Thesis: Even though Platonists and Aristotelians can have the same metaphysics of the Trinity, nonetheless it is harder for the Platonists to distinguish the doctrine of the Trinity from tritheism. But the Christian Platonists can still escape the charge of tritheism by accepting divine simplicity.
I shall assume that Aristotelianism accepts individual forms, so that the humanity of Peter and the humanity of Paul are numerically distinct. If it turns out that Aristotle did not accept individual forms, then I shall not deem Aristotle an Aristotelian.
Now I can argue for my thesis. Take the same metaphysics of the Trinity: There is one divinity and three hypostases (subjects, persons, individual substances, etc.). Each hypostasis has the numerically same divinity.
Suppose Platonism is true. Then the Trinity is analogous to three human beings, say Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, each of whom is a distinct hypostasis that has the numerically same humanity. Indeed, if the human ousia is humanity, then Socrates, Hypatia and Catherine are homoousioi, numerically one in ousia.
Suppose isntead Aristotelianism is true. Then the Trinity is no longer analogous in this way to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, because Socrates, Plato and Aristotle have numerically three humanities which are numerically distinct. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle are only homoiousioi, alike in ousia.
Now insofar as the Trinity is analogous to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, thus far the doctrine of the Trinity is like tritheism. Hence, if Platonism is true, the doctrine of the Trinity is more like tritheism than if Aristotelianism is true.
To rephrase, consider how a tritheism with gods who are exactly alike would be like given Platonism and given Aristotelianism. Suppose that thundergod is a species of god. In Platonism, a tritheism about thundergods would be three hypostases, say Zeus, Bill and Helga, each of whom has the numerically same thunderdivinity. While Zeus, Athena and Hephaestus would not be homoousioi, Zeus, Bill and Helga would arguably be. Hence, the doctrine of the persons of the Trinity being homoousioi would not distinguish the doctrine of the Trinity from three thundergods. On the other hand, in Aristotelianism, Zeus, Bill and Helga would normally each have a distinct thunderdivinity, and the thunderdivinity of each would be the ousia of each. Zeus, Bill and Helga would only be homoiousioi.
If this is right, it helps to explain why some of the Church Fathers sound more tritheist than, say, Aquinas, and it may also help to explain why sometimes the Eastern Church may look to the Western Church as closer to tritheism while the Western Church may look to the Eastern Church as closer to unitarianism. The difference lies is not so much in the metaphysics of the Trinity, as in the metaphysics of ordinary objects like people and angels. This observation may be ecumenically important.
Is this a good reason to accept an Aristotelian metaphysics? Well, I did not say that the Platonistcannot distinguish the Trinity from a trio of conspecific gods. I only said that it is harder for the Platonist to do so, and that the homoousios/homoiousios distinction does not help. But the Platonist can and should make a further move, that of accepting the doctrine of divine simplicity. Thus, the Platonist should not only say that the Father has the numerically same divinity as the Son and Holy Spirit do, but that the Father is that divinity. Divine simplicity understood at least as the identity of God and the divine ousia is the common doctrine of the Eastern and Western Churches (my authority for the views on the Eastern side is Fr. Denis Bradley; on the Western side, the doctrine is enshrined in the teachings of Lateran IV and Vatican I).
If Platonism holds, Zeus, Bill and Helga would each have the same thunderdivinity, but they would not be that thunderdivinity. But the Father not only has but is the same divinity, the same godhead, as the Son and Holy Spirit.
And of course the Aristotelian ought to say the same thing: the Father, Son and Holy Spirit each is the one godhead, glorious and worthy of all worship, may his name be blessed by all.
Hi Alexander,
Hope TX is treating you well.
As you understand the (relevant, correct) doctrine of simplicity, what does "is" mean, in "the Father is the godhead [God's divinity]".
It isn't identity, right? (Because some things are true of one but not the other.)
But if it isn't, the Father and God's divinity will be distinct, and so if both are divine, we've got (at least) two divinities.
I curious about how you're thinking about this.
Best,
Dale
Oh yeah - there's a somewhat related discussion here (re: the chart).
http://trinities.org/blog/
Dale
What should one say about: "The Father is the godhead"?
What at least one Aristotelian, namely St. Thomas, says is basically this: The is of identity is actually ambiguous, though for ordinary things the extension of the two meanings is the same. When we say that Cicero is Tully, we could mean one of two things:
(a) Cicero's substantial form is numerically the same as Tully's substantial form ("substantial identity");
(b) Cicero's hypostasis ("individual substance") is numerically the same as Tully's hypostasis ("hypostatic identity").
Now, on an Aristotelian metaphysics, for ordinary objects, there is substantial identity iff there is hypostatic identity, because distinct individuals have distinct forms, and distinct substantial forms are had by distinct individuals. But in the case of God, the coincidence between substantial and hypostatic identity breaks down.
Thus, when we say that the Father is the godhead, the is indicates substantial identity, while when say that the Father is not the Son, the is not indicates lack of hypostatic identity.
What we have here is like relative identity, in that we have more than one sense of identity, but unlike in typical relative identity theories, there are in all only two senses of identity.
So the Aristotelian has a story to tell here.
What about the Platonist? There things are harder, because the Platonist does not seem to have available a notion of substantial identity. So maybe the Platonist cannot say what the sense of is in "the Father is the godhead" is. But that's OK--to use a term meaningfully, it is not necessary to have a story about the term's semantics. There is a worry about how one can come to grasp the word one uses in such cases, but the Platonist can always say that this is by grace, a supernatural grasp. (The idea that we only grasp the doctrines of faith by grace is attractive on independent grounds.)
I do think that in discussions of the Trinity it is essential to bear in mind the analogical nature of language about God. It is possible that some term be univocal in the case of finite beings, but acquire an ambiguity when applied in the divine case. Sometimes we'll be able to resolve that ambiguity verbally and explain how the two senses differ, but it is also prima facie possible that we be unable to explain the difference in the two senses verbally.
Suppose that we were animals that did not distinguish between hearing and tactile feeling. For us, to hear and to feel tactilely is the same thing. After all, both hearing and tactile feeling is a matter of sensing pressure from the outside environment. So we have a single term, say "feer", for data we get by sensing pressure from the outside environment. Now we meet humans, and we realize after talking with them for a while that they have two distinct terms, "hear" and "feel", corresponding to our single "feer". After a fair amount of talking with human beings, we might get the hang of the distinction between hearing and feeling, but still be unable to explain that distinction to anybody else. We might translate human texts into our language by using "feer" to translate both "hear" and "fear", but in doing so we would be using "feer" in two distinct senses.
The Platonist can claim that it is thus with "is" and God. By using the language, under the influence of grace and/or in sacred contexts (the liturgy may well end up semantically crucial!), we come to grasp the two distinct senses of "is", but are unable to explain.
Of course, ultimately, we could dissect humans, or read their anatomy books, and find out how hearing and feeling differ. This possibility may correspond to the deeper understanding we can have in heaven.
(From the point of view of the above, it is significant that Augustine insists on not defining the term "person", insisting on its being a placeholder for a reality that we have no other way of getting at. This may play a role in his account of the Trinity that functionally corresponds to the distinction between the two kinds of "is" of identity.)
Let me add a complication to using Leibniz's law in the case of God.
One can formulate Leibniz's law as: "If x has property P, and y=x, then y has property P." That's fine, but it presupposes properties. And it is not clear whether, given divine simplicity, it makes sense to talk of "properties" in the case of God.
Suppose instead that Leibniz's law states that in a sentence template of the form "____ is F" identicals can be intersubstituted. If so, then Leibniz's law is surely false, since we can surely have Fs that induce an intensional context. Now you might say that you can still generate problems for "the Father is the godhead" by using Fs that do not induce an intensional context. But I suspect that any examples you will give of this will depend on something like the following Extensionality Principle:
If a term F does not induce an intensional context in ordinary uses, F does not induce an intensional context in theological uses
But someone who has a robust notion of the analogical nature of theological language will reject this principle.
Moreover, it is not clear whether any of the Fs that actually create trouble for "The Father is the godhead" are ordinary Fs. For ordinary terms F like "wise", "all powerful", the Father is F iff the Son is F iff the Holy Spirit is F iff the godhead is F. You get trouble when you start using terms F like "is (the) Father" or "became incarnate". But these are not ordinary terms--indeed, they have no ordinary uses, so the extensionality principle is inapplicable. You can do better if you make use of the doctrine of the Incarnation, and use terms like "died". The Son died, but the godhead did not die. However, there are complications with "the Son died" that may damage the argument by making it less ordinary than it seems on the face of it. And in any case, you still need the dubious Extensionality Principle.
All that said, I am not a Platonist; there may be better Platonist answers which I simply do not know.
Hi Alexander,
Do you assume that every trinitarian is a Platonist or an Aristotelian? I take it, none of us are either, in a strict sense. Of course, some realists about universals are more or less Platonists or Aristotelians *about universals*. Aquinas, in my view, is incredibly hard to interpret on the Trinity, so I don't want to open that can of worms unless it has to be opened. What I'm getting at is this: Do *you* think identity statements are ambiguous? I don't. For some natural language sentences, I guess they could be read in some cases as being about identity or not. But in logic, it seems to me they're as clear as can be.
So I was asking: in your view, is this true? f = d (d names the divine essence) If I understood you, you said no. Rather, f & d are one substance but not identical (whatever that means).
Re: L's Law. Maybe it's best to put it in forms of truths, so as to not presuppose anything about properties / universals. So: For any a and b, a = b only if whatever is true of a is true of b and vice-versa. I think Cartwright has argued that L's Law is just not the same as, and isn't reducible to that principle of intersubstitutivity you cite. After all, it's based on intuition about things, not about sentences and term-substitutions. I sort of see what you're trying to go, in providing a linguistic parry to certain sort of L's Law objections. But I'll wager that you're committed to some form a L's Law yourself.
About grasping the meaning of claims by grace - I take it, all true Christians would then understand some claim not graspable by others, e.g. "the Father is the divine essence". But then, among believers, there would be intelligible discourse about that claim that showed they grasped the meaning of it. But we don't find that. What we rather find is what I call "negative mysterianism" - the claim that some trinitarian claims are unintelligible, but this isn't a bad thing (e.g. Augustine saying he doesn't know what "person" means in this context).
Honestly - imagine that a Hindu tells you "I understand how Atman and Brahman are related". And you say "Great - how? Identity?" And he says "No - it has been revealed unto me by Vishnu, but I can't explain it to you, you infidel." Don't you think he'd be faking it? *Ordinarily*, a mark of understanding something, or at least of understanding it well, is being able to help someone else grasp it. Or at least, being able to tell them what they'd have to study to eventually be able to grasp it...
Dale:
I agree that not everybody now is a Platonist or an Aristotelian. My concern is more with the great historical figures here. Even there, not everything may fit exactly.
I don't know whether all identity statements are univocal. I feel the pull towards saying that some of our language about God is univocal. But on the other hand, Aquinas may well be right that all true positive claims about God are analogical, in which case this is also true of identity statements.
I don't think it helps much to say that Leibniz's law is about things or to use "true of" talk.
Things are pretty complicated given a hylomorphism. There will be more than one way in which something can be true of a thing. We might be talking of the form, the matter or the composite, for instance. There may be subtler distinctions: we might be talking of the hypostasis or the individual essence.
I am not clear enough on all the metaphysics to be able to affirm or deny that Leibniz's law holds in all generality. It does, I think, hold of ordinary things.
I suspect, though, that the correct account of the Trinity and the Incarnation will require a disambiguation of identity.
In the end, I really do think the Tradition is saying that the Father is identical with God, and that the Son is identical with God, and that the Father is not identical with the Son. This forces one to see identical as not being simply univocal.
Aquinas seems to me to give the best account there is of how all this could be true. I actually find him very clear and easy to interpret on the Trinity--maybe that's a sign that I'm misinterpreting him.
I don't even know how good a mark of grasping a concept is being able to introduce it to those who don't have it. How would one introduce concepts of matter, space, place, size and shape to a being that didn't have these concepts (e.g., a being that was non-spatial and had not been given any ability to sense what is in space, though you could somehow telepathically communicate with the being)? We could introduce axioms of geometry as purely abstract axioms, but that, I think, wouldn't help.
See Keith Yandell's article from Phil. Christi (2000 or 2001, I don't recall). It deals with many of these themes in a way that you might find helpful.
Also, when you say, "Suppose Platonism is true. Then the Trinity is analogous to three human beings, say Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, each of whom is a distinct hypostasis that has the numerically same humanity. Indeed, if the human ousia is humanity, then Socrates, Hypatia and Catherine are homoousioi, numerically one in ousia." I'm not sure why this has to be Platonism - it just sounds like Aristotle's "secondary substance" talk to me, which is left as an option by the ambiguous use of ousia in the creeds (i.e. it is not specified whether the substance which the members of the godhead share is primary or secondary). So when you say, "Suppose isntead Aristotelianism is true. Then the Trinity is no longer analogous in this way to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, because Socrates, Plato and Aristotle have numerically three humanities which are numerically distinct," you are right - PROVIDED you mean primary substance. But one could mean secondary substance by ousia and S, P, and A would then still be the same substance (homoousia).
Brad:
It seems a merit of Aristotelianism that it can make the Trinity disanalogous to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. After all, we surely don't want the Trinity to be too closely analogous to S, P and A, since that threatens tritheism.
As for whether ousia can mean "secondary substance" in the creeds, if that is all that was meant, then there would be no more mystery in the Father and Son being homoousioi than there is in the unity of secondary substance between Socrates and Plato. But the doctrine of the Trinity is indeed a unique mystery, and is treated as such by the Tradition.
A couple of your points seem a little strange to me. One, the churchmen who first elucidated the doctrine of the Trinity were unquestionably more Platonic than Aristotelian, so it strikes me as weird to suggest that trinitarianism is somehow less amenable to platonists. Two, before Nicea the church had allowed the expression homoousion OR homoiousion in formulating trinitarian statements; that is, understanding the Father, Son, and Spirit to be of one secondary substance was completely in bounds. So when you say, "As for whether ousia can mean "secondary substance" in the creeds, if that is all that was meant, then there would be no more mystery in the Father and Son being homoousioi than there is in the unity of secondary substance between Socrates and Plato" I have to agree with you in part - it's less mysterious - but disagree with the implication - that it wasn't what the creed meant. In fact, the creed did mean that to some of them (though tradition would eventually leave that interpretation behind).
Dear Brad,
1. It does sometimes happen that a philosophical mistake can make it more difficult to adhere to some portion of the Christian teaching. I am not saying that the Platonist Fathers got Christian teaching wrong. But if Platonism turns out to be wrong, as I think it does, then it is not unlikely that their philosophical mistake made it more difficult for them to express and hold that teaching. Christian doctrine is irrepressible--it shines through philosophical mistakes, and a good thing that is given that we surely all make philosophical mistakes.
For another interesting example of this sort of thing, consider the conflict between the Church's Tradition of treating abortion as tantamount to homicide, even though the reigning philosophical view until the late 19th century was that the embryo was not ensouled. Again, the truth from moral theology that abortion is tantamount to homicide was made more difficult to hold on to by the philosophical mistake, but nonetheless the doctrine shone through, by the power of the Holy Spirit, who establishes the Church in truth.
I actually think that it is cases like this, where doctrine is in tension with reigning philosophy, that provide some of the clearest testimony to what Christian doctrine is.
2. It is certainly true to say that the Father and the Son are like in substance. If x=y, then x is like y. You can't get more alike than identical!
3. Of course I take the Tradition's developing understanding of the Councils as normative. While the deposit of faith is unchanged, we grow in clarity. The Councils come from the voice of the Church, and the Church continually seeks deeper understanding. Granting for the sake of the argument that the creed in the intentions of the Council Fathers was meant to be compatible with a secondary substance reading, then that means that the Tradition has since come to see that a secondary substance identity is insufficient as an expression of the faith of the Church. And the later development of the Tradition, fully compatible with the first (after all, on the primary substance reading, there is also secondary substance identity), is authoritative, just as Nicaea was.
I agree, and am likewise thankful, that the Holy Spirit sees fit to preserve the truth through any misshapen vehicle we offer him. But I think the doctrine of the Trinity emerges from our Christology, and when it comes to understanding the dual human/divine nature of Christ I think Platonism makes it EASIER, not harder - though it may be true that Aristotelianism is friendlier to trinitarianism in the long run. In fact, I am at a near-complete loss to understand the dual nature of Christ from Aristotle's (or Aquinas') perspective.
And it's kind of you to grant "for the sake of the argument that the creed in the intentions of the Council Fathers was meant to be compatible with a secondary substance reading", but it's abundantly clear from their writings that such an interpretation was on their minds (see, for example, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Origen, Tertullian, John of Damascus and others who say that the substance the persons share IS similar to the substance shared by Peter, James, and John).
Brad:
I know that the Fathers do sometimes compare the substance shared to that of three persons. And that comparison is correct, but it would be mistaken to think that it expresses the whole of the relevant aspects of the truth about the Trinity. If it did, I don't think they would see the doctrine of the Trinity as a mystery in the way they do.
I am not sure why you think the Platonic way of understanding the Incarnation is easier. I think it is slightly easier on the Aristotelian account, at least in one respect. Christ qua man did not know certain things which he qua God did know. What to make of that? The Aristotelian can give the following account: x does A qua F provided that the F-nature is causally involved in x's doing A. But it is just slightly less clear on a Platonic view how to say this, since the forms are causally impotent. Perhaps one can say that x does A qua provided that x's participating in Fness is causally involved in x's doing A. Once we have participatings on the scene, we have something functionally rather Aristotelian.
That's not to say that there isn't some other issue where the Platonist has an easier time with the Incarnation.