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- H. E. Baber (2008). Trinity, Filioque and Semantic Ascent. Sophia 47 (2).It is difficult to reconcile claims about the Father's role as the progenitor of Trinitarian Persons with commitment to the equality of the persons, a problem that is especially acute for Social Trinitarians. I propose a metatheological account of the doctrine of the Trinity that facilitates the reconciliation of these two claims. On the proposed account, ‘Father’ is systematically ambiguous. Within economic contexts, those which characterize God's relation to the world, ‘Father’ refers to the First Person of the Trinity; within theological contexts, which purport to describe intra-Trinitarian relations, it refers to the Trinity in toto-thus in holding that the Son and Holy Spirit proceed from the Father we affirm that the Trinity is the source and unifying principle of Trinitarian Persons. While this account is solves a nagging problem for Social Trinitarians it is theologically minimalist to the extent that it is compatible with both Social Trinitarianism and Latin Trinitarianism, and with heterodox Modalist and Tri-theist doctrines as well. Its only theological cost is incompatibility with the Filioque Clause, the doctrine that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son—and arguably that may be a benefit.Reading list | Discuss | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
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In a recent article, Edward Wierenga defends a version of Social Trinitarianism according to which the Persons of the Trinity form a unique society of really distinct divine beings, each of whom has its own exemplification of divinity. In this paper, I call attention to several philosophical and theological difficulties with Wierenga’s account, as well as to a problem that such difficulties pose for Social Trinitarianism generally. I then briefly suggest what I take to be a more promising approach to the Trinity.
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| | Other links: web.ics.purdue.edu pdcnet.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Wolfhart Pannenberg's innovative account of the Trinity, in which the mutual self-distinction of the divine persons is also constitutive for the divinity of each, is an important corrective to one-sided views of Trinitarian relations which reductively account only for relations of origin. However, his account ties relationality to death and self-emptying in such a way that it becomes impossible to escape a hierarchical account of Trinitarian relations in which the differences between the persons collapse into an ordered relation that repeats the pattern of the relations of origin. As a result, the most significant potential contribution of Trinitarian theology, its responsiveness to a reality that is internally differentiated yet non-competitive, is lost. This problem is the result of tying the inner-Trinitarian relations too closely to the cross, such that there has to be something in the divine life that can make the cross possible, a move that has become increasingly popular in recent Trinitarian theology. The inner-Trinitarian relations are then reduced to a single taxis which is not sufficiently flexible to respond to the various ways in which God interacts with the world as narrated in the Bible.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Roughly, the problem of the Trinity is the problem of how God can be one and yet be the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, which are three, not one. That one thing is identical with three distinct things seems to violate traditional laws of identity. I propose a solution to this problem according to which it is just an ordinary claim of one-many identity. For example, one pair of shoes is identical with two shoes; and my one body is identical with its six limbs of arms, legs, head, and torso. The pair of shoes is not identical with each one of the two shoes, nor is my body identical with each one of its six limbs, but rather identical with all of them taken together, or collectively. I argue that the problem of the Trinity should be understood accordingly: God is identical with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit collectively, but not with each one of them distributively. According to the way I develop this proposal, no traditional laws of identity are violated, but merely generalized in an intuitive way. I argue that this is compatible with Christian Orthodoxy as given by the Athanasian Creed. I end by responding to some anticipated objections.
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| | Other links: dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... As is well known, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity poses a serious philosophical problem. On the one hand, it affirms that there are three distinct Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—each of whom is God. On the other hand, it says that there is one and only one God. The doctrine therefore pulls us in two directions at once—in the direction of saying that there is exactly one divine being and in the direction of saying that there is more than one.
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| | Other links: web.ics.purdue.edu pdcnet.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... As is well known, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity poses a serious philosophical problem. On the one hand, it affirms that there are three distinct Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—each of whom is God. On the other hand, it says that there is one and only one God. The doctrine therefore pulls us in two directions at once—in the direction of saying that there is exactly one divine being and in the direction of saying that there is more than one.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... The doctrine of the Trinity poses a deep and difficult problem. On the one hand, it says that there are three distinct Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and that each of these Persons “is God”. On the other hand, it says that there is one and only one God. So it appears to involve a contradiction. It seems to say that there is exactly one divine being, and also that there is more than one. How are we to make sense of this?
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... The doctrine of the Trinity poses a deep and difficult problem. On the one hand, it says that there are three distinct Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and that each of these Persons “is God”. On the other hand, it says that there is one and only one God. So it appears to involve a contradiction. It seems to say that there is exactly one divine being, and also that there is more than one. How are we to make sense of this?
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| | Other links: web.ics.purdue.edu | Scholar | At my library | More options ... The doctrine of the Trinity poses a deep and difficult problem. On the one hand, it says that there are three distinct Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and that each of these Persons “is God”. On the other hand, it says that there is one and only one God. So it appears to involve a contradiction. It seems to say that there is exactly one divine being, and also that there is more than one. How are we to make sense of this?
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| | Scholar | More options ... Brian Leftow has proposed a “Latin” doctrine of the Trinity according to which “the Father just is God,” and so also for the Son and the Spirit. I argue that Leftow’s doctrine as he presents it really does have the consequence that Father, Son, and Spirit are all identical, a consequence that is inconsistent with orthodox Trinitarianism. A fairly minor modification would enable Leftow to avoid this untoward consequence. But the doctrine as modified will still retain a strongly modalistic flavor: it implies, among other things, that the prayers of Jesus in the Gospels are instances of God-as-Son praying to himself, namely to God-as-Father. If this is found unacceptable, Leftow may have been too quick to dismiss Social Trinitarianism.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Early in the fourth century Constantine made Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire, and at once had reason to regret his having done so; for now not only the Church but the state was convulsed by controversies about the Holy Trinity. These controversies raged for over two hundred years, after which the bishops found new intellectual outlets, if not more rational ones, for their animosities. But Trinitarian trouble was not dead, only sleeping. The Great Schism of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which split the Western from the Eastern Church, took place, on its theological side, over a question concerning the Trinity. This was, of course, that most famous of all theological questions, the question of the procession of the Holy Ghost, or of the filioque. The Orthodox theory was that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father alone. The Western bishops, however, were equally adamant that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father filioque - 'and the Son'.
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| | Scholar | More options ... Discussion of H. E. Baber, Trinity, filioque and semantic ascent
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