Trinity (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Am I correct when I think I recall that the author also edits the blog "trinities - theories about the father, the son and the holy spirit"?

Thanks for the link. I come from a theological rather than philosophical background, and my initial sense was shock at how much space was devoted to social trinitarianism in the article. While there is certainly a significant presence of social trinitarianism in theological work today, I would say that it's far from the normal or most accepted position on the Trinity. Is this not the case in philosophy? Could anyone give a general sense of the reception of a social trinity amongst philosophers? I don't think it would warrant nearly as much space in a theological encyclopedia article on the doctrine. Here Rahner or Barth would probably be taken more seriously than some of the more recent work, which I think has the reputation of being a bit less rigorous.

Unless something has changed in the last couple of years, Tuggy defends a more traditional "Latin Trinity."

I'm not trying to say that Tuggy defends social trinitarianism simply because he devotes a good deal of space to it in the encyclopedia article. Indeed, an encyclopedia article presumably reflects the state of the field rather than the state of its author's position. And this is where I did have a question about the treatment of social trinitarianism. Is the state of the field such that an article on the Trinity warrants such an extensive discussion of social models? I'm relatively ignorant of contemporary philosophy of religion, and was surprised by how much the question of social trinitarianism seemed to be a live issue, judging by its discussion in the article. Is this where most of the innovative work in trinitarian doctrine is being done amongst philosophers?

Hi folks,

Thanks for the link, Jon.

Yes, I'm the trinities guy - the editor of it, though happily, my blog mates have been putting up some good stuff lately.

About ST, my impression in that more philosophers than theologians are sympathetic to it - notables include those in the article, but also Hasker, Layman, Plantinga (both of them?). This is probably because of (1) intelligibility - love it or hate it, it is pretty clear what Swinburne is and is not saying, in sharp contrast to most theologians' treatments, and (2) fairly widespread sympathy for Richard of St. Victor / Davis / Richard of Oxford a priori arguments for a social trinity from the idea that God must be perfectly loving. Many Christian philosophers are just captivated by this picture of a perfect divine community.

I do not defend any "Latin" view; people probably jump to that conclusion because I've attacked Swinburnean social theories a couple of times in print.

Thanks Dale, and good to meet you. I was aware of the views of some of those you mentioned, not of others. Some thoughts that come to mind (not targeted at you, of course) 1) Often the Victorine tradition is too far divorced from the Augustinianism that is at its root- I think Michel Barnes brings this up in some of his work on Augustine's doctrine of the Trinity. Same with the Cappadocians (not that A. is at the root in this case, but that they share a common root.). 2) It strikes me that being "captivated" by a "picture" of community is no different in its lack of clarity than the sorts of treatments upon which someone like Swinburne is attempting to shed some intelligibility. 3) I imagine that "most theologians' statements" are probably less clear to those who are not brought up with the same disciplinary styles. The sharpest of analytical arguments is no clearer than mud to me, but that doesn't mean that it is thus not sharp in how it has been structured- it just means that I'm not all that sharp. 4) The difficulty of having a Latin/Social/whatever-else distinction seems to be that people can fall into being labeled as one thing or another that doesn't so well describe their position. In theology this comes up in atonement theory as well, which tends to have its quite rigid taxonomy of models.

Hi Evan,

A couple of other points. When calculating the % of space in my piece given to social, vs. that given to "Latin" views, keep in mind the History supplement, which has Augustine and Aquinas. To me, all the entry is of a piece - it had to be split into supplementary documents for practical reasons. Unfortunately, many readers will probably just look at the main entry's TOC.

I was speaking very generally re: the Christian philosophers' fascination with ST. To put it more clearly: they think that some aspect of divine perfection logically implies that God (in some sense) is more than one person. Swinburne gives clear versions both of this argument, and of a social theory - for him, God, is a substance with three other substances (the three divine persons) as parts. Of course, many "social" theories are unclear, but this is more true in theology than in philosophy.

I have to disagree with your view that clarity is totally background relative. I will concede, though, that much analytic philosophy is badly written, in an overly abstract, plodding, academic style. And yet, generally speaking, it can be figured out - while hard to chew, it does yield claims you can then understand and evaluate. The reason I didn't say much about recent theologians on the Trinity in the piece is that I found most of them don't have well-developed views, that is, clear and well-articulated ones. I suspect this is in part due to what I call mysterianism, of the negative variety... but there are probably many reasons for this.

On labels - they are great, so long as they are helpful. Many, esp. Richard Cross, have criticized the Latin-social dichotomy, and I think they are largely correct - I sort of say this in the piece somewhere.