What rot.

Of course if A=B and A is a number, it follows that B is a number.

That's not about numbers, but about identity. it's not about genus, but individuality.

And then you flee back to the diagram. It's not about the diagram, it's about the nature of "is".

When you say, "...it was god," you mean, "it was the god-person," and this is precisely what is not meant when a Christian says that Jesus is God. In fact the theologically precise Christian says that Jesus is the Son of God. — Leontiskos

...and the issue is, how are we to make sense of this?

You seem to think that an explanation. It isn't.

The transitive property of identity requires that the three relata belong to the same genus. — Leontiskos

The transitivity of identity doesn't require relata to "belong to the same genus" - it's a purely logical principle. If A=B and B=C, then A=C, regardless of what kind of things A, B, and C are.

You a e simply using technical theological terminology to avoid addressing a straightforward logical point.

Bob has been explicit that he thinks the Trinity can be derived within natural philosophy - without revelation. He pretty much claims, way back, what you say he doesn't.

I gather that you, Tim and Leon disagree, preferring the traditional approach.

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. — Fire Ologist

One of the issues is indeed the number of such explanations. There's a list in the SEP article of something like a dozen or so differing accounts.

Let's be very specific about the problem. 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. We can substitute "god" for "Jesus" and maintain the truth value of the assertion. And when they say that they are imbued with Holy Spirit, they mean that they are imbued with god - substitution works here, as well.

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.

Leon's elaborate distinctions between essence/person, analogical/univocal predication, etc. don't address this practical point about how the language actually functions. 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".

I am waining too! — MoK

Yep, definitely waning. Nearly done here. :wink:

Yeah, all clear. A good approach.

I've looked, but have not been able to locate a good account of opacity. The IEP article is framed around Frege, and so leads in to Russell an descriptions. The SEP article on Quotation might be both clearer and of greater generality. See especially the list of five possible responses. For Davidson, the Demonstrative theory is key.

right.

The Christian narrative is not as simple as some would have it: — Leontiskos

:rofl:


Indeed.

If I misread your lack of further comment, that'd be pleasing.

Is there then any issue here that is left hanging, once the scope is sorted?

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.

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

It's not as if the problem's not widley recognised:

After its formulation and imperial enforcement towards the end of the fourth century, this sort of Christian theology reigned more or less unchallenged. But before this, and again in post-Reformation modernity, the origin, meaning, and justification of trinitarian doctrine has been repeatedly disputed. — SEP: Trinity

At least you are thinking. A good thing.

You seem to think that I think that language cannot be about the world. So I'll point out again that 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.

That the limits of our language are the limits of our world is not at all a restriction - there is literally nothing about which we cannot speak...

Hence analysing how we talk about the Trinity is engaging with what's being said about the Trinity.

The elephant in the room was that the Father is God, the Son is God, and yet the Father is not the Son. I pointed out, and there is general agreement here, that the "is" cannot be the is of identity, because while it shares reflexivity and symmetry with identity, it does not share transitivity. (Do i need togo over that again?)

The elephant in the lap of the Theist is to explain what the "is" is, given the constraints they have placed on it by accepting revelation and scripture and the Nicene Creed.

Now the Stanford General Catalogue of Variations on the Trinity lists quite a few suggestions. And that brings it's own problems, the arc I've mentioned - this looks to be ad hoc rationalisation, explaining away rather than explaining.

I think 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.

right — flannel jesus

Not convinced?

Seems that folk here are solving a problem they have yet to specify. Oh, well.

. What is wrong is to say that he delights in conflict — Jamal

Yet that's the main synthesis, isn't it? The idea of the value of a negative dialectic?

It was me who, without Adorno's permission, brought in the concept of "manifest image," so that angle might not be very important — Jamal

That you felt some need for such a term might be an indication of another observation from Wittgenstein and Davidson, that disagreement presupposes some overarching or background agreement. The manifest image might be needed as the background - antithesis - against the "scientific image" through which we see the geistige Erfahrung...

We can't disagree about everything...?

Don't Lois's beliefs belong rather to Lois?

Superman can fly. Lois believes that.

Atheism is a very different thing to analytic method. It is surprising to me that this needs mention.

There are whole worlds between theism and atheism.

The sanctification of rules results in their analysis... — Hanover

Analytic philosophy as the sanctification of rules...

Not so much. Wittgenstein is traditionally read as an overcoming of the rules of the various language games. A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs does much the same thing from a very different perspective.

Obviously, any such generalisation will fail to capture more than part of the analytic approach. It's not monolithic. But it is ubiquitous. You and Leon both make use of analytic methods.

Ok.

Well, seems to me that if you are unsure that she believes what you suggested, we can't proceed.

If we are going to get somewhere we may need to focus?

You stipulated that she does. I trust you. If you now want to bring that in to doubt, go ahead, but I don't much see the point in doing so.

Why introduce "god's eye view"?

If you and I agree that Superman can fly, why should we concern ourselves with god's opinion on the topic?

Seems out of place.

Not sure here.

"Superman is Clark Kent" is a straight forward identity - one may be substituted for the other. Superman can fly, hence Kent can fly.

"Lois believes that Superman can fly" is not directly about superman - this by way of giving a sense to "directly". It's about Lois, and something else... that we call a belief.

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

But we should not jump the gun. Perhaps a slower reading of the article is called for?

...you are always more interested in talking about talking, rather than in what is actually being said. — Fire Ologist

Ok. But is that all it is? — Fire Ologist

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

:smile:

And this:

All fair, except that in this discussion we might want to keep the wound open rather than heal it - it might help us (me?) to see the value in what Adorno is proposing.

The comforting Davidsonian view is that we can give an account that settles our differences. The uncomfortable Adorno view is that we not only can't, but ought not.

Referential opacity occurs between contexts. Indeed, it can be considered part of what defines a context. Getting the scope right clears up the mess.

Same substance, different form. — DingoJones

Number 1.5, Divine Life Streams, in the Stanford General Catalogue of Variations on the Trinity?

Yes, these threads have very little value when folks just want to tell us what their beliefs are. — Hanover

Perhaps; perhaps. seems to think the wounds worth keeping open. I wonder if that's why he commits to these fora.

The Trinity isn't stupid, worthless, or even nonsense — Hanover

I'll again make explicit that I agree. It has a place in a language game, a use. So it is not meaningless, if meaning is use; nor is it worthless, not for the faithful, and not for those who might try to understand them. And without sense, if we are to understand that in terms of coherence - the contradiction in the Trinity is what leads to the ad hoc self-justification of Thomism and such.

What stands is the view expressed in the OP, that the acceptance of such convolute, complex reasoning, apparently in order to achieve some semblance of coherence, is puzzling.

One question here is surely whether the Trinity is to be understood as a starting point, as a hinge proposition, not to be doubted; or as a deduction from first principles as @Bob Ross would have it; or if those accounts that supposedly render the Trinity coherent can have wider application, or are to be kept only inside the room in which we talk about God.

I've noticed you're quite fond of using this example too. — Jamal

Dogs are servile and neurotic. I'm more a cat person. Cats live in our houses despite not having been domesticated - their only concession being to make use of the litter tray, although arguably this is for their comfort anyway.

I tried to work out what manifest image was, by searching this thread. My impression is that it's not unlike the third vertices of Davidson's triangulation, which for him is an unavoidable agreement between speaker and interpreter, as to how things are,.

But whereas Davidson uses charity to reach an understanding between speaker and interpreter, Adorno delights in the uncharitable, in the failure of translation, a difference such that the interpreter can never reach a coherent account of the utterance. And Adorno sees this as worthy.

The present discussion in the christian narrative might be a neat sandpit example of such failure to agree, and the resulting interminable dispute. That ceaseless taunting and counter play becomes the point of the exercise, rather than any resolution.

Is that Adorno?

I could go on, but the cat says its bowl need filling. Must go.

Glad you liked it.

...you are always more interested in talking about talking, rather than in what is actually being said. Turning every subject into the same discussion — Fire Ologist

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

Intriguing how apt today's Frank and Earnest comic was... on multiple levels.

Divine intervention?

Pearls before swine... :wink:

I'm pretty sure Banno doesn't care about disproving any religious doctrine. He's interested in the methods theologians use to reach their conclusions, but even that isn't a very strong interest for him. For the most part, @Banno couldn't care less. He's just good at creating interesting discussions. — frank

Pretty much. The reasoning used in the simple theology hereabouts is low-hanging fruit for an analytic approach. It's the little word puzzles that are interesting, more than that it relates to god - but these threads always get a good audience, and plenty of kick back, which is fun. I'm supercilious and condescending, and despite, or perhaps becasue of that, you, dear reader, are here browsing my posts. Are you not entertained?

That, and that the OP was by Frank, who is at the least earnest in his posts.

Leon is helpful in these threads becasue he is so predictable. When someone disagrees with him he will variously denigrate them personally, misrepresent what they have said and claim to have already provided the answer. It's a pattern seen across many threads and against many different posters, and is the reason that he is ignored by so many of the more competent folk hereabouts.

He also borrows a strategy from Tim, to bury the discussion in appeals to specialised theological metaphysics, to insist that those who do not engage in the same texts as he does cannot understand his profundity. At heart this is an appeal to authority, together with a refusal to engage charitably.

Tim of course has a better background in all this than any of us, and so never descends to the plebeian stance of actually presenting an argument. Hand waving and eloquence is sufficient for him to maintain his circumstance.

Fire Ologist presumes that the posts here are trying to learn about Christianity. That's not something I'm much interested in, given it's ubiquity. 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.

So is this just performance art? Public onanism?

What if Banno's point is more Wittgensteinian, or Davidsonian - that there need be, indeed is, no explicable final answer in the way that theology presupposes? Then the arc of his assault here is in showing that all Leon and Tim and the others are doing is also a distasteful display of inappropriate behaviour? That in the face of the ineffable and the infinite, any finite discourse must fail?

But he's not cleaver enough to be doing that, now, is he.

Perhaps it's not a good idea to post these musings. But I'll do it anyway. These interminable threads make my point far more eloquently than I ever could.

5.1 in the Stanford General Catalogue of Variations on the Trinity?

You say that we cannot discuss the Creed without bringing in Thomism. — Leontiskos

No, I didn't. The only connection is the one you and Tim make. I'm just asking for a coherent account of the Trinity.

So we are back to where you intentionally and blatantly misrepresent folk who dare to question your ideas.

Same old.

And so the use of analogically argument in order to understand God is fundamentally flawed?

Ok. So deductive logic doesn't work because of the failure of transitivity, and analogical reasoning also fails.

So faith it is. Thomism set aside.

Nice attempt at deflection. Called.

...but they didn't survive. — frank

An interesting euphemism...

...the Nicene Creed predates Thomism by some 900 years — Leontiskos

I understand that, Leon. You missed the point, again. The creed doesn't help us make sense of you and Tim, of itself. We need the Thomism as well.

Yeah, the Creed doesn't help much unless you also take on board the whole Thomistic metaphysics of essence and personhood and so on. But ask what an essence is, and the answer is circular - that which makes a thing what it is, and not something else.

What is "that which makes something what it is" if not identity? It's not a property...

So what we are left with is that Christianity wanted to affirm monotheism, together with the divinity of Christ, and that the Holy Spirit was a distinct person - a problem set by apparently conflicting revelations. The answer was to claim the three persons had the same essence, which might work provided one doesn't pay too much attention to what an essence is. What follows is centuries of increasingly sophisticated theology moving from substance and person, through essence and existence, create enough technical distinctions and qualifications that people lose track of the original logical problem.

This sort of thing perhaps ought upset those of a logical, as opposed to a mystical, disposition. Hence, perhaps, Leon's disquietude.

This isn't an attack, it's setting out dogma, in it's original sense, and instead of saying "this is what you ought believe", asking "why ought you believe this?"

we are up to the part where you usually tell us that you already gave the answer... — Banno

I already told you... — Leontiskos

There it is...!


I'm off to do some shopping. Cheers.

"Fuck off," — Leontiskos

Cheers.

The elephant is too heavy for your lap.

For those with an interest in background stuff, the diagram, which Leon says is most certainly not a representation the Trinity, can be found in the Wiki article on The Shield of the Trinity, where there is a bit of historical background.