Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Reality is strange

The doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation and transubstantiation initially seem contradictory. Elaborate theological/philosophical accounts of the doctrines are available (e.g., from St. Thomas Aquinas), and given these, there is no overt contradiction. But the doctrines still seem very strange and they feel like they border on contradiction, with the accounts that remove contradiction sometimes looking like they are ad hoc designed to remove the contradiction from the doctrine. This may seem like a good reason to reject the doctrines.

But to reject the doctrines for this reason alone would be mistaken. For similar points can be made about Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics. To say that simultaneity is relative or that a physical object has no position but rather a probability distribution over positions borders on contradiction, and the philosophical moves needed to defend these seem ad hoc designed to save the theories. If we’ve learned one thing from physics in the 20th century, it is that the true physics of the world is very strange indeed.

Nor are theology and science the only places where things are strange. Similar things can be said about the mathematics of infinity, or even just common sense claims such as that there is change (think of Zeno’s paradoxes) or that material objects persist over time (think of the Ship of Theseus and the paradoxes of material composition).

We can, thus, be very confident that created reality is very strange indeed. And hence, shouldn’t we expect similar strangeness—indeed, mystery—in the Creator and his relationship to us?

17 comments:

  1. It is possible to understand this by the idea of "the thing in itself" of Kant. At least as understood by Leonard Nelson with immediate non intuitive knowledge.


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  2. Alex

    The Trinity doesn't merely "initially seem contradictory", the Trinity does overly contradict Divine Simplicity.
    Divine Simplicity holds that there are no real distinctions in God, while the Trinity asserts that there is a real distinction between the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit.
    Or, to put it more clearly, Divine Simplicity entails that God is identical to all his properties, that is, God's Mercy is God's Justice is God etc.

    That also means that God's 'Sonness' is God's 'Fatherness' is God's 'Spiritness' is God's ...

    There is also another important difference between the doctrines you are describing and scientific theories. Scientific theories are, by there own nature, subject to corrections or even to complete revision. contrary to faith doctrines there is nobody who claims that the scientific theories must be correct and that people who even dare to doubt this are guilty of heresy or something like that.

    If only there was so much openness on doctrines.

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  3. Walter:

    On the Oppy/Brower/Pruss account of divine simplicity, all that's needed for property simplicity is that the truthmaker of God's having each divine property be the same. And that can be reconciled with the Trinity.

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  4. Alex

    The question is: do you agree that God's mercy is God's justice etc or not?
    In "On three Problems of Divine Simplicity" you say "For according to the doctrine of divine simplicity when God has attributes A and B, then God’s being A is ontologically identical with God’s being B."

    So, it doesn't seem that the doctrine of divine simplicity is merely about the truthmaker of God's having each divine property be the same. God's being A is ontologically identical with God's being B. God's being the Father is ontologically identical with God's being the Son and also ontologically identical with God being just, omniscient, omnipotent, good, etc.


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  5. Walter,

    It's worth mentioning that, for Aquinas at least, divine simplicity is primarily a claim about composition (or the lack thereof), not a claim about identity. The view is, after all, that God has no parts, right? So, unless you think the claim that God has no parts entails the claim that God's attributes are all identical, it isn't clear why such identity claims are relevant.

    I should add that I, for one, do not believe that "God has no parts" entails "God's attributes are all identical."

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  6. Michael

    From the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

    "According to the doctrine, “[God] doesn’t merely have a nature or essence; he just is that nature, … [and] each of his properties is identical with each of his properties…so that God has but one property.”
    https://www.iep.utm.edu/div-simp/


    That's the version of Divine Simplicity I am talking about here. And from this version it follows that the property "being the father" is identical with the property "being the son".

    So, I am not saying that God has no parts entails the claim that God's attributes are all identical, I am saying that most proponents of divine simplicity nowadays believe that God's attributes are all identical. Even Alex seems to believe or at least he used to believe that when he wrote "On three Problems of Divine Simplicity".

    But of course, there are different accounts of DS, and I am not claiming that my objection works for all possible accounts of DS one can come up with. But it does work for the version claiming that "each of his properties is identical with each of his properties…so that God has but one property".

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  7. Walter:

    "God's F" is, I think, just the truthmaker of "God is F". So, God's mercy is God's justice, but that simply means that the truthmaker of "God is just" is the same as the truthmaker of "God is merciful".

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  8. Alex

    No, if God's mercy (M) is God's justice (J) then God is the truthmaker of M = J. That means he is also the truthmaker of F(being the father) = S (being the son) = G.
    And that contradicts the trinity.


    If you claim God is the truthmaker of M as well as the truthmaker of J, you contradict divine simplicity, because you are the truthmaker of "Alex is male" and also the truthmaker of "Alex is a philosopher", but it makes no sense to claim Alex being male is Alex being a philosopher. And that's because you are not simple, you have separate properties.

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  9. God's being the Father and God's being the Son can be the same, i.e., there can be one truthmaker, without the Father being the Son.

    Note that I am not the truthmaker of "Alex is a philosopher". For if x is the truthmaker of p, then it is impossible for x to exist without p being true. But I can exist without being a philosopher. (I don't know if I can exist without being male.)

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  10. Alex

    If "God's being the father" is the same as "God's being the son" then that alone contradicts the Trinity.

    As for Alex being the truthmaker of "Alex is a philosopher" or not, that's not the point. I could have used "Alex is human" and "Alex is male" for that matter.The point is that if there can be one truthmaker for two separate things, that is a contradiction of simplicity because there cannot be separate things in a simple entity.
    And if the truthmaker is about only one thing, there can be no Trinity.
    This exhausts the options, I am afraid.

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  11. No, the doctrine of the Trinity is not about "God's being the Father" not being the same as "God's being the Son". It is about the Father not being the Son.

    Truthmakers are truthmakers for *propositions*. And everyone agrees there are many different true propositions about God.

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  12. Alex


    The traditional doctrine of simplicity says that there are no real distinctions in God. If a different proposition doesn't describe a real distinction in God, then of course there are different true propositions in God. But my original comment was about the view on divine simplicity as expressed by, e.g. Edward Feser "what the doctrine of divine simplicity claims ... is, not that all of God’s properties are identical and thus are as necessary as he is, but rather that all of his real properties are. (https://theopolisinstitute.com/conversations/simply-irresistible/)

    The Trinity is about real properties, not about "Cambridge" properties. So, the property "being the Son" is identical to the property "being the Father" is identical to the property "Being omniscient" etc. Hence there can be no Trinity.

    As to your 'truthmaker escape', it doesn't seem to be true that all that's needed for property simplicity is that the truthmaker of God's having each divine property be the same. The truthmaker of Alex's property of being male is the same as the truthmaker of Alex being human, but in Alex's case there is no property simplicity. What seems to be needed for property simplicity is that each property be identical. And that contradicts the Trinity.

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  13. "The truthmaker of Alex's property of being male is the same as the truthmaker of Alex being human": Roughly speaking, the truthmaker of my being human is me with my human form; the truthmaker of my being male is me with my accident/trope of maleness.

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  14. Alex

    But in that case, the truthmaker of God being the Father is God with his "Fatherly" form etc. This makes matters even worse for simplicity.

    Actually whatever the truthmaker for God's being the Father or God's being the Son is, is irrelevant.
    What matters is the reality. Is there a real difference between God being the father and God being the son or not? If there is a real distinction, then simplicity is false. If there isn't one, the Trinity is false.

    Now, you can have the last word on this, because there really is nothing more I can add.

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  15. Walter and Alex,

    There have been several recent defenses that the Father and Son are really distinct, but the persons are just the relations subsisting in different ways. For example the Son is identical to relations subsisting Son-like, and the Father is identical to the relations subsisting Father-like, etc.. But the relations subsisting Father-like is really distinct from the relations subsisting Son-Like.

    Now, this all hinges that ways of subsisting are not intrinsic properties of God, since for each X "God subsisting X-like" the subsistences would have to be identical for all X, so would undermine this.

    Perhaps the Theist might say that these are in relation to creaturely features of paternity, etc., and so would be extrinsic to God. But this necessitates and even prioritizes creation, which the Simple Theist couldn't allow.

    Do you think there is a way out for this conception?

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  16. Michael

    To be honest, I really don't get those defenses. The fact that I can think or contemplate about myself does not mean that I am in fact two persons. And my "act of contemplating about myself is not somehow a third person.

    At best you get a symbolic (or modal) Trinity, but that is a heresy.
    Anyway, my argument is against the brands of divine simplicity that state that God is identical to all his 'properties'and that all his properties are identical to God.
    On that account, relations subsisting Son-like are identical to relations subsisting Father-like.

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  17. I like how God's existence is analysed here with honest intellectualism. God bless.

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