BackgroundYouth are increasingly aware of the negative effects of climate change on the planet and human health, but this knowledge can often come with significant affective responses, such as psychological distress, anger, or despair. Experiencing major “negative” emotions, like worry, guilt, and hopelessness in anticipation of climate change has been identified with the term eco-anxiety. Emerging literature focuses on adults' experience; however, little is known about the ways in which children and youth experience eco-anxiety.ObjectivesThe aim of this review was to: (...) identify the available evidence on the topic of eco-anxiety in children, clarify the mental health consequences brought by the awareness of climate change in this population, and identify knowledge gaps in the literature and considerations for future research.MethodsGiven that the research on the topic of eco-anxiety in children is limited, that there are very few randomized controlled trials, and that the goal is not to analyze individual studies in-depth, a scoping review was used. Keywords pertaining to the themes of eco-anxiety, climate change and children were used as search terms in five databases. Journal articles using qualitative and quantitative methods, as well as gray literature were examined by two independent reviewers. A descriptive-analytical method was used to chart the data that emerged from the literature. Eighteen articles were considered in the final analysis.ResultsEvidence confirms that children experience affective responses and eco-anxiety in reaction to then awareness of climate change. Mental health outcomes include depression, anxiety, and extreme emotions like sadness, anger, and fear. Youth from vulnerable communities, like indigenous communities, or those who have strong ties to the land are often identified as being emotionally impacted by climate change. The literature analyzed also describes how children and youth are coping with eco-anxiety, including maladaptive and adaptive responses. Preliminary considerations for parents, teachers and educators, mental health care providers, school systems, adults and people of power include adding age-appropriate climate education to the school curriculum, considering youth's emotions, and promoting healthy coping through empowerment. Important gaps exist in the definition of eco-anxiety in youth, as various characterizations of this emerging concept are found across articles. (shrink)

Sometimes people posit "beliefs" to explain mundane instrumental actions (e.g., Neil believes the switch is connected to the light, so he flipped the switch to illuminate the room). Sometimes people posit "beliefs" to explain group affiliation or identity (e.g., in order to belong to the Christian Reformed Church Neil must believe that God is triune). If we set aside the commonality of the word "belief," we can pose a crucial question: Is the cognitive attitude typically involved in the first "light (...) switch" sort of case the same as the cognitive attitude typically involved in the second "Trinity" sort of case? Or: Is mundanely believing the same cognitive relation as groupishly believing? In this essay, I argue that the answer is no. Mundane Beliefs play their instrumental roles well if they are true, and their manner of processing is accordingly sensitive to evidence. Groupish Beliefs play their identity-constituting roles well if they are distinctive, and their manners of processing accordingly allow for and often support distortions of evidence and truth. The manners of processing are thus so different that--despite the common word "belief"--philosophy of mind and epistemology would do well to recognize distinct cognitive attitudes. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Reprinted in Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity, Oxford, 2009, eds Michael Rea and Thomas McCall. In this essay, I assess a certain version of ’social Trinitarianism’ put forward by J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, ’trinity monotheism’. I first show how their response to a familiar anti-Trinitarian argument arguably implies polytheism. I then show how they invoke three tenets central to their trinity monotheism in order to avoid that implication. After displaying these tenets more (...) fully, I argue that Trinitarians would do well to hold Moreland’s and Craig’s trinity monotheism at arms length. (shrink)

In this paper, I will offer an analogy between the Trinity and extended simples that supports a Latin approach to the Trinity. The theoretical tools developed to discuss and debate extended simples in the literature of contemporary analytic metaphysics, I argue, can help us make useful conceptual distinctions in attempts to understand what it could be for God to be Triune. Furthermore, the analogy between extended simples and the Trinity might surprise some who find one of these (...) at least plausibly possible and the other incoherent. (shrink)

This 9,000+ word entry briefly assesses five models of the Trinity, those espoused by (i) Richard Swinburne, (ii) William Lane Craig, (iii) Brian Leftow, (iv) Jeff Brower and Michael Rea, and (v) Peter van Inwagen.

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 (...) class='Hi'>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. (shrink)

This paper provides an overview of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, with special attention to the most influential solutions to the so-called "threeness-oneness problem".

This book is about relations--intimate relations--that exist between all that is living: between the cosmos and humanity, between the cosmos and God, and between God and humanity. It is also about relations--essential relations--that exist within all that is living: within an evolving cosmos, within a developing humanity, and within the living God. It is moreover about relations that are fundamentally constitutive of cosmic, human, and divine being and thus provide a clue to the nature of reality itself."--Intro., p. 11.

The paper argues that Sergej Bulgakov's sophiology was an attempt, via antinomism or the philosophy of antinomies, to overcome the rationalism, monism, and determinism (in a word, "pantheism") of Vladimir Solov'ëv's philosophy of the Absolute understood as an abstract Trinitarianism. After detailing Solov'ëv's thought on the Trinity and Bulgakov's criticisms of it, the study then describes Bulgakov's antinomism and its application to the doctrine of God. However, it is contended that Bulgakov's antinomism ultimately falls into the same problems with (...) pantheism found in Solov'ëv and so the last part of the paper tentatively proposes resources in his work, stated in the form of a suggested "fourth (Bulgakovian) antinomy" between ousia (divine Being as such) and Sophia (the revelation in God and the world of the divine Being), that might help to avoid a collapse of God and the world by making the divine Being proper utterly transcendent and unknowable. (shrink)

Using Geach’s Principle of the Relativity of Identity, the doctrine of the trinity is defended against charges of inconsistency put forward by David Wiggins and Richard Cartwright.

There is a lively debate in contemporary Analytic Philosophy of Religion about the consistency of the Trinitarian doctrine. In this context, the notion of ‘mystery’ has become crucial. However, although it is currently considered the main challenge of Trinitarian theology, its definition remains rather partial and superficial. After a brief description of today’s Mysterianism, I analyse three ‘emblematic’ positions in light of the current debate: Aquinas, Leibniz and Hegel present three ways to believe in a mysterious Trinity. I will (...) point out a few possible weaknesses in the positions of the first two authors in order to better highlight the usefulness of the Hegelian position, often underestimated in the contemporary analytic debate. I will also analyse the connection between the three positions and their respective metaphysics, showing the epistemological premises (e.g., analogy and univocity) that need to be better investigated in the future. (shrink)

The problem of the Trinity is often framed as a paradox between some propositions central to the doctrine of the Trinity that seem to be logically in tension with each other. However, a problem of Paradox presupposes that we have a sufficient understanding of the meanings of the propositions (otherwise we wouldn’t even have any appearance of conflict between these meanings). My claim in this paper is that the main problem of the Trinity is more radical than (...) a problem of Paradox: it’s rather a problem of Meaninglessness, in the sense that the difficult challenge is to grasp a meaning for the central propositions of the doctrine (not to render logically compatible some meanings clearly grasped). I show how we can respond to the problem of Meaninglessness and how, once we have solved it, there is no need to try and dissolve the appearance of contradiction which constitutes the problem of Paradox. As far as the problem of Paradox goes, the solution adopted here is therefore a form of Mysterianism. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction Is the Doctrine of the Trinity Rationally Accessible? A Priori Arguments for Trinitarian Theism Revelation‐based Arguments for the Trinity Arguments in Favour of the Social Analogy Arguments Against the Social Analogy The Social Trinity and Tritheism.

William Hasker replies to my arguments against social Trinitarianism, offers some criticism of my own view, and begins a sketch of another account of the Trinity. I reply with some defence of my own theory and some questions about his.

A number of thinkers today, including open theists, find reasons to attribute temporality to God. According to Robert W. Jenson, the Trinity is indispensable to a Christian concept of God, and divine temporality is essential to the meaning of the Trinity. Following the lead of early Christian thought, Jenson argues that the persons of the Trinity are relations, and these relations are temporal. Jenson’s insights are obscured, however, by problematic references to time as a sphere to which (...) God is related. Schubert M. Ogden gives the notion of divine temporality coherent content by arguing that God’s actuality is best understood as an unending succession of experiences. This paper was delivered in the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God. (shrink)

Prima facie, relative identity looks like a perfect fit for the doctrine of the Trinity since it allows us to say that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, each of which is a Trinitarian Person, are the same God but not the same Person. Nevertheless, relative identity solutions to logic puzzles concerning the doctrine of the Trinity have not, in recent years, been much pursued. Critics worry that relative identity accounts are unintuitive, uninformative or unintelligible. I suggest that (...) the relative identity account is worth a second look and argue that it provides a coherent account of the doctrine of the Trinity. (shrink)

This paper develops an interpretation of the doctrine of the Trinity, drawn from Augustine and the Athanasian Creed. Such a doctrine includes divinity claims (the persons are divine), diversity claims (the persons are distinct), and a uniqueness claim (there is only one God). I propose and defend an interpretation of these theses according to which they are neither logically incompatible nor do they do entail that there are three (or four) gods.

The doctrine of the Trinity developed in response to a range of theological interests, among them the project of reconciling claims about the divinity of Christ with monotheism and massaging Christian doctrine into the ambient (largely Platonic) philosophical framework of the period. More recently the Trinity doctrine has been deployed to promote normative claims concerning human nature, human relationships and social justice. During the past two decades analytic philosophers of religion have increasingly engaged with the doctrine. There are, (...) however, a number of foundational questions that have not been addressed in the philosophical literature. The Trinity: A Philosophical Investigation considers the competing accounts of the Trinity doctrine, whether orthodox or heterodox, and aims to respond to objections and explicate their motivations and entailments. (shrink)

William Hasker replies to my arguments against Social Trinitarianism, offers some criticism of my own view, and begins a sketch of another account of the Trinity. I reply with some defence of my own theory and some questions about his.

Tao and Trinity treats the Trinity as a philosophical notion coming to birth in Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Plato. All three attempt to treat the idea of an absolute source or unity of all things, and are driven in the direction of a first principle which is an instance of itself, an identity and a contradiction at once. The Trinity later on in Aquinas is also such a principle, one characteristically Western, with consequences for art and metaphor, image (...) and symbol, comedy, tragedy, and religion. The consideration of Aquinas forces a rewriting of the history of Western philosophy from Parmenides to Heidegger, Whitehead, and Derrida. The Tao is an Eastern version of such a principle - less dependent on dialectic, reason, logic, hierarchy, and more on nature, mysticism, and transcendence."--Back cover. (shrink)

P. T. Geach has argued that it is impossible to demonstrate that the doctrine of the Trinity is consistent. I try to show why -- on a common understanding of the notion of consistency -- his reasoning is flawed and why, on Geach’s own principles, one should expect that if the doctrine of the Trinity is true then it will be possible to prove that the doctrine is consistent, and it will be possible to do this in a (...) way that makes no appeal to the truth of any religious doctrine. (shrink)

Nicholas of Cusa (1402-1464) explored the boundaries of human reason for the sake of making religious belief believable. Unwillingly, he became a milestone in the process of rationalizing Christian theology. Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) is a proof to this perspective by the way he makes use of Cusanus’s approach. In his ’Spaccio de la bestia trionfante’, Bruno discusses Cusanus’s attempts at the geometrical problem of squaring the circle. Bruno not only promotes his atomistic geometry, he also uses the metaphoric meaning of (...) triangle for Trinity as an occasion to supplant ’faith’ with ’sincerity’. For Bruno faith is not anymore the true belief of religion, but rather ’good faith’ and fidelity, i.e., social and political virtues. (shrink)

This article examines Trinitarian themes in St. Augustine's City of God and in his On the Trinity. It argues that the scope and intention of the latter work can be clarified to some extent by noticing the apologetic commitments entailed in the exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity in the former. It argues against the tendency of some recent scholarship to restrict the intelligibility of the On the Trinity to converted Christians, even as it also defends (...) the irreducibility of the doctrine of the Trinity, in Augustine's thinking, to any doctrine of pagan learning. Without prejudice to recent scholarly clarifications of the polemical origins of some of the arguments in the On the Trinity, the article argues that the work is more than the sum of its polemical parts, and is intentionally addressed by Augustine to a wide readership, deliberately unspecified in identity except insofar as they are united as “human beings who are seeking God.” Just as ancient apologetics, including Augustine's, was addressed to a variety of people, pagan and Christian, in various states of conviction and conversion, so the On the Trinity is meant to address many types of readers, at various levels of conversion and understanding, hoping to bring all of them closer to—or to confirm and deepen their participation in—the true worship of the one true God, without which, Augustine believes, no one can ultimately find the God they seek. (shrink)

Traditionally it has been presumed that the knowledge of God’s triune nature could be derived only from positive Biblical revelation. However, the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on the universal possibility of true salvific faith implies that supernatural revelation also occurs outside Christianity. Karl Rahner’s explanation of the meaning of the Trinity as “concrete monotheism” raises the possibility of an implicit knowledge of God’s self-revelation as “Word” and “Spirit” in the experience of grace and its formulation in the categories of (...) the other world religions. (shrink)

SUMMARYSchleiermacher's doctrine of the Trinity is constituted not only by his Glaubenslehre but also in Über den Gegensatz zwischen der Sabellianischen und der Athanasianischen Vorstellung von der Trinität . Schleiermacher can be seen to construe the persons of the Trinity as the circumscription of divinity. This point leads to consideration of divine wisdom as the ground of both the immanent and economic Trinity.

Dale Tuggy argues that my trinitarian views are in conflict with the theology of the New Testament; the New Testament, rather, is unitarian. I show several flaws in this argument, and point out the New Testament evidence that eventually led to the formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity.

An appropriate motto for Augustine's great work On the Trinity is 'faith in search of understanding'. In this treatise Augustine offers a part-theological, part-philosophical account of how God might be understood in analogy to the human mind. On the Trinity can be fairly described as the first modern philosophy of mind: it is the first work in philosophy to recognize the 'problem of other minds', and the first to offer the 'argument from analogy' as a response to that (...) problem. Other subjects that it discusses include the nature of the mind and the nature of the body, the doctrine of 'illumination', and thinking as inner speech. This volume presents the philosophical section of the work, and in a historical and philosophical introduction Gareth Matthews places Augustine's arguments in context and assesses their influence on later thinkers. (shrink)

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? (shrink)

Kortum summarizes his own argument as follows: (1) Without thought, one cannot intentionally create anything. (2) Without language, one cannot have higher-order thoughts. (3) Without others, one cannot have a language. (4) Before the physical universe existed, God was alone and without others. (5) Therefore (by steps 3 and 4), God could not have had a language. Thus (by steps 2, 3 and 4), God could not have had any higher-order thoughts. And so, ultimately (by steps 1, 2, 3, and (...) 4), God could not have intentionally created the physical universe. In this essay, I challenge Kortum’s conclusion. Although I have little doubt that other responses are readily available to those who believe in intelligent design, in what follows I argue that the traditional Christian doctrine of the Trinity (or at least one version of it) provides the resources to block his argument. His argument might work against other versions of monotheism; by it he might be able to show that the notion of a solitary and. (shrink)

This contribution offers a survey of the modern African theological discourse on the Trinity as a distinctive Christian doctrine of God. It is a systematic narrative review of primary literature on the doctrine of the Trinity in modern African theology with a view to identify main trends, key concepts and major proponents. It is argued that the contemporary African Trinitarian Hermeneutics cannot be understood in isolation from African debates on translatability of concepts of God framed first in terms (...) of the reinterpretation of the theological significance of pre-Christian African concepts of God and subsequently as an outcome of African Christological reflection. The article affirms an apophatic resistance to any tendency to take God for granted as recently advanced by Ernst Conradie and Teddy Sakupapa. (shrink)

The article is devoted to almost unknown monastery of the Russian Orthodox Church, a Holy Trinity Zosimo-Savvatievskaya Novo-Solovetskaya Krasnokholmskaya poustinia that was one of the important pilgrimage places of the royal family in the 17th century. Despite the fact that the monastery was founded in the reign of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, it is an important link in the historical and cultural development of our Fatherland, primarily because the extant architectural monuments of outstanding artistic qualities. That is why the architectural (...) ensemble of the monastery occupies a prominent place in the history of Russian culture. In addition, Novo-Solovetskaya poustinia is an important historical object providing data on the development of Russian spiritual and artistic culture of the late seventeenth century. The question of cultural-historical and social roles that Orthodox monasteries played in the history of Russia is still not sufficiently studied is. The modern development of the Russian state cannot be complete without the restoration of the positive legacy that has been lost in our culture and morality. In this regard, the study of development and formation of the Orthodox monastic culture may fill this gap. Historical development of the Zosimo-Savvatievskaya Novo-Solovetskaya Krasnokholmskaya poustinia, its architecture can contribute to the restoration of our historical memory, which is an important factor in the revival of our national identity. The author of the article also tells about the history of monastery in tough years of godless power and about the people, who died for their faith and who are called now the new martyrs. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is the social trinitarian account in Richard Swinburne's "The Christian God." After setting out the route Swinburne follows in reaching his conclusions about the Godhead, I endeavour to show two things: (i) that his account does not avoid the charge of tritheism and thus is not faithful to key elements in the Christian creeds; (ii) the philosophical moves behind his conclusions are not compelling if, as we can, we challenge his assumptions about divine necessity. A (...) better account of divine necessity takes us away from Swinburne's version of trinitarianism/tritheism. (shrink)

The studies on the history of the notion of “personhood” have largely recognized that Christian thought had a central role in the development and significance of this concept throughout the history of Western civilization. In late antiquity, Christianity used some terms taken from the classic and Hellenistic vocabulary in order to express its own theological content. This operation generated a “crisis” of classical language, namely a semantic transformation in the attempt to address some aspects of reality which were not envisioned (...) by the previous usage of these words. The term person is a paradigmatic example of this process. In fact, from the outset, it played a strategic role in formulating the idea of Incarnation, one of the central doctrines of Christianity. This essay aims to show how, during the first centuries of Christianity, the terms commonly used in order to express the notion of “personhood” became pivotal elements for the formulation of the discourse about the Trinity and progressively acquired new meanings. The analysis focuses only on the initial stage of the elaboration of this concept in Christianity and, based on some of the most significant texts, tries to bring out a series of theoretical problems that may be useful to understand the subsequent debate. In order to do so, the author divides the text in two parts. In the first one, he analyses two features strictly connected to the theological use of the term “persona”, which remained central also when this term was later referred to man. These features are individuality and ontological stability, along with the structurally relational status of personhood. In the second part, the author offers more details about the theology of the Cappadocian Fathers, in particular of Basil of Caesarea, and analyses two sectorial languages—mathematical and iconic language—used by Basil in order to describe the intra-trinitarian relationships. (shrink)

Moore, Gerard Review(s) of: The trinity: Insights from the mystics, by Anne Hunt, A Michael Glazier Book, Collegeville: Liturgical Press. 2010, pp.190, ISBN 9780814656921, $37.95.

Throughout his long intellectual life, Leibniz penned his reflections on Christian theology, yet this wealth of material has never been systematically gathered or studied. This book addresses an important and central aspect of these neglected materials—Leibniz’s writings on two mysteries central to Christian thought, the Trinity and the Incarnation. -/- From Antognazza’s study emerges a portrait of a thinker surprisingly receptive to traditional Christian theology and profoundly committed to defending the legitimacy of truths beyond the full grasp of human (...) reason. This view of Leibniz differs strikingly from traditional perceptions of the philosopher as a “hard” rationalist and quasi-deist. Antognazza also sets Leibniz’s writings in the context of the important theological controversies of his day. (shrink)

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.. (shrink)