What is a person?

Do I call myself a person? Do any of us call ourselves people?

I just said “I call myself.” But “I call myself” sounds like two people.

And now that I am talking about what I just said (analytics), I’ve drawn a third person view, on me thinking to say “I call myself a person.”

@Leontiskos

Language itself is tied up in my being a person (Davidson) (and what I’m saying regardless of if it’s like what Davidson is after). And the minute there is language, like the minute there is a person, we, in reflection, take third person views and first person views, we multiply our sense of “self” even though alone, just to think at all.

Each one of us, is like a Trinity.

A mind is like a community of sorts, in order to reflect, to have a mind, and a language.

To know, and to give, and to love, and know that you are loved…

The real personal stuff of life.. Requires a layered activity within ourselves.

The word was with God and the word was God.
The logic of the Trinity is like the logic of being a reflecting thing, a person.

Added:

‘God is your being, but you are not His’ — Wayfarer

This discussion is tied with a discussion of being.
(Now that I havent really cleared anything up, let’s discuss the being and becoming of it all. :razz:

They believed God is everything. — frank

In the sense that God is everything - God is the “in” and “with” of all things.
But in the sense that each separate thing is separate from each other (like this rock and that drink), each separate thing is not God and God is not that thing.

So, confounding the analytics, God and his creation both get to have it both ways.
First, God is everything so we are ultimately somewhere in The One, and second, I, for a time, am NOT God and he is not me

That’s where the cross comes in. I am separated and yet I can remain in Him and he in me.

We become like Gods, like Jesus is God……..

So now here’s the analytic side of it. @Leontiskos does the above make sense to you? It’s not expressly dogma, or from someone else - just my attempt to speak about the Trinity and how is see it. Where is there blatant error and where is it correct?

I think you, @Leontiskos can check my math and see coherence with the basic doctrines in some of the above, see the logic of it.

(And you made a distinction between God as a category of being and God as the living being we know as God. And you talked of “the God” versus “God”. These are all necessary distinctions, but I think it can confuse this further. Meaning, I follow you, but I could see someone misconstruing that you are saying there is more than one God.).

I was talking about Plotinus. — frank

I thought you were showing other places like Plotinus were the source of the doctrine of the Trinity. Jesus Christ’s words and deeds are a better source.

Word was God. (Father)
word with God. (Son)
These are the same word. (Same Spirit in each.)

These are more pieces to say what Trinity is, and where it comes from, and what the idea reflects.

The basic idea was that God is everything. That's what Plotinus believed. — frank

No. Three persons who each are God, is one God. That’s unique information.

you theists — Banno

No difference between us - theists just suck at forming coherent sentences. We still believe in coherent sentences. We just find there are messages that are clear despite the incoherent sounding sentences and the analogies. Messages that are loud and clear.

the similarity is significant. — Leontiskos

We come to know God but seeing him in others.
We come to do God’s work by doing good for others.



We can know the Trinity. We just have to put our calculators away for a bit. Someday the math has to work. Calculus and irrational numbers were new once. There is math of the Trinity, but that is less important and has not been revealed or figured out.

If I could explain the math of one God/three persons, /each who are God - would you believe in Jesus? It’s interesting to a philosopher and a theologian, but it hasn’t been laid bare yet. That’s my hope…

Sounds like an MOT to me. — Hanover

I want to be a member of the tribe. I hope I am.

There is one tribe now, but it still goes back to Abraham and is his as well.

We don't have official declarations that we can't know each other. The Trinity is not just a routine complicated thing. — Hanover

Saying that the Trinity is a deep mystery says this as dogma “whether you understand it or not, this is the faith”. It doesn’t say “you can’t understand it, never will, and shouldn’t try.”

In fact, we are basically all here to know, love and serve God. Know is first. Knowing God means knowing he is Father, Son and Spirit. So knowing about the Trinity increases our knowledge of God; it doesn’t add a layer of mystery.

There is a bottomless pit of mystery who is our God. The Catholic Church says, don’t let that stop you, God has given us a ton of clues about who and what he is. Some of them are a philosopher’s and a scientists challenge, but so are many things and that is just one aspect…

“We cannot come to know the Trinity by reason alone.” (CCC §237)
That doesn’t mean we cannot know the Trinity.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. — John 1:1-5, 14

The word was God is like “Superman can fly.” Or “Clark Kent is Superman.” It’s content. It’s about the world. It is what is, like “I am”.
The word was with God is like analytics. It’s the word about the word. This is the reason when God first told his name to Moses he said he was to be called “I am”. He is an analytic/ontological puzzle, in only his name.

Here is another point that I thought was interesting for people focused on language and analytics.

The Christian name of God is a whole story. “I am” was a name that could breathe. But because of Jesus we speak of God in the name of the Father, Son and the Spirit. It’s like a story playing out. When just saying his name.

We cannot come to know the Trinity by reason alone.” — Hanover

I cannot come to know any person by reason alone. Not you, not Banno, not my children. I cannot come to know many things by reason alone.

But knowing is tied to judgment and reasoning, and believing, so everything I know is mixed with my reasoning. Reasoning is a part of being awake and thinking about anything.

I don't hold my views because they are logically consistent, empirically provable, or factually credible. — Hanover

Maybe not BECAUSE, they are logically consistent, provable. But you can probably formulate them into coherent sentences. You can probably correct people who assign belief to you that you do not hold - all of that takes discussion and reasoning.

why the grappling in the muck with the non-believers — Hanover

Because they asked. It’s as simple as that. And we are all in the exact same muck, here together. I hoped this would be a discussion, and it pretty much became one.

If Christian, confirmation bias is dogmaticaly imposed and it eliminates the possibility of disproof and it entails belief regardless. You can understand then the feeling that there is no value in the debate. Your mind can't be changed by operation of law, so to speak. — Hanover

That’s not true at all.

Heaven, in all its glory, is not sought after, but is brought to earth by good acts. We seek to bring God here, — Hanover

That is Catholic as well.
Faith without acts is dead. The kingdom of God is now.

Quantifying in (from outside) not ok. Lois' t1 not our t1. — bongo fury

”Lois believes that” narrows the multiple permutations among Clark and Superman’s sameness and differences, down to one particular instance. So substitution found in the full story of Clark/Superman may fail in the story of Lois’ beliefs — Fire Ologist

The guts of Davidson's article is the difference between "Superman is Clark Kent" and "Lois believes that Superman is Clark Kent". The former is a relation of identity between two characters, the latter a belief on the part of a third character. The two are very different things. — Banno

:up:

Major: t1 = t2

Minor: ϕ(t1)

Conclusion: ϕ(t2)

Here t1 and t2 are expressions which refer to entities (for example, proper names of people or cities). ϕ(t1) is a sentence containing at least one occurrence of t1, and ϕ(t2) is a sentence that results from replacing at least one occurrence of t1 in ϕ(t1) with an occurrence of t2, eliminating the “=” of t1 = t2. Recurring ti presumes that ti is univocal throughout, and recurring ϕ presumes that the sentential context ϕ is not altered, syntactically or semantically, by the replacement. — IEP

None of that need be about ‘Lois believes that..’. It is all about clarifying the identical.

Referential opacity occurs between contexts. Indeed, it can be considered part of what defines a context. — Banno

‘Opacity’ points to ‘difference’ (one shielded by opacity from the other). Difference is the line drawn ‘between contexts’.

So identity is about sameness and difference. And all of the valid or erroneous permutations that follow, and that can be translated into analytic terms.

The guts of Davidson's article is the difference between "Superman is Clark Kent" and "Lois believes that Superman is Clark Kent". The former is a relation of identity between two characters, the latter a belief on the part of a third character. The two are very different things. — Banno

Yes they must be treated one at a time. Because the two are ‘different things’ as you say.

But, though they are two different things, the process of the third person believing, only occurs once Lois forms some concrete identity in the form of ‘what’ she believes; once she has a ‘what’, she can believe what she believes. So they are different things, but when discussing belief, identity must be part of the discussion. (Which is what Davidson seems to think.)

The ‘what’ in this case is ‘Superman can fly.’ Lois has identified the character of Superman as the particular flying man. She identifies the man ‘Superman’ and believes “he can fly”.

So again, although ‘identity’ and ‘believing’ are different, belief requires there be the identity of what in particular is believed.

We analyze “what” she believes the way we analyze referential opacity, sameness, difference, identity; we analyze believing differently.

We analyze “that” she is believing X with newer/additional terms. These may refer to referential opacity, but again, that is its own issue (or can be treated as its own issue).

Whatever sort of thing that belief is, it doesn't allow the sort of substitution we are envisioning. — Banno

Now we are just getting into the nature of the permutations between sameness and difference in references to Clark and Superman, and a way error and correctness can occur when misapplying the analysis of what is identified and what is not (Clark is the same as super; Clark is different; Superman can fly; Clark cannot fly;)

‘Lois believes that’ narrows the multiple permutations among Clark and Superman’s sameness and differences, down to one particular instance. So substitution found in the full story of Clark/Superman may fail without incorporating Lois particularly intentional, identity awareness, purpose in speaking (she may be lying about her belief).

the latter a belief on the part of a third character. — Banno

And we, the readers and analysts are a fourth party, necessary to account for the coherence of a belief (Davidson’s communication needed for objectivity.)

Bumped into this clip from 30 plus years ago. Shows a lot.

- The fact that woke issues/analysis was so precisely tuned by 1993 shows how the woke attitude became ubiquitous in the 1980s. It was mostly led by women’s rights, but also gay rights (called LGB), but all the moving parts were in the public consciousness (except the word “woke”).

- shows how the woke make something intended to have zero political content into a political outrage.

- shows absolutely zero progress has been made towards advancing the conversations, or reducing any sense of injustice. This could be a scene from yesterday in any US university (except the teacher would have been physically kicked off campus, fired, ruined, “cancelled”).

- shows how in-fighting was always a feature of wokism because there is no way to possibly talk and act right and woke.

- shows how the main result of wokeism is the break-up of the art class, representing the dismantling of institutions and how the woke are always shooting their own society in the foot (this is the main product of enforcing wokism: everybody just shut up and go home; no more X institution for anyone.. No thought to what will replace some pillar of society)



ADDED: Kids in the Hall was probably one of the most woke things in all of media when this was released, but today, if they did a skit like this, making woke people look silly and unreasonable, and not showing serious consequences for the non-woke, this skit would be considered anti-woke, harmful to the cause.

And logical precedence is a different animal to temporal precedence. — Banno

Yes, but they are analogous.
Like logical immediacy in the Trinity is analogous to temporal immediacy in eternity.

**Fire Ologist's telling concession:**
"We are not going to explain away the fact that one plus one plus one equals three, and three does not equal one"

This is essentially admitting that the Trinity violates basic logical principles while trying to maintain it's still somehow reasonable. — Claude

Yes.

But the trinity is not a math/logical problem. If you make it one, and see that as a threshold issue to making the Trinity anything else, it will only make no sense. (Which is I think where you want to leave it.). You don’t yet see the Trinity let alone start to see how to do the math of the eternal Trinity.

**Fire Ologist's position is genuinely incoherent** - he wants both mystery and rational explanation, both revealed content and logical analysis — Claude

(How is that amusing. :angry: )

But yes, that is exactly what I want. Is it either a something of a mystery or something of a rational explanation? Will quantum behavior ever be predictable? Any mystery versus rational explanation there?

I don’t give much more import to the Son coming from the Father than I do to Pegasus springing — Banno

Well you should quote me, because I was talking about any normal son and any normal father (temporal relationship) to make a point about eternity (God the Father, God the Son, with self-same Holy Spirit - one being in eternity….)

Is the concept of eternity incoherent? Just the concept of the eternally present now? Kind of makes no sense what of now was before and what of before is still now? At the very least what was before, was before now so not like now so not eternally present. Maybe ask Claude - how can we use “eternity” coherently and validly…?

As far as import. I’d love to know what is more important to you, worth speaking about, than the analytics and coherence of things spoken? I knew all along you didn’t give any importance to the content of this discussion, other than whether some sort of linguistic puzzle might provide token content to dissect and/or prove. I get that. I am saying to you, you didn’t allow yourself to get to a place with the content where the analytics might begin. That’s fine. I’m surprised and thankful it went this far. But I remain puzzled at how you address speaking about the world, and about people in the world and knowing such things apart from any language that might attempt to capture them. I don’t know how analytics cannot be damned at times because of something more important. I’m sure it is (as it is for all people and as all people deal with mystery at some point). That life is the content of interest to one seeking to understand the Trinity.

I admit I am not able to directly answer your question.

I also think you just don’t see the content of which I am speaking.

The Trinity is as mysterious as the human self. Hard to speak of these persons.

And tell Claude he doesn’t know his USB port from a hole in his head.

I don't see how entertaining time in the equation actually helps. — Banno

Before there is a son, there has to be a father. So the son comes after a father. And for something to proceed from a son, the son comes first and what proceeds must logically proceed afterwards.

That all takes time.
That is also how we reach logical conclusions. We first have a premise, then draw inferences or otherwise, and from these conclude something else.
That is a process having a before (ie “if…”) and an after (…then…) .

So to talk about God’s inner life (which reason can’t discover unless God shares it in revelation) we must talk about something eternally present.
And to talk at all, we need to say things first, and then second and then so on (like taking time…) .

So I mentioned time to in a way acknowledge that the Trinity can’t really be said analytically. I just still don’t see the analytics as the only priority for us to understand something, particularly another person (or three persons).

The theology here does not stand well in public. Might be better to seek an alternative. — Banno

Neither does the set of all sets. I will never stop believing in sets either, nor need an alternative. (I’m sure you could show me how analogizing Russell’s paradox to the Trinity is not apt.)

I said many things and you addressed only a few. That’s fine. But I don’t see the end result affecting how well the Trinity stands in public. No need to speak for the public.

The Trinity is a mystery beyond human understanding. You alluded earlier to John 1:1. Religion scholars identify that as Logos mysticism. It's cool stuff. — frank

There is plenty of mysticism to be had here. But, although linear, more readily analytic reasoning, may seem remote in some of these sentences, it is not non-existent, and things like this are not just mysterious. It is not beyond human understanding, in my view (despite how it sounds incompressible, I see a solid thing there to understand - just a complex solid thing there that we will ever approach enclosed understanding…

Bob has been explicit that he thinks the Trinity can be derived within natural philosophy — Banno

I know he said that. I disagreed with him.

When folk say that Jesus is god, they mean that when they say that Jesus died on the cross, it was god who died on the cross. — Banno

Yes.

We can substitute "god" for "Jesus" and maintain the truth value of the assertion. — Banno

Well, yeah, but… Jesus became a man first, and then died on the cross. The father didn’t do that. So it is true to say God died on the cross, because Jesus is God, not because the Father is God. So yeah…

And when they say that they are imbued with Holy Spirit, they mean that they are imbued with god - substitution works here, as well. — Banno

Yes.

But it is not true that they are imbued with Jesus; becasue Jesus and the Holy Spirit are not the same person. And it is not true that the Holy Spirit died on the cross. — Banno

Well, Jesus’ spirit is the Holy Spirit. Through him, with him, in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit…
I agree it is not true that anyone has Jesus qua Jesus in them, but they may have Jesus’ Holy Spirit in them.
And I don’t know how the Holy Spirit attended to the death of Jesus of the cross. The Holy Spirit may have in fact been with him as he died in the cross and maybe so intimately that the Holy Spirit died with him, and maybe the Father as well, in a sense. But I think we start to misunderstand what the Trinity is and how the three are united and that this eternal union is God. They are immediately not each other and given over to each other completely. It is love; that is eternal life for each as one.

And you, Olo, don't wish to appeal to pure mystery here since you "believe there is reasoning that explains this".

Trinitarians use identity as it suits them, but drop it when it is inconvenient. The very epitome of "ad hoc". — Banno

I think the way I maintain some rationality is first equate temporality, like a timeline, with linear analytic reasoning (like you say is “how the language actually functions”) Then equate eternity with the present moment, right now, and only now, but the same now eternally - as if repeating but already repeating what was exactly. We string out God, father, son, spirit, and unity and difference in the timeline and things start to contradict one another. This is the way language works.
But what we are talking about here is an eternal thing - at once the father, son and shared spirit is God. In that present moment, there is no room for contradiction - just diction. And god said… and the word was with god… and the word was god…

So you don’t need to accept my answer for “is” but it is an eternal thing”is” not a temporal “is”. (The temporal “is” came later, by analogy, and led to the son becoming a man, dying and rising again before our eyes to teach us what it is like to be God… to love with no bounds…

But this does not mean that the doctrine is divorced from reason. — Leontiskos

Exactly. Nothing, that we say we know (so nothing that we say we believe because all things we believe we also know) is divorced from reason.

I think we are still waiting for an explanation of what the "is" in the Trinity is, and why. — Banno

We can only show you analogies. And then, in between them, you start to see the analytic reasoning and logic. From there you can attempt your own analogy. If you nail an analogy, maybe you have something.
And the full “is” and explanation is something approached asymptotically. There is always more to say and clarify.

The Trinity is like two people in love. The love is bigger than each one, but also completely known and found in each one separately. (You don’t have to believe love is a real thing, but if you do believe in the lib you may share with a child, or a spouse, that is like the life of God.)

We are not going to explain away the fact that one plus one plus one equals three, and three does not equal one, but that one person is fully God, the other person if fully God, and the other person is fully God, but though there are three persons, there is but one God. If you are looking for some explanation that provides a new math, that may never come.

If such explanations are all you are after and all you think are worth discussing and all the world of language has to offer, I think you are just being rebellious against your own experience. Life is full of absurdity and mystery and seeming contradiction - there is more to say than “that’s absurd.”

But imagine a single being who is the one God. This being’s personality is to give. Just is. When God gives, he gives everything. So when he gives the Son is begotten and this son has everything that was the fathers so this son is God. But this son, as with the father, is therefore a giver. The son does not take any credit for being God, but gives it all to the father, so much so that between the father and the son is the same spirit of giving, and so much so this spirit is God.

Now imaging this happens all at once in an instant - father giving all to the son who gives all to the father such that the All that is given is the God who is the father and the son.

The Trinity is analogous to something like that.

This is full of things to analyze and subject to scrutiny and refine and correct - all steps requiring reason.

we are still waiting for an explanation of what the "is" in the Trinity is, and why.

I have the impression that you, Olo, might be willing to accept it as a mystery, as an article of faith rather than of reason. If that is so, then we perhaps have nothing left to argue here. — Banno

I think there is an explanation of the many instances of “is” in the Triune God. I can provide some of them. Count and Leon have provided some.

But I don’t think I, or Bob Ross, or Leon, or anyone, would have thought of God as one God in the name (not names) of the Father, Son and Spirit who are three distinct persons - this is divine revelation, inspired words whose meaning on a surface level is mysterious. I don’t see them as contradictory, but if someone didn’t believe in any such thing as any God or revealed word, then I can see why they would only see contradiction.

So you characterized my position on the Trinity as one I “accept it as a mystery, as an article of faith rather than of reason.” That is not what is going on in my mind, or not how I would say it. It is close, but not precise.

I do believe there is one God who is three persons; I also believe there is reasoning that explains this. I also see that I had to accept all of this through faith, because it is mysterious. But again, my reason allows me deeper and better understanding of this (how the Trinity relates to the substance of love, and knowing, but I digress), so I would not simply end my
position on the issue as “it’s a mystery; believe it or don’t if you want.” There is much more to say besides “mystery” about the Trinity and it takes reason and logic to say things.

A shame you agree with Leon's misrepresentations of my position. — Banno

There are a lot of caricatures of what the faith is - bad starting points for the analysis and the questions.

You seem to think that I think that language cannot be about the world. — Banno

It’s not that it cannot be about the world, it’s that what it says about the world is illusion or is self-referential as part of a game constructed on top of the world, but not really about the world.

language games - moving blocks and counting apples - are inherently embedded in our interactions with the each other and with the things we find around us. — Banno

Yes, but, as soon as one talks about the block as if it could exist before one said “block”, the discussion becomes not about the block, but about how language doesn’t talk about such things. There are no blocks, until there are “blocks”.

The problem here is that folks like Banno simply haven't asked the question of where the Trinitarian doctrines come from: — Leontiskos

Agreed. There is a lot of misperception:
- the OP said God became man and died on a a cross to save us…from his own wrath. The “from his own wrath” misunderstands what we are being saved from so set up misunderstanding of why dying on a cross might make sense.

There are others…

some truth is entrusted to man by God. — Leontiskos

Right.

Personally, I dont think the writers of the Bible figured this [the mysteries of the Trinity, sacrifice of the Son who is God, the word made flesh, the Eucharist, etc] out - they were inspired to write what makes no sense (at first) to say because it is what makes sense to God, and is for us, not from us — Fire Ologist

Analytics would agree with this claim:

all that we know is … not adequately comprehensible as to its inner being; — Leontiskos

They should. Sounds like part of the method that an analytic would use to guard against essentialism, for instance.

We approach knowing, but never fully grasp.

May be said to fit with Wittgenstein as with knowledge of mystery.

I think the whole notion that "the Trinity strains credulity" is premised upon the contentious idea that the Trinity is discovered through natural reason — Leontiskos

I think we agree.

So the analytic empirical scientist could say “but what is this object called God with its eternal existence, and why would you need to find some new logic to know this God…that is all preposterous.” All the theist can say is “yes, but then why did you ask me about God and the Trinity - these objects were revealed to me — Fire Ologist

It only strains credulity when all you believe to be credible is what comes through natural reason. I don’t. I trust is many things that strain credulity. The substance of love and value of suffering.

The point to Banno and Frank is, just because their credulity may be strained, doesn’t mean all credulity must be strained for all thinkers.

So I think we agree.

And as far as “only analogy” can capture our understanding of the Trinity, yes, there are senses to “analogy” where this is true. So my point is, there are other senses to analogy where we must use reason and logic to identify how an analogy points out similarities and how it points out differences; analytic reasoning is subsumed by or contained in analogous explanation, and therefore to say “the Trinity can be expressed…only in terms of analogy” is to include and incorporate analytic reasoning within an overall analogical approach. I don’t think we must say “can be expressed…only in terms of analogy.” I think we should simply say “is expressed… in terms of analogy.” Leave room for reason to breathe in its expression, so to speak.

Again, I think we agree.

there are true things I can know about it [the Trinity] and false things I can logically demonstrate about it, now that it has been revealed to me. — Fire Ologist

did you guys think the NT makes sense? Because it doesn't — frank

Yes, legit questions. But you didn’t ask them in a way that sounded like you thought you could possibly get an answer. You asked potential lobotomy patients to respond with a coherent thought.

Turn the other cheek says it all. I tried that and kept getting insulted. But…whatever. Always happy to be reminded of the message of the Bible, so thanks for that.

And I don’t think you are responsible for the hostility of others. Just your own belittling way of framing things…But again, whatever…. You seem earnest enough now, possibly open to respecting my response, so the rest is up to me.

The question is:

whether “the Catholic Church holds the Trinity to be beyond human understanding — Fire Ologist

You quoted the following to support that the church does hold the Trinity to be beyond understanding:

Theologians distinguish two classes of supernatural mysteries: the absolute (or theological) and the relative. An absolute mystery is a truth whose existence or possibility could not be discovered by a creature, and whose essence (inner substantial being) can be expressed by the finite mind only in terms of analogy, e.g., the Trinity. A relative mystery is a truth whose innermost nature alone (e.g., many of the Divine attributes), or whose existence alone (e.g., the positive ceremonial precepts of the Old Law), exceeds the natural knowing power of the creature.... — New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia

So the church says we don’t simply figure out through observation and logic that God is the Trinity, and we do not understand this mysterious revelation more deeply through observation and logic either. But the church doesn’t say we don’t continue to understand the Trinity more deeply and more deeply, and the church doesn’t say observation and logic are not present and necessary when we come to understand the Trinity more deeply. The church says merely that the Trinity is a truth “whose existence or possibility could not be discovered by a creature, and whose essence (inner substantial being) can be expressed by the finite mind only in terms of analogy.”

I am sympathetic to an argument that expressing my understanding of the Trinity in language will yield many analogies; and analytic statements will be hard to come by. BUT, that does not mean: 1. I am not thereby understanding the truth (because analytics fail to prove out the analogy may just point a failure of language and not the non-existence of that which language attempts to say), and 2. it does not mean there is nothing analytic whatsoever to be said (indeed you need to understand identity, transitivity, logic, analytics, in order to behold the Trinity as mystery, and in order to create accurate analogies about it.)

So I disagree with the New Advent quote above where it says “can be expressed…only in terms of analogy.” That is not dogma and I don’t have to believe it. The Trinity is a mystery whose depths will never be fully fathomed to be recaptured and restated in syllogism. But there are true things I can know about it and false things I can logically demonstrate about it, now that it has been revealed to me.

Like I can know it is false to say God the Father is the true God, and the Son and Holy Spirit are derivative. Though this seems to fix the contradictions, it is false because the Son is eternally begotten, as the Holy Spirit always proceeds from them. The three persons are immediately one God. So it is false to defeat the contradictions of the Trinity in this way because although a son logically follows after a father, in God, father and son have always immediately been the case.

Human logic needs time to go from premise to conclusion. In God the premise IS the conclusion, and the logic plays out in the instantaneous presence of eternity.

So the analytic empirical scientist could say “but what is this object called God with its eternal existence, and why would you need to find some new logic to know this God…that is all preposterous.” All the theist can say is “yes, but then why did you ask me about God and the Trinity - these objects were revealed to me, like any other currently unexplainable, mysterious experience is revealed to us. If you want to know what I understand of my experience of this revealed thing, the above is how I can speak about it.”

So I agree with you and @Banno that the Trinity strains credulity. But that is not the same thing as saying it is devoid of all logical analysis and not able to be said in any true sense of the word “said”.

(And this is why I believe, because now we see another mystery revealed - “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.” How can God be with Himself - this is all consistent with the notion of eternally begotten Son and its curious relationship with logical language. And in Genesis God creates by his word “And God said ‘let there be light’…”

Language and logic are ubiquitous indeed. But mysterious in how they can be shared with you and me, and in you or me. Language itself, analytics itself, is born out of mystery. Personally, I dont think the writers of the Bible figured this out - they were inspired to write what makes no sense to say because it is what makes sense to God and is for us, not from us. So the absurdity and its consistency with experience is like evidence of its source being from God, not merely from men who speak a language. But this is all perhaps more psychology, or epistemology, than it is the metaphysics/ontology of which you are asking.)

...I meant an Analytic philosopher who is an atheist, thus implying that not all Analytic philosophers are atheists — Leontiskos

Atheism is a very different thing to analytic method. — Banno

Right, which is why I am suspicious of this thread here on a philosophy forum instead of a theology forum. It gave license to performance art and mockery.

If we’d all be a bit more mature and forgo judgment, atheists might have no issue finding the reasoning inside of a belief in the Trinity, and theists might have no issue finding such analytic reasoning lacking. Proving one side need not be a judgment against the other because belief in God or not is a wholly different thing than what is reasonable.

It is precisely the fact that reason is a separate function than belief that one can believe before seeing reason (which we all do every day when we take risks), or require reason first before belief (which we all do every day as well when we figure out what to do next).

I am willing to start over with no hostility on an honest answer about whether “the Catholic Church holds the Trinity to be beyond human understanding”.

But I’d ask for a small step back from you as well in some form of confession that your original post with it’s reference to lobotomies and belittling caricatures of Christianity might have been a factor in the hostility on the thread. No big deal to me - Maybe I don’t know your personality and you meant no offense - but dude… I go to Catholic Mass every week. I consider myself fairly reasonable and intelligent and not in any need of a lobotomy to make sense of my faith. Do you really want to speak with me or not?

No, but it might be all that can be said. — Banno

Yes.

But isn’t that statement itself, outside of, maybe better said, running parallel to, the ubiquitous analytics of language?

“All that can be said, makes use of analytics, or, is about language.” This is a metaphysical observation about being human, because we are the ones who say things. Such statements are not possible to avoid making. They are always present with the contents of language - language is not just about itself.

Must we hold that all statements about the world cannot be trusted? Sense certainty cannot be trusted analytically, yet we survive by it.

There must be more philosophy can say about this predicament.

More IS said when we say things like “it might be all that can be said” so why not embrace this and find new ways to test our theories besides the internal analytics that set out these theories?

If we subject your statement “might be all” to analytics: “might” means “maybe is, maybe is not”. So “may be all that can be said” means “may not be all that can be said”, which means there may be more that can be said. So even your statement does not foreclose all that can be said.

What more can be said about language and about what we say, than something spoken about the world and we speakers in it?

We must do better on two fronts.

Analytic philosophy as the sanctification of rules...

Not so much. — Banno

I agree. It’s not a sanctification or even a reification, because the object of analytics is not some thing to reify. It analyzes what reifying humans say. The object of analytics is speaking and analyzing, the act of signifying through language.

But it does not refute the ubiquity of analytics to say what I am saying either. The ubiquity of analytics is why one seeks to show the logic of the Trinity. Logic is ubiquitous to speakers of language. So if one such speaker wants to speak about a “Trinity” one doesn’t abandon logic (that is impossible); one is simply saying there exists something in the world, in human experience that language makes difficult to say. It can only be impossible to say if “analytics might be all that can be said.”

So if you really only thought language might be all that can be said, you would no longer be curious to speak about things like “trinities” or “what is a painting” or even what are the limits of what can be said - none of those things could truly be said the way analytics says things. But you referenced one of these impossible things to say (namely “the limits of what can be said.”). We all need to speak about the world and its truth for all. Let’s embrace that.

this self-narration in order to try to salvage one's past utterances is obviously not philosophy. It's just a vain attempt to save face. — Leontiskos

Yeah, that was weird. This post has been sarcastic, jaded, ironic from the start.

It almost became a discussion between two sides of an issue a couple times, but earnestness is hard to fake on TFP.

It's the little word puzzles that are interesting, more than that it relates to god — Banno

Not really. Unless it relates to God, the puzzles do not become so stark, so exaggerated, that they demand interest. The stakes are raised too high for you to ignore. Absolutes set every stage. It can appear delusional to ignore them all of the time.

But then, this sounds absolute:

[talking about talking] that's what Philosophy is. — Banno

Banno, like a god, making his usual intervention.

Contrary to protestations and resentment from many, that's what Philosophy is. — Banno

Ok. But is that all it is?

I am not being contrary. Complementary yes, but not contrary. (And not complimentary just yet. :joke: ).

Just because analytics accompanies everything we say, why always belittle the fact that so does the rest of the world talked about through the logic of what we endeavor to say?

We have to choose the content too, or there is nothing to analyze, nothing to say and analyze. We don’t just make rules and make token uses of those rules - we say things we need rules to make clear.

I would say re the cartoon, I am sympathetic to both red and green, I am there in the middle, not locked, analytics versus ironic poetry, but with both. “You are here” continues to provide plenty of content.

Divine intervention?
— Banno — Fire Ologist

Divine intervention? — Banno

Definitely! :rofl:

Divine enough for me that you thought to post that. :up:

Seriously though, Earnest has a bit of perfection in it. God strikes again!

“You are here.” With a clear line between them. Spot on! :lol:

ADDED: Thanks for the earnest post!

SUPERIMPOSED: Ironically, (where irony is opposite earnestness) the Frank and Earnest that you reposted was most earnest.

on multiple levels. — Banno

:lol:

Are you not entertained? — Banno

Oh Banno - you are always more interested in talking about talking, rather than in what is actually being said. Turning every subject into the same discussion: Analytics applied to low hanging fruit.

I know there is a whole person there - not just a living truth table.

Olo is right that what is said in this thread is pretty irrelevant to the beliefs of the faithful. It's apparent that it's equally irrelevant to the beliefs of us Pagans. — Banno

You asked a lot of questions. I assume they were rhetorical then? For amusement. Fun.

And now I think you might need to learn more about paganism.

that there need be, indeed is, no explicable final answer in the way that theology presupposes? — Banno

That is your own psychological issue - and a lot of people around here - disdain for the absolute and dogma. Despite the Spanish Inquisition, theology presupposes no such thing. I am a pretty solid Catholic - nothing, no pope, no dogma, no mystery - nothing oppresses me. I usually rely on reason, but I don’t even have to do that.

Frank, who is at the least earnest in his posts. — Banno

Really?
@frank - you’ve been earnest with me? Betcha I’ve been more earnest with you..

a sense of Joy to feel that way, especially when others reciprocate. — DifferentiatingEgg

Feel what way? What feeling am I talking about? Who is reciprocating on this thread?

I know more about Christianity than you do. — frank

Maybe. I don’t know.

One might say that the Trinity is "not logical" in the (somewhat idiosyncratic) sense of "not able to be demonstrably proven by natural reason," — Leontiskos

That’s enough. I can let someone have that. If they then want to ask about it and ask me how I believe it, and what I believe, I get the perplexity.

But if they are satisfied with that, and that “not able to be proven by natural reason” sums up the Trinity, and they have no honest question or curiosity about such believers, then it is certainly logical to assume a conversation about what the Trinity is will go nowhere. Which we have assumed from the beginning. Because we are logical.

The root problem is that a claim like "not logical" is vague and ambiguous, as it has a very large semantic range and could even be construed in positive or negative ways. It lacks precision and is therefore an unwieldy predication, especially when it is to be leveraged as an accusation. — Leontiskos

I agree with that. I will say Banno was trying to be precise, pointing out specific contradictions.

But unless there was an honest interest in what we are saying, they just won’t see the logic. It’s not like natural reason.

there is a difference between strict contradiction and merely apparent contradictions, or contradictions that arise through equivocation, or not making proper distinctions. And there is a difference between what is beyond human reason, or beyond the domain of logic and of univocal predication, and what is contrary to reason (contradictory). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree with that 100%. And you said it well as usual.

I also do not think it contradicts any of the above for me to say this:

I do think, in some senses, the Trinity, and even Christ on the Cross, do not make sense. These are valid questions for reasonable people to ask, and the answers are not satisfying to the one who only experiences this subject through logical syllogism. — Fire Ologist

But it was imprecise, and contradicts your quote above, for me to say this:

the difficulty in speaking about mystery makes “contradiction” abound. — Fire Ologist

This is said more precisely as “the difficulty in speaking about mystery makes apparent contradictions easily arise.”

I agree fully with everything C.S.Lewis said too. However, I think @Banno and @frank would say that the mere reference to three persons in one God is an occasion where “meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words “God can.””

I disagree with Banno and Frank that the Trinity is meaningless and contradictory, but I grant (I think in agreement with Augustine and Aquinas) that it is very treacherous to attempt a straight logical line through it - though not impossible, but understandably difficult to speak about.

Let me digress to make a small point. It’s perfectly logical and there is no apparent contradiction to say there can only be one God. Without measuring God’s power, we can say God is the highest power, the immortal all powerful one. If there were two such beings, neither would be God, because neither would be highest or all powerful. God can have no equal nor anyone higher, and if you like a lesser God, we should just come up with a new term because anything under God is in some sense wholly and utterly unlike God. What about a lesser God makes them God at all? Makes no sense.

This is logic. Reason can conclude monotheism makes sense and non-monotheistic religions do not make sense when they use the term “God”.

If Frank and Banno were arguing against the logic of monotheism, we would need no revelation and would make no reference to mystery - it’s simple logical inference to say, if there is any God, there is only one God.

Now we Christians have been blessed to know this one God through the Son, as Father. And have come to learn the Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son and that the Son says he and the Father are one, and his spirit is God as he and the father are God. The church is the mystical Body of Christ, and his Bride, as when man and woman marry and become one flesh…

I see the logic in all of that. I can go on making distinctions, and correcting error (like some of the things Frank said make no sense and contradict what I said and what the Church says). And there is probably some error in what I just said, but I could be corrected, because there is a logic here.

I agree with you and @Leontiskos - the Trinity is the opposite of meaningless.

But I also see that, on its face, (from outside this milieu as Banno put it), if you did not hear the Son speak, a “Trinity” could easily appear to make little sense. It is like explaining in words how an apple tastes - the words only make sense to apple eaters. It’s sweet, but not like sugar, because it is tart but not so much as a lemon, and it crunches but not like a roasted walnut, because it is juicy, but drier than a plumb - we could go on and on but unless you ate an apple you might see only apparent contradiction.

So the OP was fairly doomed. Because unless it was asked with a humble spirit and the open mind of someone who is truly curious, it is highly unlikely the detractors of Christianity will ever get a sense of how the Trinity really tastes. (God even gave us the Eucharist - he did his best to reach everyone from every angle! I have hope, which is why I keep posting…)

If you think “It’s a mystery” equates to “so there is nothing anyone can say” then why ask? — Fire Ologist

First of all, I think I differ a bit (slightly) from @Leontiskos and maybe @Count Timothy von Icarus.

I do think, in some senses, the Trinity, and even Christ on the Cross, do not make sense. These are valid questions for reasonable people to ask, and the answers are not satisfying to the one who only experiences this subject through logical syllogism.

Like explaining why a song is beautiful - some things said will only make sense to someone who heard the song.

But we’ve heard enough of that on this thread already. Enough talking over each other’s heads.

To reset:

So what is a “self”? How is it that “you” and “me” are having this exchange; unless there is an identifiable “self” in each of us in which this “exchange” is taking place?

But “self” is a mystery, no? Any discussion of this mystery is going to be full of contradictions, (because the concept of self-identity is perilous if not illusory and really not coherent and not a conversation about any “thing”.)

Mystery abounds, and the difficulty in speaking about mystery makes “contradiction” abound.

I just don’t thereby conclude from the contradiction that the subject of the mystery does not exist. I conclude I need to keep figuring out a way to talk about it.

Contradiction is a dead end, but only along one line of reasoning. We can hit the dead end, and reset to try another way.

I don’t ignore Freud because he divided the self into id, ego and superego, for instance. We can rationally consider Freud, and the difference between the superego and the id in the conscious and subconscious self, for instance, even though billions of people say the self is an illusion (including in many ways, me).

So @frank do you really wonder about the Christian narrative? Do you really wonder how some Christian can rationally discuss the “Trinity”, like Freud may have discussed a “self”?

Here is a premise: logic is like one of the senses; you can rely on it to penetrate the world, and live by it most days, but every so often it leads down a dead end (mirage/set of all sets, the infinite continuum of impossible becoming), even unto death and madness.

So maybe, sometimes, regarding some situations and certain subjects, relying ONLY on our senses and our reason will not deliver us from the dead end. Maybe beings like us have more that penetrates experience besides reason. Or our senses. We have understanding that usually follows after reason, but can understand and not know why or how just as well.

Logic isn’t God to me. It’s just a tool, like an eyeball.

Sometimes we can relate with things through our ears, but don’t see or can’t picture them at all. Other times we can relate to things that make no logical sense. That doesn’t mean those things can’t be seen; or can’t be logically explained (by me); but absent that vision or logic, it also doesn’t mean those things can’t can’t be beheld and talked about in other ways (by me).

To say “it’s a mystery” is still to logically identify an “it”. All logic isn’t lost in the notion of three persons in one God. It’s just not that simple.

Have I already abused language too much for you?

Not worthy of reply?

↪frank - I'll take that as a "no." — Leontiskos

Yep. No honest curiosity, or basic humble respect.

accepting that the Trinity is beyond comprehension. — frank

How about, it’s not merely beyond comprehension. There are things we can say about God.

Can you accept that? It would seem you could if you were asking someone to explain the Christian narrative. But then, are you honestly asking for anything new?