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Objections to Social Trinitarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2010

WILLIAM HASKER
WILLIAM HASKER
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Huntington University, 2303 College Avenue, Huntington, IN 46750 e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article reviews a number of objections to Social Trinitarianism that have been presented in the recent literature, especially objections alleging that Social Trinitarianism is not truly monotheistic. A number of the objections are found to be successful so far as they go, but they apply only to some versions of Social Trinitarianism and not to all. Objections to Social Trinitarianism as such, on the other hand, are not successful. The article concludes with a proposal for a Social Trinitarian conception of the unity of God.

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Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 4 , December 2010 , pp. 421 - 439
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

Notes

1. In an important interdisciplinary collection dealing with the Trinity, all three of the historical studies dealing with the post-Nicene period challenge the conventional readings of Eastern and Western Trinitarianism. See Joseph T. Lienhard SJ ‘Ousia and Hypostasis: the Cappodocian settlement and the theology of “One Hypostasis”’; Sarah Coakley ‘“Persons” in the “social” doctrine of the Trinity: A critique of current analytic discussion’; and Michel René Barnes ‘Rereading Augustine's theology of the Trinity’; all in Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall SJ, & Gerald O'Collins SJ (eds) The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

2. Tuggy, Dale ‘Divine deception, identity, and Social Trinitarianism’, Religious Studies, 40 (2004), 269–287, 285, n.1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. Henceforth I shall use ‘Persons’ to refer to the Trinitarian Three; the term is intended to be noncommittal as to the nature of the Three. Our ordinary conception of persons will be indicated by the lower-case ‘person’.

4. The matter is brought sharply into focus by Karl Rahner's assertion that ‘there is properly no mutual love between Father and Son, for this would presuppose two acts’; Rahner The Trinity, Joseph Donceel (trans.) (New York NY: Crossroad, 2002; German original 1967), 106. Rahner makes it clear that he would be happy to abandon the term ‘person’ altogether, were he permitted by the Church to do so. It is difficult to find equally unambiguous statements from the contemporary analytic critics of Social Trinitarianism.

5. There is a special problem in that both prosopon and persona were sometimes used in the sense of ‘mask’ – something that could be worn in a theatrical production. It is clear, however, that this sense does not capture the principal meaning of these terms as used by the Fathers.

6. J. P. Moreland & William Lane Craig Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), ch. 29, ‘Christian doctrines of the Trinity’.

7. Howard-Snyder, Daniel ‘Trinity monotheism’, Philosophia Christi, 5 (2003), 375–404, 383Google Scholar.

8. Ibid., 399.

9. Ibid.

10. Note that if God is timeless, as the majority of the theological tradition has held, it will in any case be strictly and literally false to say that God created (past tense). Following Howard-Snyder's lead, then, we have a quick and easy refutation of divine timelessness. It's too bad this did not occur to Augustine, Boethius, and Anselm; we could have been saved so much heavy intellectual labour!

11. But, then again, perhaps not all that unusual, given that Howard-Snyder is an analytical philosopher? Speaking as a member of that guild myself, I would have to say that an over-zealous insistence on language that is strictly literal and univocal is one of the occupational hazards of the trade.

12. See Tuggy ‘Divine deception, identity, and Social Trinitarianism.’

13. See William Hasker ‘Has a Trinitarian God deceived us?’, in Michael Rea & Thomas McCall (eds) Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 38–51. However, the specific answer proposed here is not given in that article.

14. Tuggy ‘Divine deception, identity, and Social Trinitarianism’, 275.

15. For a brief but insightful introduction to the development of doctrine, see Jaroslav Pelikan Development of Christian Doctrine: Some Historical Prolegomena (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1969).

16. Brian Leftow ‘Anti Social Trinitarianism’, in Davis, Kendall, & O'Collins The Trinity, 203.

17. Richard Swinburne The Christian God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 180f.

18. Idem ‘Could there be more than one God?’, Faith and Philosophy, 5 (1988), 225–241CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19. For this criticism see Leftow, ‘Anti Social Trinitarianism’, 232–234.

20. It is not clear, however, that very many Social Trinitarians have actually adopted this strategy. Leftow's only recent examples are David Brown & C. F. J. Williams, but neither example holds up under scrutiny. Beyond these two, Leftow mentions two earlier writers, John Champion Personality and the Trinity (New York NY: Fleming H. Revell, 1935), and Charles Bartlett The Triune God (New York NY: American Tract Society, 1937).

21. For additional details see Kathleen V. Wilkes Real People: Personal Identity Without Thought Experiments (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). My own assessment of the data will be found in ‘Persons and the unity of consciousness’, in George Bealer & Rob Koons (eds) The Waning of Materialism: New Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 175–190.

22. There are some passages in David Brown which might lead one to suppose that he endorses such a view. That he does not, however, is clearly shown by the following quotation: ‘Thus, though in some ways such a society [as the Trinity is supposed to be] functions just like a person, there remains the most important respect in which it is not a person, namely, that it has no existence in itself but only through what are already indisputably persons’; Brown ‘Trinitarian personhood and individuality’, in Ronald J. Feenstra and Cornelius Plantinga, Jr (eds) Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement: Philosophical and Theological Essays (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 72f.

23. Leftow suggests that this is an attempt to slide between the other two alternatives.

24. C. J. F. Williams ‘Neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance’, in Alan F. Padgett (ed.) Reason and the Christian Religion: Essays in Honour of Richard Swinburne (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 242.

25. Leftow ‘Anti Social Trinitarianism’, 225f.

26. Williams ‘Neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance’, 240.

27. A referee notes that for Williams to use ‘there is a single act of willing’ to express the sense suggested here would be ‘remarkably infelicitous’. This may indeed be infelicitous, but some interpretation along these lines seems to be required if we are to avoid outright inconsistency with the passage quoted at the beginning of this paragraph.

28. Leonard Hodgson The Doctrine of the Trinity (London: Nisbet, 1943), 101; cited in Leftow ‘Anti Social Trinitarianism’, 209.

29. Moreland & Craig Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, 589.

30. Leftow ‘Anti Social Trinitarianism’, 209; the reference is to Layman, C. Stephen ‘Tritheism and the Trinity’, Faith and Philosophy, 5 (1988), 291–298CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Yandell, Keith ‘The most brutal and inexcusable error in counting? Trinity and consistency’, Religious Studies, 30 (1994), 201–217CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 205, 216. It should be noted that Layman only suggests this as a logical possibility; he is not committed to its being true.

31. Ibid., 210; the reference is to David Brown The Divine Trinity (La Salle IL: Open Court, 1985), 300f.

32. A referee asks, if the Trinity can be referred to analogically as if to a single person, why can't the Trinity be ‘analogously omniscient’? All I can say here is that it seems to me that such an analogical usage would be too much of a stretch. The Trinity as a whole can be omniscient in virtue of knowledge that is shared between the Persons, but it seems very strained to attribute omniscience to the Trinity in virtue of knowledge, parts of which are had by each Person but which cannot be shared with the other two. In any case, I reject the assumption that an omniscient person would have to know the first-person truths of all other persons.

33. Swinburne The Christian God, 172–175.

34. Leftow ‘Anti Social Trinitarianism’, 220.

35. Ibid., 221. The reference is to Cornelius Plantinga, not to Alvin.

36. For instance: for Leftow himself, God the Father is divine by being ‘God-living-the-Father-life-stream’. (See the concluding section of this paper for explanation.) The Trinity, on the other hand, is divine by being ‘God-living-simultaneously-the-three-life-streams-as-Father-Son-and-Holy-Spirit’. The Father has attributes the Trinity as a whole does not have, and vice versa.

37. Plantinga makes all this perfectly clear in his own discussion of the topic; see Cornelius Plantinga, Jr ‘Social Trinity and Tritheism’, in Feenstra and Plantinga (eds) Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement, 34.

38. Wierenga, Edward ‘Trinity and polytheism’, Faith and Philosophy, 21 (2004), 281–294CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39. Brower, Jeffrey ‘The problem with Social Trinitarianism: a reply to Wierenga’, Faith and Philosophy, 21 (2004), 295–303CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40. Ibid., 297f.

41. This interpretation of ‘being God’ is suggested by Brower's assertion, quoted above, that ‘being deus’ should be understand as ‘being a God’. In Brower's joint article with Michael Rea, they define ‘x is a God’ as ‘x is a hylomorphic compound whose ‘matter’ is some divine essence', where the context makes clear that the definiens is held to be true of the divine Persons. See Brower, Jeffrey E. & Rea, Michael C. ‘Material constitution and the Trinity’, Faith and Philosophy, 22 (2005), 57–76, 69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42. I am informed by Alan Padgett that the New World Translation, used by the Jehovah's Witnesses, translates, ‘the Word was a god’. And The New Testament in an Improved Version, published by a Unitarian committee in 1908, has ‘and the word was a god’.

43. Brower ‘The problem with Social Trinitarianism’, 299.

44. Leftow, Brian ‘A Latin Trinity’, Faith and Philosophy, 21 (2004), pp. 304–333CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For my critique of Leftow's proposal, see ‘A Leftovian Trinity?’, Faith and Philosophy, 26 (2009), 154–166CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45. Leftow ‘A Latin Trinity’, 312. I have decided not to discuss here Leftow's intriguing parallel concerning Jane, a dancer who, as a result of repeated use of a time-travel machine, is able to fulfil multiple roles on stage during a single performance. Interested readers should consult Leftow's original article and my critique.

46. Ibid., 314f.

47. Ibid., 308.

48. Leftow claims a precedent in Aquinas, but one that I find strained and unconvincing. Readers, however, should decide about this for themselves; see Ibid., 315–316.

49. Moreland & Craig Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, 594. It will be noted that we have now moved a long way from Tuggy's characterization of the Social Trinity as ‘a mere group of individuals’. If Moreland and Craig qualify as Social Trinitarians (and there seems to be no dispute about that), it is clear that Social Trinitarianism can involves modes of unity for the divine Persons that go far beyond Tuggy's description of the view.

50. One reader of the manuscript asked, ‘Once the life-strands are understood as three distinct subjects of experience, what is left of the unity of the divine person with which Leftow began?’ I reply that we are left, not with the unity of a single divine person, but nevertheless with a single divine substance: in Moreland & Craig's words, a ‘soul which is endowed with three complete sets of rational cognitive faculties’.

51. I would like to call to the reader's attention the important article by McCall, Tom ‘Social Trinitarianism and Tritheism again: a response to Brian Leftow’, Philosophica Christi, 5 (2003), 405–430Google Scholar. Some of McCall's criticisms of Leftow parallel points made in this essay, while others delve into areas not addressed here. Especially helpful is McCall's account of elements in the Trinitarian tradition that sit poorly with Leftow's understanding of ‘Latin Trinitarianism’.

52. My thanks to Alan Padgett, Thomas Tracy, and to an unnamed referee for this journal for valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper.