Personhood is teleologically relational in the sense that a person is the kind of being that necessarily can only be fulfilled in relationships with other persons.
Necessarily, any person other than God is a creature.
So, if God is a single person, this person necessarily can only be fulfilled in relationships with creatures.
If a being only finds its fulfillment in relationships with Fs, then the being’s fulfillment depends on Fs.
So, if God is a single person, God’s fulfillment depends on creatures.
God’s fulfillment does not depend on creatures.
Thus, God is not a single person.
thus, if God is a person, God is two or more persons.
(I think most non-Christian monotheists these days will say that God is a single person. But I wonder if it wouldn’t be a better view for them to deny that God is a person at all, and to insist that the centrality of personhood to the understanding of God is a mistaken Christian approach.)
Here is another variant on the argument:
Necessarily, a person can only flourish in relationship to another equal person.
It is possible that God flourishes.
If God is a single person, then it is impossible for there to be another person equal to God.
So, God is a single person, it is impossible that God flourishes. (9 and 11)
So, God is not a single person. (10 and 12)
So, if God is a person, God is two or more persons.
Now, granted, it is a standard view in Christianity that one cannot prove the doctrine of the Trinity by reason. If the arguments above are sound, have I contradicted that view? No, for several reasons. First, the arguments don’t establish that God is three persons. Second, the arguments only establish that if God is a person at all, then God is two or more persons—but a further argument is needed that God is a person at all. (Perhaps perfect being theology can yield that.)
The crucial issue is not whether relationships are valuable, but whether they are constitutive of personhood or merely an expression of an already perfect personhood. Premise (1) assumes the former without argument. If by the fulfillment of personhood we mean the complete actualization of what belongs intrinsically to a person, then it is not evident that interpersonal communion is among those intrinsic constituents. Personhood is ordinarily understood in terms of intellect, rational agency, will, and self-consciousness. None of these, considered in themselves, appears to require the actual existence of another person in order to be fully instantiated. Thus, the burden lies on the defender of (1) to show that interpersonal relation is not merely a valuable exercise of personal capacities, but an essential condition for the completion of personhood itself.
ReplyDeleteRelatedly, I think the argument conflates constitutive fulfillment with expressive fulfillment. Classical theism has traditionally understood God's love and creation not as completing some unrealized aspect of the divine nature, but as the free expression of a perfection that is already complete. If God's love for creatures is expressive rather than constitutive of His fulfillment, then the same possibility remains open even if one grants that love is an essential divine perfection. Simply asserting that the highest form of love is interpersonal does not establish that a solitary divine person would be metaphysically incomplete, because it has not yet been shown that interpersonal communion is necessary for the actualization of personhood itself, rather than being one of the ways in which an already fully actualized person freely manifests that perfection.
Hi Prof.,
ReplyDeleteI really like this argument but have a question about the implications of the first premise: does it make each of the Divine Persons dependent for their "teleological fulfillment" on another Divine Person in an inappropriate way? E.g., does it make the Father dependent for his teleological fulfillment on the Son or Spirit? And is it correct to think of an individual Divine Person being dependent for fulfillment in this way, even on another Divine Person?
- Harrison J.