditional understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. In some ways it is similar to Dr Michael Rea's ideas about material constitution that I criticised in this post. The words of my original post are in bold:
Most of the tenets of the doctrine of the Trinity, in its traditionally understood form are, of course, indispensable: The unity of God is non-negotiable as is the distinctiveness of the Persons and of course the Deity of each. However, the idea that God does not have 'parts' (the doctrine of Divine simplicity) seems to me to be less fundamental. It is a required belief for Roman Catholics according to the 4th Lateran Council of 1215 and also Vatican II, but as a protestant I do not feel bound by these Councils; and the Eastern Orthodox Church, with it's teaching on the distinction between God's essence and His energies does not seem as wedded to Divine simplicity as the RCC.
By discarding the necessity for it to involve the idea of God having no parts, I have been able to come to an understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity which is, I would argue, both coherent and maintains those three 'non-negotiables': God's unity (oneness), the distinction between the Persons and the Deity of the Persons.
This understanding of the Trinity is as follows:
The Father is the one and only God ("for there is one God, even the Father", as the Bible says).
The Son is a part of God - namely His Word or Logos, His Wisdom, begotten of the Father and therefore of 'one substance' with the Father (analagous to how an earthly child is made from the very bodies of its biological parents).
Likewise, the Holy Spirit is a part of God - namely His Spirit (what it says on the tin!)
It could be objected that, according to this understanding, there is no difference between the Father and the Trinity as a whole. This is a reasonable objection, but I would argue that the name Father refers to the first Person of the Trinity (of whom the second and third Persons are parts) considered on His own, while the term Trinity refers to all three Persons considered together. Admittedly the difference is subtle and largely a matter of emphasis.
Another objection is that, on this understanding, the Son and the Spirt appear to be less than fully God; that each is merely a part of God. However, I would argue that, because of the unique and infinite nature of the Godhead, every part of God contains the fullness of everything that God is - the fullness of the Divine Essence or Nature - and that therefore each part of God may be rightly called God. This is not to say that each part of God is a distinct and seperate God, or that each part of God is literally identical with the whole of God. To illustrate what I mean I will use an analogy: Imagine you are holding an apple and you have just taken a bite of it. What you now have in your mouth is not an apple; neither is it the apple; nevertheless, it very definitely is apple. Because the apple is, in a sense, simple - not made up of distinct parts each of which is something other than apple - every bit of it can rightly be referred to as apple. Similarly, even though, according to the view described here, God does have parts, in another sense He can, in fact, still be described as 'simple' because each part of him, while not being the whole of God, nevertheless contains all the essential characteristics, qualities and attributes of Divinity and can therefore rightly be referred to as God. The Son is God, the Spirit is God, and yet there is only one God - the Father - just as in my analogy there is only one apple!
This way of understanding the doctrine of the Trinity may be somewhat unorthodox - some might even say heretical - although, paradoxically perhaps, I think it is closest to the Eastern (and Oriental) Orthodox way of thinking about the Trinity, which emphasises the Father's role as the eternal source of the Son (through 'generation') and of the Spirit (through 'spiration'), and also as the source of the Divinity of each of the other two. Nevertheless, Eastern/Oriental Orthodox theology does not (I believe) make the Son or the Spirit subordinate to the Father and neither is my portrayal of the Trinity intended to do so.
One problem with this attempt to make the doctrine of the Trinity work is that, in order to make it possible to refer to the Son and the Spirit as God, it requires us to think of the word 'God' as referring not only to the Father but also to some kind of divine substance, analogous to - if not actually - a material substance, of which the Father consists. For most Christians - as well as adherents of the other Abrahamic faiths - the word 'God' is, I think, used to describe a personal, supreme Being and not some kind of (albeit non-physical) material. But the term 'Divine Substance' is, of course, very much part of the traditional Trinitarian language and, as well as being used to denote the one divine Essence, Nature or Being of God, it is sometimes - particularly by some of the early Church fathers (Tertullian for example) - used to describe a kind of spiritual matter or 'stuff'. Still, as a solution to the problem of finding a logically coherent way to state the doctrine of the Trinity, I'm not at all sure that the method described above is entirely satisfactory!
Saturday, 21 November 2015
Not guilty of modalism (possibly)
My formulation of the doctrine the Trinity as describing one God in three presences, rather than Persons, is, of course, open to the charge of being heretical on the grounds that it could be construed as a form of modalism or Sabellianism (the view that God is one Person with three 'modes' of existence - eg. that he existed originally as the Father, then came to earth as the Son and is now present with us as the Holy Spirit - as opposed to three Persons, each of whom exists as the same one Being). My only defense against this charge is to point out that it all depends on what is meant by the word 'person'. I don't know what the word 'person' meant to somebody in the Greek speaking world of the 4th Century. I understand that the Latin word 'persona' (from which we derive the English word 'person') is itself derived from a Greek word which originally meant 'mask' (as in the mask worn by an actor on the stage). Clearly, at least in its original form, it did not refer to an actual, individual self. However, our modern understanding of the word 'person' is that it refers to a conscious, self-aware subject or agent. In grammar, the subject of a verb is the one who acts while the object is that which is acted upon - so if God were three subjects then we would have to say, for example, that 'they created the world' rather than that 'He created it'.
Since none of us know exactly what the word 'person' meant to the people who devised the Nicene Creed or the early Trinitarian formulas, it is at least conceivable that they may have meant something similar to what I mean when I say that God is present to us in three different ways - that He exists as one self with three distinct presences, namely His transcendent presence as the Father, His very personal presence in the life and teachings of the man Jesus Christ and His immanent presence amongst us by means of His Holy Spirit.
Since none of us know exactly what the word 'person' meant to the people who devised the Nicene Creed or the early Trinitarian formulas, it is at least conceivable that they may have meant something similar to what I mean when I say that God is present to us in three different ways - that He exists as one self with three distinct presences, namely His transcendent presence as the Father, His very personal presence in the life and teachings of the man Jesus Christ and His immanent presence amongst us by means of His Holy Spirit.
Tuesday, 20 October 2015
Material Constitution and the Trinity
The other day I listened to this podcast in which a Philosophy Professor called Dr Michael Rea describes what he believes to be a coherent model of the Trinity. It involves the concept of material constitution. The version of this theory that he posits involves a lump of playdough tha has been made into a statue of 'Gumby' (I have no idea who or what Gumby is - Dr Rea is an American). The idea is that although the playdough and the statue occupy the same physical space and are, essentially, the same thing, there is also a clear distinction between the playdough and the statue. For example, one could destroy the statue without destroying the playdough; and if it was you who made the statue, you could say that the playdough was bought from a shop but the statue was not.
Dr Rea even posits a version of this theory that involves three distinct entities which are also the same thing - a lump of marble, which is also a statue, which is also a pillar.
Now, it seems clear to me that if a statue is also being used as a pillar, the difference is merely one of function. There is no intrinsic distinction between the statue and the pillar, and to use this as a trinitarian argument is akin to the oft peddled analogy of someone who is a husband, a father and a brother (this analogy fails, because the husband, father and brother are not three persons but merely one person with three different roles - the husband is the father and the brother - so it is modalistic and thus heretical).
The question of the distinction between the playdough (or marble) and the statue (whether of Gumby or anything else) is a little more complex. It is true that there is a genuine distinction here. There are things that are true of the marble that are not true of the statue and vice versa. However, in a sense, the distinction is als merely functional. The statue is a function of the lump of playdough - if you were to change the shape of it so that it no longer resembled Gumby, it would cease to function as a statue of Gumby. Similarly, if the man in the husband/father/brother analogy were to get divorced, one of his functions (that of husband) would cease to obtain. The playdough/statue is really just one thing with two different functions. If you throw the statue in the air, you are also throwing the lump of playdough in the air. If you paint the lump of playdough red you will also be painting the statue red. This does not serve as an analogy for the Trinity because the distinctions in the trinitarian relations are more than merely functional - the persons perform different actions and have different experiences. For example, the Son 'took on flesh' and underwent crucifixion while the Father and the Spirit did not.
Dr Rea says during the podcast that the lump of playdough represents the divine essence, and that the three Persons of the Trinity are three distinct forms that the essence takes. This is not, in my opinion, a good analogy because (a) it suggests that, rather than possessing or constituting the Divine Essence (or Nature or Being), the Persons are somehow made out of - or constituted by - the Divine Essence almost as if it were a physical substance and (b) even if all three Persons were formed from the same 'lump' of Divine Essence, there would, as a consequence, be no distinction between them as one lump of any given substance cannot assume three distinct forms simultaneously - the same lump of playdough, for example, cannot, at one and the same time, be both cube shaped and spherical.
Incidentally, in the course of the podcast, Dr Rea offers similar criticisms of both C.S. Lewis's cube analogy of the Trinity and William Lane Craig's 'three headed dog'/Trinity Monotheism analogy/model to those that I made in my posts here, here and here.
Dr Rea even posits a version of this theory that involves three distinct entities which are also the same thing - a lump of marble, which is also a statue, which is also a pillar.
Now, it seems clear to me that if a statue is also being used as a pillar, the difference is merely one of function. There is no intrinsic distinction between the statue and the pillar, and to use this as a trinitarian argument is akin to the oft peddled analogy of someone who is a husband, a father and a brother (this analogy fails, because the husband, father and brother are not three persons but merely one person with three different roles - the husband is the father and the brother - so it is modalistic and thus heretical).
The question of the distinction between the playdough (or marble) and the statue (whether of Gumby or anything else) is a little more complex. It is true that there is a genuine distinction here. There are things that are true of the marble that are not true of the statue and vice versa. However, in a sense, the distinction is als merely functional. The statue is a function of the lump of playdough - if you were to change the shape of it so that it no longer resembled Gumby, it would cease to function as a statue of Gumby. Similarly, if the man in the husband/father/brother analogy were to get divorced, one of his functions (that of husband) would cease to obtain. The playdough/statue is really just one thing with two different functions. If you throw the statue in the air, you are also throwing the lump of playdough in the air. If you paint the lump of playdough red you will also be painting the statue red. This does not serve as an analogy for the Trinity because the distinctions in the trinitarian relations are more than merely functional - the persons perform different actions and have different experiences. For example, the Son 'took on flesh' and underwent crucifixion while the Father and the Spirit did not.
Dr Rea says during the podcast that the lump of playdough represents the divine essence, and that the three Persons of the Trinity are three distinct forms that the essence takes. This is not, in my opinion, a good analogy because (a) it suggests that, rather than possessing or constituting the Divine Essence (or Nature or Being), the Persons are somehow made out of - or constituted by - the Divine Essence almost as if it were a physical substance and (b) even if all three Persons were formed from the same 'lump' of Divine Essence, there would, as a consequence, be no distinction between them as one lump of any given substance cannot assume three distinct forms simultaneously - the same lump of playdough, for example, cannot, at one and the same time, be both cube shaped and spherical.
Incidentally, in the course of the podcast, Dr Rea offers similar criticisms of both C.S. Lewis's cube analogy of the Trinity and William Lane Craig's 'three headed dog'/Trinity Monotheism analogy/model to those that I made in my posts here, here and here.
Saturday, 25 July 2015
Three Whos and one What
This article, by Frank Sheed, does a good job of explaining the orthodox understanding of the Trinity, and it is an example of one of the most common ways of arguing that the Trinity doctrine is not self-contradictory; the 'three whos and one what' argument. This argument fails, however, because if possession of the one Divine Nature means that each of the Persons is God, and if there is only one God, then it follows that each of the Persons literally is the same thing. To say that each of the Persons 'personifies' the one God, or even that each of them 'subjectifies' the one God, would not entail any contradiction but to say that each of them is (ie. is identical to) God implies that there can be no distinction whatsoever between them because each of them is the same thing, a thing that there is only one of.
In other words, by insisting that the 'who' is the 'what' (in other words, that both of those terms signify the same thing), the 'three who's and one what' argument defeats itself.
In other words, by insisting that the 'who' is the 'what' (in other words, that both of those terms signify the same thing), the 'three who's and one what' argument defeats itself.
Thursday, 21 May 2015
More on William Lane Craig's 'Trinity Monotheism'
My discovery that highly respected Christian philosopher William Lane Craig does not believe the Persons of the Trinity to be identical to God (because of the absurdities involved in the notion of three things being identical to a fourth thing but not to each other) is quite liberating. It’s good to know that my own views on the Trinity are scarcely less orthodox than those of such a highly respected Christian apologist. However, Craig’s view does leave open some important questions. For example, if he doesn’t think the Persons of the Trinity are identical with God, what does he think they are? And if the Persons can be referred to as God in a non-identity way, “such as ascribing a title or office… or ascribing a property”, does this mean that they really are God? If so, does Craig then think that the Godhead consists of one supreme God (the Trinity) and three lesser Gods (the Persons)? If Craig doesn’t think the Persons really are God then whatever he is defending, surely it is not the doctrine of the Trinity as traditionally understood by the Church, either protestant or catholic.
In my opinion, the reason why it is appropriate and meaningful to refer to the Son as God is that He fully reveals and represents God for us; the reason it is appropriate and meaningful to refer to God's Spirit as God is the fact that it is by His Spirit that God is present with us - and the fact that neither is strictly identical with God means that the word is best understood as being applied to them in a figurative or symbolic way.
In my opinion, the reason why it is appropriate and meaningful to refer to the Son as God is that He fully reveals and represents God for us; the reason it is appropriate and meaningful to refer to God's Spirit as God is the fact that it is by His Spirit that God is present with us - and the fact that neither is strictly identical with God means that the word is best understood as being applied to them in a figurative or symbolic way.
Wednesday, 20 May 2015
William Lane Craig, the Trinity and me
In my first post on this blog I explained that, because of the impossibility of three Persons being the same God and yet distinct from each other, I have come to the conclusion that the doctrine of the Trinity (DOT) is not true literally, but true in a figurative or symbolic way.
One of the possibilities I have considered in the past, though, is the idea that when we say that the Persons are God, we mean the word ‘God’ in a different sense to that in which we mean it when we say that there is only one God.
The traditional way to understand the DOT is the idea of there being one Divine Nature (or Being) that is shared by three Divine Persons. The problem is caused by the fact that not only the one Nature, but also the Persons, are referred to as God. If the word God has only one meaning, this would lead one to conclude that God is both something that there is only one of, and also something that there are three of. Cue cognitive dissonance!
However, if we take the word God to have one meaning when referring to the Divine Nature and a different meaning when referring to the Persons then the problem (at least the aspect of it under discussion) is resolved. There is only one God (in the Nature sense) and there are three Gods (in the Person sense).
I assumed that this way of looking at the DOT would not pass muster as being orthodox, as effectively it seems to imply that either the Persons are not God in the true sense of the word, or that there is actually more than one God, in which case Christianity would be a polytheistic religion – which it has certainly always claimed not to be!
However, after re-reading and considering the model of the Trinity posited by the well known and highly respected (at least among protestants) Christian apologist and philosopher William Lane Craig, I have come to the conclusion that this is exactly the model of the Trinity that he espouses – and, as far as I am aware, no one calls him a Unitarian or a Tritheist!
In Craig’s article, A Formulation and Defense of the Doctrine of the Trinity, in which he outlines his proposed description of the nature of God – a model which he calls Trinity Monotheism, "according to which God is a soul endowed with three sets of cognitive faculties, each sufficient for personhood" – he makes the following statements (my own comments are in italics):
‘We turn finally to Trinity Monotheism, which holds that while the persons of the Trinity are divine, it is the Trinity as a whole which is properly God. If this view is to be orthodox, it must hold that the Trinity alone is God and that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, while divine, are not Gods.‘
When Craig states that, for his view to be orthodox, it must hold that the Persons ‘are not Gods’, you might think he is merely stating that they are not God in the plural but that they are indeed God in the singular. But this is not the case, as we shall see.
‘The persons of the Trinity are not divine in virtue of exemplifying the divine nature. For presumably being triune is a property of the divine nature (God does not just happen to be triune); yet the persons of the Trinity do not exemplify that property. It now becomes clear that the reason that the Trinity is not a fourth instance of the divine nature is that there are no other instances of the divine nature. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not instances of the divine nature, and that is why there are not three Gods. The Trinity is the sole instance of the divine nature, and therefore there is but one God. So while the statement “The Trinity is God” is an identity statement, statements about the persons like “The Father is God” are not identity statements. Rather they perform other functions, such as ascribing a title or office to a person (like “Belshazzar is King,” which is not incompatible with there being co-regents) or ascribing a property to a person (a way of saying, “The Father is divine,” as one might say, “Belshazzar is regal”).’
So Craig does not think that the Persons are identical to God, although we may CALL them God, in a sense which is not meant to imply that they are instances of the Divine Nature.
‘…we could think of the persons of the Trinity as divine because they are parts of the Trinity, that is, parts of God. Now obviously, the persons are not parts of God in the sense in which a skeleton is part of a cat; but given that the Father, for example, is not the whole Godhead, it seems undeniable that there is some sort of part/whole relation obtaining between the persons of the Trinity and the entire Godhead.’
‘…if we think of the divinity of the persons in terms of a part/whole relation to the Trinity that God is, then their deity seems in no way diminished because they are not instances of the divine nature.’
‘…the part/whole relation at issue here does not involve separable parts. It is simply to say that the Father, for example, is not the whole Godhead. The Latin Church Father Hilary seems to capture the idea nicely when he asserts, “Each divine person is in the Unity, yet no person is the one God” (On the Trinity 7.2; cf. 7.13, 32).
‘On the other hand, it must be admitted that a number of post-Nicene creeds, probably under the influence of the doctrine of divine simplicity, do include statements which can be construed to identify each person of the Trinity with God as a whole. For example, the Eleventh Council of Toledo (675) affirms, “Each single person is wholly God in Himself,” the so-called Athanasian Creed (eighth century) enjoins Christians “to acknowledge every Person by Himself to be God and Lord,” and the Fourth Lateran Council, in condemning the idea of a divine Quaternity, declares, “each of the Persons is that reality, viz., that divine substance, essence, or nature. . . . what the Father is, this very same reality is also the Son, this the Holy Spirit.” If these declarations are intended to imply that statements like “The Father is God” are identity statements, then they threaten the doctrine of the Trinity with logical incoherence. For the logic of identity requires that if the Father is identical with God and the Son is identical with God, then the Father is identical with the Son, which the same Councils also deny. ‘
I’m a bit flabbergasted by this! Craig, who considers himself a Trinitarian – and who regularly debates with Unitarians in defense of the Trinitarian cause – just came right out and stated plainly that if the creeds are taken to mean that the Persons of the Trinity are identical with God then they are logically incoherent! Well… yes! That’s the whole point, that’s the problem I’ve spent many long hours trying to surmount in the hope of avoiding being a heretic. But Craig seems to think it’s simply not an issue.
‘Protestants bring all doctrinal statements, even Conciliar creeds, especially creeds of non-ecumenical Councils, before the bar of Scripture. Nothing in Scripture warrants us in thinking that God is simple and that each person of the Trinity is identical to the whole Trinity. Nothing in Scripture prohibits us from maintaining that the three persons of the Godhead stand in some sort of part/whole relation to the Trinity. Therefore, Trinity Monotheism cannot be condemned as unorthodox in a biblical sense. Trinity Monotheism seems therefore to be thus far vindicated. ‘
‘In other words, God is not a single, isolated person, as unitarian forms of theism like Islam hold; rather God is a plurality of persons, as the Christian doctrine of the Trinity affirms. On the unitarian view God is a person who does not give Himself away essentially in love for another; He is focused essentially only on Himself. Hence, He cannot be the most perfect being. But on the Christian view, God is a triad of persons in eternal, self-giving love relationships. Thus, since God is essentially loving, the doctrine of the Trinity is more plausible than any unitarian doctrine of God.’(End of quotations.)
Basically, Craig believes that the one God is the Trinity itself, and that each of the Persons is something less than God. He describes them as being (at least in some sense) parts of God but clearly not identical to God, and therefore distinct from Him (It?).
Craig's model escapes the charge of being unitarian because God clearly exists as three Persons rather than merely one. However, I am surprised that he considers himself - and is considered by many others - to be orthodox when he believes that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit may be called God only in some secondary sense - denoting office or indicating possession of the quality or attribute of divinity (which he compares to the quality of being feline possessed by the parts of a cat). He clearly does not think that any of the Persons is actually the one true God, for his whole claim to monotheism rests on the fact that only the Trinity itself (ie. the combination of all three persons together) is to be ascribed that title.
I too believe in one God, though I believe that the one God is the Father (as taught by the Bible here and here and by the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds) rather than the Trinity. However, I do believe God's creative, rational energy (Logos) of which Jesus is the human incarnation, and also God's Spirit are, in a sense, parts of God and thereby share in His nature. And I do think Jesus and the Holy Spirit can be called God in a symbolic way (because of this participation in the divine nature and because they mediate God's presence for us). I had thought that my beliefs were technically heretical and perhaps they are in terms of the historic understanding of, particularly, the Roman Catholic and possibly also Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches (although see this article and also this podcast - both by Eastern Orthodox priests) but if William Lane Craig is generally considered to be perfectly orthodox and sound in his Trinitarianism by the mainstream protestant community then perhaps there is hope for me yet!
One of the possibilities I have considered in the past, though, is the idea that when we say that the Persons are God, we mean the word ‘God’ in a different sense to that in which we mean it when we say that there is only one God.
The traditional way to understand the DOT is the idea of there being one Divine Nature (or Being) that is shared by three Divine Persons. The problem is caused by the fact that not only the one Nature, but also the Persons, are referred to as God. If the word God has only one meaning, this would lead one to conclude that God is both something that there is only one of, and also something that there are three of. Cue cognitive dissonance!
However, if we take the word God to have one meaning when referring to the Divine Nature and a different meaning when referring to the Persons then the problem (at least the aspect of it under discussion) is resolved. There is only one God (in the Nature sense) and there are three Gods (in the Person sense).
I assumed that this way of looking at the DOT would not pass muster as being orthodox, as effectively it seems to imply that either the Persons are not God in the true sense of the word, or that there is actually more than one God, in which case Christianity would be a polytheistic religion – which it has certainly always claimed not to be!
However, after re-reading and considering the model of the Trinity posited by the well known and highly respected (at least among protestants) Christian apologist and philosopher William Lane Craig, I have come to the conclusion that this is exactly the model of the Trinity that he espouses – and, as far as I am aware, no one calls him a Unitarian or a Tritheist!
In Craig’s article, A Formulation and Defense of the Doctrine of the Trinity, in which he outlines his proposed description of the nature of God – a model which he calls Trinity Monotheism, "according to which God is a soul endowed with three sets of cognitive faculties, each sufficient for personhood" – he makes the following statements (my own comments are in italics):
‘We turn finally to Trinity Monotheism, which holds that while the persons of the Trinity are divine, it is the Trinity as a whole which is properly God. If this view is to be orthodox, it must hold that the Trinity alone is God and that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, while divine, are not Gods.‘
When Craig states that, for his view to be orthodox, it must hold that the Persons ‘are not Gods’, you might think he is merely stating that they are not God in the plural but that they are indeed God in the singular. But this is not the case, as we shall see.
‘The persons of the Trinity are not divine in virtue of exemplifying the divine nature. For presumably being triune is a property of the divine nature (God does not just happen to be triune); yet the persons of the Trinity do not exemplify that property. It now becomes clear that the reason that the Trinity is not a fourth instance of the divine nature is that there are no other instances of the divine nature. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not instances of the divine nature, and that is why there are not three Gods. The Trinity is the sole instance of the divine nature, and therefore there is but one God. So while the statement “The Trinity is God” is an identity statement, statements about the persons like “The Father is God” are not identity statements. Rather they perform other functions, such as ascribing a title or office to a person (like “Belshazzar is King,” which is not incompatible with there being co-regents) or ascribing a property to a person (a way of saying, “The Father is divine,” as one might say, “Belshazzar is regal”).’
So Craig does not think that the Persons are identical to God, although we may CALL them God, in a sense which is not meant to imply that they are instances of the Divine Nature.
‘…we could think of the persons of the Trinity as divine because they are parts of the Trinity, that is, parts of God. Now obviously, the persons are not parts of God in the sense in which a skeleton is part of a cat; but given that the Father, for example, is not the whole Godhead, it seems undeniable that there is some sort of part/whole relation obtaining between the persons of the Trinity and the entire Godhead.’
‘…if we think of the divinity of the persons in terms of a part/whole relation to the Trinity that God is, then their deity seems in no way diminished because they are not instances of the divine nature.’
‘…the part/whole relation at issue here does not involve separable parts. It is simply to say that the Father, for example, is not the whole Godhead. The Latin Church Father Hilary seems to capture the idea nicely when he asserts, “Each divine person is in the Unity, yet no person is the one God” (On the Trinity 7.2; cf. 7.13, 32).
‘On the other hand, it must be admitted that a number of post-Nicene creeds, probably under the influence of the doctrine of divine simplicity, do include statements which can be construed to identify each person of the Trinity with God as a whole. For example, the Eleventh Council of Toledo (675) affirms, “Each single person is wholly God in Himself,” the so-called Athanasian Creed (eighth century) enjoins Christians “to acknowledge every Person by Himself to be God and Lord,” and the Fourth Lateran Council, in condemning the idea of a divine Quaternity, declares, “each of the Persons is that reality, viz., that divine substance, essence, or nature. . . . what the Father is, this very same reality is also the Son, this the Holy Spirit.” If these declarations are intended to imply that statements like “The Father is God” are identity statements, then they threaten the doctrine of the Trinity with logical incoherence. For the logic of identity requires that if the Father is identical with God and the Son is identical with God, then the Father is identical with the Son, which the same Councils also deny. ‘
I’m a bit flabbergasted by this! Craig, who considers himself a Trinitarian – and who regularly debates with Unitarians in defense of the Trinitarian cause – just came right out and stated plainly that if the creeds are taken to mean that the Persons of the Trinity are identical with God then they are logically incoherent! Well… yes! That’s the whole point, that’s the problem I’ve spent many long hours trying to surmount in the hope of avoiding being a heretic. But Craig seems to think it’s simply not an issue.
‘Protestants bring all doctrinal statements, even Conciliar creeds, especially creeds of non-ecumenical Councils, before the bar of Scripture. Nothing in Scripture warrants us in thinking that God is simple and that each person of the Trinity is identical to the whole Trinity. Nothing in Scripture prohibits us from maintaining that the three persons of the Godhead stand in some sort of part/whole relation to the Trinity. Therefore, Trinity Monotheism cannot be condemned as unorthodox in a biblical sense. Trinity Monotheism seems therefore to be thus far vindicated. ‘
‘In other words, God is not a single, isolated person, as unitarian forms of theism like Islam hold; rather God is a plurality of persons, as the Christian doctrine of the Trinity affirms. On the unitarian view God is a person who does not give Himself away essentially in love for another; He is focused essentially only on Himself. Hence, He cannot be the most perfect being. But on the Christian view, God is a triad of persons in eternal, self-giving love relationships. Thus, since God is essentially loving, the doctrine of the Trinity is more plausible than any unitarian doctrine of God.’(End of quotations.)
Basically, Craig believes that the one God is the Trinity itself, and that each of the Persons is something less than God. He describes them as being (at least in some sense) parts of God but clearly not identical to God, and therefore distinct from Him (It?).
Craig's model escapes the charge of being unitarian because God clearly exists as three Persons rather than merely one. However, I am surprised that he considers himself - and is considered by many others - to be orthodox when he believes that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit may be called God only in some secondary sense - denoting office or indicating possession of the quality or attribute of divinity (which he compares to the quality of being feline possessed by the parts of a cat). He clearly does not think that any of the Persons is actually the one true God, for his whole claim to monotheism rests on the fact that only the Trinity itself (ie. the combination of all three persons together) is to be ascribed that title.
I too believe in one God, though I believe that the one God is the Father (as taught by the Bible here and here and by the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds) rather than the Trinity. However, I do believe God's creative, rational energy (Logos) of which Jesus is the human incarnation, and also God's Spirit are, in a sense, parts of God and thereby share in His nature. And I do think Jesus and the Holy Spirit can be called God in a symbolic way (because of this participation in the divine nature and because they mediate God's presence for us). I had thought that my beliefs were technically heretical and perhaps they are in terms of the historic understanding of, particularly, the Roman Catholic and possibly also Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches (although see this article and also this podcast - both by Eastern Orthodox priests) but if William Lane Craig is generally considered to be perfectly orthodox and sound in his Trinitarianism by the mainstream protestant community then perhaps there is hope for me yet!
Thursday, 30 April 2015
C.S. Lewis's Cube Analogy
In Chapter 24 (entitled 'The Three-Personal God') of C.S. Lewis's brilliant book, 'Mere Christianity', Lewis attempts to show that it is not irrational to believe in the Trinity by using the following argument:
'You know that in space you can move in three ways - to left or right, backwards or forwards, up or down. Every direction is either one of these three or a compromise between them. They are called the three Dimensions. Now notice this. If you are using only one dimension, you could draw only a straight line. If you are using two; you could draw a figure: say, a square. And a square is made up of four straight lines. Now a step further. If you have three dimensions, you can then build what we call a solid body: say, a cube - a thing like a dice or a lump of sugar. And a cube is made up of six squares.
'Do you see the point? A world of one dimension would be a straight line. In a two-dimensional world, you still get straight lines, but many lines make one figure. In a three-dimensional world, you still get figures but many figures make one solid body. In other words, as you advance to more real and more complicated levels, you do not leave behind you the things you found on the simpler levels: you still have them, but combined in new ways - in ways you could not imagine if you knew only the simpler levels.
'Now the Christian account of God involves just the same principle. The human level is a simple and rather empty level. On the human level one person is one being, and any two persons are two separate beings - just as, in two dimensions (say on a flat sheet of paper) one square is one figure, and any two squares are two separate figures. On the Divine level you still find personalities; but up there you find them combined in new ways which we, who do not live on that level, cannot imagine. In God's dimension, so to speak, you find a being who is three Persons while remaining one Being, just as a cube is six squares while remaining one cube. Of course we cannot fully conceive a Being like that: just as, if we were so made that we perceived only two dimensions in space we could never properly imagine a cube. But we can get a sort of faint notion of it. And when we do, we are then, for the first time in our lives, getting some positive idea, however faint, of something super-personal - something more than a person. It is something we could never have guessed, and yet, once we have been told, one almost feels one ought to have been able to guess it because it fits in so well with all the things we know already.' (End quote)
I have come across Lewis's cube analogy used as a defense of the doctrine of the Trinity (DOT) many times, including in this talk by well known Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias, and in this YouTube video which purports to explain the DOT 'with reason' by using the cube analogy.
Now if Lewis's point about people in a two dimensional world not being able to grasp the concept of a three-dimensional shape is merely intended to illustrate the impossibility of us mortals ever being able to fully comprehend the infinite God, then I have no argument with him. In that case he is effectively saying that while he believes in and teaches the DOT, he accepts that there is no way the doctrine can ever make sense to the human mind and it must be accepted on faith in spite of its apparent incoherence.
If, however, his depiction of a cube appearing, to the inhabitants of a two-dimensional world, to be six separate squares when it is actually one single cube in the three-dimensional world, is intended as an actual analogy by which to explain the DOT, then it fails dismally. This is because, even in the three dimensional world, none of the six squares that comprise the cube actually is the cube. Since the squares would be analogous to the Divine Persons and the cube would be analogous to the Divine Being, this would mean that each of the Divine Persons is only a part (one third, presumably) of the Divine Being. Consequently, we would have three Persons, each of whom is a part of God but none of whom actually is God. Since the DOT requires that each of the Persons is fully God, C.S. Lewis's cube analogy sadly fails to shed any light on how the doctrine can be understood in a coherent and non-contradictory way.
'You know that in space you can move in three ways - to left or right, backwards or forwards, up or down. Every direction is either one of these three or a compromise between them. They are called the three Dimensions. Now notice this. If you are using only one dimension, you could draw only a straight line. If you are using two; you could draw a figure: say, a square. And a square is made up of four straight lines. Now a step further. If you have three dimensions, you can then build what we call a solid body: say, a cube - a thing like a dice or a lump of sugar. And a cube is made up of six squares.
'Do you see the point? A world of one dimension would be a straight line. In a two-dimensional world, you still get straight lines, but many lines make one figure. In a three-dimensional world, you still get figures but many figures make one solid body. In other words, as you advance to more real and more complicated levels, you do not leave behind you the things you found on the simpler levels: you still have them, but combined in new ways - in ways you could not imagine if you knew only the simpler levels.
'Now the Christian account of God involves just the same principle. The human level is a simple and rather empty level. On the human level one person is one being, and any two persons are two separate beings - just as, in two dimensions (say on a flat sheet of paper) one square is one figure, and any two squares are two separate figures. On the Divine level you still find personalities; but up there you find them combined in new ways which we, who do not live on that level, cannot imagine. In God's dimension, so to speak, you find a being who is three Persons while remaining one Being, just as a cube is six squares while remaining one cube. Of course we cannot fully conceive a Being like that: just as, if we were so made that we perceived only two dimensions in space we could never properly imagine a cube. But we can get a sort of faint notion of it. And when we do, we are then, for the first time in our lives, getting some positive idea, however faint, of something super-personal - something more than a person. It is something we could never have guessed, and yet, once we have been told, one almost feels one ought to have been able to guess it because it fits in so well with all the things we know already.' (End quote)
I have come across Lewis's cube analogy used as a defense of the doctrine of the Trinity (DOT) many times, including in this talk by well known Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias, and in this YouTube video which purports to explain the DOT 'with reason' by using the cube analogy.
Now if Lewis's point about people in a two dimensional world not being able to grasp the concept of a three-dimensional shape is merely intended to illustrate the impossibility of us mortals ever being able to fully comprehend the infinite God, then I have no argument with him. In that case he is effectively saying that while he believes in and teaches the DOT, he accepts that there is no way the doctrine can ever make sense to the human mind and it must be accepted on faith in spite of its apparent incoherence.
If, however, his depiction of a cube appearing, to the inhabitants of a two-dimensional world, to be six separate squares when it is actually one single cube in the three-dimensional world, is intended as an actual analogy by which to explain the DOT, then it fails dismally. This is because, even in the three dimensional world, none of the six squares that comprise the cube actually is the cube. Since the squares would be analogous to the Divine Persons and the cube would be analogous to the Divine Being, this would mean that each of the Divine Persons is only a part (one third, presumably) of the Divine Being. Consequently, we would have three Persons, each of whom is a part of God but none of whom actually is God. Since the DOT requires that each of the Persons is fully God, C.S. Lewis's cube analogy sadly fails to shed any light on how the doctrine can be understood in a coherent and non-contradictory way.
Wednesday, 29 April 2015
One God in three presences
Martin Luther once said, "to try to deny the Trinity is to endanger your salvation. To try to comprehend the Trinity is to endanger your sanity." The reformer chose not to risk losing his marbles but some of us Christians are less willing to simply accept such a central tenet of the faith as an incomprehensible mystery.
Over the years I have heard and read many attempts to explain the doctrine of the Trinity in a way that is both coherent and does not stray from the bounds of orthodox Christian theology. I have also spent many hours trying to figure out for myself how to make sense of the idea of three Divine Persons in one Divine Being. None of the explanations that I have heard, read, or attempted to devise, have ever stood up to rigorous scrutiny no matter how subtle, complex or seemingly clever they were or how sophisticated the mental gymnastics involved.
Ultimately, all attempts to explicate the doctrine of the Trinity come up against the following impasse: If each of the Persons is no less than God (and this must be the case, for orthodox theology requires that each is fully God, not partly God or part of God) and each of the Persons is no more than God (and they cannot be, for Christian theology teaches that each of the Persons has existed from the beginning, and in the beginning there was only God - nothing which was not God could yet exist, for God is the creator of all things) and if there is only one God then it follows logically from these premises that there can be absolutely no distinction between the Persons - each just is the other; in fact, there must really be only one Person. Yet Trinitarian theology teaches that each of the Persons is really distinct; though there is only one God, He exists eternally as three Persons, each of whom is not the other two.
It seems clear to me that there is no way around this conundrum and I have come to the conclusion (perhaps conclusion is the wrong word as my views on this subject are constantly under development) that since it is internally incoherent and logically impossible (not merely impossible in the sense of being beyond human experience – that, of course, would not be a problem where God is concerned - but impossible in the sense of being self contradictory; for a thing cannot be both x and not x simultaneously, neither can there be both three of something and only one of the same thing simultaneously, no matter how many mind-bending theories one posits about ‘three whos and one what’, relative identity or different senses of the word 'is') then it must be the case that not all of the tenets of the doctrine are literally true. In the words of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."
It seems, then, that the only reasonable understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity must be a symbolic, figurative, parabolic or poetic (as opposed to literal) one. In other words, it must be the case that either the Persons are not literally distinct from each other; or that none - or only one - of the Persons is literally God; or that God is not One in a literal (mathematical) sense.
Although I contend that the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be true in the literal sense, it is important to remember that just because something is not literally true does not mean that it is not actually true - it can still be 100 percent true but in a sense other than that implied by the straightforward, 'face value' meaning of the words.
My own understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity is that it expresses and symbolises the idea that, though there is only one God, Christians specifically encounter that God in three main ways; firstly, as the omnipotent, omnipresent creator of the universe and spiritual parent of all human beings; secondly, we encounter God in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, who for all Christians is the ultimate revelation of God's character and disposition towards humanity; thirdly, we meet God in the life of the Church and in the lives of individual believers as they live out their faith, empowered by God's spiritual presence.
Another way of saying this is that God, our Divine Parent, is fully present in and revealed by Jesus (who is, in a special sense, God's Son) through the agency of God's Spirit - which is not merely a blind force but a personal Presence of love and compassion. This view of the Trinity could, perhaps, be described as one God in three presences (rather than Persons).
There are, of course, other ways one could understand the doctrine of the Trinity non-literally but, for me, this is the interpretation that makes the most sense in terms of reflecting both the structure of the Trinitarian formula (albeit in a figurative way) and my actual experience of the Christian faith.
Over the years I have heard and read many attempts to explain the doctrine of the Trinity in a way that is both coherent and does not stray from the bounds of orthodox Christian theology. I have also spent many hours trying to figure out for myself how to make sense of the idea of three Divine Persons in one Divine Being. None of the explanations that I have heard, read, or attempted to devise, have ever stood up to rigorous scrutiny no matter how subtle, complex or seemingly clever they were or how sophisticated the mental gymnastics involved.
Ultimately, all attempts to explicate the doctrine of the Trinity come up against the following impasse: If each of the Persons is no less than God (and this must be the case, for orthodox theology requires that each is fully God, not partly God or part of God) and each of the Persons is no more than God (and they cannot be, for Christian theology teaches that each of the Persons has existed from the beginning, and in the beginning there was only God - nothing which was not God could yet exist, for God is the creator of all things) and if there is only one God then it follows logically from these premises that there can be absolutely no distinction between the Persons - each just is the other; in fact, there must really be only one Person. Yet Trinitarian theology teaches that each of the Persons is really distinct; though there is only one God, He exists eternally as three Persons, each of whom is not the other two.
It seems clear to me that there is no way around this conundrum and I have come to the conclusion (perhaps conclusion is the wrong word as my views on this subject are constantly under development) that since it is internally incoherent and logically impossible (not merely impossible in the sense of being beyond human experience – that, of course, would not be a problem where God is concerned - but impossible in the sense of being self contradictory; for a thing cannot be both x and not x simultaneously, neither can there be both three of something and only one of the same thing simultaneously, no matter how many mind-bending theories one posits about ‘three whos and one what’, relative identity or different senses of the word 'is') then it must be the case that not all of the tenets of the doctrine are literally true. In the words of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."
It seems, then, that the only reasonable understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity must be a symbolic, figurative, parabolic or poetic (as opposed to literal) one. In other words, it must be the case that either the Persons are not literally distinct from each other; or that none - or only one - of the Persons is literally God; or that God is not One in a literal (mathematical) sense.
Although I contend that the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be true in the literal sense, it is important to remember that just because something is not literally true does not mean that it is not actually true - it can still be 100 percent true but in a sense other than that implied by the straightforward, 'face value' meaning of the words.
My own understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity is that it expresses and symbolises the idea that, though there is only one God, Christians specifically encounter that God in three main ways; firstly, as the omnipotent, omnipresent creator of the universe and spiritual parent of all human beings; secondly, we encounter God in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, who for all Christians is the ultimate revelation of God's character and disposition towards humanity; thirdly, we meet God in the life of the Church and in the lives of individual believers as they live out their faith, empowered by God's spiritual presence.
Another way of saying this is that God, our Divine Parent, is fully present in and revealed by Jesus (who is, in a special sense, God's Son) through the agency of God's Spirit - which is not merely a blind force but a personal Presence of love and compassion. This view of the Trinity could, perhaps, be described as one God in three presences (rather than Persons).
There are, of course, other ways one could understand the doctrine of the Trinity non-literally but, for me, this is the interpretation that makes the most sense in terms of reflecting both the structure of the Trinitarian formula (albeit in a figurative way) and my actual experience of the Christian faith.
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