'Essence' is 'what is essential to the being', from the Latin 'esse' 'to be'. So two men both 'participate' in the form 'man' even though they are numerically different men. — Wayfarer

Right. So if we stumbled upon an organism, we might wonder whether it is human. We might come to decide, "This thing is of the same nature as John Doe (and is therefore human)."

The genesis of Trinitarian theology is the same. Folks were wondering what Jesus is. The Council of Nicea came to decide, "The Son is consubstantial with the Father (and is therefore divine)."

@bongo fury

I can’t say I understand Analytic Philosophy’s interest in this sort of substitutability and “referential opacity.” It seems endlessly confused.

For example, suppose “Superman” = “Clark Kent.” This looks like an absurd supposition from the start. The only reason Clark Kent exists at all is because “Superman” != “Clark Kent.” If Superman and Clark Kent were equivalent and therefore substitutable, then this would only mean that Kal-El’s disguise or pseudo-identity had failed.

More generally, if we have two names for the exact same thing (identical both notionally and mind-independently), then one of the names is superfluous and pointless. This hangup with referential opacity seems to be a matter where one posits that superfluous and pointless case and then supposes that it is a centrally important case. How the heck is this case deemed so important?

Probably what is happening is that the “objective” identity is focused on so strongly that one forgets that what is (supposedly) “objectively” identical need not be notionally identical. It seems controversial to claim that the “objective” referent of “Superman” and the “objective” referent of “Clark Kent” are identical, but I would say that it is clearly false to claim that the two signs have notional equivalence. Even to the narrator, “Superman” means something like, “Kal-El in his superhero identity,” whereas, “Clark Kent,” means something like, “Kal-El in his secondary identity, disguised as a human.” That they are not simply equivalent means that they cannot be substituted in every context.

More simply, “Superman” and “Clark Kent” are not different names for the same thing. The whole point of a disguise is to create a “name” that does not reference the true referent. Thus it is much truer to say that “Clark Kent” means “Not-Superman” than to say that “Clark Kent” and “Superman” name the same thing.

What’s weird is that the person interested in this sort of thing might respond, “Okay, so Superman isn’t the best example of this.” But what is the best example? Wouldn’t the best example be something that is completely absurd rather than only partially absurd (like Superman)? It seems like the best example would be two words which refer to the exact same thing, such that there is no notional difference, no difference of semantic range, no connotative difference, etc. The best example looks to be a sheer linguistic impossibility.

Am I missing something important here?

---

Let me sketch out my guess at what is occurring.

Consider two biconditionals:

• SC: The two terms can be substituted salva veritate within this context ↔ The two terms are equivalent within this context
• SA: The two terms can be substituted salva veritate in every context ↔ The two terms are equivalent in every context (i.e. the two terms are absolutely identical)

Both of these biconditionals are true, but this is the argumentation that leverages SA:

i. [Claim that two terms can be substituted in every context]
ii. [Identify a context in which the two terms cannot be substituted]
iii. Draw a reductio of some kind

For example:

1. "Superman" = "Clark Kent."
2. Lois believes that Superman can fly.
3. ∴ Lois believes that Clark Kent can fly.

As I pointed out above, (1) is false, but it is false in a very deep sense. This is because SA is a linguistic impossibility, and therefore to stipulate that some pair of terms satisfies SA is to stipulate a linguistic impossibility. It’s therefore no surprise that one can always find a context in which the two terms cannot be substituted once one moves out into the real world.

I think the issue has to do with epistemic direction, and this error plagues much of Analytic Philosophy. SC and SA are only epistemically coherent (and generally useful) when one moves from the first half to the second half. “These two terms are substitutable, therefore they are equivalent—either in this context or in every context.” That is how one reasons. A judgment of equivalence is inherently a conclusion rather than a premise. Equivalence is never intuited or stipulated.

Now we did get a kind of argument for equivalence in this thread. In this thread (1) was supported by the argument, “Term1 and term2 both rigidly designate the same thing.” Yet note that this does not fulfill SA, namely because it does not address the “context” where such a thing is not believed by Lois. Validity would require, “Term1 and term2 both rigidly designate the same thing, and every rational agent knows this.”

Note that this sort of thing happens all the time among TPF Analytics. For example, in the thread from which this thread was spawned, was just assuming by fiat that the Christian theological terms “Jesus” and “God” are unconditionally substitutable. It is the same sort of move from, “Superman is Clark Kent,” to, “Superman = Clark Kent” (in the sense of SA), albeit with a different context-valence.

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

Spot on. Apparently this has been explained quite a few times throughout the thread. :up:

The abstract of your article contains such outrageous grammatical errors that I am inclined to suspect either that it was written by rather poor AI, or that you are only semi-literate. — alan1000

You are mistaken. There are no grammatical errors in the abstract.

It looks like an interesting article.

The second problem is that to read the article, I have to sign on to a website, with the obvious security compromise which that entails. — alan1000

Academia.edu is a highly regarded website, and your idea that having to sign in is prohibitive doesn't make much sense. You also have to sign in on TPF, after all.

Owing to the way they've been post-trained, all LLMs are largely unable to offer political opinions of their own. — Pierre-Normand

Can you expand on that?

My assumption was that—supposing an LLM will not offer contextless political opinions—it is because a polemical topic is one where there is wide disagreement, lack of consensus, and therefore no clear answer for an LLM.

I'm also curious what the difference is between, "Do you think Trump is a good president?," versus, "Does [some demographic] think Trump is a good president?," especially in the case where the demographic in question is unlimited (i.e. everyone). It seems like the two questions would converge on the same question for the LLM, given that the "opinion" of the LLM should be identical with the various opinions (or rather, linguistic patterns) which it collates.

That's a good post, frank. :up:

In Aristotelian-speak we would say that a material phoneme is not a formal word, and that the presence of a rigid designator requires certain intentions and beliefs on the part of the speaker.

T1 has to show up in the b sentence, and it's not there. There's nothing to substitute. — frank

...And so the question asks what t1 really is, given that the material markings which attend t1 are not sufficient for the presence of t1. So if we let t1 = "Superman," we haven't yet achieved what is needed for "objective" substitution-claims, given that "Superman" means different things to different people (i.e. the term is equivocal). Approaching these issues without something like 's Setoid is a dead end.

Substitutability depends on equivalence, and given that no rational or logical law/relation sidesteps the filter of belief, therefore it is false to claim that substitutability depends on equivalence irrespective of belief. If John does not believe that two terms are equivalent, then John cannot substitute them, and it is sheer confusion to think that there is some case where a substitution occurs but a "John" does not exist.

It is reasonable to think that the relationship between L and some other category W that represents an alternative analytic conception of the world, can be described in terms of a functor F : L --> W. — sime

Right, and I think a lot of this could be tied back to the "God's-eye view" question. If no category (L, W, etc.) is inherently privileged over any other, then it looks like the referential opacity "problem" cannot even arise.

Put differently, if we omit the presupposition that there is a "narrator" perspective which provides indisputable facts, then there is merely a disagreement between Lois ( L) and the observer (W) over whether Superman is Clark Kent. In that case each accuses the other of holding a mistaken belief which in turn influences their belief about what is permissibly substitutable.

(The reason I find this example so strange is because, depending on the time index, Lois may or may not believe that Superman is Clark Kent.)

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. — Fire Ologist

Right. So to take a group like the Stoics, the Logos is seen to order all things without remainder, but what is at stake is not an ontological thesis. Logos-providence does not entail pantheism.

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. — Fire Ologist

I think the general thrust is correct. The traditional Christian metaphysics of the God-world relation tends to be participatory rather than a matter of identification. God does things like create, sustain, and guide creation, but he is not himself creation. An ontological creator-creation distinction is maintained in traditional Christianity.

(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.). — Fire Ologist

To simplify the whole question, because the ancient Greek texts did not have the uppercase-lowercase distinction, and they did not have indefinite articles, therefore they were unable to linguistically represent 'God' in the way that we commonly do today. But there are pros and cons. One of the cons of our own idiom is that although everyone uses the term 'God', it is not at all clear when the term is being used with any clear sense.

What is a person? — Fire Ologist

:up:

Aquinas sees this as the preliminary question to the whole discussion.

Fine. The use of Logos tells that it's related to Plato, the Stoics, and Philo. The basic idea was that God is everything. That's what Plotinus believed. I'm happy to give you the victory over sorting out what Catholics believe. — frank

Okay, well thanks for that. Logos was a philosophical term of art, but it was also a common linguistic term. Both are probably at play in John's prologue.

The basic idea was that God is everything. — frank

Not for any of the figures you mention (i.e. pantheism).

I'm glad you concede that Catholics do not fall into the transitive problem. More generally, I would say that in an anthropological sense it is mistaken to attribute extremely simplistic mistakes to millennia-old traditions. Millennia-old traditions do not make extremely simplistic mistakes, such as failing to recognize the law of identity or transitivity, and this includes all sorts of religions and traditions. This is because 1) just because someone lived before the 21st century does not make them dumb; 2) adherents of a tradition will tend to scrutinize their tradition more thoroughly than outsiders given that they think about the issues more seriously; and 3) when you have the input of billions of people over thousands of years, extremely simplistic mistakes do not survive. It is this remarkable underestimation of millennia-old traditions that I find especially problematic.

Fine. You're saying John 1:1 is saying that the Word was with the Father, and the Word was divine. — frank

Yep, and it's the same with predications of the Son. His nature/ousia is God/divine. But he is not "the god," where "the god" means something like the Father or else a generic god-person. The Nicene Creed says, "Consubstantial with the Father," which is the much more traditional phrase.

262 The Incarnation of God's Son reveals that God is the eternal Father and that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, which means that, in the Father and with the Father the Son is one and the same God. — Catechism of the Catholic Church, #262

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. — Fire Ologist

That does an injustice to the Trinity. The mystery of knowing the Trinity is not akin to the mystery of truly knowing the nuances of me, Banno, or a fine wine.

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

Nah, @Fire Ologist is right on the money. Here is the Catechism:

236 The Fathers of the Church distinguish between theology (theologia) and economy (oikonomia). "Theology" refers to the mystery of God's inmost life within the Blessed Trinity and "economy" to all the works by which God reveals himself and communicates his life. Through the oikonomia the theologia is revealed to us; but conversely, the theologia illuminates the whole oikonomia. God's works reveal who he is in himself; the mystery of his inmost being enlightens our understanding of all his works. So it is, analogously, among human persons. A person discloses himself in his actions, and the better we know a person, the better we understand his actions.

237 The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense, one of the "mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God".58 To be sure, God has left traces of his Trinitarian being in his work of creation and in his Revelation throughout the Old Testament. But his inmost Being as Holy Trinity is a mystery that is inaccessible to reason alone or even to Israel's faith before the Incarnation of God's Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit. — Catechism of the Catholic Church

The inner life of others is also opaque to us unless they "let us in," and once they do that their outer works are made transparent. Granted, the Trinity is moreso, but the similarity is significant.

98% of Christian denominations accept the Trinity from a doctrinal point of view, yet only 16% of Christians actually accept it. https://www.arizonachristian.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AWVI-2025_03_Most-Americans-Reject-the-Trinity_FINAL_03_26_2025.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com

What this means is that there is a distinction between self avowing as a Christian and being a part of the institution of Christianity. Such is common among religions, particularly large ones. — Hanover

I think it only means that not everyone studies Trinitarian theology.

I have always thought Christians were polytheistic, not as a criticism, but just a fact, not having any reason to particularly care to save them from it. I found Mormon belief clearer and just more forthright, but, again, there were no consequences for my view. I might as well have been studying the Greek gods. — Hanover

The Mormon view is clearer. But it isn't representative of Christianity.

My point here is that I can fully understand preposterous views, like a snake talking to Eve, but you're arguing from incoheremce. While you may say it all makes sense if you think about it long enough, it really doesn't. — Hanover

Well you presented an argument and I pointed out why your argument fails. Calling it "preposterous" but being unable to present a valid argument against it is not helpful.

This is the official view of the Catholic Church:

"The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith…” (CCC §234)

“The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense… We cannot come to know the Trinity by reason alone.” (CCC §237)

This is a direct nod to mysticism. While you might use reason to get at it somewhat, ultimately it's "a mystery." — Hanover

We've covered this ad nauseum in the thread. "Mystery" does not mean "preposterous" or "contradictory."

I do note in the Creed that it refers to "we," which could simply mean human reason cannot be used as a basis to understand the Trinity, and it would follow also that it can't be used to reject the Trinity. We can neither come up with reasons to prove it exists or that it doesn't, but we accept on faith that it does. — Hanover

No, that is incorrect. The Catholic view is that the Trinity is not contradictory, and that is why Catholics such as Augustine answer charges of contradiction, and they do it substantively. They do not say, "Oh it's a mystery so you can't argue against it by definition." That's not what Catholicism means by "mystery."

Look, our religious difference seems to have everything to do with the truth-aptness of religious claims. You always go back to the idea, "None of this is provable or disprovable or rational or irrational, and none of it really matters anyway (for there are no differences that arise on account of these beliefs), so let's all just stop arguing about it." I think that is deeply mistaken. If one has that view then a lackadaisical approach to religion is warranted, such as failing to distinguish Mormons from traditional Christians. But if one does not have that view then the lackadaisical approach is not warranted. In that case we would have to take the objections seriously and admit that religion is susceptible to rational objections. It seems like I think religion is susceptible to rational objections and you don't, and therefore we approach all of this from significantly different vantage points.

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

I've explained why this claim fails quite a few times. Check out my posts towards the end of <this thread>.

You're therefore not in a battle with the analytics or the users of reason. You're in a battle specifically with non-Christians who reject your demand of acceptance of Church dogma and refuse to humbly accept their human rationality cannot comprehend divine rationality. — Hanover

This is an incorrect framing, and it evinces the same lackadaisical attitude that led you to interpret me to be saying the exact opposite of what I had said. You aren't reading or interpreting posts carefully, likely because you hold to an a priori position which says that none of this matters anyway.

This therefore has nothing to do with secularism versus theism or analytics versus whatever. This is just whether one is willing to be Christian or not. If true Christians tied to doctrinal belief (98%) constitute the authentic Christians, then this is just about being Christian or not, and not about being an Analytic, a rationalist, a theist, or whatever. — Hanover

Believe it or not, people don't just decide whether to be a Christian or not for no reason whatsoever. It has to do with other holdings, including things like rationalism, theism, atheism, etc.

My belief holds, for example, that death is mourned because the opportunity to perform God's law has ended. Heaven, in all its glory, is not sought after, but is brought to earth by good acts. We seek to bring God here, not to go to the heavens for God. It's a this worldly religion based upon what you do. It's not a religion centered around eternal rewards.

My point is that you probably find that profoundly wrong, and you may find issues within it unresolvable, but why should I pretend to care. I don't hold my views because they are logically consistent, empirically provable, or factually credible. I hold them for meaning, purpose, comfort, morality, sense of community, sense of beauty, utilitarian benefit, belonging, etc etc. — Hanover

I don't think religious positions are inadjudicable. I think your belief in the inadjudicability of religious positions is mistaken.

I guess I'm asking, why the grappling in the muck with the non-believers when you've got enough reason to believe even if some of their academic objections can't be readily overcome? — Hanover

Because a fallacious argument against Christianity impedes others from life in God.

Look, if you believe something is good and shareable, and someone gives a fallacious argument against it, then (ceteris paribus) you should point out the problems in the argument. If you don't do that then you don't care about others sharing in the good.

Obviously Judaism is not an evangelistic religion, and that's a big difference. But the idea that one should protect what is good and true is not a strange idea.

This is actually a really excellent question and objection, given that my claim is that "The Son is God" is never used in early Christianity.

In the Greek of Jn 1:1 the first instance of 'God' includes the definite article whereas the second does not.

So if we use your NIV translation but include the articles and omit the capitalization, we get this:

"In the beginning was the word, and the word was with the god, and the word was god."

The reading that you and Banno see is, "...and the word was the god," which is on par with, "Jesus is the god."

In the Biblical mindset god (theos) is not a binary notion. For example, angels and demons would also be described with theos or similar terms (which have to do with generalized divinity). Nevertheless, the Hebrew authors still differentiate the one god or the creator god from lesser divinities. In the New Testament Greek this is usually done with the definite article ("the god"). This is why, for example, Jn 1:1 was not a knockdown argument against Arius, for Arius saw the Word as a divine being unequal with the one god.

So in that Jewish and Early Christian idiom, "the god" is the Father, whereas Jesus is the Son of God. This same idiom is present in the Nicene Creed as well as in current Catholic and Orthodox liturgy. "God" used hypostatically refers to the Father.

So the opening Collect of a Roman Catholic liturgy is conditional in the following way:

– If the prayer is directed to the Father: "Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever";
– If it is directed to the Father, but the Son is mentioned at the end: "Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever";
– If it is directed to the Son: "Who live and reign with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever." — Roman Missal, Third Edition

Now I bolded each instance of 'God'. You can see that instances 1, 2, and 4 are a Triune use of 'God', whereas 3 is the ancient hypostatic use of 'God' (the Father).

Another example is the opening Collect from the first Sunday of Advent (chosen at random):

Grant your faithful, we pray, almighty God,
the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ
with righteous deeds at his coming,
so that, gathered at his right hand,
they may be worthy to possess the heavenly Kingdom.
Through our lord Jesus Christ, your son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the holy spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. — Roman Missal, Third Edition

Again, instance 1 is hypostatic whereas instance 2 is Triune (despite the fact that the Father is never without the Son and Spirit).

Well, I know what I mean... Ands the thread is pretty much about trying to make sense of what you mean. — Banno

Tell me what you mean by 'is' and what you mean by 'God' and I will tell you whether the proposition "Jesus is God" is true.

Curiously, when I typed "Shield of the Trinity" into Google, the AI gave an overview. Part of the overview was that the diagram can be misleading insofar as some might see four entities (Father, Son, Spirit, God), and that they might therefore mistake "is" for a copula of identity. Ding ding!

-

Edit: Else, to avoid repeating myself:

Again, basing the entire discussion on a heuristic diagram which is famous for its oversimplification is not a good approach. Here is a clause from the Catechism of the Catholic Church that most closely approximates the same idea:

262 The Incarnation of God's Son reveals that God is the eternal Father and that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, which means that, in the Father and with the Father the Son is one and the same God.
— Catechism of the Catholic Church, #262

We could disambiguate the modern phrase, "The Son is God":

A. "The Son—in the Father and Spirit and with the Father and Spirit—is God"
B. "The Son—apart from the Father and the Spirit—is God"

(A) is theologically true whereas (B) is theologically false. The Son is never apart from the Father and the Spirit. What is happening in this thread is that (B) is being claimed as Catholic teaching, and this is false given that (B) is not Catholic teaching. (B) is a hostile translation of a highly compacted and oversimplified diagram.* In the contemporary colloquial idiom when Catholics speak of "God" as a sort of proper name they are talking about the Triune communion of persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For Catholics the inner life of God is tri-personal, and this creates friction with the standard account of 'God' as mono-personal. The hostile translation (B) is presupposing 'God' as a mono-personal hypostasis, which would place the relata into the same genus and accord with a transitive property of identity. But anyone with knowledge of historic Christianity will know that this is a misrepresentation, that for Christians the generic "God" is triune rather than a single hypostasis, and that "Son" and "God" therefore belong to different genera. ↪Bob Ross was correct in saying that what is at stake is a predication rather than an identity relation. That is a remarkably accurate interpretation of Nicene Christianity. — Leontiskos

That's the reasoning behind the substitution argument given earlier. If in "Jesus is God" and "The Holy Spirit is God" the "is" is that of identity, then we ought be able to substitute and get "Jesus is the Holy Spirit". But Scripture won't let us. — Banno

The underlying idea that, "'Son' and 'God' are formally substitutable terms," requires an insane ignorance of Christian Trinitarianism. — Leontiskos

-

Are you now denying that Jesus is God? — Banno

You literally don't know what you mean when you say, "Jesus is God." You literally have no idea what you mean by "is," and now you are trying to leverage your ambiguous, bumper-sticker phrase to try to somehow shame me. :lol:

In syllogistic logic, all relations are reduced to single-places predications. “Socrates is taller than Plato” have to be paraphrased into one-place predicates like “Socrates is-a-thing-taller-than-Plato” before entering a syllogism. Something like "Tully is Cicero" has to be treated not as a relation, but as a single-placed predicate. It has to be treated the same way as, say, "Tully is a writer". Tully is a member of the group of writers, and Tully is a member of the group of things which are Cicero. — Banno

This is just more ignorance of history, in this case syllogistic logic. Syllogistic logic is predicative. For example, "Socrates is human," is not the single-place predicate H(S). Pretending it is is a kind of myopic projection of predicate logic beyond its bounds. That's what your strange analysis of "is" is: an awkward shoehorning of natural language into the straightjacket of specialized logical devices.

But all of this is based on your insistence that we must stick with your bumper sticker formulation, "Jesus is God," despite the fact that the theological sources simply do not rely on such bumper sticker formulations. Were we to abandon the bumper sticker, your strawman would fall apart. So we can't do that! :grimace:

- Yes, the analogy limps insofar as it utilizes the idea of separable parts. Yet my point is that an age which accepts (2) will surely reject the Trinity.

One of the great weaknesses of Analytic Philosophy is that it doesn't recognize that logic follows upon being, and that every approach to logic presupposes a metaphysics. Older logicians were better logicians than the Analytics because they understood this.

Thinking now of these metaphysical premises, presumably it is no coincidence that a numerical objection to the Trinity has become popular in an individualistic age. The core argument is something like this:

1. The Trinity is a unified multi-hypostasis reality
2. But there are no unified multi-hypostasis realities
3. Therefore, the Trinity cannot exist

For example, in our day it is commonly believed that a social reality constituted of persons is reducible to persons. So someone in our day might say that a "family" is a fiction, and all that really exists in a family are the individuals.

On that assumption the Trinity is "illogical" (precisely because it contradicts the metaphysical doctrine of (2)). But a negation of (2) is not implausible. Families are arguably multi-hypostasis realities, and not mere fictions. The "superorganism" of a beehive is another example, where the hive is more than the sum of its parts. The Trinity will be seen as possible so long as we see unities which are more than the sum of their parts as possible. The Trinity is a bit like a beehive where the hypostases are in such elegant concert that it is hard to tell where one begins and another ends, and where the bees are nonplussed about this fact. This extreme unification is precisely why Christianity holds that Trinitarian activity ad extra is not differentiable from standard monotheism.

- Oh, dear. :sweat:

The source was openly an LDS source, That's why frank provided the picture of the Mormons on bikes. @Banno then cited another article describing other views on the Trinity. The point then was just to point out there wasn't Christian consensus on the Trinity. — Hanover

Okay...

I've pointed out the problems with appealing to Mormonism on Christian questions. Banno is quoting from SEP and is mistakenly transferring its philosophical authority into a religious authority. SEP is really not a reliable theological source. In that article it is adopting one particular way of ordering very recent logical approaches to the Trinity.

None of that has much to do with consensus. There is a Christian consensus on the Trinity, and it is based in the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople (325 and 381).

Thus approximately 98.5%[59] of the world's Christians are Nicene Christians, adhering to the Nicene Creed's Trinitarian and Christological doctrines. The remaining 1.5% include non-Trinitarian groups such as the LDS Church, Jehovah's Witnesses, Swedenborgians, etc. — Nicene Creed | Wikipedia

If the LDS are to be counted as Christians, then they account for 0.61%, and SEP's logical taxonomy has nothing to do with representation or consensus. So I would say that the OP's focus on Catholicism is representative of Christianity generally, especially if we favor the general Nicene tradition.

The trinity is three entirely seperate personages, not a single entity. They have a common purpose, and they're referred to as the godhead. Such is true Christian theology. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist/article/do-latter-day-saints-believe-in-the-trinity

When you say "the Christian narrative" and then start going on about the Nicene Creed which was arrived at 325 years after Jesus' death, you're just taking about your peculiar brand of modified Christianity. — Hanover

I was looking through your posts to try to understand where you are coming from. Maybe part of the problem here is that you are depending on Mormon sources. At least the second sentence of your article is candid:

Like many Christians, we believe in God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. However, we don’t believe in the traditional concept of the Trinity. — Mormon Source

I think it struggles if it's subjected to basic logical demands (e.g., law of identity, law of non-contradiction, etc.). — Hanover

Well we can look at your argument too, which I would say comes down to this:

I don't know where [Hanover's] either/or is coming from. — Leontiskos

-

1. Yahweh is God. Jesus is God. The holy spirit is God.

2. . Hanover is a person, Bob is a person, Frank is a person.

3. Hanover is Banno. Bob is Banno. Frank is Banno.

Is 1 like 2 or is 1 like 3? Clear this up for me.

If 1 is like 2, then you have three things that fit into a single category.

If I is like 3, then you either have 1 person with 3 names or a 3 headed monster. — Hanover

You are giving a dilemma:

4. Either "is God" means something like "is a person" or else "is God" means something like "is Banno"
5. Either way we arrive at an anti-Trinitarian outcome
6. Therefore, the doctrine of the Trinity is inconsistent

As I alluded to, the either/or of (4) is ad hoc and false, and therefore your argument is unsound. Christians say what "is God" means, and it means, "is divine," or, "Homoousios with the Father."

Again, basing the entire discussion on a heuristic diagram which is famous for its oversimplification is not a good approach. Here is a clause from the Catechism of the Catholic Church that most closely approximates the same idea:

262 The Incarnation of God's Son reveals that God is the eternal Father and that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, which means that, in the Father and with the Father the Son is one and the same God. — Catechism of the Catholic Church, #262

We could disambiguate the modern phrase, "The Son is God":

• A. "The Son—in the Father and Spirit and with the Father and Spirit—is God"
• B. "The Son—apart from the Father and the Spirit—is God"

(A) is theologically true whereas (B) is theologically false. The Son is never apart from the Father and the Spirit. What is happening in this thread is that (B) is being claimed as Catholic teaching, and this is false given that (B) is not Catholic teaching. (B) is a hostile translation of a highly compacted and oversimplified diagram.* In the contemporary colloquial idiom when Catholics speak of "God" as a sort of proper name they are talking about the Triune communion of persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For Catholics the inner life of God is tri-personal, and this creates friction with the standard account of 'God' as mono-personal. The hostile translation (B) is presupposing 'God' as a mono-personal hypostasis, which would place the relata into the same genus and accord with a transitive property of identity. But anyone with knowledge of historic Christianity will know that this is a misrepresentation, that for Christians the generic "God" is triune rather than a single hypostasis, and that "Son" and "God" therefore belong to different genera. was correct in saying that what is at stake is a predication rather than an identity relation. That is a remarkably accurate interpretation of Nicene Christianity.

()


* The misrepresentation is also being used by @frank as a support for the strawman of the OP.

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

Again, @Banno's argument is invalid, and obviously so:

1. Son = God(head)
2. Spirit = God(head)
3. Therefore, Son = Spirit {transitive property of identity}

Again, the transitive property of identity requires relata of the same genus:

The presupposition when using the transitive property of identity is that each of the relata are the same kind of thing (i.e. belong to the same genus). So if A, B, and C are all numbers, then we can apply the transitive property of identity to them. But if A is a number, B is an animal, and C is a solar system, then we cannot. — Leontiskos

4. 2+2 = 4
5. 3+1 = 4
6. Therefore, 2+2 = 3+1 (transitive property of identity)

7. 3 = giraffe
8. giraffe = Copernican System
9. Therefore, 3 = Copernican System (transitive property of identity)

(6) is valid whereas (3) and (9) are not.

Count has already pointed this up:

It's "one nature, three persons." Consider the analogous case of human nature:

Mark is human. (A is B)
Christ is human. (C is B)
Therefore Mark is Christ. (A is C) — Count Timothy von Icarus

A nature (ousia) and a person (hypostasis) are not of the same genus, and this is why Banno's argument is invalid.

Analytics like Banno seldom have any idea what they are doing when they say, "x = y," as they assume that anything can be placed into that form. They don't recognize the mathematical context and the single genus of the relata that their formulation takes for granted. This is one example of why Banno's philosophy is so unreflective. In a philosophical sense, "x = y" pertains to epistemic moves, where a single object goes by two different names. There are just too many reasons why this sort of approach is utterly inappropriate when talking about the Trinity. The underlying idea that, "'Son' and 'God' are formally substitutable terms," requires an insane ignorance of Christian Trinitarianism. It is such an unlikely strawman that very little attention is paid to the idea at all.

I fed the last page into Claude and received the following review: — Banno

@Hanover, @Baden - isn't this literally against the rules of TPF? An entire post of AI? Further, Banno is constantly telling us that "I win because AI said so," all the while failing to provide even the prompts he is providing to the AI. Is this really what the forum has come to? Is this rule still being enforced?

AI

AI LLMs are not to be used to write posts either in full or in part (unless there is some obvious reason to do so, e.g. an LLM discussion thread where use is explicitly declared). Those suspected of breaking this rule will receive a warning and potentially a ban.

AI LLMs may be used to proofread pre-written posts, but if this results in you being suspected of using them to write posts, that is a risk you run. We recommend that you do not use them at all — Baden

Making AI say whatever you want it to say is pretty easy. Hanover knows this:

↪Banno Then continue your conversation with ChatGPT and ask it for Jewish interpretations that it stands for repudiation of human sacrifice and then have it compare that to your other post. Then argue with it and have it change its mind.

It has such poor resolve I find — Hanover

Leontiskos's suggestion that analytic philosophy is overly restrictive when evaluating the Trinity because it demands logic is difficult to accept, — Hanover

This is a very strange interpretation given that I said just the opposite:

The Analytic, with his tiny set of norms, must ultimately admit that pretty much everything passes muster, at least on Analytic grounds. — Leontiskos

To the extent we're referencing the analytic tradition as elaborated by Wittgenstein and Davidson, particularly with their dispensing with the idea that meaning is based on an internal referent, I see Leon's point. If the soul is an entity and the love one has for God is a true thing in one's heart, it's entirely inadequate to suggest these words refer to just their use and not some mystical entity.

And we've got to keep in mind that the linchpin of Wittgenstein's enterprise is in denying private language, which is a metaphysical impossibility to the theist because his internal state is publicly shared by God. That is,a theist might see Wittgenstein's theory as a brilliant reductio that proves without God you are limited to an absurdly restricted system of language. Of course, the secular analytic embraces this conclusion and runs with it. — Hanover

I don't see theology as private, even if we are prescinding from the idea that God is part of the group. Theology has always been a public, social enterprise.

But then I disagree with Leon in his hesitation to accept that logical thought (which here I mean logical reasoning, which includes analogizing and the use of precedent as authority) by itself is not a religious act. — Hanover

I said that logical thought can but need not be worship. I would say that the fact of logical reasoning is not itself worship even if the material object is construed as "religious." So for example, if an atheist is logically analyzing Rabbinic literature, he is not engaged in worship.

- Wow, and in 1993. :lol:

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… — Fire Ologist

These sorts of puzzles arise within Christianity because Christianity is based on natural language, and wherever there is natural language the strict separation between logically distinct categories does not exist. Christianity was not made in a lab.

If one has not studied a great deal of theology, the best rule of thumb when it comes to Trinitarian theology is to use the term 'Godhead' and to simply avoid the term 'God.' The textual ambiguities—not to mention the logical complexities—of the term 'God' are legion. Thus the basis for Trinitarian theology is three hypostases (Father, Son, Spirit) and one ousia (Godhead). When one moves outside of Trinitarian theology that rule of thumb must be dropped, and the complexities of natural language must be embraced.

@Fire Ologist - This ^^^ is a good example wherein one shows that a charge of contradiction is false. An argument that the Trinity is unreasonable is shown to fail, yet without sacrificing the Trinity as an article of faith. The objection objectively fails, and yet the doctrine of the Trinity remains "unerectable" via natural reason.

Oh, Leon. Yes, that's how "=" works. And yes, it follows that you cannot be using "is" in "Jesus is God" to mean "=", and hence you must be using it a different way.

So, how are you using it? How does it work? And why do you need this special use of "is" just for God? Why is this special use not ad hoc self-justification? — Banno

So first, replace every instance of "you" with "the diagram." Second, revisit my initial claim that your focus on the diagram is a dead end.

And why do you need this special use of "is" just for God? — Banno

Your invalid use of the transitive property of identity is not only applicable to God(head). Failing to keep the relata of the same genus is always invalid.

And you asre slipping back into attacking me rather than the point being made here. Bad form. — Banno

Telling you that you should inform yourself before attacking that which you don't understand is attacking you? It's not attacking you, and it's pointing to the real problem here. That problem is why I was so averse to even entering this thread in the first place.

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

Then you've done what I said:

Now you could build that condition into your definition of "=" if you like... — Leontiskos

And also as I said:

...but it amounts to the same failure; the same invalidity within your argument. — Leontiskos

Your proposition "Jesus = God(head)" is false, given that there is not equality between things of different genera. This is precisely what I said above.

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

Which, again, comes precisely from the diagram. Your continual insistence makes no sense, "It's not about the diagram, it's about that part of the diagram that says 'is'!" That part of the diagram is obviously a part of the diagram.

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

By reading the smallest bit of theology to inform yourself before jumping to attack that which you do not understand?

The Trinitarian term "God(head)" is not a hypostasis; it is an ousia. Christians do not believe that Jesus = God(head).

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. — Banno

No, that's incorrect. The presupposition when using the transitive property of identity is that each of the relata are the same kind of thing (i.e. belong to the same genus). So if A, B, and C are all numbers, then we can apply the transitive property of identity to them. But if A is a number, B is an animal, and C is a solar system, then we cannot.

Now you could build that condition into your definition of "=" if you like, but it amounts to the same failure; the same invalidity within your argument.

Again, the deeper problem is that you are relying on a heuristic diagram that doesn't try to be theologically precise. One way to remedy such confusions is to talk about Godhead instead of "God," to remind ourselves that what is at stake is an ousia.

The same sort of error is present in claims like this one:

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

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.

transitivity — Banno

Again:

Sure, but did you catch the other half, where viewing "God" and "hypostasis" as belonging to the same univocal genus is also erroneous? — Leontiskos

The transitive property of identity requires that the three relata belong to the same genus. Yet a hypostasis and an ousia obviously do not belong to the same genus. Your argument is invalid.

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. — Fire Ologist

Good stuff. :up:

For example, for Aquinas the doctrine of the Trinity is an article of faith, and what this means is that faith is a necessary condition for belief in the Trinity. For Aquinas, one does not simply figure out the fact of the Trinity all by their lonesome. But this does not mean that the doctrine is divorced from reason.

If an atheist were really interested in the theology of revelation, they would want to start thinking about how an intellectually superior being would reveal things to an intellectually inferior being, namely things which exceed the rational comprehension of the intellectually inferior being. (Note that I am focusing on the "intellectual" for the sake of simplicity.)

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

:up:

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; — Fire Ologist

Right.

Agreed. There is a lot of misperception — Fire Ologist

Yeah, and I think a lot of it has to do with a kind of anthropocentrism, where one sees themselves and their own age as the center of the universe. On that conception everything is measured against our current form, and so much the worse for anything that doesn't "measure up." Thus there is no possibility of being measured by something greater than us. No possibility, for example, of being dwarfed by greater intelligences.

Edit: The other general problem is that Trinitarian theology requires the most careful linguistic distinctions, and the objectors are basically using careless or ambiguous words at every turn. For example, pretending that the symbol (or rather function) "=" has some precise meaning, or that "is" is an uncomplicated copula, or that 'incomprehensible' and 'inconceivable' mean the same thing. I could go on. It is but one instance of the sort of lazy critique where one expects their interlocutor to do all of the work, and where one purports to be knowledgeable, ignorant, and critical of some particular thesis, all at the same time.

I'm not sure it's so ... "non-mysterious". ;) — jorndoe

I hope I haven't said that the Trinity is non-mysterious?

The Jews don't put much divine stock in Jesus; he wasn't the Messiah according to them. — jorndoe

Well the first Christians were all Jews. Beyond that, there are different lines of Jewish expectation and prophecy, and the ones which converge on a figure like Jesus actually exclude the unanimity that modern folk seem to expect.

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

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s foes will be those of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it. — Matthew 10 (RSV)

- Yeah, I think you're making a really salient point. :up:

I guess no one wanted to take up Hanover's comment? — jorndoe

I don't know where his either/or is coming from.

The perennialists sometimes bring up the parable of the blind men and an elephant.
Might be better suited for pluralism. — jorndoe

Right, and a pluralism thesis is different from an incomprehensibility thesis, although that parable does leverage incomprehensibility. The key difference for a Christian claim or any revelatory claim is that some truth is entrusted to man by God.

So according to the Hindu/Buddhist elephant-parable contradictions are considered acceptable because it is assumed that they resolve at a deeper level. For Christianity there is no "deeper level" which supersedes divine revelation. Thus the phenomenon of contradiction is being approached differently by the two traditions, albeit with the significant caveat that the epistemic reliability of the claims in question is markedly different. Nevertheless, there are similarities insofar as Christians believe that various tensions and confusions will be resolved in the end. Still, the Christian would be careful to distinguish a tension from a contradiction.

Wouldn't it be more a cause for wonderment if it created referential transparency?

Then the Superman of Lois' beliefs could be relied on to share all his properties with the actual fictional one?

Granted that would spoil story-telling, and perhaps also Davidson's proposed intentionality test. — bongo fury

Wouldn't it also mean that the believer is omniscient, lacking no knowledge about identities?

As I mentioned, it's been said that God is like a coffee cup. The handle is an analogy. The mind is the index finger. In other words, the mind can only grasp God in a limited way. — frank

Yes, that's something of the idea. :up:

Since everything is knowable according as it is actual, God, Who is pure act without any admixture of potentiality, is in Himself supremely knowable. But what is supremely knowable in itself, may not be knowable to a particular intellect, on account of the excess of the intelligible object above the intellect; as, for example, the sun, which is supremely visible, cannot be seen by the bat by reason of its excess of light. — Aquinas, ST I.12.1

This is often captured by the idea that what is infinite (God) cannot be comprehended or encompassed by what is finite (man).

- Interesting points. :up: