Online research in philosophy

The function and method of philosophy.--The nature of religious experience.--Religion and philosophy: naturalism.--Religion and philosophical idealism.--The structure of the universe and the objectivity of values.--The christian conception of god.--The doctrine of the person of christ.--The doctrine of the trinity.

This paper discusses Leibniz's Trinitarian doctrine in the light of his philosophy, as revealed by a set of virtually unstudied texts. The first part of the paper examines Leibniz's defence of the Trinity against the charge of contradiction as a necessary precondition to the development of his own conception of the Trinity. The second part discusses some of the key features of Leibniz's Trinitarian doctrine, notably his conception of person, the analogy between the human mind and the Trinity, and the problem of Trinitarian relations.

Jeffrey Brower and Michael Rea have proposed a model for the Trinity using a particular understanding of the relation of material constitution. I examine this model in detail and conclude that it cannot succeed. I then suggest, but do not fully develop, a model of the Trinity using an alternative notion of constitution.

What is it for there to be a God, and what reason is there for supposing him to conform to the claims of Christian doctrine? In this pivotal volume of his tetralogy, Richard Swinburne builds a rigorous metaphysical system for describing the world, and applies this to assessing the worth of the Christian tenets of the Trinity and the Incarnation. Part I is dedicated to analyzing the categories needed to address accounts of the divine nature--substance, cause, time, and necessity. Part II begins by setting out, in terms of these categories, the fundamental doctrine of Western religions--that there is a God. After pointing out some of the different ways in which this doctrine can be developed, Swinburne spells out the simplest possible account of divine nature. He then goes on to clarify the implications of this account for the specifically Christian doctrines of the Trinity (that God is "three persons in one substance") and of the Incarnation (that God became incarnate in Jesus Christ). Swinburne finds that there are good reasons to believe the Christian additions to the core Western idea of God. The Christian God builds upon Swinburne's acclaimed previous work to form a self-contained text which will no doubt become a classic in the philosophy of religion.

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.

Which Trinity? : the doctrine of the Trinity -- In contemporary philosophical theology -- Whose monotheism? : Jesus and his Abba -- Doctrine and analysis -- "Whoever raised Jesus from the dead" : Robert Jenson on the identity of the Triune God -- Moltmann's perichoresis : either too much or not enough -- "Eternal functional subordination" : considering a recent evangelical proposal -- Holy love and divine aseity in the theology of John Zizioulas -- Moving forward : theses on the future of Trinitarian theology.

Theology is the preeminent academic discipline during the Middle Ages and, as a result, most of great thinkers of this period are highly trained theologians. Although this is common knowledge, it is sometimes overlooked that the systematic nature of medieval theology led its practitioners to develop full treatments of virtually every area within philosophy. Indeed, theological reflection not only provides the main context in which the medievals theorize about what we would now recognize as distinctively philosophical issues, but it is responsible for some of their most significant philosophical contributions. To give just a few examples: it is problems with the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation that prompt medievals to develop the notions of ‘substance’ and ‘person’ in striking and original ways; it is problems with the doctrine of the Eucharist that lead them to consider the possibility of ‘accidents that do not inhere’; and it is problems of..

1 Proponents of the ST strategy include Timothy Bartel, “Could There Be More Than One Almighty?” Religious Studies 29 (1993): 465–95, and “Could There Be More Than One Lord?” Faith and Philosophy 11 (1994): 357–78; David Brown, The Divine Trinity (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1985), and “Trinitarian Personhood and Individuality,” in Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement, ed. R. Feenstra and C. Plantinga (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 48–78; Stephen Davis, “A Somewhat Playful Proof of the Social Trinity in Five Easy Steps,” Philosophia Christi 1, no. 2 (1999): 103–5; Peter Forrest, “Divine Fission: A New Way of Moderating Social Trinitiarianism,” Religious Studies 34 (1998): 281–97; C. Stephen Layman, “Tritheism and the Trinity,” Faith and Philosophy 5 (1988): 291–8; Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., “Gregory of Nyssa and the Social Analogy of the Trinity,” Thomist 50 (1986): 325–52, “The Threeness/Oneness Problem of the Trinity,” Calvin Theological Journal 23 (1988): 37–53, and “Social Trinity and Tritheism,” in Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement, 21–47; Richard Swinburne, The Christian God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); and C. J. F. Williams, “Neither Confounding the Persons nor Dividing the Substance,” in Reason and the Christian Religion: Essays in Honor of Richard Swinburne, ed. Alan Padgett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 227–43. The position is also commonly attributed to the Cappadocian Fathers. See especially Brown, Divine Trinity; Plantinga “Gregory of Nyssa and the Social Analogy of the Trinity,” and H. A. Wolfson, Faith, Trinity, Incarnation, vol. 1, The Philosophy of the Church Fathers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964).