I've read that it looks like a contradiction if you assume “is” means numerical identity. In Trinitarian theology, “is God” means shares the same divine essence, not is numerically identical.

Following the way of using equivalence just set out, we could substitute "God" for "Father, or for "Son", or for "Holy spirit"; but not "Father" for "Son", and so on.

The substitution is not transitive.

So yes, it does set out something of what is implied in the idea of a trinity.

Without doing the calculation, I suspect that this would result in modal collapse. That might not be a good outcome.

I've read that it looks like a contradiction if you assume “is” means numerical identity. In Trinitarian theology, “is God” means shares the same divine essence, not is numerically identical — Wayfarer

The Trinity is explicitly a mystery. You're not supposed to make sense of it. The hypostases are separate, but each one is fully God.

This is not a matter of opinion. It's doctrine.

In this case, “is” doesn’t mean numerical identity (as in "Clark Kent is Superman") but rather participation in a common essence.

The Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God — but they’re not each other. So “is” here is not transitive, and trying to make it so leads to either contradiction or heresy, depending on your preference.

To hark back to an infamous episode of American presidential politics, 'it depends on what the meaning of "is" is'. As I understand it, predication in Aquinas is allegorical, rather than literal. This is connected to the 'analogical form of knowing' which was later undermined by Duns Scotus (and according to Radical Orthodoxy, a major part of the decline of the West.)

In this case, “is” doesn’t mean numerical identity (as in "Clark Kent is Superman") but rather participation in a common essence. — Wayfarer

This is incorrect, but I'm not going to debate it. This is Christianity kindergarten.

Here's maybe an odd little nugget that might clarify the problem with such Thomistic reasoning. I've already mentioned this problem, but it might be helpful to expound and expand it.

6. Since He is absolutely simple, His willing and thinking are identical.

So we should be able to substitute his will for his thinking.

So what god wills, god thinks, and what god thinks, god wills. Hence he cannot think what he does not will, nor will what he does not think.

So he cannot think about what might have been the case had I not written this paragraph. To think about it would have been to will it, and hence to make it so.

Perhaps then Thomism commits to Lewis' counterfactuals - that every possibility is an actuality. That would be an odd result.

Shame you can't lower yourselves to our level, but I suppose we'll have to get by, somehow.

:lol:

Right, numerical identity (dimensive quantity) is posterior to virtual quantity (qualitative intensity) and anything's being any thing at all. Unit (and thus number, as multitude) is posterior to measure. Which is just to say that, to have "three ducks" requires "duck" as a measure, etc. God's unity is transcendental however, in the sense that all being is unified. "Thing" and "something" are also considered derivative transcendentals (in the same way beauty is). They are prior to numerical identity in that you cannot have "numbers of things" without things; multitude presupposes units. The supposition here is that numbers exist precisely where there are numbers of things, hence their posteriority, although they are prior as an absolute unity in God (normally attributed to Logos).

Part of the idea of their pre-existence God is that all effects exist in their causes. But it's also the case that no finite idea is wholly intelligible on its own (just as multitude is not intelligible without unit). Hegel's Logic is largely extending this idea. Only the "true infinite" can be its own ground.

In this case, “is” doesn’t mean numerical identity (as in "Clark Kent is Superman") but rather participation in a common essence. — Wayfarer

Well, that's problematic in itself... (See what I did there?)

To say that they are not "numerically identical" is to say that substitution fails.

If transitivity is denied, then the Son cannot be substituted for the Sprit, and hence they must be different.

But they are the same.

Contradiction.

SO back to the point, that the notion fo the trinity is incoherent.

SO back to the point, that the notion fo the trinity is incoherent. — Banno

It comes from Neoplatonism. These days we call it mysticism.

, , if your aim is to show that the Trinity is a Devine Mystery, your have succeeded.

But why the recourse to logic? Why not just stick with "It's not supposed to make sense"?

Why all the contrivance?

So what god wills, god thinks, and what god thinks, god wills. Hence he cannot think what he does not will, nor will what he does not think. — Banno

I think the issue here, is that what classical texts mean by 'thinks' is not what we normally intend by it. I read in The Embodied Mind, that prior to Descartes, 'ideas' were not understood as the property of individual minds:

Prior to Descartes, the term "idea" was used only for the contents of the mind of God; Descartes was one of the first to take this term and apply it to the workings of the human mind.. This linguistic and conceptual shift if just one aspect of what Richard Rorty describes as the "invention of the mind as the mirror of nature".

So when a medieval thinker says “God thinks,” this doesn’t imply that God has something like private mental episodes or shifting representations. Instead, it refers to the divine knowing of eternal truths—or what might classically be called the Forms, which the rational intellect can have some insight into.

In that context, “what God thinks, God wills” isn’t a statement about psychology or decision-making, but a metaphysical expression of divine simplicity: God’s knowing and willing are not separate faculties or processes but identical in the unity of divine being.

God’s knowing and willing are not separate faculties or processes but identical in the unity of divine being. — Wayfarer

Perhaps.

He still can't think about what it would be like if you had not replied to me. If he thinks it, he wills it, if he wills it, it is so.

God results in modal collapse. Either he is a contradiction or a divine mystery.

Again, understanding this in terms of substitution drops all the huff and fluff.

If we say that the Father and the Son are “the same” in virtue of sharing in transcendental unity, that may avoid numerical identity — but then we are no longer using “same” in any logically tractable way. Substitution still fails. The contradiction arose precisely because we were trying to preserve intelligible substitution, transitivity, and logical identity while claiming that the Father is not the Son, &c.

The cost is, you can no longer track sameness with logic.

Either the Trinity is a mystery, and logic doesn't apply, or it's logical, and a contradiction.

That unit is prior to multitude isn't really about the Holy Trinity, it's just relevant to speaking about the topic. Unlike Bob, Aquinas does not think the Trinity can be known through natural reason, only that God exists.

On the topic of willing/knowing mentioned , this, particularly article 9, would be the relevant question.

God, being eternal, knows all that is or ever will be actual. But God also knows all things that are potential since they exist as potential.

But I think this may just be the same misunderstanding in play again, i.e., that all distinctions must be real, such that willing and knowing can not be meaningfully distinguished unless they are metaphysically distinct. But that a fire is hot, heats, and illuminates, does not require three distinct flames or three distinct composite parts of a flame. Likewise, we see many things with our eyes, but we need not suppose a distinct act of seeing for each thing that we see, although obviously we can meaningfully distinguish between seeing different things.

That unit is prior to multitude isn't really about the Holy Trinity, it's just relevant to speaking about the topic. Unlike Bob, Aquinas does not think the Trinity can be known through natural reason, only that God exists. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure, Bob deviates from the True Path... and we agree he can't deduce the Trinity within Natural Philosophy. Cool.

I'm not relying on the Trinity being deducible. I'm taking it as it is presented, in the Shield of Trinity, and working out the consequences. And in that Shield transitivity is denied, which has the consequence of modal collapse.

Separately...

But that a fire is hot, heats, and illuminates, does not require three distinct flames or three distinct composite parts of a flame. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Analogical predication. Interesting, since it was the basis of logic in Mohism. The idea is that heat and light are caused by flame, but that the flame remains one. But god's will and his knowledge are not caused by god, not results of, so much as inseparable from, his very nature.

The moment you begin to say something like, “God knows Himself as good, and so wills Himself as good, and hence his will is Love” you relying on a sequence of conceptual moves that require some functional or modal distinction within God. What has the appearance of having a sound logical structure is no more than a series of analogical or poetic moves.

In the end, what appears to be metaphysical precision turns out to be a kind of rhetoric —using philosophical forms to say things that only make sense if you don’t push them too hard, and which are accepted not on their own merit, but for the completely different grounds of revelation and faith. Hence the criticism offered earlier in this thread, that the conclusions of the reasoning are already a given, and the reasoning is just huff and fluff.

It's more honest, to my eye, to say that such things are a mystery than to pretend they are the necessary product of philosophical analysis.


And...

article 9 — Count Timothy von Icarus

...does not address the particular objection I raised.

If he thinks it, he wills it, if he wills it, it is so. — Banno

:broken:

Not really.

:up:

CC: @Leontiskos @Count Timothy von Icarus @RogueAI

Now we are getting somewhere! I appreciate the elaborate response.

Despite claiming god to be a simple, it juxtaposes will and intellect; subject and object; father and son and so on. But those distinctions are the very thing denied by divine simplicity

I see where your head is at, but I think this is a misunderstanding. God’s properties are predicated analogically and not univocally. We can, and should, in fact, collapse them into the same thing and only refer to them as separate to explain something from different angles.

Firstly:

1. God’s all-goodness (perfection) is just a description of His self-unity [since goodness is just absolute unity]. He does not have a faculty or power of good: He is perfect goodness itself by being absolutely unified.
2. God’s absolute simplicity is just the same as His self-unity.
3. God’s necessity is just His simplicity (lack of parts) which is (from 2) the same as His self-unity.
4. God as Being itself is the same as His necessity as a simplicity (since subsistence in-itself is just necessary being that is simple) which is (from 2) the same as His self-unity.
5. God’s pure actuality is the same as Him as Being itself which is (from 4) the same as His self-unity.
6. God’s changelessness is the same as His pure actuality which is (from 5) the same as His self-unity.
7. God’s eternity proper is just His changelessness which is (from 6) the same as His self-unity.
8. God’s omnipresence is just Him as Being itself which is (from 4) the same as His self-unity (being provided to a thing through creation).

So His all-goodness, absolute simplicity, pure actuality, changelessness, eternity, and omnipresence are identical.

Secondly, His all-lovingness refers to His inability through creation to will the bad of something which is just a description of His how His faculty of willing works; and His non-corporeality is just a description of His inability to be affected by space (being changeless). These are reducible to His will and pure actuality (as analogically descriptions), and do not imply any separation in Him.

Thirdly, His willing, thinking, and power are identical. There’s no mind, will, and power in God in a literal sense: analogically, we speak of the one and same being as like a mind, like a will, like power (of pure act) itself. When I say “this light bulb is the like a sun radiating light”, I am not committed to the idea that the light bulb is a sun. God is like a will; and the shortcut way of describing that is “God is will”.

Fourthly, the Trinity refers to three real subsistent relations in one concrete nature: they are not separations in that nature. So they do not imply parts in God. They all, in fact, collapse into each other as the same (ontologically) rational nature.

God has two aspects we can describe then: His unified faculties and His self-unity; and His self-unity is just a depiction of His unified faculties as unified. So He is just One.

 Let's set aside the issue of how this debars god from thinking about things that are not real - the common "what if..." of modality

Let’s not! Thinking of a hypothetical is not the same as thinking of actuality. God thinks of metaphysically possible things as possible—not real; and so “what if this then that” does not create anything because it doesn’t think of this or that as actual—it posits their possibility. When I think of “what if a unicorn existed?”, I am not thereby thinking “this real unicorn”.

Is the Son then the same as that thinking, and so not more than a thought, or is the Son a second being caused by God's thinking of himself - in which case he is not simple, not One Being?

Both. Remember, under this view, God’s thinking and willing are the same: we are not thinking of two different faculties in God when we posit them. Consequently, God’s “abstact” knowledge is abstract but not like our abstract knowledge because our abstract knowledge is distinct ontologically from our willing powers (and consequently we can think without creating—God cannot do this!!!!).

Therefore, the Son is abstract knowledge of God and also thereby eternally generated out of God as created. This is necessarily entailed from God’s willing and thinking as identical.

Does this mean that there are two ontologically distinct beings—the Son and the Father—like two gods? No. Because when something is willed that is how it is created and to will is in accord with an object of desire or thought (which is to be realized/willed into existence); and the object of this thought of God is Himself who is ontologically simple. God then is willing the creation of an absolutely simple being which then would have to collapse into Himself (in nature).

In more modern terms there is a play on the use of the existential operator,

I didn’t really follow this: can you elaborate with an example?

Then there is the point I made earlier, the use of anthropomorphic language on which the charge of presuming what you wish to conclude rests

But we can only know what God is not from His effects; so we have to use analogies.

It's not a syllogism, since it misses the hidden assumption that thinking of something as real necessarily makes it real. God, then, can' think of things that are not real, something that is routine for us. So what we have here is a loaded metaphysical claim, not a deduction, as well as the contradiction in being an absolute simple and yet having identifiable will and intellect.

I didn’t give a syllogism: I recognize that and it was on purpose. I think everyone can see the premises going on in it. It would be painfully overkill to give a series of syllogisms for the entire argument: this one fatal flaw of analytic philosophy—it depends these rigid and superfluous graveyards of syllogisms. If you want, I can write it out that way: the argument is logically valid in classical logic.

Interesting, I thought Aquinas made a similar argument. I guess I just diverged from Tommy on this one.

Making a religion in the colloquial sense of that term is more about, in my head, coming up with traditions, superstitions, rituals, etc. I am not really interested all that much in that: I went to a Catholic church once and it all seems so superficial to me. They didn't dive intellectually into knowing God better or cultivating the virtues: they just recited some chants, drank out the same cup (which is nasty), and did some recited prayers.

If I were to have a religion, Bobism, it would be to come together out of reverance for what is perfectly good; to learn more about what is good; to practice being good; and to remember what is good. It would look very different I think than mainstream religions that seem to manifest to the populace as a means of checking boxes off their list of to-dos.

Well, it's complex. Saint Thomas cites Saint Augustine more than any other thinker (10,000+ times!) and Augustine suggests we can see the divine image (including the Trinity) by looking within. The second half of his book on the Trinity is a sort of phenomenological dive into the triads that fill the very conditions of experience. Likewise, there was a long tradition of seeing God, and the Trinity in created things (Saint Bonaventure is a great example here). Thomas isn't really at odds with these, but he doesn't think you can demonstrate the Trinity.

However, if one takes the view that all relations are inherently triadic and that the semiotic triad is the precondition for anything to be meaningfully anything at all, I think it's possible to construct a sort of transcendental argument towards the Trinity.

Now we are getting somewhere! — Bob Ross

I don't think so. The analogical reasoning you employ - arguing that because two things are similar in some respects, they're likely similar in others - is not up to the task of providing a proof. The best you might achieve is an understanding of what you already take as true, along the lines that Tim is suggesting.

I don't see that what you have added avoids the critique already made. It repeats the same errors.

That's interesting: can you outline an argument for everything being inherently triadic?

I didn’t really follow this: can you elaborate with an example? — Bob Ross

I see two key logical issues here. The first is the use of an existential predicate in first order logic. The second is modal collapse.

Existence is usually dealt with in first order logic by treating it as a quantifier - the familiar "∃" in "∃(x)...". You'll have heard the standard existential arguments for the existence of God at the response that existence is not a predicate? This is the sort of thing that results from the use of a first order logic; that's kind of why most of it comes from Bertrand Russell.

Folk try to get around this by making use of an explicit first order predication, usually written as "∃!". The results are mostly dealt with in what has been called free logic. However, one of the conclusions found in free logic is that one cannot conclude from an argument that something exists. However, one of the conclusions found in free logic is that one cannot conclude from an argument that something exists. Existence seems to have to be presupposed by the argument.

Put simply, if your argument concludes “and therefore this thing exists,” but the existence of the referent is not already presupposed, then your inference is invalid.

This presents problems for things popping into existence at God's will.

This is a genuine issue. See https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-free/#inexp

For example, consider

• God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived.
• Therefore, He must exist.
• Therefore, He must exist necessarily.
• Therefore, He must be pure act, or simple.

At each step, a move is made that runs contrary to the inexpressibility of existence conditions. It's invalid.



The second issue is not unrelate. Modal collapse will occur when necessity and possibility are rendered the same, when what could be is the same as what must be. The problem of intransitivity, related previously, that the Father is god, and the Son is god, but the Father is not the Son, results in the distinction between necessity and contingency collapsing.

☐(Father = god)
☐(Son = god)
And so
☐(Father = Son)

But the assertion is, instead,
~☐(Father = Son)

And we have a contradiction.

Also, this last is identical to ◇~(Father = Son) with which you would doubtless disagree.

Some theologians resort to non-classical logics in an attempt to avoid these issues. Doing so looks rather ad hoc.

I apologize: I thought retribution semantically referred to restoration. Retribution actually refers to punishment. I was referring to restoration this whole time with the term retribution. — Bob Ross

So you said:

Like I've always said, justice is about respecting the dignities of things which is relative to the totality of creation (and how everything fits into it). Justice, then, is fundamentally about restoring the order of things and not punishment; however, what you are missing is that retribution and punishment are not the same thing: retribution is a requirement of restoration, but punishment is not. — Bob Ross

"Retribution" has to do with repayment or recompense, and in its original sense the repayment could be positive or negative. If positive, it would be a reward; if negative, it would be a punishment. In both cases it is understood as a form of restoration - a kind of restoring of the balance of justice.

In the negative sense which is now the dominant sense, the punishment restores whatever was detracted from the victim of the transgression. The term to substitute for "whatever" is somewhat debatable and also case-dependent. "Honor" would be a common rendering. For example, to apologize to someone you have wronged is to humble oneself while honoring or uplifting the other person, which restores the proper balance between the two of you. In slighting them you demeaned them and placed them below you, and in order to compensate and restore the proper balance what is needed is an act of placing them above you. Depending on the offense, greater recompense is needed.

So it is not wrong to see retribution as intertwined with restoration. A rather precise analysis of this comes in Aquinas' writings on contrapassum, where what is honed in on is specifically the restoration of the imbalance between two wills. For example, if a man steals an ox he must of course return it, and this is also part of retribution. But retribution in a more precise sense has to do with the recompense for the imbalance that has been created between two wills or two persons, and thus the thief who stole one ox must repay five oxen rather than only one (Exodus 22:1). In our current legal parlance this is called restitution with punitive damages, or with exemplary damages. This restoration or re-balancing is much the flip side of the Golden Rule, especially in the neutral sense—which includes both the positive reward and the negative punishment—insofar as one receives back their own treatment, whether good or ill. This is both why someone who injures you becomes indebted to you, and also why you "owe" someone who performs a gratuitous act for you, even though these two cases also have some significant differences (i.e. repaying a debt vs. returning a favor).

With that said, I don't have time to get caught up in this thread at the moment. I have too many pokers in the fire as it is. The thread seems to be going well enough. It looks like you, @Wayfarer, and especially @Count Timothy von Icarus have written a number of good posts.

Humanity is evil by nature and must atone for its sins.