Two trinity problems
There's been some discussion of the trinity over at Mickey's place, among other places. My profound ignorance on the subject doesn't stop me from being interested. Or from making a few (probably ill-conceived) comments.
Up front: I'm a little leery of this whole "trinity" thing.
I'm pretty sure this is a bad start. At least, if we can replace the "is" with "=" (denoting the relation that philosophers call "identity"), then we get a clear contradiction. It goes like this:
But step 4 contradicts T2. Oh no!
So you have three options:
I'm probably gonna have to go with 2 or 3, myself. If you go with 2 then you're gonna have to (Clintonianly) resolve what the meaning of 'is' is. If you go with 3, then you have to either (a) become a unitarian, or (b) start over with your description of the trinity.
(If you don't like premise 1 (or premise 3), you can redo the argument with some other property of God that you think is true. God doesn't have a body; but Jesus has a body. God "never sleeps nor slumbers", but Jesus slept. God is a trinity, but Jesus is not a trinity.)
This is kind of a ridiculous argument. But all it really uses is the fact that if X=Y then any property of X is a property of Y (philosophers call this "indiscernibility of identicals"). If X and Y are the same, then they aren't different.
But Jesus does not have all of the properties that God has. Either I'm wrong about that, or indiscernibility of identicals is false, or else Jesus = God is false. I'm afraid my vote is probably going to have to go to the last option.
So if "Jesus is God" is a true statement, it means something different from "Jesus = God". (What does it mean, then? Ummm, still working on that.) But even if the statement is true in some other sense, it's one we should be very careful with, to keep from inadvertently making bad arguments like the one that proves Jesus didn't rise from the dead.
That's as far as I've got. Thoughts?
(By the way, Shieva (whose blog I linked to at the top of this post) is a soon-to-be-fellow-student at Rutgers. Which is to say, she's already a student there, but not yet a fellow student, because I'm not yet a student. Is there a better way of saying what she is to me?)
(Also by the way, I'm sure neither of these arguments are remotely original, so please don't give me credit for them. If you know which ancient dude I should give credit to, please let me know.)
Up front: I'm a little leery of this whole "trinity" thing.
1.
Let's start with two claims:| T1. | (a) The Father is God. (b) Jesus is God. (c) The Holy Spirit is God. |
| T2. | Jesus is not the Father, and similarly for every other pair. |
I'm pretty sure this is a bad start. At least, if we can replace the "is" with "=" (denoting the relation that philosophers call "identity"), then we get a clear contradiction. It goes like this:
| 1. | The Father = God | From T1(a) |
| 2. | God = the Father | Identity is symmetric. |
| 3. | Jesus = God | From T1(b) |
| 4. | Jesus = the Father | Identity is transitive. |
But step 4 contradicts T2. Oh no!
So you have three options:
- You can say we goofed on the properties of identity: either symmetry or transitivity breaks down.
- You can say that in claims T1 and T2, "is" does not mean "=".
- You can give up and say, yep, it's contradictory: T1 or T2 is false.
I'm probably gonna have to go with 2 or 3, myself. If you go with 2 then you're gonna have to (Clintonianly) resolve what the meaning of 'is' is. If you go with 3, then you have to either (a) become a unitarian, or (b) start over with your description of the trinity.
2.
Here's a separate problem with T1. If we gloss "Jesus is God" as "Jesus = God", then arguments like this one would be valid:- God does not change.
- Since Jesus = God, Jesus does not change.
- Dying and rising from the dead are changes.
- Therefore Jesus did not die or rise from the dead.
(If you don't like premise 1 (or premise 3), you can redo the argument with some other property of God that you think is true. God doesn't have a body; but Jesus has a body. God "never sleeps nor slumbers", but Jesus slept. God is a trinity, but Jesus is not a trinity.)
This is kind of a ridiculous argument. But all it really uses is the fact that if X=Y then any property of X is a property of Y (philosophers call this "indiscernibility of identicals"). If X and Y are the same, then they aren't different.
But Jesus does not have all of the properties that God has. Either I'm wrong about that, or indiscernibility of identicals is false, or else Jesus = God is false. I'm afraid my vote is probably going to have to go to the last option.
So if "Jesus is God" is a true statement, it means something different from "Jesus = God". (What does it mean, then? Ummm, still working on that.) But even if the statement is true in some other sense, it's one we should be very careful with, to keep from inadvertently making bad arguments like the one that proves Jesus didn't rise from the dead.
That's as far as I've got. Thoughts?
(By the way, Shieva (whose blog I linked to at the top of this post) is a soon-to-be-fellow-student at Rutgers. Which is to say, she's already a student there, but not yet a fellow student, because I'm not yet a student. Is there a better way of saying what she is to me?)
(Also by the way, I'm sure neither of these arguments are remotely original, so please don't give me credit for them. If you know which ancient dude I should give credit to, please let me know.)
Posted by Jeff on Monday, April 17, 2006
5 Comments:
Might I suggest a book?
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Roles, Relationships, and Relevance by Bruce Ware has been greatly informative. It's a quick read.
I don't think it's right to interpret the 'is' in 'Jesus is God' as identity. The sentence 'I am human' is true, and presumably 'you are human' is true too, but we cannot infer from the conjunction of these two sentences that 'I am you.'
I'm not sure I agree, but I think identity fails with the sort of problems you raised. Additionally, the identity "relation" is supposed to be symmetrical and transitive. So...
P1: Jesus is (identical to) God.
P1' : God is (identical to) Jesus.
But P1' is wrong. God is a Trinity, but Jesus is not. Moreland claims that rather than thinking of P1 in terms of identity, it ought to be essential predication. I'm not sure I agree yet, but the metaphysics of God tends to be, well, difficult.
There are, of course, puzzles about the Trinity. I don't think this is one of them.
Incidentally, denying (1) isn't so strange. Peter Geach spilled much ink developing an account of "relative identity" according to which identity need not be transitive in all contexts. And the account is not an ad hoc move designed only the save the Trinitarian from embarrassment; it has application to and conceptual motivation from a variety of philosophical topics.
The way I always understood it:
Jesus is God in terms of essence, not in terms of personhood. All three members of the trinity are identical in essence (not sure exactly what that means, but hey, what's one more mystery in this discussion) but not in terms of function. I'd definitely check out Moreland for more on this, mostly because he's the one who explained it little ol' freshman me a few years back.
And using Jesus to try and figure out how the Trinity works may be making things more complicated because of the whole incarnation bit. Jesus sleeps because he's human, not because he's God. Does the divine aspect/side/whatever ever sleep?
Egads, trying to think through this stuff at seven in the morning is not a good idea.
I've got to agree about the essence bit. I've always understood "Jesus is God" to be sort of analogous to saying "Jeff is human." Correct me if I'm wrong, but would we not be seriously mistaken (or simply incoherent) if we inferred from "Jeff is human" that "Human is Jeff?"
Now of course you might ask why the usual formula is not "Jesus is a god" or "Jesus is divine." The latter is a fairly common formula, so never mind that. As to the former, that implies that there are other gods out there, which is something Christians usually don't like to say because it just raises all sorts of useless questions about what we mean by "god." And at any rate, we certainly don't mean that Jesus is a god separate from the Father or the Holy Spirit (we can sort of imagine the Trinty being a Trirumvirate of existentially independent deities, but we don't actually think that's the way it is). So saying "Jesus is a god" would not actually be any clearer than saying "Jesus is God," and arguably more misleading.
Great! This is exactly the kind of discussion I was hoping for. Y'all are cool. My response is going to be in a new post, since formatting is easier there.
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