Discerning the Boundary between Trinitarianism and Tritheism

Sanjay Merchant Candidate for Doctor of Philosophy

Claremont Graduate University Claremont, California

Summer 2015

APPROVAL OF THE REVIEW COMMITTEE

This dissertation has been duly read, reviewed, and critiqued by the committee

listed below, which hereby approves the manuscript of Sanjay Merchant as fulfilling the

scope and quality requirements for meriting the degree of doctor of philosophy.

Stephen T. Davis, Chair Claremont McKenna College

Russell K. Pitzer Professor of Philosophy

Anselm K. Min Claremont Graduate University

Maguire Distinguished Professor of Religion

Tammi J. Schneider Claremont Graduate University

Professor of Religion, Dean of the School of Arts and Humanities

Oliver D. Crisp Visiting Examiner

Fuller Theological Seminary Professor of Systematic Theology

ABSTRACT

By Sanjay Merchant

Claremont Graduate University: 2015

The objective of this dissertation is to delineate trinitarianism from tritheism in

the current analytical philosophical context by relating historical instances of

tritheism—namely, those of John Philoponus, Roscelin of Compiègne, and Gilbert of

Poitiers—to contemporary examples of social trinitarianism—namely, those of David

Paulsen, Richard Swinburne, and Stephen Davis. Concerning the historical tritheists,

Philoponus sought to associate the person of the Son with a single theanthropic nature

in Christ, against the Chalcedonian distinction of natures. He imagined that the Father

and Spirit, as distinct divine persons, have particular natures due to their ontic equality

with the Son. Roscelin conjectured that the divine persons are discrete divine

substances, lest the Father and Spirit became incarnate with Christ, and that the divine

essence is an abstraction. Gilbert was accused of dividing divinity (or the divine essence)

from Deity (or God), such that the Father, Son, and Spirit have tropes of divinity. Each

was charged with dividing the essence from the persons and, thereby, undermining the

oneness of God.

Concerning the contemporary social trinitarians, Paulsen’s theory is anti-

trinitarian in that the divine persons are considered discrete beings rather than

indiscrete individuals. What is more, Godhead is regarded a voluntary community.

Swinburne posits, in contrast, that the Father, Son, and Spirit are discrete beings who

inevitably and eternally cause one another. Divine threeness is not voluntary but

necessary. Still, each divine member of Swinburne’s “Collective” possesses his own trope

of divinity. The Father, Son, and Spirit exemplify, not the single-same essence, but the

same type of essence. Despite their causal relations, the divine persons are individuated

by tropes of the divine attributes, constituting a trio of gods. Yet, whereas Paulsen and

Swinburne explicitly maintain that the divine persons are discrete beings, Davis

advances a version of quasi-generic trinitarianism which respects divine transcendence

and mystery. The persons are like a community, but not literally discrete beings in moral

union. He invokes perichoresis as the mysterious mechanism which ensures divine

oneness given the robust interpretation of divine threeness ascribed to social

trinitarianism.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank Stephen Davis, Anselm Min, Tammi Schneider, and Oliver Crisp for their

supervision, as well as J.P. Moreland, Carl Mosser, Dale Tuggy, Einar Bøhn, and

Vlastimil Vohánka for fielding my questions and stimulating my thoughts on the

theology, metaphysics, and logic of the Trinity. I am also grateful to Uwe Michael Lang

for providing me with important historical theological materials on tritheism. Above all,

I offer praise to the tri-hypostatic Deity. May the Father be glorified, the Son blessed,

and the Spirit exalted.

But there is another special mark by which he designates himself, for the purpose of giving a more intimate knowledge of his nature. While he proclaims his unity, he distinctly sets it before us as existing in three persons. These we must hold, unless the bare and empty name of Deity merely is to flutter in our brain without any genuine knowledge.

— John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.13.2

Portions of this dissertation were presented at the following academic conferences:

2014 American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting of the Midwest Region

2014 Evangelical Theological Society Annual Meeting

2014 Evangelical Philosophical Society Annual Meeting

2014 Evangelical Theological Society Annual Meeting of the Midwest Region

2014 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Evangelical Theological Association

2014 Midwestern Conference of the Society of Christian Philosophers

Sixteenth Annual Convention of the College Theology Society

2013 Evangelical Theological Society Annual Meeting

Eighth Annual Meeting of the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology

2010 Evangelical Theological Society Annual Meeting of the Northeast Region

2010 Evangelical Philosophical Society Annual Meeting of the Far West Region

Forty-fifth Annual Meeting of the Wesleyan Theological Society

2009 Western Conference of the Society of Christian Philosophers

2009 Trinity Symposium

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 1

A Note on Terminology 9

Chapter Summary 12

Chapter 1 — The Task of Trinitarian Theology 17

The Boundaries of Trinitarian Theology 18

The Divinity of the Persons 19

Divine Threeness 25

Divine Oneness 29

The Heretical Poles of Trinitarian Theology 30

Ontological Subordinationism 33

Modalism 41

Polytheism 46

Three Readings of the Athanasian Creed 48

The Token/Type Reading and the Quasi-creational Model 48

The Token Reading and the Quasi-identity Model 54

The Type Reading and the Quasi-generic Model 59

Tritheism among the Heretical Options 67

Chapter 2 — From Mystery to Theory 71

Mystery 71

Utter Mystery 72

Ultimate Mystery 75

Traditional Analogies and Theories of the Divine Essence 90

The Psychological Analogy and the Divine Essence as a Particular 95

The Three-Man Analogy and the Divine Essence as a Universal 105

Perichoresis 113

Tritheism and the Conditions of Divine Oneness 121

Chapter 3 — Tritheism 124

John Philoponus: Miaphysite Tritheism 125

Roscelin of Compiègne: Nominalist Tritheism 133

Gilbert of Poitiers: Realist Tritheism 140

Tritheism and Theological Rationalism 144

Chapter 4 — Social Trinitarianism 147

Varieties of Social Trinitarianism 147

The Case for Social Trinitarianism 152

The Problem of Mere Monotheism 153

The Problem of Relative Identity 158

The Intra-divine Love Argument 161

The Case against Social Trinitarianism 163

The Problem of Uncreedality 163

The Problem of Theological Projection 164

The Problem of Ontological Fragility 166

The Problem of Worthiness of Worship 171

The Problem of Personifying Godhead 174

Tritheism and Univocal Theologizing 175

Chapter 5 — Delineating Social Trinitarianism and Tritheism 178

David Paulsen: Elyonic Monotheism 178

Richard Swinburne: The Christian God 193

Stephen T. Davis: Perichoretic Monotheism 200

Tritheism and Analogical Theologizing 205

Conclusion 209

Bibliography 219

INTRODUCTION

The luster of trinitarianism waned from the enlightenment through the twentieth

century, according to the standard narrative.1 Karl Rahner lamented that, by the 1960’s,

the doctrine of the Trinity had become a quaint relic of Christian theology, isolated from

the dogmatic system. “We must be willing to admit that, should the doctrine of the

Trinity have to be dropped as false, the major part of religious literature could remain

virtually unchanged…. It is as though this mystery has been revealed for its own sake,

and that even after it has been made know to us, it remains, locked up within itself. We

make statements about it, but as a reality is has nothing to do with us at all.”2 Mid-

century theologians warned that enlightenment toxins had seeped into the ground of

modern trinitarianism, as philosophers pronounced the doctrine irrelevant.

Nearly two centuries prior, Immanuel Kant had protested that “whether we are to

worship three or ten persons in Divinity makes no difference” as confessions of divine

triunity are neither rationally founded nor morally significant. “The pupil will implicitly

accept one as readily as the other because he has no concept at all of a number of

persons in one God, and still more so because this distinction can make no difference in

1 It is a widely held opinion that trinitarian theology has enjoyed a resurgence since the mid-

twentieth century which, for some, marks the needed retrieval of a neglected doctrine. Others perceive a series of novel developments which depart from the original intent of the creeds. On the latter appraisal, see Stephen R. Holmes, The Holy Trinity: Understanding God’s Life (London, U.K.: Paternoster, 2011) in which Holmes argues that various influential modern accounts of the Trinity are alterations of the traditional doctrine—overemphasizing personal and communal language, flouting established philosophical commitments relevant to the doctrine, and expressing overconfidence in the ability of language to convey divine triunity—that bear little resemblance to patristic and medieval accounts. Given the volume of trinitarian theology produced in recent decades, both opinions have merit.

2 Karl Rahner, The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (London, U.K.: Herder and Herder, 1970; reprint, New York, New York: The Crossroads Publishing Company, 2010), 10-11 and 14.

his rules of conduct.”3 Friedrich Schleiermacher infamously relegated the doctrine to the

appendix of his monumental Christian Faith, maintaining that theological affirmations

within the compass of redemption, founded upon a pious sense of dependence, have

religious significance, whereas metaphysical disputes—including those pertaining to the

divine essence and persons—are religiously irrelevant. He opposed the tendency to build

complex canons on religious notions that properly originate in devotion. Subsequent

systematicians who refrained from transmitting the doctrine in embalmed form either

decentralized the Trinity or reinterpreted divine triunity as a metaphysical reality

independent of revelation.

Rahner’s admonition, nonetheless, revitalized interest in the meaning and

relevance of the Trinity and roused economic themes. Why has divine triunity been

revealed? How does it affect our appraisal of other doctrines? How does it affect our

lives? The dogmatic challenge is to ascertain the function of the doctrine within

systematic theology and its significance to piety under the constraints of biblicality and

doctrinal consistency. Today, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, trinitarian

reappraisals of various aspects of Christian theology are in vogue.4

3 Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties, trans. Mary J. Gregor (New York, New York:

Abaris Books, 1979), 65 & 67.

4 Beyond the many theological textbooks, monographs, and historical ressourcements, a sampling of titles which offer “trinitarian” evaluations of other doctrines and topics within the last twenty years include The Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan: The Trinitarian and Cosmic Order of Salvation (Kilian McDonnell, 1996); The God of Evolution: A Trinitarian Theology (Denis Edwards, 1999); The Depth of the Riches: A Trinitarian Theology of Religious Ends (S. Mark Heim, 2000); Satan and the Problem of Evil: Constructing a Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy (Gregory A. Boyd, 2001); King, Priest, and Prophet: A Trinitarian Theology of Atonement (Robert J. Shermon, 2004); The Trinitarian Ethics of Jonathan Edwards (William J. Danaher, 2004); Ministry in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service (Stephen Seamands, 2005); Divine Likeness: Toward a Trinitarian Anthropology of the Family (Marc Cardinal Ouellet, 2006); Renewing Pastoral Practice: Trinitarian Perspectives on Pastoral Care and Counselling (Neil Pembroke, 2006); Christian Preaching: A Trinitarian Theology of Proclamation (Michael Pasquarello III, 2008); A Trinitarian Theology of Law: In Conversation with Jürgen

Introduction

Philosophical engagement with trinitarianism, on the other hand, addresses

ontological and logical concerns, raising questions of coherence. What hath Athens to do

with Jerusalem as it pertains to the Trinity? Catherine LaCugna submitted that

“theologians can counterbalance [philosophical] discourse that tends toward the

ahistorical with soteriological rootedness and historical conscientiousness.” Conversely,

“philosophers can challenge theologians to be more exact in [their] formulations, and

more consistent in [their] systematization of history, exegesis, doctrine and theology.”5

Indeed, the relevance and intelligibility of trinitarianism are interrelated in that the

communal adoration among the Father, Son, and Spirit is contingent upon the logical

possibility of intra-divine love. How, therefore, are three persons one God? The logic of

the Trinity, in turn, stimulates questions of theological metaphysics. What is God? What

is a person, divine or otherwise? And in which sense are the divine persons in God? The

challenge is to establish a coherent account of divine triunity under theological

proscriptions of unitarianism and polytheism and the logical prohibition against

contradiction, “since contradictions are false even in Heaven.”6

Moltmann, Oliver O’Donovan and Thomas Aquinas (David H. McIlroy, 2009); Indwelling the Forsaken Other: The Trinitarian Ethics of Jürgen Moltmann (J. Matthew Bonzo, 2009); Persons, Powers, and Pluralities: Toward a Trinitarian Theology of Culture (Eric G. Fleet, 2011); Spirit of Love: A Trinitarian Theology of Grace (Amos Yong, 2012); Theology for Better Counseling: Trinitarian Reflections on Healing and Formation (Virginia Todd Holeman, 2012); Unity in the Triune God: Trinitarian Theology in the Full-Communion Agreements of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (Timo Tavast, 2012); The Artist and the Trinity: Dorothy L. Sayers’ Theology of Work (Christine M. Fletcher, 2013); Toward a Trinitarian Theology of Liturgical Participation (R. Gabrial Pivarnik, 2013); A Trinitarian Anthropology: Adrienne von Speyr and Hons Urs von Balthasar in Dialogue with Thomas Aquinas (Michele M. Schumacher, 2014); and A Trinitarian Theology of Religions: An Evangelical Proposal (Gerald R. McDermott and Harold A. Netland 2014).

5 Catherine Mowry LaCugna, “Philosophers and Theologians on the Trinity,” Modern Theology 2 (1986): 178. Compare Charles P. Arand, “Confessing the Trinitarian Gospel,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 67 (2003): 203.

6 Keith E. Yandell, “The Most Brutal and Inexcusable Error in Counting?: Trinity and Consistency,” Religious Studies 30 (1994): 204.

The prevalent concern that conventional models of the Trinity conceal a dormant

modalism has contributed to the rise of the social model, according to which Deity is

comparable to three persons in intimate community, profoundly conjoined by mutual

love and reverence, where ‘person’ denotes a center of consciousness, or locus of

awareness, intelligence, free action, and relationality.7 Relationality, moreover, is

alleged to constitute the persons, somehow founding their individuality in plurality.

Personhood, in this sense, is necessarily communal.8 The Christian God is not an

austere celestial monad but caring ‘fellowship’ (koinwni/a), inducing those who bear the

divine image to join in inclusive, affectionate relationships of mutual self-offering.9

7 Similar definitions appear in Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of

God, trans. Margaret Kohl (San Francisco, California: Harper and Row, 1981; reprint, Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 1993), 18; Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., “Gregory of Nyssa and the Social Analogy of the Trinity,” Thomist 50 (1986): 325; Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., “The Threeness/Oneness Problem of the Trinity,” Calvin Theological Journal 23 (1988): 40; C. Stephen Layman, “Tritheism and the Trinity,” Faith and Philosophy 5 (1988): 292; Stephen T. Davis, “A Somewhat Playful Proof of the Social Trinity in Five Easy Steps,” Philosophia Christi 1 (1999): 103; Karen Kilby, “Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrines of the Trinity,” New Blackfriars 81 (2000): 433; Jeffrey E. Brower, “The Problem with Social Trinitarianism: A Reply to Wierenga,” Faith and Philosophy 21 (2004): 301; Jeffrey E. Brower and Michael C. Rea, “Understanding the Trinity,” Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 8 (2005): 151; Stephen T. Davis, Christian Philosophical Theology (New York, New York: Oxford University Press), 63; Stephen T. Davis, “The Mormon Trinity and Other Trinities,” Element 2 (2006): 3-4; David L. Paulsen, “A Dialogue on Openness Theology: Response to Professor Pinnock” in Mormonism in Dialogue with Contemporary Christian Theologies, ed. David L. Paulsen and Donald W. Musser (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 2007), 517; and Carl Mosser, “Fully Social Trinitarianism” in Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity, ed. Thomas H. McCall and Michael C. Rea (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 134.

8 Mosser identifies Leonard Hodgson (in The Doctrine of the Trinity [New York, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1944]) as a leading early promoter of social trinitarianism in “Fully Social Trinitarianism,” 134-135. Hodgson employed the insights of John Laird (in Problems of the Self: An Essay Based on the Shaw Lectures Given in the University of Edinburg, March 1914 [London, U.K.: Macmillan and Company, 1917]) who sought to ascertain a positive psychology of the soul which emphasizes the independent existence of selves against idealistic monism while recognizing social interconnectedness wherein “the self requires society, but… is an independent member of society” (363). Compare Claude Welch, “Faith and Reason in Relation to the Doctrine of the Trinity,” Journal of Bible and Religion 16 (1948): 27.

9 In this vein, Clark Pinnock recounted that, in moving from Calvinism to open theism, “I began to see God not as a solitary God, but as a communion of love marked by overflowing life. I got the sense of a totally shared life at the heart of the universe, not of God the monarch, ruling from isolated splendor, but of God the perfect sociality, which embodies the qualities of mutuality, cooperation, and reciprocity—a

Introduction

Karen Kilby comments: “A retrieval (it is believed) is needed: the Trinity must be

understood once again (one reads) as a positive and central element in the Christian

faith.... The chief strategy used to revivify the doctrine and establish its relevance has

come to be the advocacy of a social understanding of the Trinity…. It has become the

new orthodoxy.”10

Social theorists—including John Zizioulas and Cornelius Plantinga—have made

the case in recent decades that the oneness of God is properly modeled on communion,

citing the Cappadocian Fathers as forerunners of an eastern social model in which the

individuation of the persons is basic to divine oneness, as opposed to Augustine who

supposedly endorsed a western unitarian model in which the unity of God is

conceptually basic to divine threeness.11 The purported task of western trinitarianism is

to determine how, and in what sense, the one God is three persons in light of divine

oneness, whereas eastern trinitarianism endeavors to ascertain how, and in what sense,

the three persons are one God in light of divine threeness. By prioritizing the treatise de

deo trino, social trinitarians declare, the eastern approach remedies much of the

confusion and irrelevance assigned to the contemporary doctrine.

Historical theologians—including Michel Barnes, Sarah Coakley, Richard Cross,

and Lewis Ayres—have contested the claim that ancient trinitarianism encompassed a

unity with genuine diversity” (“A Dialogue on Openness Theology: Open and Relational Theologies” in Mormonism in Dialogue with Contemporary Christian Theologies, ed. David L. Paulsen and Donald W. Musser [Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 2007], 498-499). Clearly, deep-seated religious intuitions and related theological commitments influence one’s affinity or aversion to the social model.

10 Kilby, “Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrines of the Trinity,” 432-433. The emphasis is Kilby’s.

11 See, for example, John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in the Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985) and Plantinga, “Gregory of Nyssa and the Social Analogy of the Trinity,” 325-352.

social model which “begins from diversity” and a unitarian model which “begins from

unity.”12 The Cappadocian Fathers did not unequivocally teach that plurality is the

proper starting point of trinitarian theologizing or that the divine persons are centers of

consciousness in moral union. Although diverse ontologies shaped trinitarianism in the

Greek and Latin speaking churches, the allegation that East and West embraced

disparate positions is imprecise and misleading.13 Even so, the Cappadocians articulated

“three-man” analogies which compare the Father, Son, and Spirit to a trio of individual

humans. The relevant issue for contemporary trinitarianism is, according to Plantinga,

“whether the social analogy is merely an interesting historical aberration to be

associated with such figures as John Philoponus and Joachim of Fiore or whether, on

the other hand, it is respectably, even if distantly, of the house and lineage of Gregory of

Nyssa.”14

Whether an aberration or legitimate expression of trinitarianism, social accounts

invite the allegation of tritheism: that the Father, Son, and Spirit are independent divine

12 See, for example, Michel René Barnes, “Augustine in Contemporary Trinitarian Theology,”

Theological Studies 56 (1995): 237-250; Sarah Coakley, “‘Persons’ in the ‘Social’ Doctrine of the Trinity: A Critique of Current Analytic Discussion” in The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity, ed. Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’ Collins (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 123-144; Richard Cross, “Two Models of the Trinity?,” Heythrop Journal 43 (2002): 275-294; Sarah Coakley, “Introduction: Disputed Questions in Patristic Trinitarianism,” Harvard Theological Review 100 (2007): 125-138; Richard Cross, “Latin Trinitarianism: Some Conceptual and Historical Considerations” in Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity, ed. Thomas H. McCall and Michael C. Rea (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 201-214; and Lewis Ayres, “Augustine on the Trinity” in The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity, ed. Gilles Emery and Matthew Levering (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 123-137.

13 A.N. Williams maintains that works of eastern and western theology often vary in genre, not methodology, metaphysics, or logic in “The Logic of Genre: Theological Method in East and West,” Theological Studies 60 (1999): 697-707. The “helical” or “irregular” genre exhibits a multifaceted appraisal of images and themes, whereas the “linear” or “regular” genre exhibits completeness and systemization. While both East and West manifest works of helical and linear theology, the helical approach is assumed to be paradigmatically eastern; the linear approach, paradigmatically western.

14 Plantinga, “Gregory of Nyssa and the Social Analogy of the Trinity,” 328.

Introduction

beings. All the same, at which point does a theory of personal individuality amount to

independent existence? The Christian tradition sanctions no single authoritative or

widely accepted definition of tritheism. As Jeffrey Brower and Michael Rea observe,

“friends of the social analogy rightly respond that defending the criticism [that social

trinitarianism entails tritheism] requires, among other things, a serious analysis of what

exactly it means to be a polytheist—a task that, as it turns out, is far from simple.”15

Peter van Inwagen similarly cautions that “the question whether tritheism is a heresy is

a subtle question—and to make the related point that the question ‘What, exactly, is

tritheism?’ is likewise a subtle question.”16

Historically, Arians—both associates of Arius of Alexandria and unaffiliated

parties that advanced similar theologies—have been charged with promoting polytheism

for teaching that the Father and Son are qualitatively dissimilar beings. They regarded

the Father as the primordial God, unoriginate and unknown, and the Son an inferior

deity: a contingent Word produced by the will of the Father. Notwithstanding, Arian

graded polytheism is a form of unitarianism, as the Father, alone, is true God whereas

the Son is an exalted creature who exercises a role within the economy of salvation by

the consent of the Father. Social trinitarianism is, quite the opposite, alleged to be a

variety of polycentric polytheism in which the Father, Son, and Spirit are considered

independent divine beings on ontological par.

15 Brower and Rea, “Understanding the Trinity,” 151.

16 Peter van Inwagen, “Three Persons in One Being: On Attempts to Show that the Doctrine of the Trinity Is Self-Contradictory” in The Trinity: East/West Dialogue, ed. Melville Y. Stewart (Boston, Massachusetts: Kluwer Academic Press, 2003), 88.

Granted that churchmen have seldom avowed polycentric polytheism, prominent

theologians warn that the social model conceals tritheism. Those following the course

set by Rahner charge any theology in which the Father, Son, and Spirit are deemed

centers of consciousness with tritheism. The confession that “God exists in three

persons,” coupled with a philosophical notion of personhood derived from human

experience, Rahner supposed, yields tritheism in popular theology. After caveats

concerning the historical application of the term ‘person’ to the Father, Son, and Spirit

have elapsed, “later on… we see that once more we glide probably into a false and

basically tritheistic conception, as we think of the three persons as three different

personalities with different centers of activity.”17

My objective is to delineate trinitarianism from tritheism in the current analytical

philosophical context by relating historical instances of tritheism—namely those of John

Philoponus, Roscelin of Compiègne, and Gilbert of Poitiers—to contemporary examples

of social trinitarianism—namely those of David Paulsen, Richard Swinburne, and

Stephen Davis. Both Paulsen and Swinburne maintain that the Father, Son, and Spirit

are separate beings but deny that the existence of three gods amounts to the historical

heresy of tritheism. Davis, on the other hand, explicitly affirms that there is only one

divine particular which the Father, Son, and Spirit mysteriously constitute like

individuals constitute a community. I conclude that Paulsen’s theology is polytheistic,

Swinburne’s can be judged tritheistic on historical grounds, and Davis’s is not tritheistic.

17 Rahner, The Trinity, 43.

Introduction

A Note on Terminology

Trinitarian theology leverages several metaphysical terms, including ‘substance,’

‘essence,’ ‘nature,’ ‘individual,’ and ‘person.’ Aristotle’s Categories—adapted through

various interpretations, reformulations, and limited implementations—provided a

philosophical framework for early trinitarianism. Per Aristotle, the natural objects of

ordinary experience—Abraham the patriarch, Barack Obama, this giant redwood, that

Douglas fir, Bucephalus, and Black Beauty—are primary substances, or discernible

subjects of predication. Secondary substances are fundamental classifications of

primary substances—Abraham and Obama are humans, this giant redwood and that

Douglas fir are trees, Bucephalus and Black Beauty are horses—or, stated as qualities:

humans exemplify humanness, trees exemplify treeness, horses exemplify horseness.

Primary substances are concrete instances of secondary substances while secondary

substances are said-of, or are descriptive of, primary substances.

In contrast to substances, accidents are qualities that are present-in things—

“Abraham is bearded,” “this Douglas fir is full,” “Bucephalus is black.” The beardedness

of Abraham, the fullness of this Douglas fir, and the blackness of Bucephalus are

inseparable from, dependent upon, and contingent to their respective subjects. The

blackness-of-Bucephalus is particular to Bucephalus, as the blackness-of-Black Beauty is

particular to Black Beauty. Even so, blackness is said-of both Bucephalus and Black

Beauty. Accidents which are present-in something contrast with substances which are

not present-in anything.

Substances and accidents are bridged in two ways. That which is said-of

something—horseness or blackness—is a universal, or shared quality of individual

things, whereas that which is not said-of anything—Bucephalus or the blackness-of-

Bucephalus—is a particular. Hence, a four-fold schema emerges.

Substance Accident

Universal Horseness Blackness

Particular Bucephalus Blackness-of- Bucephalus

Alas, the earliest framers of trinitarian theology were not obedient Aristotelians.

They denied that the distinction between primary and secondary substance applies to

God in a univocal sense and insisted that the conceptual demands of theology exceed the

limited analytical capacities of Aristotelian categorialism, strictly speaking. Neither were

they rigorously consistent with one another prior to the development of a standardized

trinitarian vocabulary. For this reason, I will catalog my own terms, at this point, and

report where others differ, as necessary.

Hereafter, I will use ‘essence’ to refer to universal or secondary substances and

either ‘individual’ or ‘being’ to refer to particular or primary substances. The latter

terms, however, are not necessarily interchangeable. Individuals are ontological unities

and distinct subjects of predication in a relatively standard sense. This horse, that tree,

and the Holy Spirit are individuals. Beings on the other hand, are discrete—ontologically

independent or separable—individuals. This horse and that tree are beings. The Spirit,

in contrast, is a divine individual, ontologically integral to the Father and Son, not a

being apart from the Father and Son. The metaphysical integration or ontic overlap of

the divine persons entails indiscreteness. Perhaps all mundane individuals are discrete,

but trinitarianism requires that, possibly, the substantive divine persons are

Introduction

metaphysically in one another, as accidents are present-in substances, which is

impossible for mundane beings. In cases where the distinction between essence and

individual/being is irrelevant or ambiguous, I will use the general term ‘substance.’

Concerning accidents, ‘property’ will refer to universal accidents and ‘trope’ to particular

accidents. Although not accidents, ‘trope’ will also refer to property instances of the

divine attributes, including the omnipotence of the God, the omniscience of the Father,

the divinity of the Son, and the omnipresence of the Spirit, among others.

Substance Accident

Universal Essence Property

Particular Individual or Being Trope

The terms ‘divine essence’ and ‘Godhead’ will be used synonymously. Ironically,

‘God’ is, simultaneously, the most unavoidable and ambiguous term in Christian

theology. In many contexts it refers to the Father, in others to the divine essence, to a

divine community constituted by the Father, Son, and Spirit, to the Divine Being who is

the Father, Son, and Spirit, to the Son, or to the Spirit. I will specify which meaning is in

view whenever possible. Elsewise I employ the terms ‘God’ and ‘Deity,’ along with the

adjective ‘divine,’ generally and pre-theoretically. Finally, some worry that the

traditional term ‘person’ advertises the Father, Son, and Spirit as centers of

consciousness before the debate is given a hearing.18 While it is impossible to avoid the

18 Theologians have been ambivalent about the term ‘person’ from the earliest period of

Trinitarian theologizing. Most notably, Augustine remarked that since “the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Father, and the Holy Spirit… is neither the Father nor the Son, certainly they are three…. Yet, when the question is asked, What three? Human language labors altogether under great poverty of speech” (On the Trinity, 5.9.10; all citations are from On the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal Treatises, Moral Treatises, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ser. 1, vol. 3, ed. Philip Schaff [Peabody, Massachusetts:

term, I do not assume that the divine persons are centers of consciousness, let alone

discrete existents. ‘Person,’ in reference to the Father, Son, or Spirit, only denotes

metaphysical individuality, unless otherwise noted.

Chapter Summary

Chapter 1: The Task of Trinitarian Theology. The first chapter outlines the

boundaries and heretical poles of trinitarianism. The boundaries—the divinity of the

persons, divine threeness, and divine oneness—derive from the biblical portrait of Deity

as one who is revealed in the Son and given in the Spirit, as emissaries of the Father. The

heretical poles arise from neglect of a boundary: ontological subordinationism omits the

divinity of the persons; modalism, divine threeness; and polytheism, divine oneness.

Trinitarian proposals gravitate toward and approach the clarity of the poles without

traversing the boundaries, or so proponents hope. The quasi-creational model—in

which the Son and Spirit exemplify (something like) tropes of divinity deriving from the

person of Father—verges on subordinationism; the quasi-identity model—in which the

Father, Son, and Spirit are identical relative to one conception of Deity and non-

identical relative to another—verges on modalism; and the quasi-generic model—in

which the Father, Son, and Spirit are (something like) discrete instances of the divine

essence—verges on polytheism. Scripture and early theological developments lay the

groundwork for analogies and models of the Trinity.

Hendrickson Publishers, 1995], 17-228). In a passage reminiscent of Athanasius’s insistence that the orthodox party had been “forced” to use certain terminology to answer heretical misunderstandings of consubstantiality (Defense of the Nicene Definition, 5.19), Augustine states that the term ‘person’ was “born of necessity” (On the Trinity, 7.9).

Introduction

Chapter 2: From Mystery to Theory. Trinitarianism turns on analogies—

principally, the psychological analogy of Augustine and the three-man analogy of

Gregory of Nyssa—because the Christian God is a mystery. After outlining both

analogies, I conclude that Augustine and Gregory differ neither in their operating

conceptions of Deity nor theological aims, agreeing that the divine essence is entirely

shared by the relationally individuated Father, Son, and Spirit. They differ over the

nature of universals—for Augustine, they are aggregates of particulars and, for Gregory,

they are immanently and entirely present in their particulars.

Gregory’s trinitarianism is, genuinely, quasi-generic as the Father, Son, and Spirit

are conceived to be (something like) particulars under a common species, short of

tritheism. The doctrine of perichoresis, which is intended to uphold the ontic oneness of

God and the unified operations of the divine persons, developed within the theological

tradition which conceives of the divine essence as an immanent universal. Tritheistic

theologies must renounce the indivisible essence which constitutes and unifies the

persons as either a mental abstraction or a fourth metaphysical item that the discrete

persons severally exemplify.

Chapter 3: Tritheism. The third chapter provides a brief survey of three figures

historically suspected of tritheism: the sixth century miaphysite John Philoponus, the

eleventh century founder of nominalism Roscelin of Compiègne, and the twelfth century

commentator on Boethius and metaphysician Gilbert of Poitiers. Philoponus sought to

associate the person of the Son with a single theanthropic nature in Christ, against the

Chalcedonian distinction of natures. He imagined that the Father and Spirit, as distinct

divine persons, have particular natures due to their ontic equality with the Son. Roscelin

conjectured that the divine persons are discrete divine substances, lest the Father and

Spirit became incarnate with Christ, and that the divine essence is an abstraction.

Gilbert was accused of dividing divinity (or the divine essence) from Deity (or God),

such that the Father, Son, and Spirit have tropes of divinity. Each was charged with

dividing the essence from the persons and, thereby, undermining the oneness of God.

Whereas Christian theologians have rarely avowed a plurality of gods, theologies

which separate or eliminate the divine essence were identified as instances of

polycentric polytheism. Social trinitarian schemes which postulate a substantial

distinction between the divine persons, only unifying the Father, Son, and Spirit in

operation, are tritheistic; those which affirm the substantial unity of the persons,

utilizing sociality as a heuristic, are not. The crucial question is whether the theorist will

tolerate a divine metaphysic of real distinction without particularization and total unity

without identity.

Chapter 4: Social Trinitarianism. The fourth chapter briefly surveys varieties of,

the case for, and the case against the social model. The most controversial variety of

social trinitarianism depicts the persons, quite literally, as divine beings in moral union.

Accounts which tender additional conditions of divine unity, in an effort to establish the

ontic oneness of God, are less literal in their articulation. The second variety

deemphasizes the social and intersubjective aspects of divine oneness, depicting the

unity of God in terms of composition, with the Father, Son, and Spirit being proper

parts of the divine Whole. The third variety invokes perichoresis as a mysterious

metaphysical mechanism which ensures that there is one divine Token, against the

threat of tritheism.

Introduction

The case for social trinitarianism centers on the intra-divine love argument,

wherein perfect divine love requires distinct, affective subsistences in God. The chief

argument against the social model is that functional and mereological approaches to

divine unity fail to establish the oneness of God in keeping with historical Christian

standards. The complaint is that social models, by lapsing into a strictly generic

construal of Godhead, are tritheistic.

Chapter 5: Delineating Social Trinitarianism and Tritheism. Paulsen contends

that Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,

taught a social doctrine of God that meets the scriptural and creedal standards of

trinitarianism. He admits that Smith conceived of the Father, Son, and Spirit as discrete

divine beings but denies that confessing ontologically paired deities amounts to the

historical heresy of tritheism. Smith’s/Paulsen’s theory is, in fact, anti-trinitarian in that

the divine persons, as was the case with Philoponus and Roscelin, are considered

discrete beings rather than indiscrete individuals. What is more, Godhead is regarded a

voluntary community. In contrast, Swinburne posits that the Father, Son, and Spirit are

discrete beings who inevitably and eternally cause one another. Divine threeness is not

voluntary but necessary. Still, each divine member of Swinburne’s “Collective” possesses

his own trope of divinity. The Father, Son, and Spirit exemplify, not the single-same

essence, but the same type of essence. Despite their causal relations, the divine persons

are individuated by tropes of the divine attributes, constituting a trio of gods. Yet,

whereas Paulsen and Swinburne explicitly maintain that the divine persons are discrete

beings, Davis advances a version of quasi-generic trinitarianism which respects divine

transcendence and mystery. The persons are like a community, but not literally discrete

beings in moral union. He invokes perichoresis as the mysterious mechanism which

ensures divine oneness given the robust interpretation of divine threeness ascribed to

social trinitarianism.

CHAPTER 1 — THE TASK OF TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY

The peculiar God in whom Christians place their faith is, per the Nicene-

Constantinopolitan Creed,

One God, the Father, almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible... [and] one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father… [and] the Holy Spirit, the Lord and life-giver, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is together worshipped and together glorified.19

Likewise, according to the Athanasian Creed,

We worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity, without either confusing the persons or dividing the substance. For the Father’s person is one, the Son’s another, the Holy Spirit’s another… Thus the Father is God, the Son God, the Holy Spirit God; and yet there are not three Gods, but there is one God.20

And the Cappadocian Settlement pronounced that God is both singular—‘one substance’

or ‘essence’ (mi/a ousi/a)—and plural—‘three individuals’ or ‘persons’ (treij

u(posta/seij)—subsisting as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Deity is neither monadic, so as

to prohibit internal distinctions, nor triadic, so as to proscribe fundamental ontological

union. Neither does divine unity entail strict identity, which is to confuse the persons,

nor does divine plurality entail ontological discreteness, or particularization, which is to

divide the substance. On the contrary, God is triune. The task of trinitarian theology is

to navigate a course between the Scylla of unitarianism and the Charybdis of polytheism

19 J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 3rd ed. (New York, New York: Addison Wesley Longman,

1972), 297-298. All citations are from Kelly’s translation.

20 John H. Leith, ed., Creeds of the Churches: A Reader in Christian Doctrine from the Bible to the Present, 3rd ed. (Louisville, Kentucky: John Knox Press, 1982), 704-706. All citations are from Leith’s translation.

in expounding both the unity, or consubstantiality, and individuation of the Father,

Son, and Spirit.

The Boundaries of Trinitarian Theology

The doctrine of divine triunity encompasses seven scriptural affirmations, which

Augustine delineated with particular economy.

There is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit—each one of these is God, and all of them together are one God; each of these is a full substance and all together are one substance. The Father is neither the Son nor the Holy Spirit, the Son is neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son, but the Father is purely the Father, the Son purely the Son, and the Holy Spirit purely the Holy Spirit.21

Thus, the basic propositions of trinitarian theology (TT):

(TT1) The Father is God.

(TT2) The Son is God.

(TT3) The Holy Spirit is God.

(TT4) The Father is not the Son or the Holy Spirit.

(TT5) The Son is not the Father or the Holy Spirit.

(TT6) The Holy Spirit is not the Father or the Son.

(TT7) There is one God.22

21 Augustine, On Christian Teaching, trans. R.P.H. Green (New York, New York: Oxford

University Press, 1999), 10.

22 Similar sets of propositions appear in A.P. Martinich, “Identity and Trinity,” Journal of Religion 58 (1978): 170; A.P. Martinich, “God, Emperor, and Relative Identity,” Franciscan Studies 39 (1979): 181; Stephen T. Davis, Logic and the Nature of God (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1983), 134-135; LaCugna, “Philosophers and Theologians on the Trinity,” 170; John Zeis, “A Trinity on a Trinity on a Trinity,” Sophia 32 (1993): 45; John Macnamara, Marie La Palme Reyes, and Gonzalo E. Reyes, “Logic and the Trinity,” Faith and Philosophy 11 (1994): 6; Yandell, “The Most Brutal and Inexcusable Error in Counting?: Trinity and Consistency,” 203; Edward C. Feser, “Swinburne’s Tritheism,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 42 (1997): 175; Dale Tuggy, “The Unfinished Business of Trinitarian Theorizing,” Religious Studies 39 (2003): 166; Van Inwagen, “Three Persons in One Being: On Attempts to Show that the Doctrine of the Trinity Is Self-Contradictory,” 91; Brower, “The Problem with Social Trinitarianism: A Reply to Wierenga,” 296; Edward Wierenga, “Trinity and Polytheism,” Faith and Philosophy 21 (2004): 284; Brower and Rea, “Understanding the Trinity,” 147; S. Davis, “The Mormon Trinity and Other Trinities,” 5; Fisher Humphreys, “The Revelation of the Trinity,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 33 (2006): 289; Trenton Merricks, “Split Brains and the Godhead” in

The Task of Trinitarian Theology

The Divinity of the Persons

TT1-3 capture a crucial sub-doctrine of trinitarian theology: the divinity of the

persons. The Father, of whom Jesus bore witness, is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and

Jacob. Accordingly, the church confesses, not only the prologue to John’s Gospel, but

the Shema. Yet “not to acknowledge the Godhead of the Son and Holy Spirit,” Gregory of

Nyssa warned, “is impious and absurd.”23 The operative question is “which sort of

divinity?” Are the divinities of the Son and Spirit commensurable with that of the

Father, or does the Father exemplify a qualitatively distinct mode of Godhood?

Jesus addressed his God as “Father” and instructed his disciples to pray to “our

Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 6:9), announcing that to be “taught of God” is to

have “heard and learned from the Father” (John 6:45).24 He comforted his followers by

revealing that our “heavenly Father,” who provides for the birds, will also feed us

(Matthew 6:25-26) and “God [who] clothes the grass of the field” will also clothe us

(Matthew 6:30) since our “heavenly Father knows that [we] need all these things”

(Matthew 6:32). Likewise, he professed to receive the glorification of his Father, “of

whom you say, ‘he is our God’” (John 8:54), and directed Mary Magdalene to tell the

Knowledge and Reality: Essays in Honor of Alvin Plantinga on His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Thomas Crisp, Matthew Davidson, and David Vander Laan (Boston, Massachusetts: Kluwer Academic Press, 2006), 300; James N. Anderson, “Positive Mysterianism Undefeated: A Response to Dale Tuggy,” 2011, http://www.proginosko.com/docs/Positive_Mysterianism_Undefeated.pdf, 7; Einar Duenger Bøhn, “The Logic of the Trinity,” Sophia 50 (2011): 364; Brandon Carey, “Social Trinitarianism and Polytheism,” Religious Studies 47 (2011): 97; and Shieva Kleinschmidt, “Many-One Identity and the Trinity” in Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, vol. 4, ed. Jonathan Kvanvig (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 84.

23 Gregory of Nyssa, “To Ablabius: On ‘Not Three Gods’” in Select Writings and Letters of Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ser. 2, vol. 5, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995), 331.

24 All biblical quotations are from the New American Standard Bible.

disciples “I ascend to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God” (John

20:17) after his resurrection.

The Son descended into the world to reveal God as Father (Matthew 11:27) “that

we might receive the adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4-6). Yet Jesus’ followers forsook

unitarianism as they reflected upon his radical self-testimony in light of their

charismatic experience of the Holy Spirit.25 He had revised the Mosaic Law, claimed to

inaugurate the Kingdom of God through his preaching and miracles, professed to

personally restore Israel, and forgave sins in God’s name (Mark 2:1-12; par. Matthew

9:1-8; Luke 5:17-26), prompting astonishment—“who can forgive sins, but God alone?”

(Luke 5:21; cf. Jeremiah 31:34)—and inspiring us to forgive as we have been forgiven

(Colossians 3:13). His opponents accused him of comparing himself to God due to his

peculiar self-understanding and bold claim to a privileged relationship with the Father

(John 5:18; cf. Psalm 2:7). Upon announcing that “I and the Father are one,” his hearers

threatened to stone him, protesting that “you, being a man, make yourself out to be

God” (John 10:30-33).

Through his ministry, he conspicuously reenacted divine feats. As the God of

Israel provided manna in the wilderness (Exodus 16), Jesus fed the thousands (Matthew

14:13-21; par. Mark 6:31-44; Luke 9:10-17); as God gives his spirit (Nehemiah 9:20),

25 Admittedly, whether high Christology developed within the early Jewish church or the later

gentile church is controversial. Those who endorse late development reason that, since Christian veneration of Jesus as divine ostensibly flouts Jewish monotheism, high Christology arose after the Jewish period. Hellenism, so we are told, eroded the original portrait of Jesus as a charismatic but thoroughly human preacher. See, for example, Geza Vermez, Christian Beginnings: From Nazareth to Nicaea (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2013). Such views, however, tend to exaggerate dichotomies—including Jew and Greek, charisma and dogma, piety and philosophy—which were not prominent in the first century. For defenses of early development, see Larry Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003) and Daniel Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ (New York, New York: The New Press, 2012).

Jesus sends the Spirit (John 16:7); as “the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word

of our God stands forever” (Isaiah 40:8), Jesus declared that “heaven and earth will pass

away, but my words will not pass away” (Mark 13:31; par. Luke 21:33). Unlike Paul and

Barnabas at Lystra (Acts 14:11-15) and the angel who revealed the apocalypse to John

(Revelation 22:8-9), he never disclaimed divinity but received worship (Matthew 28:17;

John 20:28; cf. Matthew 4:10; Hebrews 1:6), pronounced himself exempt from the

Sabbath, and asserted authority over life, death, and the final judgment (John 5:16-24;

cf. Matthew 28:18). He audaciously invited prayer, promising that “if you ask me

anything in my name, I will do it” (John 14:14; cf. Acts 7:59-60; 2 Corinthians 12:8-10)

for “whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13; cf., Joel

2:32; Acts 2:21). Although the Lord of Israel “will not give [his] glory to another” (Isaiah

42:8), Jesus is worthy of the Father’s honor (John 5:23) and shares his exaltation (John

17:5; cf. 2 Timothy 4:18; 2 Peter 3:18; Revelation 1:5-6, 5:13), being the object of

Christian devotion (John 3:16; cf. Matthew 10:37) who urged his followers to “believe in

God, believe also in me” (John 14:1).

He existed as pre-incarnate ‘Word’ (Lo/goj), “in the form [morfh~|] of God”

(Philippians 2:6)—“the exact representation [xarakth\r] of [the Father’s] nature”

(Hebrews 1:3)—becoming “the image [ei0kw_n] of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15) in

his incarnation. The Word “became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14), professing to

be the enigmatic “Son of Man” (Matthew 24:30; cf. Daniel 7), as well as the “Son of God”

(John 10:36). He is “bridegroom” (Matthew 25:1-12; Mark 2:19) and “husband”

(Revelation 21:2), titles by which Israel identified the Lord as a God of intimate concern

(Isaiah 62:5; Hosea 2:16). For Israel to pledge to another god was tantamount to

adultery. Yet Jesus’ disciples venerated him as “savior” (Luke 2:11; John 4:42; 1 John

4:14; 2 Peter 2:20, 3:18; Titus 2:13), an honor which the Lord refuses to share with any

other (Isaiah 43:11, 45:21; cf. 1 Timothy 4:10). Jesus, in addition, identified himself as “I

am” (e)gw_ ei)mi; John 8:58), alluding to the personal name which the God of Israel had

revealed to Moses (e)gw_ ei)mi o( wn; Exodus 3:14 in the Septuagint), and as the Shepherd

of Israel (John 10:11, 10:16; cf. Hebrews 13:20; 1 Peter 2:25, 5:4) whom David trusted

(Psalm 23:1; cf. Isaiah 40:11, Ezekiel 34:15). What is more, the Almighty God of

Revelation, “the Alpha and Omega” (Revelation 1:8), reveals himself to be Jesus

(Revelation 21:5-7, 22:12-20). He who was dead but lives forevermore echoes Isaiah

44:6: “I am the first and the last, and there is no God besides me.”

The nascent church commonly identified Jesus as “Lord,” (Philippians 2:9-11; 1

Peter 3:14-15) which conveys deity as the New Testament translation of the sacred name

Yahweh (יהוה; Matthew 3:3; par. Mark 1:3; cf. Isaiah 40:3), so as not to evoke identity

with the Father. Paul taught that “for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom

are all things and we exist for him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things

and we exist through him” (1 Corinthians 8:6; cf. 1 Timothy 2:5). John, nonetheless,

risked confusion in identifying the Word who became flesh as “God” (John 1:1) and as

“the true God and eternal life” (1 John 5:20). He recorded, moreover, that Thomas

recognized the risen Jesus as “my Lord and my God” (John 20:28). Similarly, Peter and

Paul described him as “God and Savior” (2 Peter 1:1; Titus 2:13). And the writer of

Hebrews quoted Psalm 45:6 (Hebrews 1:8) and 102:25 (Hebrews 1:10) in referring to

the Son as “God” and “Lord,” respectively.

As well, the church identified Jesus as the creator and sustainer of the world

(John 1:3, 10-11; 1 Corinthians 8:6; Colossians 1:16-17; Hebrews 1:2-3, 2:10; cf. Isaiah

40:28, 44:24; Jeremiah 10:16), pardoner (Colossians 3:13; cf. Psalm 130:4; Jeremiah

31:34), redeemer (Galatians 3:13; Titus 2:13-14; Revelation 5:9; cf. Psalm 130:7; Hosea

13:14), and judge (Matthew 25:31-46; John 5:22; 2 Corinthians 5:10; 2 Timothy 4:1; cf.

Joel 3:12). Christians professed to receive God’s grace and redemption in Christ, the

“first fruits” (1 Corinthians 15:20-23) and “author and perfecter” of our faith (Hebrews

12:2), who wields divine power to save and in whom “new things have come” (2

Corinthians 5:17). He is the principle administrator of divine rescue and reconciliation,

giving himself as the substance of redemption. Christ does not simply demonstrate or

offer salvation, he is our salvation. Those who confess his lordship and resurrection will

be saved, “for the Scripture says, ‘whoever believes in him will not be disappointed’”

(Romans 10:9-11). In citing Joel 2:32, Paul reveals that faith in Jesus Christ is trust in

Yahweh, as his saving work is the consummation of the Father’s mission. “God was in

Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19). And through the economy

of salvation, Deity both redeems and reveals, compassionately reestablishing creation as

the agent of restoration. The one true God condescends to reveal himself as savior in

response to creation’s groaning.

The Holy Spirit, in turn, is God’s power by whom believers are “baptized into one

body” (1 Corinthians 12:13), being washed and sanctified (1 Corinthians 6:11), in whom

we receive gifts—words of wisdom, words of knowledge, faith, healing, effecting of

miracles, prophecy, distinguishing of spirits, tongues, and the interpretation of tongues

(1 Corinthians 12:8-10)—and mature in godliness—“love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,

goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). And yet the Spirit

is more than sheer divine power. John, in keeping with Jesus’ testimony, strained Greek

grammar by using the pronouns “he” and “him” in reference to the Spirit: “I will ask the

Father, and he will give you another Helper that he may be with you forever; that is the

Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see him or know him,

but you know him because he abides with you and will be in you” (John 14:16-17; cf.

14:26, 15:26, 16:7-15). Jesus scandalized his audience by claiming to wield divine

authority (Matthew 11:27), and his outrageous message and ministry carries on in the

power of the Holy Spirit who comes in his name (John 7:39, 14:16-17, 15:26, 16:7-16;

Romans 8:9-10; Galatians 4:6) by proceeding from the Father (John 15:26). God’s active

presence in the earth did not cease with the Lord’s ascension but continues with the

Spirit of Truth, who wills (1 Corinthians 12:11), fellowships (2 Corinthians 13:14),

testifies (Romans 8:16), convicts, guides, speaks, glorifies, discloses (John 16:7-15), and

is sinned against (Isaiah 63:10; Matthew 12:31-32; Acts 7:51; Ephesians 4:30; 1

Thessalonians 5:19).

Pentecost commemorates the inauguration of God’s presence in the church

through the Spirit. The commissioning of the Spirit by the Father and Son is ancillary to

the advent of Christ, but the church’s knowledge of Jesus as Christ is ancillary to God’s

impartation through the Spirit.26 As the Father’s redeeming reach pervades the Son, so

his consecrating reach pervades the Spirit. Those who are born of the Spirit (John 3:5-8)

have been “chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying

work of the Spirit, to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with his blood” (1 Peter 1:1-2).

26 Welch, “Faith and Reason in Relation to the Doctrine of the Trinity,” 22.

He is, moreover, the facilitator and quickener of creation (Genesis 1:1-2). Paul, in fact,

declared that “the Lord is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:17-18) and referred to the human

body, interchangeably, as “the temple of God” and “the temple of the Holy Spirit” (1

Corinthians 3:16, 6:19-20). Peter, as well, equated lying to the Holy Spirit with lying to

God (Acts 5:3-4). The God who creates, contrary to the heretic Marcion, is the God who

loves and descends to sanctify his marred and beloved creation.

Divine Threeness

TT4-6 capture a second sub-doctrine: divine threeness. The indiscernibility of

identicals is the principle that, for any particular x and any particular y, if x is

numerically identical to y then x exemplifies property P if and only if y exemplifies

property P; that is, if x and y are numerically identical then x and y are qualitatively

identical, or indistinguishable. Numerical identity entails indistinguishability. The

contrapositive of the indiscernibility of identicals is the principle that, if it is not the case

that x and y are qualitatively identical then it is not the case that x and y are numerically

identical, or if x and y are distinguishable then x and y are distinct.27 And owing to

27 The question of distinguishability—“How does one know that the persons are distinct?”—does

not amount to the question of individuation—“How are the persons distinct?” The former question concerns certain identifying characteristics, whereas the latter question concerns certain identity features inherent to God which render this person this person and not that person, though they are indistinguishable with regard to the divine attributes. In other words, there is an explanation for the fact that the Father, Son, and Spirit are non-identical. A robust account of divine threeness demands an “explanation-ender” (Richard Brian Davis, “Haecceities, Individuation, and the Trinity: A Reply to Keith Yandell,” Religious Studies 38 [2002]: 203). As a result, the doctrine of the Trinity involves a metaphysical identity principle:

For any divine person x and y, necessarily, there exists a metaphysical identity feature f such that f individuates x and y.

Admittedly, the metaphysical identity principle is ambiguous insofar as it does not specify the relationship between x, y, and f. A more precise principle—one which stipulates, for example, that f relates x to y, or that x exemplifies f, or that f is a constituent of x—would prejudice further investigation. The basic operating principle of trinitarian individuation is only as specific as the biblical and creedal data. Hence, the imprecision of the metaphysical identity principle is unavoidable. It is, nonetheless, vital

certain unique characteristics, the Father, Son, and Spirit are distinguishable. The Son,

for instance, came to accomplish the will of the Father who sent him; the Father is not

bound to obey the will of the Son. The Son was crucified; no one can persecute the

Spirit. The Spirit descended like a dove; the Father is unseen. Neither did the Trinity

speak from heaven at the baptism of Jesus, nor was the Trinity born of a virgin, nor did

the Trinity fall on the disciples as tongues of fire, but the Father, Son, and Spirit,

respectively.28 Consequently, the divine persons are non-identical. But does non-

identity signify that the Father, Son, and Spirit are discrete beings or merely distinct

individuals short of particularization? Is the contrapositive of the indiscernibility of

identicals compatible with Tertullian’s verdict, “the Father and Son are demonstrated to

be distinct; I say distinct but not separate (distincte, non divise),”29 or is

particularization logically inevitable? And how is divine oneness squared with the

individuation of the divine persons?

to distinguish between that which individuates Godhead and that which individuates the divine persons. Indeed, the individuator that particularizes particulars need not be the individuator that individuates non-particulars. That which individuates this red ball and that green ball is not necessarily that which individuates the properties of redness and greenness under the determinable being-colored. See J.P. Moreland, “Theories of Individuation: A Reconsideration of Bare Particulars,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 79 (1998): 255 and J.P. Moreland, Universals (Montreal, Quebec: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001), 149. The former type of individuator is an identity feature that individuates a particular among other particulars: particularizing, or strongly individuating. The latter type of individuator does not particularize properties but weakly individuates. F is a weak individuator in that it individuates divine persons x and y without particularizing them. A complete account of divine individuation encompasses both the strong individuation of God, as such, and the weak individuation of the divine persons.

28 Augustine, On the Trinity, 1.4.7.

29 Tertullian, Against Praxeas, 11. All citations are from Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, ed. Allan Menzies (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995), 597-632.

Within certain Old Testament passages, the identity of the divine actor is

obscure, suggesting a loose distinction of individuals.30 Patristic formulations of divine

personhood may have been as important to biblical exegesis as to schematizing the

apostolic witness concerning Christ. Michael Slusser submits that “it was a method of

literary and grammatical analysis of Scripture that provided the early Christian thinkers

with the way to talk about God in Trinitarian fashion,” distinguishing divine persons

within complex texts.31 Abraham addressed his angelic visitor at Mamre, for instance, as

God (Genesis 18). Christians discerned in the Angel (or Messenger) of the Lord a figure

“within the divine world who often becomes… the Lord and not just a messenger… [and]

an indicator of agents within the divine world who may be identified with the Lord of

Israel but also distinguished from God.”32 The Angel is sent from God to lead and

prepare (Genesis 24:7, 40; Exodus 23:23, 32:34; Malachi 3:1; cf. Exodus 33:14-15) with

the Lord’s name “in him” (Exodus 23:20-23), but self-identifies (Genesis 31:11-13;

Exodus 3:2-6; cf. Joshua 5:13-15, Judges 6:11-24) and grants blessings as God (Genesis

16:1). Upon meeting the Angel of the Lord, Hagar reflects: “You are a God who sees….

Have I even remained alive here after seeing him” (Genesis 16:13)? Late Palestinian

Judaism imparted to the church abstractly personified conceptions of Yahweh’s

30 Incidentally, the Old Testament cohortative, “God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness,’” (Genesis 1:26) does not indicate a multiplicity of gods, as the plural name

Elohim (ֱאֹלִהים) is paired with a singular verb, “said.” Compare Genesis 3:22, 11:7 and Isaiah 6:8. Likewise,

Psalm 149:2—“Let Israel be glad in his maker [literally, ‘makers’]”—Ecclesiastes 12:1—“Remember also your creator [literally, ‘creators’] in the days of your youth”—and Isaiah 54:5—“For your husband [literally, ‘husbands’] is your maker” [literally, ‘makers’]—involve pluralizations.

31 Michael Slusser “The Exegetical Roots of Trinitarian Theology,” Theological Studies 49 (1988): 475. He surveys the exegetical practices, in this regard, of Justin, Tertullian, and Athanasius in the section titled “Prosopological Exegesis” (463-466).

32 Patrick Miller, “A Strange Kind of Monotheism,” Theology Today 54 (1997): 295. Compare Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 56.

Shekinah, Voice, Word, Spirit, Breath, and Wisdom, representing divine presence and

power, without suggesting discrete subsistence.33 No personification, however, can be

definitively identified as a divine individual apart from the New Testament witness of

Christ and the Spirit.

The New Testament depicts the Father, Son, and Spirit in personal intercourse.34

The Son, who has received all things from, and is the unique revealer of, the Father

(Matthew 11:27), as the Father is the revealer of the Son (Galatians 1:16), differentiates

between his will and that of his Father. The passionate prayer of the Son to the Father in

the Garden of Gethsemane—“my Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet

not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39)—certainly alludes to intersubjective

exchange. The centers of consciousness view, though difficult to square with

monotheism, is appealing given scriptural allusions of this sort. At the very least, it is

not obviously unbiblical. As Jürgen Moltmann summarizes, the revelation of Jesus

Christ as the Son “is not consummated and fulfilled by a single subject” but “is the

history of the reciprocal, changing, and hence living relationship between the Father, the

Son and the Spirit.”35

The salvation of humanity is the triumph of the divine persons; the privilege of

“peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,” producing hope despite tribulation,

33 J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (New York, New York: Harper Collins

Publishers, 1978), 7. Compare the section titled “Excursus: Classical and Jewish Antecedents” in Slusser, “The Exegetical Roots of Trinitarian Theology,” 468-470.

34 Concerning Old Testament instances, Tertullian evidenced personal intercourse with Isaiah 42:1, 45:1 [mistakenly reading Ku/rw| as Kuri/w|], 49:6, 53:1; 61:1 (cf. Luke 4:18); Psalm 3:1, 71:18, and 110:1 in Against Praxeas, 11.

35 Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, 64.

“because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit

who was given to us” (Romans 5:1-5; cf. 1 Corinthians 6:9-20; Romans 8:2-11;

Ephesians 2:18-22; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Philippians 2:1-2; Colossians 1:6-8; Hebrews 2:3-4;

1 Peter 1:1-2). He, who alone has seen and explained the Father (John 1:18), “having

offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God” (Hebrews

10:12) to request “another Helper” who is “the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot

receive” (John 14:16-17). And so, Jesus commanded his followers to “make disciples of

all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”

(Matthew 28:19).

Deity is inextricably bound to salvation. The Son and Spirit—emissaries of the

Father, achieving redemption through incarnation and applying it through indwelling—

accomplish our rescue by fulfilling essential roles without redundancy or conflict. And

yet divine descent into the world exhibits distinctive forms in the incarnation of the Son

and the outpouring of the Spirit. To know God as redeemer is to know him as spiritual

and gracious Father, incarnate and saving Son, and outpoured and sanctifying Spirit.

His providential orchestration reveals that “there are varieties of gifts, but the same

Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. There are varieties of

effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons” (1 Corinthians 12:4-6).

Consequently, Paul bids the Corinthians, “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the

love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14).

Divine Oneness

TT7 expresses a third sub-doctrine: divine oneness. The operative question is

“which sort of oneness?” Does the unity of the divine persons entail that the Father, Son,

and Spirit are numerically identical, as Jacob is Israel, that they constitute a composite

unity, as an engine’s parts—cylinder, piston, and crankshaft, among others—comprise

an engine, that the divine persons, as discrete subjects, unreservedly collaborate in their

activities, or something else?

Scripture is explicit: “Understand that I am he,” declares the Lord. “Before me

there was no God formed, and there will be none after me. I, even I, am the Lord and

there is no savior besides me” (Isaiah 43:10-11). To be sure, “the Lord is one”

(Deuteronomy 6:4; cf. James 2:19), which is integral to the greatest commandment

(Mark 12:29-30; par. Matthew 22:37; Luke 10:27; cf. Deuteronomy 6:5). He is God of

heaven and earth (Deuteronomy 4:39), utterly incomparable, unrivaled (Isaiah 40:25,

46:9), sovereign over both Jews and gentiles, “since indeed God who will justify the

circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith is one” (Romans 3:29-30),

and duly glorified (1 Timothy 1:17). Divine oneness and sonship through Christ ensure

that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither

male nor female” (Galatians 3:28), as unity in heaven effects unity on earth. Israel was,

therefore, prohibited from venerating other gods (Exodus 20:3-4; cf. 1 Corinthians 8:4-

6) and charged to respect the Lord, alone (2 Kings 17:34-41).

The Heretical Poles of Trinitarian Theology

The doctrine of the Trinity is the church’s declaration of the exegetically derived

sub-doctrines, whereas accounts of the Trinity are theological systematizations of the

sub-doctrines. “All the attempts to spell out the doctrine of the Trinity,” Thomas Morris

states, “can be thought of as located along a spectrum, at one end of which is the error of

modalism”—wherein one affirms consubstantiality and denies personal individuation—

“and at the other end of which is polytheism”—wherein one denies consubstantiality and

affirms particularization.36 The logical problem, centered on the conventional

interpretation of the indiscernibility of identicals, yields the apparent dilemma, as John

Zeis explains,

The law states that if there is some sortal under which a and b are identical, then for every sortal which is true of a, b is identical with a under that sortal. The implication for the Trinity is that if the Father is the same God as the Son, then if the Father is a Divine Person, the Son is the same Divine Person as the Father…. If [this is] correct, then Christians would seem to be logically bound to choosing between tritheism and unitarianism.37

Likewise, John Macnamara, Marie Reyes, and Gonzalo Reyes note,

If a unique God really were identical with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then these three would have to be one and the same Divine Person. This follows from the logic of identity: a = b and a = c, then b = c. An identity reading of ‘is’ here would force either the heresy that there are three Gods (Tritheism) or the heresy that there is only one Divine Person (Sabellianism).38

Van Inwagen, surveying anti-trinitarian arguments from the basic propositions of

trinitarianism to unitarianism and polytheism, assents: “It has long seemed to me that

the problems… anti-Trinitarian arguments raise are insoluble, if the standard logic of

identity is correct.”39

36 Thomas Morris, Our Idea of God: An Introduction to Philosophical Theology (Notre Dame,

Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 176.

37 Zeis, “A Trinity on a Trinity on a Trinity,” 47.

38 Macnamara, Reyes, and Reyes, “Logic and the Trinity,” 6.

39 Van Inwagen, “Three Persons in One Being: On Attempts to Show that the Doctrine of the Trinity Is Self-Contradictory,” 92.

The logical problem of the Trinity concerns no sheer puzzle of “celestial

mathematics,” but the coherence of the principal mystery of Christian theology.40 Yet,

while the triune God surpasses understanding, the sub-doctrines of trinitarian

theology—the divinity of the persons, divine threeness, and divine oneness—are

intelligible and prima facie inconsistent.41 Scripture and the creeds cannot adjure

Christians to confess that there is and is not precisely one God.42 Orthodoxy is obliged to

explain the conjunction of the sub-doctrines without neglecting the conjuncts. In

contrast, ontological subordinationism, modalism, and polytheism, by diminishing

certain basic propositions of trinitarian thought, pose coherent but reductionistic

theologies proper. More comprehensive and nuanced trinitarian accounts are normally

40 Kilby, “Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrines of the Trinity,” 432.

41 Leroy Howe remarks that “[the Trinity] has become, as [Paul] Tillich also observed, something to be placed upon the altar and adored, but not probed. While it may well be that there are aspects to the doctrine of the Trinity which are above reason, there is no good reason to dismiss the intellectual significance of those other aspects of the doctrine which are not” (“Ontology, Belief, and the Doctrine of the Trinity,” Sophia 20 [1981]: 7).

42 Those who concede the “paradox of the cardinals” (Bøhn, “The Logic of the Trinity,” 365)—that there is and is not precisely one God, owing to the poverty of human logic—must answer van Inwagen’s critical appraisal: “If one maintains that something is to be believed, one thereby commits oneself to the thesis that that thing is true, for to believe something and to believe that it is true are one and the same thing. And nothing that is true can be internally inconsistent. If a theological doctrine or political ideology or scientific theory comprises three statements, and if that doctrine or ideology or theory is true, then its three constituent statements must be individually true. We might put the matter this way: every ‘part’ of anything that is true must also be true, and anything that is true is consistent with anything else that is true—and an inconsistent doctrine or ideology or theory is one such that some of its parts are inconsistent with others of its parts. Those who are willing to believe what is logically inconsistent have failed to take account of the logically elementary fact that a truth cannot be inconsistent with a truth” (“Three Persons in One Being: On Attempts to Show that the Doctrine of the Trinity Is Self-Contradictory,” 86-87). And Martinich begs the irrationalist, “lead us not into temptation. Religion does not excuse irrationality. Theologians are subject to the same canons of reason as mathematicians. Is not God Wisdom itself? Is not the Son the Logos? There is neither sense nor salvation in incoherence, and Kierkegaard in his death-defying leap of faith into the abyss of absurdity has no good hope that ye will be caught by any angels” (“Identity and Trinity,” 174). See the section titled “Mystery” in chapter 2, below.

classified according to their conceptual proximity to the heretical alternatives.43 As a

result, examining the anti-trinitarian heresies, which represent the poles of orthodoxy,

is vital to expounding trinitarianism.

Ontological Subordinationism

Ontological subordinationism, championed by Arius, Eusebius of Nicomedia,

Eusebius of Caesarea, Aëtius of Antioch, and Eunomius of Cyzicus, among others, in the

fourth century and according to which the Father is Almighty God whereas the Son and

Spirit are exalted creatures, purchases facile consistency by sanctioning the divinity of

the Father (TT1), divine threeness (TT4-6), and divine oneness (TT7) while barring the

absolute divinity of the Son and Spirit (TT2-3).44 ‘Ontological subordination’ denotes

gradation of being beyond mere relational or economic disparity, as Jesus ostensibly

pronounced, “The Father is greater than I” (John 14:28); and implied, “Why do you call

me good? No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10:18).45 He is, as well, distinct from

43 James Anderson detects “an affinity between Trinitarian heterodoxy and theological

rationalism: a reluctance to submit human reasoning to the control of revelation and to acknowledge that our minds may not be conceptually equipped to resolve every logical puzzle thrown up by our systematization of the biblical data” (“In Defense of Mystery: A Reply to Dale Tuggy,” Religious Studies 41 [2005], 160).

44 The extant writings of Arius include letters to Eusebius of Nicomedia, Alexander of Alexandria, and Constantine, and fragments of Thalia; of Eusebius of Nicomedia, an epistle to Paulinus the Bishop of Tyre and fragments; of Aëtius, Syntagmation; and of Eunomius, Apologia and Apologia Apologiae. Various sayings and teachings are preserved by their polemical opponents, including Athanasius and the Cappadocian Fathers.

45 Although subordination gives the impression that the Father and Son are unreservedly dissimilar, various fourth century subordinationist theologies, influenced by Origen, emphasized the Son’s intrinsic position within the Father’s being, while distinguishing him from the Father. For Origen, while the Son is inferior to the Father, “his explanation of this inferiority,” Ayres states, “turns, at many points, into an account of the necessity of the Son within the divine life” (Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology [New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004], 28). Not all subordinationist theologies, therefore, sanction the strong ontic gradation implied in ‘Arianism.’ Ayres distinguishes early fourth century theologies that emphasized the sameness of the Father and Son by means of subordinationism—the divine Word and Wisdom derived from the being of God, rendering the Father and Son eternally correlative—from those that emphasized difference.

“the only true God” (John 17:3), “the only wise God” (Romans 16:27), and “he who is the

blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone possesses

immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see” (1

Timothy 6:15-16).

The doctrine of Arius and his allies emphasized the preeminence of the Father,46

who alone is considered ingenerate Deity, and the incommunicability of the divine

essence, since communicating divinity would produce another God, or so

subordinationists reasoned, effectively annulling the ascendency of the Father.47 And

God the Father, being simple and self-subsistent can neither contribute a portion of his

being, like sperm, to a divine progeny nor be depicted in relational terms.48 Hence, the

name ‘Father’ does not denote God’s substance any more than the description ‘Creator.’

Just as he might have refrained from creating the contingent cosmos, he might have

refrained from fathering the contingent Son.49 Athanasius quotes Arius’s Thalia: “God

was not always a Father, but became so afterwards; the Son was not always, for he was

not before his generation; he is not from the Father, but he, as others, has come into

46 Arian studies in recent decades—the watershed being Rowan Williams’s Arius: Heresy and

Tradition (London, U.K.: Darton, Longman, and Todd, Ltd., 1987)—have challenged the assumption that ‘Arianism’ delineates a particular school of thought. Williams argues that Arius simply stressed and advanced prevalent non-trinitarian themes which he developed, in particular, from Origen and Lucian of Antioch. He appeared to consider himself a “co-Lucianist” with Eusebius of Nicomedia, rather than a theological authority or innovator. Some who were condemned as Arians had little more in common with Arius than non-trinitarianism. Concerning misuses of the term ‘Arian,’ see Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology, 11-15. Notwithstanding, a familial resemblance is evident among patristic theologies which unreservedly weaken TT2-3 such that the Son and Spirit are significantly unlike their matchless divine Father.

47 Gregg R. Allison, “Denials of Orthodoxy: Heretical Views of the Doctrine of the Trinity,” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 16 (2012): 20.

48 J.T. Paasch, “Arius and Athanasius on the Production of God’s Son,” Faith and Philosophy 27 (2010): 391.

49 Rowan Williams, “The Logic of Arianism,” Journal of Theological Studies 34 (1983): 61-62.

subsistence out of nothing.”50 There is, therefore, no community of being among the

Father and Son, who are distinct in essence and power. As to any other creature, the

Father is invisible and incomprehensible to the Son.

On the orthodox construal, the production, or generation, of the Son from the

Father is an eternal act beyond creation; not a matter of divine fiat, but of the divine

substance, which is triune of necessity.51 The Wisdom of God necessarily exists with the

Divine Mind from which it eternally arises. The Mind has not and cannot exist without

its Wisdom. Arius taught that the generation of the Son, who is the premier creature,

resembling God’s word more accurately than any other being, and through whom all

other creatures exist, is the paramount act of creation. Still, as a creature produced ex

nihilo,52 he is of a ‘different substance’ (e(teroou/sioj) than the Father, being neither

50 Athanasius, Four Discourses against the Arians, 1.3.9. All citations are from Athanasius:

Select Works and Letters, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ser. 2, vol. 4, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995), 306-447. Traditional renderings of Arius’s theology derive in considerable measure from the polemical accounts of his theological opponents, which encumbers precise reconstruction.

51 The Cappadocians contended, more accurately, that the fatherhood of the Father and sonship of the Son are internal relations in that the Son is begotten of the Father by natural volition, which is neither Arian contingent volition nor involuntary emanation. Gregory of Nyssa explained that the orthodox “should like to persuade those who say that the Father first willed and so proceeded to become a Father, and on this ground assert posterity in existence as regards the Word, by whatever illustrations may make it possible, to turn to the orthodox view. Neither does this immediate conjunction exclude the ‘willing’ of the Father, in the sense that he had a Son without choice, by some necessity of his Nature, nor does the ‘willing’ separate the Son from the Father, coming in between them as a kind of interval: so that we neither reject from our doctrine the ‘willing’ of the Begetter directed to the Son, as being, so to say, forced out by the conjunction of the Son’s oneness with the Father, nor do we by any means break that inseparable connection, when ‘willing’ is regard as involved in the generation” (Against Eunomius, 8.2; all citations are from Select Writings and Letters of Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, 33-314). Compare Nathan Jacobs, “On ‘Not Three Gods’—Again: Can A Primary-Secondary Substance Reading of Ousia and Hypostasis Avoid Tritheism?,” Modern Theology 24 (2008): 353-354.

52 Certain ante-Nicene fathers of the Alexandrian school had suggested that the Word “began” in the sense that he became substantive in proceeding from the Father, as Tertullian stated, “he became also the Son of God, and was begotten when he proceeded forth from him” (Against Praxeas, 7). Arius’s doctrine that the Son is a creature who neither shares in nor proceeds from the divine substance was considered particularly offensive. Tertullian repudiated creatureliness: “I, on the contrary, contend that nothing empty and void could have come forth from God, seeing that it is not put forth from that which is

necessary nor eternal.53 As a contingent being, he is only metaphorically described as

‘Word,’ as he is metaphorically described as ‘bread,’ ‘light,’ and ‘gate.’ The Son is

‘Wisdom,’ who partakes of the Father’s innate wisdom according to the measure of grace

provided to him and testifies that “the Lord possessed me at the beginning of his way,

before his works of old…. When there were no depths I was brought forth” (Psalm

8:22ff). He is derivatively divine by the consent and blessing of the Father, not by

nature. The Spirit, too, is of a different substance than the Father and Son.54

Arius avowed, in the words of Athanasius,

[The Son] is not that word which is by nature in the Father, and is proper to his essence, nor is he his proper wisdom by which he made this world; but that there is another word which is properly in the Father, and another wisdom which is properly in the Father, by which wisdom also he made this Word; and that the Lord himself is called the Word (Reason) conceptually in regard of things endued with reason, and is called Wisdom conceptually in regard of things endued with wisdom.55

empty and void; nor could that possibly be devoid of substance which has proceeded from so great a substance, and has produced such mighty substances: for all things which were made through him, he himself (personally) made. How could it be, that he himself is nothing, without whom nothing was made?... Is that Word of God, then, a void and empty thing, which is called the Son, who himself is designated God” (Ibid.)?

53 Paasch proposes that Arius, in averring that the Son was produced “before the ages” or before time, may have simply meant that the Son does not exist apart from his generation in “Arius and Athanasius on the Production of God’s Son,” 389-390. His puzzling temporal language—as nothing can come into being before time, since coming into being is a temporal event—may be attributed to philosophical imprecision. In any case, Arian production is a creative act of the Father. The Son, whether eternal or temporally finite, is considered a contingent being.

54 In a same vein, one contemporary subordinationist group, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, states that “the holy spirit [sic] is not a person and it is not part of the Trinity. The holy spirit is God’s active force that he uses to accomplish his will. It is not equal to God but is always at his disposition and subordinate to him” (“Should You Believe in the Trinity: Is Jesus Christ the Almighty God?,” [New York, New York: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, 1989], 23).

55 Athanasius, To the Bishops of Egypt, 2.12. The citation is from Athanasius: Select Works and Letters, 223-235. Compare Tertullian, Against Praxeas, 5.

In the judgment of Arius, supposing the Word who became flesh to be the word which is

immanent to the Father reduces the Son to an impersonal divine property. God’s word

and wisdom are qualities predicated and constitutive of his substance, alone. To avow

that the Son is God’s rationality is, for Arius, to deny his individuality. No third

possibility resides between the Father’s attributes and the discrete Son56 who, as a

subject of predication, is neither a property nor exemplifies the Father’s attributes,

being “alien and unlike in all things to the Father’s essence and propriety.”57

Alexander of Alexandria countered that “the Word by which the Father formed all

things out of nothing, was begotten of the true Father himself” and holds “the middle

place” between the ‘unbegotten’ (a)ge/nnhtoj) God and the qualitative distinct creation.58

In the middle place—“the bosom of the Father”—the Son is distinct but not discrete, as

anything which is properly regarded as begotten, let alone “only begotten” (John 3:16),

is inherent to its progenitor. The Son is the Truth and Word, in whom all things consist

and through whom the world was framed, declaring “I am.” The Christ of Arian

preaching must concede “I have become.” By the same token, the unchanging God does

not become Father, as the Son is eternally within he who possesses everlasting

perfection.

They are two, because the Father is the Father and is not also Son, and the Son is Son and not also Father; but the nature is one; (for the offspring is not unlike its parent, for it is his image), and all that is the Father’s is the

56 R. Williams, “The Logic of Arianism,” 59-60.

57 Athanasius, Four Discourses against the Arians, 1.2.6.

58 Alexander of Alexandria, Epistles on the Arian Heresy, 11. The citation is from Gregory Thaumaturgus, Dionysius the Great, Julius Africanus, Antolius and Minor Writers, Methodius, Arnobius, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 6, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995), 291-296.

Son’s. Wherefore, neither is the Son another God, for he was not procured from without, else were there many, if a godhead be procured foreign from the Father’s; for if the Son be other, as an Offspring, still he is the same as God; and he and the Father are one in propriety and peculiarity of nature, and in the identity of the one Godhead.59

The ‘Fount of Divinity’ (fons divinitatis) flows unceasing from the unbegotten Father to

the ‘unmade’ (a)ge/nhtoj) Son. Athanasius cautioned that creaturely progeneration,

which produces a discrete being of the same kind, incompletely conveys divine

generation: “Let every corporeal inference be banished on this subject… for as the words

‘Offspring’ and ‘Son’ bear… no human sense, but one suitable to God, in like manner

when we hear the phrase ‘one in essence,’ let us not fall upon human sense, and imagine

partitions and divisions of the Godhead.”60 The Father and Son are not independently

divine in the manner that Abraham and Isaac are independently human, as divine co-

essentiality does not entail particularization.

Subordinationism is intended, in part, to secure divine transcendence.61 Arius

reasoned that the Father and Son cannot be consubstantial since, contrary to divine

impassibility, ontological union with the Son would entail that the Father suffered

hunger (e.g., Matthew 4:2), thirst (e.g., John 19:28), grief (e.g., Mark 14:34), and agony

(e.g., Matthew 27:46) in Christ’s humiliation. Trinitarians counter that the Father of

Arian theology, being isolated and imperturbable, is uninvolved and unconcerned.

60 Athanasius, Defense of the Nicene Definition, 5.24. The citation is from Athanasius: Select Works and Letters, 149-172.

61 Ayres notes other possible motivations in Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology, 55-56. Ontological subordinationists maybe sensed that God the Father produced the Son (1) to govern creation since the world cannot bear the Father’s direct contact, (2) to provide an example of holiness so that we might enjoy adoption as “sons,” or (3) to provide an example of faith so that we might learn to worship.

Whether consubstantiality contradicts the impassibility of the Father, God is abundantly

gracious, not aloof. The passion of Christ, rather than providing incontrovertible

evidence that the Father and Son are discrete, conceivably demonstrates that the

sovereign and free God, who “so loved the world” (John 3:16), encounters the world in

Jesus Christ.62

What is more, as Athanasius answered, the Son is no mere intermediary or herald

of the Father’s absolution, he is our savior. The redemptive work and lordship of Christ

is internal to the work and Godhood of the Father, such that Christians proclaim God

the Father to be in Christ reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19). The

Creator, alone, is privileged to recreate and bestow the blessing of salvation. If Christ is

not true Deity, we are not delivered from sin and death as Arian salvation involves

divine forgiveness of sin short of the transformation of the sinner. “Life would at best be

a series of sinning and being forgiven, sinning and being forgiven, repeated over and

over again; the human world would be returned to its prelapsarian state but with the

possibility of another Fall.”63 On the contrary, humanity is transfigured by the divine

Word who is intimately joined to humanity in the incarnation. The man Jesus expunges

ignorance and sin, providing knowledge of God and holiness as the giver of life and

revealer of the Father because he shares in the divine essence.64

By the Word becoming man, the universal Providence has been known, and its Giver and Artificer the very Word of God. For he was made man that we might be made God; and he manifested himself by a body that we

62 Alvyn Pettersen, “Truth in a Heresy?: Arianism,” The Expository Times 112 (2001): 153-154.

63 Ibid., 152.

64 Thomas F. Torrance, “The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity according to St. Athanasius,” Anglican Theological Review 71 (1989): 397.

might receive the idea of the unseen Father; and he endured the insolence of men that we might inherit immortality.65

The “renewal of creation has been the work of the self-same Word that made it at the

beginning.”66 And, insofar as the renewal of creation is contingent upon the salvific

authority of the incarnate Word, the authority of the Word is determined by his divinity.

It is, in consequence, no wonder that heretics “err in respect to his incarnate presence,

[in that they are] simply ignorant of the Son’s genuine and true generation from the

Father.”67

The logic of subordinationism, abridged by the historian Socrates Scholasticus,

begins with a modest deduction: “If the Father begat the Son, he that was begotten had a

beginning of existence: and from this it is evident, that there was a time when the Son

was not. It therefore necessarily follows, that he had his substance from nothing.”68

Perilous implications, nevertheless, ensue. If the Son was brought into existence ex

nihilo then he is a creature, and no mere creature secures the divine salvation promised

through the prophets. The incarnate Word is an obedient Son who is to be imitated by

lesser creatures, but not the Savior. Despite his work, the unknowable Father, alone,

saves. And, insofar as Christ’s death is unnecessary for our salvation, sin does not leave

us destitute apart from divine self-sacrifice, as the subordinationist doctrine of salvation

65 Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word, 54. All citations are from Athanasius: Select

Works and Letters, 31-67.

66 Ibid., 1.

68 Socrates of Constantinople, The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus, I.5. The citation is from Socrates and Sozomenus: Ecclesiastical Histories, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ser. 2, vol. 2, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995), 1-178.

promotes labors of self-justification and moral improvement. To be sure, demoting the

Son from divine eternity to creaturely temporality yields another religion.

The Savior is, of necessity, wholly divine and wholly human. In response to

subordinationism, the Nicene Creed anathematized, “those who say, there was when he

was not, and, before being born he was not, and that he came into existence out of

nothing, or who assert that the Son of God is of a different hypostasis or substance, or is

subject to alteration or change.” The delegates at Nicaea declared that the Father and

Son are of the ‘same substance’ (o(moou/sioj) and that the Son is eternally begotten, not

made. They failed, however, to articulate the character of homoousial union—or

consubstantiality—and distinguish between essence and individual/person as a means

of expressing both the unitive and individuative conditions of trinitarianism.

Nonetheless, the council reached two critical clarifications regarding the Christian

conception of God. First, the Father, Son, and Spirit are not ontologically graded. And

second, the unity of the divine persons is substantial, not merely covenantal. The Son is

not a god, but “very God.” As a result of the Arian controversy, the divinity attributed to

the Son and Spirit in TT2-3 is determined to be the same divinity attributed to the

Father in TT1. Both modalism and polytheism, in contrast to subordinationism,

acknowledge the commensurability of the Father’s, Son’s and Spirit’s divinity.

Modalism

Modalistic monarchianism, or modalism, advanced in the early church by

Sabellius, Noetus, and Praxaes, sanctions the divinity of the persons (TT1-3) and divine

oneness (TT7), while barring or diminishing divine threeness (TT4-6).69 On modalism,

Deity assumes the diverse roles of Father, Son, and Spirit through the course of self-

revelation, being individuated neither by properties nor relations since multiple

individuals/persons indicate multiple substances/beings, as the original Nicene Creed

equivocally implied and later modalists surmised.70 The divine persons are

presentations or modes of the Divine Subject as the names ‘Father,’ ‘Son,’ and ‘Spirit’

ultimately denote the divine individual: God. As creator and progenitor, he is the Father;

as incarnate Lord and savior, he is the Son; and as indweller and sanctifier, he is the

Holy Spirit.71 Or, alternatively, the Son and Spirit are purported to be modes of the

Father, who is God—“the Father himself came down into the Virgin, was himself born of

her, himself suffered, indeed was himself Jesus Christ,” as Tertullian attributed to

Praxeas.72 In either case, the divine persons are names of God, as Jesus seemingly

announced, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30) and “I am in the Father and the

Father is in me” (John 14:11).

The Son, as ‘person’ (pro/swpon, signifying a role assume, or a mask worn, by an

individual actor) is a manner in which God (or the Father) expresses himself. Should

God cease to express himself as the Son, the Son would cease to be, whereas God would

continue to be. The Son is not a substance or individual but a state of affairs—namely

69 According to a second form, dynamic monarchianism, the unequivocally human Jesus of

Nazareth received the eternal Christ, or presence of God, and was empowered to perform miracles at his baptism. Jesus is, thus, considered a venerable man, but not Almighty God.

70 Joseph T. Lienhard, “Basil of Caesarea, Marcellus of Ancyra, and ‘Sabellius,’” Church History 58 (1989): 160.

71 Allison, “Denials of Orthodoxy: Heretical Views of the Doctrine of the Trinity,” 19.

72 Tertullian, Against Praxeas, 1.

God’s expressing himself as the Son.73 The personal actor who realizes the state of

affairs is God. Divine modes are, therefore, “chimerical and have no ontological

substance.”74

Nancy Roberts illustrates the intuitive appeal of modalism with a novel analogy:

One thinks, in this connection, of the revolutionary discoveries made over the past century in the field of subatomic physics and the realization to which such discoveries have led, namely, that the boundaries we believe to be so solid between this and that entity are, in fact, illusory, and that there is no real distinction between mass (read ‘substance,’ ‘person’) and energy (read ‘mode,’ ‘activity’). Research in the field of quantum physics has shown that a subatomic particle is what it does, its existence consists solely in its relations to other subatomic particles. Hence, the insistence on the so-called ‘Persons’ or hypostases within God (of which the Bible never speaks to begin with) being distinct entities rather than functions of their activities may not, in fact, correspond to the way things really are.75

Should subatomic phenomena prove too obscure to stimulate robust intuitions, the

appeal of modalism can be illustrated with commonplace things. A lamp, for instance,

might function as both a source of light and a source of heat; that is, play the role of an

illuminator and a heater, without being discrete things. Or antifreeze might function as

both an engine coolant and a lubricant.

Despite its cogency, modalism is at odds with the personal intercourse of the

Father and Son as depicted in the New Testament. Modalists may answer that the Son

73 Fittingly, modalism assumes various forms. Fourth century polemicists—including Didymus

the Blind of Alexandria, Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Arian Eunomius of Cyzicus—censured a form of modalism according to which the Spirit is an ‘activity’ (e)ne/rgeia) of God. See Andrew Radde-Gallwitz, “The Holy Spirit as Agent, not Activity: Origen’s Argument with Modalism and its Afterlife in Didymus, Eunomius, and Gregory of Nazianzus,” Vigiliae Christianae 65 (2011): 228. And Marcellus of Ancyra taught, according to Eusebius of Caesarea, that the Son is a property of the Father: his rationality and word in the truest sense. See Christopher A. Beeley, “Eusebius’ Contra Marcellum. Anti-Modalist Doctrine and Orthodox Christology,” Zeitschrif für Antikes Christentum 12 (2008): 435-437.

74 Marc A. Pugliese, “Is Karl Rahner a Modalist?,” Irish Theological Quarterly 68 (2003): 232.

75 Nancy Roberts, “Trinity vs. Monotheism: A False Dichotomy?,” The Muslim World 101 (2011): 80. The emphasis is Roberts’s.

communed with the Father through the human consciousness of Jesus Christ and, as a

consequence, related to God in a manner that suggests, but does not entail, distinction

from the Father, as a puppeteer simulates conversation with his puppet. Such a

response, however, is unsustainable in light of John 17:5: “Now, Father, glorify me

together with yourself, with the glory which I had with you before the world was.”76 The

central partnership of the Gospels encompasses God the Father and the divine Son, who

preexists his incarnation.

It would not suffice to rejoin that the divine modes are necessary or simply

eternal, as Scripture implies (something like) a distinction of substance between the

Father and Son, not a distinction of aspect.77 In that case, God is guilty of deception.

Tertullian was forthright:

You must make him out to be a liar, and an imposter, and a tamperer with his word, if, when he was himself a son to himself, he assigned the part of his Son to be played by another, when all the Scriptures attest the clear existence of, and distinction in (the persons) of the Trinity, and indeed furnish us with our rule of faith, that he who speaks, and he of whom he speaks, and to whom he speaks, cannot possibly seem to be one and the same.78

And if not sheer deception, the unipersonal Deity of modalism can be charged with

narcissism, in sending himself to testify of himself while expressing love and offering

prayer to himself.79 Why would Jesus refer to the Father as though he were another, if

not to convey his individuation from the Father (e.g., Matthew 11:27)? The communion

76 In the very least, the passage is more readily explained on subordinationism, polytheism, or

trinitarianism, which reduces the plausibility of modalism.

77 S. Davis, Logic and the Nature of God, 137.

79 Tuggy, “The Unfinished Business of Trinitarian Theorizing,” 173.

of the divine persons, as depicted in the New Testament, lends credence the centers of

consciousness view. This must not be overstated, however, since the New Testament

also depicts the Son as the revelation of the Father: “Whoever has seen [the Son] has

seen the Father” (John 14:9). Yet, ironically, the Deity of modalism, who eternally exists

in solitude, does not reveal himself in the incarnation by representing himself

relationally, but a guise. Modalism converts Christ, who is the genuine expression of the

Father, into an accidental manifestation of God.80 Quite the opposite, the Son is

eternally immanent to Deity, since he is Emmanuel.

Finally, how does the Father know facts that the Son fails to know, per modalism

(e.g., Matthew 24:36)? The suggestion that divine persona A possesses knowledge that

divine persona B lacks implies a fundamental deficiency of self-knowledge in God; a

divine split personality disorder.81 Suffice it to say, the reduplicative predications

involved in the modalist response draw perilously near to Nestorianism: the

Christological heresy that the Word and the man Jesus embodied distinct loci of

consciousness and intelligence. Such a question is, no doubt, problematic for the

trinitarian, but quite intractable for the modalist.

Sure enough, the Son is in the Father and the Father is in the Son, but nothing

which is in another is the other. The Father is truly father to the Son and the Son is truly

son to the Father. Tertullian asked, “does not the very fact that they have distinct names

of Father and Son amount to a declaration that they are distinct in personality? For, of

80 Welch, “Faith and Reason in Relation to the Doctrine of the Trinity,” 24.

81 Layman, “Tritheism and the Trinity,” 293.

course, all things will be what their names represent them to be.”82 In that their

relationship is appropriately characterized as fatherhood and sonship, the Father and

Son are genuinely distinct, since no one is a father or son to himself.

Now, if I am to be to myself any one of these relations, I no longer have what I am myself to be: neither a father, because I am to be my own father; nor a son, because I shall be my own son. Moreover, inasmuch as I ought to have one of these relations in order to be the other; so, if I am to be both together, I shall fail to be one while I possess not the other…. By not having a father, however, since I am my own father, how can I be a son? For I ought to have a father, in order to be a son. I cannot therefore be a father, because I have not a son, who makes a father.83

Anti-modalist polemicists asserted that the personhood of the Father is not that

of the Son or Spirit; the Son’s not that of the Father or Spirit; and the Spirit’s not that of

the Father or Son. Accordingly, the relationships which the divine persons bear are

necessary and constitutive of deity. Whereas the persons are modes of the Divine

Subject per modalism, polytheism recognizes that the genuine individuality of the

Father, Son, and Spirit motivates TT4-6.

Polytheism

Polytheism, or tritheism in relation to Christian theology, affirms the divinity of

the persons (TT1-3) and divine threeness (TT4-6), while rejecting divine oneness (TT7).

Christians, from the first century through the Arian controversy, were keenly concerned

to distance their theologies from pagan polytheism; as, for instance, in Gregory of

Nyssa’s On ‘Not Three Gods’: “The definition [of the Trinity] refused to reckon Gods in

any number to avoid any resemblance to the polytheism of the heathen, lest, if we too

83 Ibid., 10.

were to enumerate the Deity, not in the singular, but in the plural, as they are

accustomed to do, there might be supposed to be some community of doctrine [with

polytheists].”84 And his Great Catechism:

But when you have gained the conception of what the distinction is in these, the oneness, again, of the nature admits not division, so that the supremacy of the one First Cause is not split and cut up into differing Godships, neither does the statement harmonize with the Jewish dogma, but the truth passes in the mean between these two conceptions, destroying each heresy, and yet accepting what is useful to it from each. The Jewish dogma is destroyed by the acceptance of the Word, and by the belief in the Spirit; while the polytheistic error of the Greek school is made to vanish by the unity of the Nature abrogating this imagination of plurality. While yet again, of the Jewish conception, let the unity of the Nature stand; and of the Hellenistic, only the distinction as to persons; the remedy against a profane view being thus applied, as required, on either side. For it is as if the number of the triad were a remedy in the case of those who are in error as to the One, and the assertion of the unity for those whose beliefs are dispersed among a number of divinities.85

Likewise, Athanasius vigilantly forbade that tri-personal language collapse into the

unitarianism of “Sabellius… and present-day Jews who follow Caiaphas” or augment

“the polytheism of the Greeks.”86

Tritheism has never garnered support within the church. The question, “why

three gods?,” shoulders a hefty explanatory burden. What would explain their discrete

existence? And would not the explanation be a higher or, at least, logically prior reality?

The worshipper, in addition, is concerned with the question of allegiance. Would it be an

insult to attribute the Father’s operations to the Spirit? Would it offend the Son to

84 Gregory of Nyssa, “To Ablabius: On ‘Not Three Gods,’” 331.

85 Gregory of Nyssa, The Great Catechism, 2. All citations are from Select Writings and Letters of Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, 469-507.

86 Athanasius, “Letters to Serapion on the Holy Spirit” in Khaled Anatolios, ed., Athanasius (New York, New York: Routledge, 2004), 184.

exclusively address the Father in prayer?87 Emerging from Judaism, Christianity

harbors a conception of Deity in which monotheism is decidedly secure. Therefore,

views that overemphasize divine oneness, to the neglect of divine threeness, have been a

more pressing concern for Christian theology.

Three Readings of the Athanasian Creed

Ontological subordinationism compromises the divinity of the Son and Spirit;

modalism, divine threeness; and polytheism, divine oneness. The anti-trinitarian

heresies are, nevertheless, internally consistent. Orthodox accounts approximate the

cogency of the heretical poles while aiming to intelligibly assert the basic trinitarian

conjuncts which the poles explicitly contradict. Three logical interpretations of

trinitarianism—the token/type, token, and type readings—approach ontological

subordinationism, modalism, and polytheism, respectively.

The Token/Type Reading and the Quasi-creational Model

Consider, again, the language of the Athanasian Creed: “The Father is God, the

Son God, the Holy Spirit God; and yet there are not three gods, but there is one God.”

The token/type reading of the Creed—“x is A, y is A, z is A; and yet there are not three

A’s, but there is one A,” where x, y, and z are not co-referential—“seems,” in the words of

87 As Miller stresses, “it is difficult to imagine Christian faith or Christian theology being anything

like what it is without the primacy of the Great Commandment, the obligation to give one’s total and ultimate loyalty to one center of meaning and value whom we call God and who is revealed to us as one in whom all divinity is comprehended and who resists in every way any sharing of that loyalty, any assumption that there can be other ultimate claims on our lives or other forces at work in nature, history, and culture than the Lord of Israel and the church. It is also impossible to imagine Christian theology being Christian without the claim that God is not fully revealed apart from Jesus Christ or that one can exhaust what it is to be comprehended about God without the work of the Spirit” (“A Strange Kind of Monotheism,” 293).

Plantinga, “utterly paradoxical and literally unbelievable.”88 We cannot say of apostles,

“Peter is an apostle, James is an apostle, John is an apostle; and yet there are not three

apostles, but there is one apostle.” The Father, Son, and Spirit, nevertheless, are

incongruously distinct individuals of the same essence or type (contrary to modalism)

and the same being or token (contrary to tritheism).

Early trinitarians, including Tertullian and Athanasius, advanced quasi-

creational models89 which employed emanationist language to express divine triunity in

terms of self-differentiation—the primordial and self-existent, or uncreate, Father as

Fount of Divinity imparting deity to the Son and Spirit—and account for the genuine

individuation of the divine persons within the substantive oneness of Deity.90 Tertullian

remarked that the gnostic “Valentinus divides and separates [God’s] prolations from

their Author, and places them at so great a distance from him, that the Æon,” although

longing to know him, “does not know the Father.” The orthodox, however, avow “the

prolation, taught by the truth, the guardian of the Unity, wherein we declare that the

Son is a prolation from the Father, without being separated from him.”91 The Son rises

emanationally while remaining immanent to the Father.

For God sent forth the Word, as the Paraclete also declares, just as the root puts forth the tree, and the fountain the river, and the sun the ray. For these are probolai/, or emanations, of the substances from which they

88 Plantinga, “The Threeness/Oneness Problem of the Trinity,” 43.

89 Rahner employed the term “quasi-formal”—the Father being the (analogically) formal cause, as opposed to the efficient cause, of the Son in The Trinity, 36. Cross calls the quasi-creational model the “derivation model” in “On Generic and Derivation Views of God’s Trinitarian Substance,” Scottish Journal of Theology 56 (2003): 464-480.

90 LaCugna, “Philosophers and Theologians on the Trinity,” 174.

proceed. I should not hesitate, indeed, to call the tree the son or offspring of the root, and the river of the fountain, and the ray of the sun; because every original source is a parent, and everything which issues from the origin is an offspring. Much more is (this true of) the Word of God, who has actually received as his own peculiar designation the name of Son. But still the tree is not severed from the root, nor the river from the fountain, nor the ray from the sun; nor, indeed, is the Word separated from God. Following, therefore, the form of these analogies, I confess that I call God and his Word—the Father and his Son—two. For the root and the tree are distinctly two things, but correlatively joined; the fountain and the river are also two forms, but indivisible; so likewise the sun and the ray are two forms, but coherent ones…. In like manner the Trinity, flowing down from the Father through intertwined and connected steps, does not at all disturb the Monarchy, whilst it at the same time guards the state of the Economy.92

He clarified, in pre-Arian language, “for the Father is the entire substance, but the Son is

a derivation and portion of the whole, as he himself acknowledges: ‘My Father is greater

than I.’”93 So, too, Athanasius depicted divine production with an analogy of the sun:

We see that the radiance from the sun is proper to it, and the sun’s essence is not divided or impaired; but its essence is whole and its radiance perfect and whole, yet without impairing the essence of light, but as a true offspring from it. We understand in like manner that the Son is begotten not from without but from the Father, and while the Father remains whole, the Expression of his Subsistence is ever, and preserves the Father’s likeness and unvarying Image, so that he who sees him, sees in him the Subsistence too, of which he is the Expression. And from the operation of the Expression we understand the true Godhead of the Subsistence, as the Saviour himself teaches when he says, ‘The Father who dwelleth in me, he doeth the works’ which I do; and ‘I and the Father are one,’ and ‘I in the Father and the Father in me.’ Therefore let this Christ—opposing heresy attempt first to divide the examples found in things originate, and say, ‘Once the sun was without his radiance,’ or, ‘Radiance is not proper to the essence of light,’ or ‘It is indeed proper, but it is a part of light by division; and then let it divide Reason, and pronounce that it is foreign to mind, or that once it was not, or that it was not proper to its essence, or that it is by division a part of mind.’ And so of his Expression and the Light and the Power, let it do violence to these as in the case of Reason and Radiance;

92 Ibid.

93 Ibid., 9.

and instead let it imagine what it will. But if such extravagance be impossible for them, are they not greatly beside themselves, presumptuously intruding into what is higher than things originate and their own nature, and essaying impossibilities.94

The quasi-creational model describes the individuation of the divine persons as the

innate emergence of the Son and Spirit from the Father and divine oneness as the divine

substance, constituted by the Father, pervading the Son and Spirit, thereby avoiding

tritheism and modalism. The challenge is to formulate a patently non-creational account

of the processions of the Son and Spirit, delineating trinitarianism from ontological

subordinationism.

For Arius, the Son has no antecedent element, being created ex nihilo, as opposed

to Adam who was created out of the dust of the ground. The Son is produced by the

Father, not from the Father or any other principle. For Athanasius, the Father is the

wellspring of the Son and the substance in which he is eternally produced. Whereas the

dust of the ground is both ontically and temporally prior to Adam, ‘eternal production’

indicates that the Father is ontically, but not temporally, prior to the Son. The Father is

in the Son, not symbiotically but genetically. And the divinity of the Son and Spirit is

derived, not from abstract divine attributes which remain platonically beyond their

instantiations in the Father, Son, and Spirit, but from the concrete being of the Father as

the divine substratum. The Son is begotten, not made, inheriting divine qualities from

the Father—holiness, wisdom, power, eternality—while distinctly subsisting in that he

manifests sonship. Even so, the Son is of the same kind as the Father, from whom he

derives his divinity, as human sons derive their humanity from their fathers.

Quasi-creational theories ostensibly jeopardize the ontological parity of the

divine persons by apportioning priority to the Father as the source of deity. The Son and

Spirit participate in the absolute being of the Father, who enjoys unqualified divinity.

The ontic asymmetry of the Father and Son reveals, more than an economic reality, the

immanent character of Deity.95 Yet asymmetry, which is acknowledged by all

processional accounts of the Trinity, need not entail ontological gradation.96 The Son

derives all divinity from the divine substance: the Father, himself.97 The

consubstantiality of the Father, Son, and Spirit precludes degrees of being, in principle.

The sun analogy, and the extension of the divine substance from the Father to the

Son, evokes a material conception of God in which the Son (radiance) is a consubstantial

portion of the Father (sun) as, perhaps, hydrogen and oxygen atoms, as discrete

constituents, comprise a compound water molecule.98 Yet the Son is not a proper part of

God. On the contrary, the Father, who is God, effusively constitutes the proceeding Son

and Spirit. As Gregory of Nyssa would later say,

Just as the brightness is emitted by the flame, and the brightness is not after the flame, but at one and the same moment the flame shines and the light beams brightly, so does the Apostle mean the Son to be thought of as deriving existence from the Father, and yet the Only-begotten not to be divided [sic] from the existence of the Father by an intervening extension

95 Roland Chia, “MIA OUSIA TREIS UPOSTASEIS: Athanasius and the Doctrine of the Holy

Trinity,” Jian Dao 9 (1998), 46.

97 Cross, “On Generic and Derivation Views of God’s Trinitarian Substance,” 467.

98 R. Williams, “The Logic of Arianism,” 63-64.

in space, but the caused to be always conceived of together with the cause.99

The consubstantiality of the divine persons signifies the Father’s constitutive status

within the Son and Spirit. Material conceptions suggest that the Son and Spirit inherit

divinity from the Father as a statue inherits mass from the lump of bronze out of which

it is formed.100 The statue, notwithstanding, exemplifies additional properties—for

example, representing a thinker—which individuates the statue from the lump of

bronze.

Material analogies are not, of course, entirely proper to God. Whereas material

progenitors contribute a part of their being to their progeny, the indivisible Father

contributes his entire being to the Son. “For in him all the fullness of Deity dwells in

bodily form” (Colossians 2:9). The theoretical burden of the quasi-creational theory is to

obtain co-extension (or consubstantiality) from an analogy that evokes composition.

Emphasizing co-extension subverts divine threeness, whereas stressing composition

jeopardizes divine oneness. Gregory of Nazianzus vacillated between conceptions in

worship:

No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illuminated by the splendor of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the One. When I think of any one of the Three I think of him as the whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking of escapes me. I cannot grasp the greatness of the One so as to attribute a greater

99 Basil, Letter 38: To His Brother Gregory, Concerning the Difference between ou)si/a and

u(po/stasij, 7. The citation is from Basil: Letters and Select Works, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ser. 2, vol. 8, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995), 137-141. Letter 38 is now usually attributed to Gregory.

100 Cross, “On Generic and Derivation View of God’s Trinitarian Substance,” 468.

greatness to the rest. When I contemplate the Three together, I see but one torch, and cannot divide or measure out the Undivided Light.101

For this reason, theologians have tended to steer the quasi-creational model and the

language of processions toward more lucid readings that secure the divinity of the Son

and Spirit. The objective is to develop a model which sanctions the sub-doctrines of

trinitarianism, while approaching the cogency of modalism or polytheism. An alternate

interpretation of the creed—the token reading—unambiguously avows divine oneness in

a substantive manner while preserving the comparable divinity of the Father, Son, and

Spirit.

The Token Reading and the Quasi-identity Model

The token reading of the Creed—“x1 is A, x2 is A, x3 is A; and yet there are not

three A’s, but there is one A,” where x1, x2, and x3 are co-referential102—permits an

analogy to personal identity: “Cephas is an apostle, the Brother of Andrew is an apostle,

the Author of First Peter is an apostle; and yet there are not three apostles, but there is

one apostle.” Cephas, the Brother of Andrew, and the Author of First Peter are each

identical to Simon Peter. In the same way, gods are fewer than divine persons on the

token reading, in accordance with divine oneness. To illustrate, suppose that Dwight

takes three flights on Moody Airways in January, February, and March for which the

airline records 3 passengers (P1, P2, and P3) in their annual passenger count, although

101 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 40: The Oration on Holy Baptism, 41. The citation is from

Select Orations of Saint Gregory Nazianzen, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ser. 2, vol. 7, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995), 360-377.

102 Upon surveying the New Testament witness regarding Jesus’ divine identity, Anderson comments, “this is not identification in the weak sense (e.g., ‘Jesus identified himself with sinners by being baptized’), but in a stronger, numerical sense: two proper names (or rigid designators, to use the Kripkean terminology) are treated as co-referential” (“In Defense of Mystery: A Reply to Dale Tuggy,” 147).

each passenger is identical to Dwight.103 The cardinality of the set of passengers is 3,

whereas the cardinality of the set of persons identical to Dwight is 1. P1, P2, and P3 share

the trope being Dwight. Similarly, the Father, Son, and Spirit, while distinct divine

persons, are identical to God: a concrete being rather than a kind of being.104 The token

reading, thus, ensures divine oneness.

Unfortunately, it also appears to entail modalism. Is it not the case, on this

reading, that “the Father is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Son is the Father, Son,

and Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and yet there are not

three Fathers, Sons, and Holy Spirits, but there is one Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” just

as there is one Cephas, Brother of Andrew, and Author of First Peter: Simon Peter?

Consider the triune Son argument (TS):

(TS1) The Son is God.

(TS2) God is triune.

(TS3) Therefore, the Son is triune.

Premises TS1 and TS2 are essential to Christian orthodoxy. No theology that fails to

affirm both the divinity of the Son and the triunity of God is plausibly Christian.

Conversely, no Christian theology ought to affirm TS3. Yet TS1, read as an identity

statement—“the Son is identical to God”—and TS2, read as an essential predication—

104 ‘God’ functions as a proper noun on the token reading (e.g., Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”). See William Power, “Symbolic Logic and the Doctrine of the Trinity,” Iliff Review 32 (1975): 36, who brands the concrete conception of the divine essence “the monotheistic assumption” (40-41); and van Inwagen, “Three Persons in One Being: On Attempts to Show that the Doctrine of the Trinity Is Self-Contradictory,” 85. Macnamara, Reyes, and Reyes reply that ‘God’ functions as a common noun on both the token and type readings given that it (1) has a plural form and (2) is translated between languages, rather than transliterated. They deny, however, that the synonymity of ‘divine person’ and ‘god’ entails tritheism, provided that the same God undergirds the persons in “Logic and the Trinity,” 14-15.

“God exemplifies the property of triunity”—jointly entail TS3. If TS1 (TT2) is an identity

statement then, presumably, TT1 and TT3 are also identity statements. And given that

identity is symmetrical and transitive,105 each divine person is identical to any other

divine person. Consider the identity argument (ID):

(ID1) The Father is God. (TT1)

(ID2) God is the Son. (TT2, symmetry)

(ID3) The Son is God. (TT2)

(ID4) God is the Holy Spirit. (TT3, symmetry)

(ID5) Therefore, the Father is the Son. (ID1-2, transitivity)

(ID6) Therefore, the Son is the Holy Spirit. (ID3-4, transitivity)

(ID7) Therefore, the Father is the Holy Spirit. (ID5-6, transitivity)

To read TS1 as an identity statement is to affirm ID5-7; to affirm ID5-7 is to deny TT4-6;

and to deny TT4-6 is to affirm modalism.106

Token theorists may respond that “the Son exemplifies an essential individuating

property: being-begotten.” But if the Father is God and the Son is God, as P1 is Dwight

and P2 is Dwight or Cephas is Simon Peter and the Brother of Andrew is Simon Peter

then the Father exemplifies all essential properties of the Son, including being begotten,

as Cephas and the Brother of Andrew share the tropes of Simon Peter. Hence, the Father

is (distributively) the Father, Son, and Spirit, the divine persons exemplifying no

individuating properties.107 The token reading endorses both the divinity of the Father,

105 Symmetry specifies that if x is identical to y, y is identical to x—that is, (∀x)(∀y) [(x = y) → (y

= x)]—and transitivity specifies that if x is identical to y and y is identical to z, x is identical to z—that is, (∀x)(∀y)(∀z) [(x = y ∧ y = z) → (x = z)].

106 Modalists, by denying TT4-6, and subordinationists, by denying TT2-3, implicitly deny TS2; thereby avoiding TS3.

107 Wierenga, “Trinity and Polytheism,” 288.

Son, and Spirit and divine oneness. The burden is to uphold divine threeness such that

the individuality of the persons corresponds to that which metaphysicians have termed

‘individual,’ not ‘property,’ ‘relation,’ or ‘state of affairs.’ The difficulty is that TT1-3 are

considered to be identity statements, rather than essential predications.

Relative identity theorists obscure divine oneness, by proposing that the Father,

Son, and Spirit are identical, in one sense, and non-identical, in another.108 By way of

illustration, suppose that Matthew interrupts John Mark while he is reading his

personal copy of the King James Bible and that James interrupts Mary while she is

reading her personal copy of the King James Bible. Although John Mark and Mary are

interrupted by the same type of person—namely, an apostle—they are not interrupted by

the same person. Distinct humans cannot be both the same token and individuals of the

same type. On the other hand, though their books are non-identical copies, John Mark

and Mary are reading the same text: the King James Version of the Bible. There is, thus,

as sense in which books can be simultaneously distinct and the same. The criterion for

sameness, relative identity theorists propose, depends upon the kind of object in

question.

Similarly, divine oneness might tolerate a degree of internal differentiation. The

‘is’ of predication—“is good,” for instance—is context-dependent. The statements DG1:

“Dillinger is good” and DG2: “Dillinger is not good” are compatible provided that DG1

indicates being-a-good-shot and DG2 indicates being-a-good-person. The ‘is’ of identity

108 See, for example, Martinich, “Identity and Trinity,” 175-181; Martinich, “God, Emperor, and

Relative Identity,” 181-185; Zeis, “A Trinity on a Trinity on a Trinity,” 45-55; Macnamara, Reyes, and Reyes, “Logic and the Trinity,” 10-11; and van Inwagen, “Three Persons in One Being: On Attempts to Show that the Doctrine of the Trinity Is Self-Contradictory,” 83-97.

is, perhaps, incomplete or relative in that the Father, Son, and Spirit are the same God

albeit distinct individuals. By rejecting the general applicability of the indiscernibility of

identicals and the rule of substitutivity—the logical rule that a term can replace a co-

referential term in a statement without affecting its truth-value109—and assuming that

being-identity holds for beings—that is, that which is one in God—and person-identity

holds for persons—that is, that which is three in God—relative identity theorists posit

that the being-identity of the Father, Son, and Spirit does not determine their person-

identity. Distinguishing and individuating features under the kind ‘divine person’ do not

“keep phase” under the kind ‘God.’110 Consequently, although the Son is distinguished

and individuated from the Father by the property being-begotten, this God is not

distinguished and individuated from that God, as being-begotten does not distinguish or

individuate under the kind ‘God.’

The quasi-identity model, based on relative identity, allegedly secures the

consistency of the token reading, without collapsing into modalism, and does not

endanger the divinity of the Son and Spirit, contrary to the quasi-creational model, since

“is God” in TT2-3 cannot be read as an accidental predication. In other words, the Son

109 Martinich notes that denying the rule of substitutivity also bars the argument against

trinitarianism from patripassianism (P) in “Identity and Trinity,” 179-180: (P1) There is one God. (P2) The Father is God. (P3) The Son is God. (P4) The Son suffered on the cross. (P5) Therefore, the Father suffered on the cross. Although, the Father and Son are being-identical, ‘Father’ cannot replace ‘Son’ without affecting the truth-value of P4. In other words, apart from the rule of substitutivity, “the Father is the same God as the Son” and P4 do not entail that “the Father is the same sufferer as the Son.” In a similar way, “Hesperus is Phosphorus” and “Hesperus is the evening star” do not entail that “Phosphorus is the evening star.”

and Spirit cannot be deemed gods in a creaturely sense. Unfortunately, relatively

identity has failed to garner much support among philosophers concerned with the

coherence of trinitarianism, as illustrations of the preceding sort are less intuitively

appealing that the contrapositive of the indiscernibility of identicals. A final

interpretation—the type reading—reaffirms divine threeness.

The Type Reading and the Quasi-generic Model

The type reading of the Creed—“x is (an) A, y is (an) A, z is (an) A; and yet there

are not three (types or classes of) A’s, but there is one (type or class of) A”—evokes a

societal analogy: “Peter is an apostle, James is an apostle, John is an apostle; and yet

there are not three types or classes of apostles, but there is one type or class of apostle,”

which disambiguates predications about God as divine persons from predications about

God as such. Proponents of the type reading interpret TS1 (TT2)—“the Son is God”—as

an essential predication in which ‘God’ is understood to be a property: being-divine.111

Accordingly, TT2 is rendered “the Son exemplifies the property of divinity” or “the Son

is a divine person,” which ensures divine threeness when extended to TT1 and TT3.

Incidentally, being-divine cannot mean being-Deity or being-God, which reintroduces

the identity interpretation of TT1-3, but to exemplify certain divine attributes. Edward

111 As Plantinga explains, “Gregory [of Nyssa] is not afraid of using the anarthrous Qeo/j

predicably or sortally after the fashion of John 1:1c. Thus, just as Peter, Paul, and Barnabas are each man, so the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; indeed, Gregory sometimes just uses the adjective Qei~oj for what a divine person is; viz., divine” (“Gregory of Nyssa and the Social Analogy of the Trinity,” 330). Compare Wierenga, “Trinity and Polytheism,” 288-290 and S. Davis, Christian Philosophical Theology, 63.

Wierenga submits that the statement “the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit

is God” parallels the Creed’s preceding series of predications:112

Such as the Father is, such is the Son, such also the Holy Spirit. The Father is increate, the Son is increate, the Holy Spirit increate. The Father is infinite, the Son infinite, the Holy Spirit infinite. The Father is eternal, the Son eternal, the Holy Spirit eternal. Yet there are not three eternal, but one eternal; just as there are not three increates or three infinites, but one increate and one infinite. In the same way the Father is almighty, the Son almighty, the Holy Spirit almighty; yet there are not three almighties, but one almighty.

‘God’ in TS2—“God is triune”—refers to the type or class to which the divine

persons belong. Type theorists denote divine oneness with the term ‘Godhead’ (Qeo/thj),

or that which exemplifies Godhood.113 Accordingly, TS2 is rendered “Godhead

exemplifies the property of triunity” or “Godhead is triune.” The triune Son argument is,

therefore, informally invalid due to equivocation.114 Within the context of divine

oneness, ‘God’ signifies the divine essence or community yet, within the context of the

divinity of the persons, ‘God’ refers to the property being-divine. ‘Person’ performs an

112 Wierenga, “Trinity and Polytheism,” 289-290. See the section titled “The Problem of

Uncreedality” in chapter 4, below.

113 ‘God’ in TS2 functions as a common noun on the type reading, in accordance with Gregory of Nyssa’s contention that names cannot signify God, as such: “Most men think that the word ‘Godhead’ is used in a peculiar degree in respect of nature: and just as the heaven, or the sun, or any other of the constituent parts of the universe are denoted by proper names which are significant of the subjects, so they say that in the case of the Supreme and Divine nature, the word ‘Godhead’ is fitly adapted to that which it represents to us, as a kind of special name. We, on the other hand, following the suggestions of Scripture have learnt that that nature is unnameable and unspeakable, and we say that every term either invented by the custom of men, or handed down to us by the Scriptures, is indeed explanatory of our conceptions of the Divine Nature, but does not include the signification of that nature itself” (“To Ablabius: On ‘Not Three Gods,’” 332). Cross remarks that, for Gregory, “‘God’ refers properly not to the divine persons—not to the collection of them, and not even properly to the Father—but to the divine substance or (as we would say) essence” (“Gregory of Nyssa on Universals,” Vigiliae Christianae 56 [2002]: 408; the emphasis is Cross’s) or Godhead.

114 Regarding the susceptibility to equivocation, Power remarks that “as a name, the term ‘God’ is syntactically more ambiguous than the ‘Yahweh,’ for spelled with a lower case ‘g’ it becomes a predicate” (“Symbolic Logic and the Doctrine of the Trinity,” 37).

individuative function, embodying the unique attributes and relations which

ontologically segregate individuals of the same kind.115

The type reading suggests a triune distribution of divine attributes, a divine

attribute principle:

Every divine attribute is predicated of each divine person; each divine person exemplifies every divine attribute.

Any predication of the form “God exemplifies {divine attribute a}” is equivalent to the

following set of distinct predications:

(DA1) The Father exemplifies {divine attribute a}.

(DA2) The Son exemplifies {divine attribute a}.

(DA3) The Holy Spirit exemplifies {divine attribute a}.

The divine attribute principle is different than the principle that the Father, Son,

and Spirit co-exemplify the divine attributes and individually exemplify unshared, or

personal, properties.116 Type theorists maintain that the Father, Son, and Spirit, as

distinct divine beings, individually and maximally exemplify the divine attributes, or

essential great-making properties such as holiness, omnipotence, omniscience, and

omnibenevolence, which are personalizing properties; that is, any being that

exemplifies a divine attribute is necessarily personal. The difference between non-

personalizing and personalizing properties is seen, for example, in the difference

between a boulder’s power, in terms of sheer weight and potential energy, to crush a car

and the power to intentionally crush a car with a boulder. The former power is

exemplified by material beings, while the latter power is exemplified by persons. An all-

115 Ibid., 38-39.

116 David Meyer, “Teaching the Trinity,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 67 (2003): 288-289.

powerful being exemplifies perfect and maximal personal power. Indeed, any all-

knowing or all-loving being must be personal. As Swinburne reasons, necessary

omniscience and omnipotence is sufficient for personhood—specifically, having beliefs

and the ability to perform intentional actions.117 For type theorists, the divine

community encompasses three tropes of holiness, three tropes of omnipotence, three

tropes of omniscience, and three tropes of omnibenevolence, distributed among three

divine persons.118 Hence, the type reading of the Athanasian Creed: “The Father is a

divine person, the Son is a divine person, the Holy Spirit is a divine person; and yet

there are not three Godheads, but there is one Godhead.”

Regrettably, this is tritheism. What prevents type theorists from professing that

“the Father is a god, the Son a god, the Holy Spirit a god; and yet there are not three

divine communities, but there is one divine community,” insofar as ‘God’ in TT1-3 is

read as a count noun: a term that can be modified by an indefinite article (e.g., Exodus

32:1: “Come, make us a god who will go before us”) or a number (e.g., Malachi 2:10:

“Has not one God created us?”) and has a plural form (e.g., Genesis 35:2: “Put away the

foreign gods which are among you”)? After all, what is a divine person in this case, if not

a god? As Brower notes, “there is no evidence that the early Church fathers would accept

any sharp distinction between being a God and being divine. On the contrary, they

117 Richard Swinburne, “Could There Be More than One God?,” Faith and Philosophy 5 (1988):

225-226.

118 In contrast, the Athanasian Creed indicates that the Father, Son, and Spirit co-exemplify the divine attributes: “There are not three eternal, but one eternal; just as there are not three increates or three infinites, but one increate and one infinite… [and] there are not three almighties, but one almighty.” Tertullian also specified that the Father, Son, and Spirit are “three, however, not in condition, but in degree; not in substance, but in form; not in power, but in aspect; yet of one substance, and of one condition, and of one power” (Against Praxeas, 2; the emphasis is mine). So, too, Augustine states that “the omnipotent Father, the omnipotent Son, and the omnipotent Holy Spirit… are not three omnipotents, but one omnipotent” (On the Trinity, 8, preface).

would appear to think of multiple Gods as requiring the existence of multiple divine

beings.”119 How, then, are gods fewer than divine persons as per divine oneness, on the

type reading?120

Proponents of the type reading may respond, “the Father, Son, and Spirit are

divine persons or ‘gods,’ with a lowercase ‘g,’ but none is the inimitable Christian ‘God,’

with an uppercase ‘g.’ And God (no divine person being excluded) is the proper object of

Christian worship and piety.” God is, after all, “that than which nothing greater can be

conceived,” as Anselm of Canterbury realized; and the community of divine persons is

greater than any single divine person. Accordingly, ‘God’ signifies the matchless society

of the Father, Son, and Spirit.121 The burden of this maneuver is to ascertain whether the

divine society is a perfect being in the relevant sense.122 C. Stephen Layman posits that

(1) “x is God if and only if x is the Supreme Being” in a monarchial or magisterial, rather

than ontological, sense and (2) “it is the Community of divine selves that is Lord—not

any of the individual divine selves,” which suggests that the community is greater than

any person.123 Yet each member of the Trinity maximally exemplifies the divine

attributes, including omnipotence, omniscience, and moral perfection. The community

119 Brower, “The Problem with Social Trinitarianism: A Reply to Wierenga,” 299.

120 Macnamara, Reyes, and Reyes, “Logic and the Trinity,” 7 and Wierenga, “Trinity and Polytheism,” 291.

121 See, for example, Layman: “The Father is worthy of worship, but He isn’t the community of divine selves. And hence, He is not (strictly speaking) God. The same goes, of course, for the Son and the Holy Spirit” (“Tritheism and the Trinity,” 295; the emphasis is Layman’s) and Wierenga: “Something is a God just in case it is God…. [and] a thing is identical with God just in case it is a trinity of divine persons” (“Trinity and Polytheism,” 291; the emphasis is Wierenga’s).

122 Carey, “Social Trinitarianism and Polytheism,” 102.

123 Layman, “Tritheism and the Trinity,” 291 and 296. The emphasis is Layman’s.

cannot be greater—more omnipotent, more omniscient, and more morally perfect—than

any individual.124

In order to establish the supremacy of the Trinity over the Father, Son, and

Spirit, Layman conjectures that the divine persons are jointly, but not independently,

maximally great. Just as the musketeer Athos is more powerful in alliance with Aramis

and Porthos—being able to realize certain states of affairs with the assistance of his

companions which are unattainable for any individual musketeer, such as defeating

Cardinal Richelieu’s guards in combat—so the Father, on Layman’s view, is more

powerful, knowledgeable, and good in partnership with the Son and Spirit. Whether

Layman’s proposal is tolerably biblical or creedal, it is doubtful that musketeer

trinitarianism adequately incorporates TT7. Traditionalists, no doubt, will remain

unconvinced. As Augustine announced,

One man is not as much as three men together; and two men are something more than one man: and in equal statues, three together amount to more of gold than each singly, and one amounts to less of gold than two. But in God it is not so; for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit together is not a greater essence than the Father alone or the Son alone; but these three substances or persons, if they must be so called, together are equal to each singly: which the natural man does not comprehend.125

Worshippers will wonder, as well, whether the divine community is the proper object of

Christian reverence. Does not the church venerate a Divine Subject, joining Israel in

praise: “Truly he is good, truly his loving-kindness is everlasting” (2 Chronicles 7:3)?

Once again, a central biblical theme restrains the centers of consciousness view.

125 Augustine, On the Trinity, 7.6.11. Compare 8.1.2-8.2.3.

Type theorists cannot rejoin that “Godhead is the divine being as Godhead, rather

than any divine person, is triune.” Godhead—the divine essence or community—does

not exemplify triunity, per se, and cannot be God in a concrete sense since, presumably,

that which is God exemplifies divinity. If Godhead were to exemplify the divine

attributes, as do the divine persons, he would be a fourth, personal instance of deity.126

What, however, might ground the unity of the divine persons—Godhead, Father, Son,

and Spirit—such that God is a Quaternity and not a mere quadriad? To posit that four

divine persons subsist in Super-Godhead only exacerbates the problem since,

presumably, Super Godhead would also exemplify the divine attributes, and the iterative

proliferation of divine persons would not cease with five, personal instances of deity

subsisting in Super-duper-Godhead. Yet if Godhead is not personal, holy, omnipotent,

omniscient, or omnibenevolent, how is it worthy of worship? “Who ought we to

worship?” arises from religious propriety; “what ought we to worship?” rings of

paganism. And so, “there is one personal, perfect, and infinite creator, redeemer, and

judge of the world” is a better rendition of TT7 than “there is one divine essence or

community.” Not to mention, the distinction between ‘God,’ understood to be the divine

essence or community, and ‘gods,’ understood to be the divine persons, is implausible.

In affirming that “there are not three gods,” the fathers were not denying that there are

three divine essences or communities of gods, as no one submitted that the Father, Son,

and Spirit are one divine essence or community among others. Nor does the Creed state

that “there are not three ‘Gods,’ although there are three ‘gods’” or consent that

126 Plantinga, “Gregory of Nyssa and the Social Analogy of the Trinity,” 349-350.

Christian monotheism is consistent with a nonstandard and technical form of

polytheism.127

The type reading acknowledges the comparable divinity of the Father, Son, and

Spirit and upholds their individuation. Type theorists who wish to articulate

trinitarianism must espouse divine oneness such that the unity of the divine persons

corresponds to that which metaphysicians have termed ‘being,’ not ‘state of affairs’ or

‘event.’ The quasi-generic model is intended to secure the consistency of the type

reading without collapsing into tritheism provided that the unity of the divine persons

resembles sameness of species, except that TT1-3 must not denote that the Father, Son,

and Spirit have singular tropes of divinity.128 Whereas the quasi-identity model revises

divine oneness so as to avoid the threat of numerical identity, the quasi-generic model

revises the individuation of the Father, Son, and Spirit so as to avoid particularization in

that “is God” in TT1-3 is thought to exceed essential property exemplification.

‘Perichoresis’ (perixw/rhsij), according to which the divine persons are supposed

to co-inhere, indwell, and interpenetrate one another, permitting a co-exemplification of

attributes, is invoked as the solution to the problem of particularization and means by

which the unity of the divine persons is conceived to be more like identity than property

exemplification. Ancient statements of perichoresis—including those of Maximus the

Confessor and John of Damascus—involved sophisticated appraisals of the metaphysics

of mixture, whereas social trinitarians, in recent decades, have depicted the mutual

127 Brower, “The Problem with Social Trinitarianism: A Reply to Wierenga,” 299-300 and Carey,

“Social Trinitarianism and Polytheism,” 102-103.

128 On the development of the quasi-generic theory, see Johannes Zachhuber, “Basil and the Three-hypostases Tradition: Reconsidering the Origins of Cappadocian Theology,” Zeitschrift Fur Antikes Christentum 5 (2001): 65-85.

indwelling of the Father, Son, and Spirit as a joyous divine society, sharing unguarded

love. In either case, proponents appeal to mixture theory or love as a symbol of the ontic

equality of the persons and illustration of consubstantiality: the conditio sine qua non of

orthodox Christological and trinitarian theology. But, despite its charming and ardent

depiction of divine confluence and accord, perichoresis remains an exceedingly vague

doctrine. The quasi-generic model, in addition, deemphasizes the familial relationship

suggested by the names ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ since the unity of the divine persons is

modeled on property exemplification rather than emergence from the Father. As a

result, the processions of the Son and Spirit become superfluous.

Tritheism among the Heretical Options

The church recognized, in opposition to gnostic polytheism, that creation and

redemption are inseparable; in opposition to modalism, that creation, redemption, and

sanctification are distinct; and, in opposition to subordinationism, that Jesus Christ is

both true God, as icon of the Father, and true man, since that which is healed must be

assumed.129 The divine persons are not ontologically graded, such that the Father alone

is true God (contrary to TT2-3); they are not numerically identical, such that the Father

is the Son and Spirt (contrary to TT4-6); and they are not particularized, such that there

are three gods (contrary to TT7). The Father, Son, and Spirit, though individuals, are

mutually acknowledged to be indivisible Deity. Yet both divine threeness and divine

oneness are, paradoxically, substantial. It is quite natural, then, to imagine either that

the individual substances of the Father, Son, and Spirit originate in the substance God

129 Geoffrey Wainwright, “The Doctrine of the Trinity: Where the Church Stands or Falls,”

Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 45 (1991): 131.

or that the substance of God is a synthesis of the substances of the Father, Son, and

Spirit.

In spite of this, the Father-Son relationship constrains a numerical identity

interpretation of the Father-Spirit relationship and the Father-Spirit relationship

constrains a particularized interpretation of the Father-Son relationship. Though the

Father-Spirit relationship is susceptible to a numerical identity interpretation and the

Father-Son relationship to particularization, the parity of the Son and Spirit suggests

that the ambiguous individuation of the Father and Spirit is as explicit as the

individuation of the Son from the Father in generation. Likewise, the ambiguous

identicalness of the Father and Son is as explicit as the identicalness of the Father and

Spirit, in which the Spirit is the Spirit of God who proceeds, or spirates, from the

Father, to cite the traditional terminology. Conversely, the unity of the Father, Son, and

Spirit is not the unity of a natural kind wherein the divine persons independently

exemplify divinity.

Such rudimentary considerations are not, however, an account. The quasi-

creational model implies that the Son and Spirit are ontologically inferior to the Father.

Assuming that subordinationism is not inevitable, emanationist theories equivocally

postulate that the Father is both a distinct divine person and the unity of the Trinity.

But, as Cross observes, since the Son does not exemplify the Father’s property of

generating the Son, the Father has a property which the Son lacks, contrary to the idea

that the Father, as the divine substratum, confers all his properties to the Son.

Consequently, the Father is more than the unity of the Trinity as the divine substratum.

He is a sharer in the divine essence.130 The Father, as the producer of the Son and Spirit

is, not the divine substance which is immanent to the Son and Spirit, but either a co-

exemplar of the divine essence (by way of analogy without implying particularization),

as per the quasi-generic model, or co-identical with the Son and Spirit to the divine

being (by way of analogy without implying identity), as per the quasi-identity model. Yet

in reasoning that the impartible God contributes his entire being to the Son and Spirit,

the quasi-identity model expounds the shared divinity of the persons by means of

relative identity—a dubious logical notion which lacks unequivocal examples. In

contrast, the quasi-generic model compares divine oneness to the unity of co-specific

individuals. The Christian God, nonetheless, appears polytheistic to the degree that

divine oneness is regarded an essence, universal, or species. And such a supplementary

metaphysical item effectively diminishes the processions of the Son and Spirit, which

are traditionally integral to trinitarian oneness.

David Meyer astutely comments that “originally the creeds blazed a trail between

modalism and subordinationism. Today, creeds are viewed as passing between tritheism

and modalism.”131 For ancient Christians, who abhorred the decadence of pagan

worship, divine oneness was non-negotiable. Unambiguous theological coherence was

130 Cross, “On Generic and Derivation Views of God’s Trinitarian Substance,” 469-471.

131 Meyer, “Teaching the Trinity,” 293. The earliest proponents of trinitarianism did not, however, overlook the spectrum from modalism to tritheism. Consider Tertullian’s remark: “My assertion is that the Father is one, and the Son one, and the Spirit one, and that they are distinct from each other. That statement is taken in a wrong sense by every uneducated as well as every perversely disposed person, as if it predicated a diversity, in such a sense as to imply a separation among the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit. I am, moreover, obliged to say this, when (extolling the Monarchy at the expense of the Economy) they contend for the identity of the Father and Son and Spirit, that it is not by way of diversity that the Son differs from the Father, but by distribution: it is not by division that he is different, but by distinction; because the Father is not the same as the Son, since they differ one from the other in mode of their being” (Against Praxeas, 9).

found in either modalism or ontological subordinationism. And in response to the

enormous threat posed by ontological subordinationism, polemicists stressed the

religious import of venerating Jesus as true God. In avoiding the Arian pole of Christian

theology, interpreters are driven to the divinity of the persons and the theoretical space

between modalism and polytheism. The quasi-generic model charts the space nearest to

polytheism by exploiting theories of property exemplification and appealing to

perichoresis as the mechanism of divine oneness.

CHAPTER 2 — FROM MYSTERY TO THEORY

The prolegomenal concerns of theology are whether Deity yields to metaphysical

analysis; whether the Source of Being is a being; whether it is possible to delineate the

divine substance and attributes; whether God is rationally comprehensible, at least in

part; and whether we can speak of God, an sich. The Transcendent One breaks free of all

semantic strictures, so we are told. In the words of Nazianzen, “it is difficult to conceive

God, but to define him in words is an impossibility.”132 What, therefore, do the

statements “God is one being in three persons” or “God is three persons in one being”

mean? How does the grammar of trinitarianism function?

Mystery

Christian theology stresses that significant features of reality are only partially

comprehensible and intractably impenetrable; mysteries that yield precious religious

insights while remaining conceptually irrepressible. The Trinity is the paradigmatic

theological mystery, and mysteries—reasonably-held beliefs or items of knowledge in

which the principal content surpasses the believer’s ability to conceptualize—have been

characterized in various ways. Theologians of the Trinity have attempted to demonstrate

that, while partially inexplicit, the doctrine yields important entailments for Christian

faith and is, in the least, non-contradictory since no contradiction is reasonably held.

Theological mysteries can be characterized in two ways: utter mystery and ultimate

mystery.

132 Gregory of Nazianzus, “The Theological Orations” in Christology of the Later Fathers, ed.

Edward Rochie Hardy (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Westminster John Knox Press, 1977), 138.

Utter Mystery

An utter mystery is a concept or doctrine suffering a poverty of intelligible

content that is wholly beyond human understanding and absolutely insoluble. Although

utter mysteries involve incongruous claims, the offensiveness of theological

contradiction dissipates, the mysterian hopes, with proper tutoring, as the student

uncovers insights despite inconsistency.133 In this vein, Elizabeth Johnson advises that

“the great minds of classical theology were aware of the poetic nature of ‘person’ when

we speak of the Trinity…. Using ‘person’ of the Trinity today needs to go hand in hand

with knowing that we do not understand.”134 Utter mysterianism about the Trinity,

nevertheless, prompts two questions. Why should we think that the problem of the

Trinity is entirely impenetrable? And how does trinitarianism differ from sheer

nonsense? It is tempting to excuse one’s own theological ambiguities as profundity while

charging those who tolerate unfamiliar mysteries with confusion.135

Must trinitarian theology comply with the law of non-contradiction: the logical

axiom that it is not the case that p and not-p, at the same time and in the same sense?

Relative identity theorists, once again, insist that trinitarianism need not comply with

the universal application of the indiscernibility of identicals. Perhaps the law of non-

contradiction is comparably restricted. Why cannot reality be such that there is and is

not only one God? “Where,” after all, “is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is

the debater of this age?” Where is the logician? “Has not God made foolish the wisdom

133 Dale Tuggy, “On Positive Mysterianism,” International Journal of Philosophy of Religion 69

(2011): 209.

134 Elizabeth A. Johnson, “To Let the Symbol Sing Again,” Theology Today 54 (1997): 305

From Mystery to Theory

of the world” (1 Corinthians 1:20)? Does not theology, as queen of the sciences, wield

authority over philosophy, her servant?136

Prima facie, to accept the truth of one contradiction is to accept the truth of all

contradictions. What is more, any claim follows from any contradiction by a series of

immediate inferences. Consider the trivial atheism argument (TA):

(TA1) There is precisely one God and there is not precisely one God.

(TA2) Therefore, there is precisely one God.

(TA3) Therefore, there is not precisely one God.

(TA4) Therefore, there is precisely one God or there is no God.

(TA5) Therefore, there is no God.

TA2 and TA3 follow from TA1 by simplification; TA4 follows from TA2 by addition; and

TA5 follows from TA3 and TA4 by disjunctive syllogism. Suffice it to say, atheism is an

ironic entailment of trinitarianism. In order to avoid trivialism, one might venture to

formulate a paraconsistent logic which admits TA1 while barring other contradictions,

thereby attaining general, although incomplete, consistency. The principle challenge is

to achieve containment, permitting the believer to entertain a marginally intelligible and

religiously serviceable notion of God. Yet, should it prove feasible, paraconsistent

trinitarianism would nullify theology mystery, being both systematically irrelevant—in

that it is unrelated (and impossible to relate) to any other doctrine—and individually

irrelevant—in that it is literally meaningless for one who purports to believe.

136 In favor of utter mysterianism about the Trinity, see David S. Cunningham, These Three Are

One: The Practice of Trinitarian Theology (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, Inc., 1998). Compare the responses of Randal Rauser, “Is the Trinity a True Contradiction?,” Quodlibet Journal 4 (2002), http://www.quodlibet.net/articles/rauser-trinity.shtml and Meyer, “Teaching the Trinity,” 288-294.

Surely, Christians ought to affirm that divine triunity is a mystery. God is the

infinite, transcendent cause of our universe, ground of our being, and providential

director of our future. Neither are his thoughts our thoughts nor are his ways our ways

(Isaiah 55:8). Although the believer refrains from recklessly presuming to fathom God

in his repletive immensity and declares with Job, “I am insignificant; what can I reply to

you? I lay my hand on my mouth” (Job 40:4), Christian piety esteems God the object of

eternal enjoyment, wonder, and discovery, yielding ever satisfying comprehension.

Divine mystery is epistemically open, inviting inquiry and surrendering insights. It is

not denuded of its appeal with the advent of revelation, as when a friend spoils the

reading of a whodunit by divulging that “the butler did it.”137 Awe and wonder remain.

Paraconsistent trinitarianism, in contrast, is epistemically closed, stalling inquiry.

Divine triunity, in the latter case, is explained in exactly the same way as any other true

contradiction, as nothing more can be said on the matter.138 Yet at the heart of divine

mysteriousness rests the conviction that nothing can be explained in exactly the same

way as God. Christian theology cannot uphold God’s radical uniqueness and avoid the

logical problem of the Trinity by means of paraconsistency.

Also at the heart of divine mysteriousness rests the conviction that God, as triune,

is eminently significant to Christian life, community, and proclamation. But

paraconsistent trinitarianism renders the Trinity conceptually irrelevant to the rest of

Christian doctrine, being related to non-contradictory canons of theology by trivial

137 Steven D. Boyer, “The Logic of Mystery,” Religious Studies 43 (2007): 93.

138 Rauser, “Is the Trinity a True Contradiction?”

entailment.139 The manner in which the Trinity is relevant to piety and systematics is

debatable, whether it is non-trivially relevant is not. Utter mysterianism is religiously

unserviceable, as toleration of contradictions leads to a dead end for theology. Insofar as

it is regarded a true contradiction, the doctrine of the Trinity is literally meaningless.

Suppose that God creates a square circle: a two dimensional figure that exemplifies the

properties being-a-square and being-a-circle, even though being-a-square entails being-

not-a-circle, and vice versa. The theological statement SC: “God has created a square

circle” would be almost entirely meaningless, except that God made something. Perhaps

God would know the meaning and significance of SC, but one cannot be a believer since

one cannot entertain consistent beliefs about square circles.140 Assuming that it

amounts to more than the confession that “God is something,” trinitarianism must

encompass significant intelligible content. The Trinity is, arguably, an ultimate mystery,

according to the Christian tradition: a concept or doctrine that is broadly

comprehensible, though beyond human fathoming on final analysis.

Ultimate Mystery

Ultimate mysterianism, while guardedly optimistic about the viability of

constructive projects in trinitarian theology given the broad intelligibility of God’s

nature, acknowledges that a comprehensive account of divine triunity and solution to

the logical problem escapes our rational grasp due to an overabundance of revelational

content, dearth of pertinent, systematizing content, and cognitive distance from Deity.

139 Ibid.

140 David Basinger, “Biblical Paradox: Does Revelation Challenge Logic?,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 30 (1987): 208.

Mystery, being “enigmatically larger or deeper than our knowledge of it,”141 is

illuminable and ostensible paradoxes are eliminable, allowing supplementary

revelation, although an acute sense of religious wonder remains.142 “Oh, the depth of the

riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments

and unfathomable his ways” (Romans 11:33). The challenge is to ascertain the boundary

between intelligibility and mystery.143

141 Boyer, “The Logic of Mystery,” 91.

142 Boyer, following Bernard Verkamp (in Senses of Mystery: Religious and Non-Religious [Scranton, Pennsylvania: University of Scranton Press, 1997]), delineates investigative mystery and mystērion, or revelational mystery in ibid., 89-102. Investigative mysteries are whodunits, insofar as their explanations are unknown, in which subtle clues are uncovered and assembled. Certain investigative questions of theology may be resolved—for example, conundrums about the relationship between divine providence and human freedom or the existence of evil given divine benevolence. Revelational mysteries encompass unknown realities of a religious nature, the undisclosed council of God and secrets of the kingdom, which remain too profound to diffuse and retain enigmatic qualities, even after their explanations are known. Ultimate mysterianism involves revelational mysteries.

143 LaCugna insists that ultimate mystery is properly termed ‘paradox’: “By mystery theologians mean the incomprehensibility of God as God. The term is never used to refer to a provisional state of knowledge. Therefore, while it is true that God is (absolute) mystery, it is not true that a doctrine is a mystery. Doctrines are simply doctrines, that is, human formulations which are meant to shed light on religious experience” (“Philosophers and Theologians on the Trinity,” 175; the emphasis is LaCugna’s). She charges S. Davis (in Logic and the Nature of God, 132-133), moreover, with “equivocat[ing] between ‘mystery’ and ‘doctrine’” and “inaccurately stat[ing] that Christians believe that the doctrine was ‘revealed’ by God” (175). Certainly, while theologians generally observe LaCugna’s distinction between mystery and paradox, God has unveiled the doctrine of the Trinity through prophetic disclosures (Mark 4:11; cf., Ephesians 3:3) and the advent of his Son (Hebrews 1:1-3). Robert Reymond, for instance, states that “the church has propounded its distinctive view of the tripersonality of the one true God, not because it became enamored of Greek thought or followed a spurious hermeneutic but because it was conceived that the Trinity is a revealed doctrine—not in the sense that it lies before us on the pages of Scripture as a ‘formulated doctrine’ but in the sense that it appears therein in the form of ‘fragmentary allusions’” (A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, 2nd ed. [Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, Inc. 1998], 206; the emphasis is Reymond’s). Propositional and personal revelation of God in Christ forms the basis of trinitarian dogma. See Fred Sanders, “Trinitarian Theology’s Exegetical Basis: A Dogmatic Survey,” Midwestern Journal of Theology 8.2/9.1 (2010): 78-90. Should the use of ‘mystery,’ as applied to the doctrine of the Trinity, occasion confusion, we might speak of divine triunity as a ‘paradox,’ ‘antinomy,’ or ‘puzzle.’ Not all mysteries, however, are paradoxes, antinomies, or puzzles. Whereas mysterious, traversing the boundaries of perspicuous comprehension, the mechanisms of creation ex nihilo and the resurrection, for example, are neither actual nor apparent contradictions, as ‘paradox’ seemingly denotes.

The question of intelligibility pivots on whether, and in which sense, the doctrine

of the Trinity is relevant to theology as a whole. But “does the Trinity need to be

relevant?,” Kilby asks.

What kind of relevance does it need to have? The doctrine of the Trinity arose in order to affirm certain things about the divinity of Christ, and, secondarily, of the Spirit, and it arose against a background assumption that God is one. So one could say that as long as Christians continue to believe in the divinity of Christ and the Spirit, and as long as they continue to believe that God is one, then the doctrine is alive and well.144

But doctrines assemble in “conceptual clusters.”145 The deliverances of the doctrine of

sin bear upon the doctrine of salvation. The doctrine of the Spirit is foundational to the

doctrine of sanctification. Likewise, the Trinity, being the Christian conception of God,

presumably has implications for the entire dogmatic system.

Karl Barth emphasized the significance of the Trinity for the doctrine of

revelation, in that the Father, Son, and Spirit constitute God’s threefold self-disclosure

as Lord, as the single divine “Thou” encountered by the human “I” in events of

revelation.146 Likewise, Rahner asserted that the Father, as Fount of Divinity, freely

communicates himself by means of his Word—not in an act of efficient causation (contra

subordinationism) but “in a quasi-formal causality he really and in the strict sense of the

144 Kilby, “Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrines of the Trinity,” 442-443.

The emphasis is Kilby’s.

145 Plantinga, “The Threeness/Oneness Problem of the Trinity,” 37.

146 Moltmann responds that establishing the doctrine of the Trinity upon the unified lordship of God “arises out of a preliminary hermeneutical decision which is in itself questionable, and needs to be tested against the testimony of the New Testament.” He asks, “is God’s lordship really what has to be interpreted, and is the Trinity merely its interpretation? Does the sole sovereignty of the one God precede the divine Trinity? Is it not the reverse which is true? Is the history of the divine lordship not an interpretation of the eternal life of the triune God” (The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, 63)? In other words, Barthian personal individuation puts the cart of divine lordship before the horse of divine triunity.

word bestows himself”147—materializing in history as God incarnate. The Spirit appears

as the facilitator of the Father’s self-communication, stimulating reception of the Word.

Hence the processions of the Son and Spirit are the communication of the Father.148

Trinitarian theology is the church’s faithful response to God’s self-disclosure.149 In such

a manner, the Trinity can be related to the doctrine of revelation.

Moreover, trinitarianism is bound to the doctrine of Christ. Once again, for

Rahner, diversity within the soteriological economy reveals essential hypostatic

differences. Nothing which can be said univocally of the Father, Son, and Spirit is a

matter of their respective individuality. “In God everything is identically one whenever

we are not speaking of… the three persons.”150 Anything which may be predicated of a

particular divine person cannot be predicated of another and, likewise, any act of

expression undertaken by a particular divine person cannot be accomplished by another

(or, perhaps, cannot be accomplished in the same manner), which is especially

significant with regard to the incarnation, being uniquely suitable to the Son. Should

incarnation be predicated of Father or Spirit, being-incarnate would not reflect the

essential character of the Son. The distinctive expressions of the Father and Spirit are

necessarily non-incarnational. Hence, the incarnation of Christ must be conceived of as

Word-becoming-flesh explicitly, rather than God-becoming-flesh, simpliciter.

148 In defense of Rahnerian trinitarianism against the charge of modalism, see Pugliese, “Is Karl Rahner a Modalist?,” 229-249.

149 Robert W. Jenson, “Response to Timo Tavast,” Pro Ecclesia 19 (2010): 369.

He contended, as well, that “no adequate distinction can be made between the

doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the economy of salvation.”151 Trinitarian

theology is, in large measure, an expression of the Christian experience of redemption,

as evinced by the invocation of the threefold name of God at baptism.152 The disciples

handled the Son, who appeared in human flesh to atone for our sins, and witnessed the

Spirit, who descended as a dove and tongues of fire to draw us to repentance. To know

God as redeemer is to know him as spiritual and forgiving Father, incarnate and saving

Son, and outpoured and sanctifying Spirit. Apart from the mystery of the Trinity, the

entirety of the Christian proclamation, and particularly the message of salvation, is

senseless. Divine triunity is, therefore, supremely relevant to humanity.

In that it conveys the Christian understanding of Deity, trinitarianism has

significant implications for other doctrines of Christian theology. If the Trinity is

relevant, it contains intelligible content, as reality proscribes sheer inconsistencies.

Indeed, Christian theology may violate logical principles that are widely believed to be

valid, but cannot violate logical principles per se, since logic pertains to that which is

real, and nothing real transcends reality.153 A theological mystery may be an apparent

contradiction, but cannot be an actual contradiction.

151 Ibid., 24.

152 Douglas F. Ottati, “Being Trinitarian: The Shape of Saving Faith,” The Christian Century 112 (1995): 1046 and Wainwright, “The Doctrine of the Trinity: Where the Church Stands or Falls,” 117.

153 Van Inwagen adds that, “Christians are committed to the thesis that if an essential Christian doctrine violates some principle of reasoning, then that principle is not logically correct, however many reputable professional logicians believe it to be logically correct” (“Three Persons in One Being: On Attempts to Show that the Doctrine of the Trinity Is Self-Contradictory,” 87). His own account of the Trinity, in fact, “rests on the contention that certain rules of logical inference that are commonly supposed to be valid are not in fact valid, that these rules must be replaced by other rules, rules that are valid, and that the doctrine of the Trinity does not violate any valid rule of logical inference” (88; the emphasis is van Inwagen’s).

David Basinger demurs:

The widespread use of the phrase ‘apparent contradiction’ is inappropriate. The Biblical truths in question are either contradictory from a human perspective or they are not. If such truths really are contradictory from a human perspective, then at the human level they must be viewed on a logical par with concepts such as square circles… The fact that God has presented us with such truths is irrelevant. They remain meaningless at our level, whatever may be the case for God.154

His expectation for discerning a perspicuous account is, perhaps, too high. One might

rationally accept the Trinity apart from a solution to the logical problem, insofar as she

is justified in (1) believing the individual propositions of trinitarianism and (2) believing

that their incompatibility is merely apparent.155 Trinitarians insist that the biblical data

supporting TT1-7 are exegetically sound and divinely inspired. Provided that the basic

propositions of trinitarian theology are biblical, and that which is biblical is “God-

breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16), the believer may be justified with regard to (1). And having

particularly strong grounds for (1) motivates (2), which is strengthened when (3) one

might reasonably expect to encounter an apparent contradiction in Christian theology

and (4) is armed with a possible distinction that serves to delineate divergent senses of

an inexplicit theological term.156

Consider the following apparently contradictory claims (AC):

(AC1) Paul is content in prison.

(AC2) Paul is discontent in prison.

154 Basinger, “Biblical Paradox: Does Revelation Challenge Logic?,” 212.

156 Anderson, “In Defense of Mystery: A Reply to Dale Tuggy,” 148-154. Anderson employs the appellation “merely apparent contradiction resulting from unarticulated equivocation” (MACRUE).

The conjunction of AC1 and AC2 seems to be a bald contradiction. Suppose,

however, that Paul is frustrated with his inability to freely preach but gratified that God

is using his incarceration to further the Gospel. His discontentedness pertains to his

constraints whereas his contentedness pertains to his position within God’s providential

purposes (e.g., Philippians 1:12-26). Suppose, further, that Silas overhears Paul

reporting both AC1 and AC2 to his amanuensis but is oblivious to the distinct

applications which he intends. Silas may, nonetheless, trust in Paul’s usual lucidity and

knack for distinctions, believing that AC1 and AC2 are consistent in some sense.

Contentedness is, after all, a disposition with various connotations. Silas may, therefore,

rationally believe the conjunction of AC1 and AC2 without accepting a contradiction:

“Paul is content in one sense, but discontent in another sense, although I can’t say how,

exactly.”

Arguably, no explicit inconsistency with regard to the doctrine of the Trinity can

be extracted from the biblical text. Christians might reasonably expect that “present

conceptual limitations (possibly temporary) in our noetic apparatus” render us

incapable of making distinctions necessary for a “logically perspicuous” formulation of

divine triunity.157 Our logical tools—including notions of being, identity, and

individuation—may be too crude at present to make the incisive distinctions required by

revelation. Christians confess, like Silas considering AC1 and AC2, “God is one in one

sense and three in another sense, although we can’t specify divine triunity with absolute

precision.”

157 Ibid., 153.

By the thirteenth century, scholastics generally recognized that God and

creatures share neither genus nor attributes. The longstanding suspicion that

theological affirmations traverse the limits of reason has it that our concepts and

intuitions collapse as we endeavor to grasp the Infinite Transcendent; and that our

sense of incomprehension is intensified, and latent theological paradoxes are

exacerbated, as we reflect upon divine otherness. One may suspect, therefore, that our

depictions of God will prove deficient in light of his profound dissimilarity to creation.

In spite of this, the doctrine of divine transcendence permits various interpretations

given the uniqueness of God and the inherent limitations of human thought.

According to the utter mysterian construal, God can be neither known nor

described in the manner of mundane beings. He is not regarded as an accessible object

of knowledge and, as a consequence, theology is not considered a genuine science.

Divine mysteriousness, however, is a relational property rather than a monadic

property, as God knows himself perfectly. He is mysterious to finite cognizers and it is

his prerogative to reveal himself despite our epistemic distance. Although he is

ultimately incomprehensible, God is not utterly incomprehensible. It is plausible, in any

case, that we are epistemically ill-positioned to address certain questions relevant to the

Infinite Source of being.158 Thus, divine mystery, which resists unmitigated

comprehension by virtue of its quantitative vastness, qualitative complexity, and

transcendent depth, persists, like realizing that there are more stars than can be seen on

158 William Alston, “Two Cheers for Mystery!” in God and the Ethics of Belief: New Essays in

Philosophy of Religion, ed. Andrew Dole and Andrew Chignell (New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 100.

a clear night.159 Although God is partially revealed in Scripture and creation, his

immeasurable being cannot be entirely expressed to, or grasped by, humanity.160 With

regard to (3), Christian theology invites expectations of “some things hard to

understand, which the untaught and unstable distort” (2 Peter 3:16). Both eastern

theology, being inclined toward antinomy, and western theology, being inclined toward

analogy, appreciate that divine transcendence strains our conceptualizations of Deity

and canons of logic.161 The Christian knows God as he provides light by which we

perceive. And in perceiving, even dimly, we enjoy union with him. God’s purpose in

disclosing himself to the human intellect is to realize an experiential, participatory

knowledge of him. Knowledge about God, pursued faithfully, produces knowledge of

Even so, one may remain suspicious of (3). Initially, we wonder why divine

triunity is ultimately incomprehensible. After all, God determines our epistemic access

to his being.162 In reply, ultimate mysterians advise that an apparent theological

contradiction need not be considered an intractable paradox, but a provisional dilemma

159 Boyer distinguishes ‘extensive,’ ‘facultative,’ and ‘dimensional’ categories of revelational

mystery in “The Logic of Mystery,” 94-97. Extensive mysteries quantitatively overwhelm the subject, as contemplating the plethora of stars or the sheer immensity of the universe engulfs the mind. Facultative mysteries qualitatively inundate the subject; to know love or hardship involves a non-rational, aesthetic sense that exceeds technical descriptions of courtship and poverty. And dimensional mysteries perspectively transcend the subject, as knowledge of a cylinder dimensionally transcends knowledge of a circle. The final sense is most pertinent to the Trinity.

160 Sanjay Merchant, “A Response to John H. Whittaker” in Skeptical Faith, Religion in Philosophy and Theology, no. 66, ed. Ingolf U. Dalferth and Michael Ch. Rodgers (Tubingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 154.

161 For an account of the semblance of eastern and western methods, see A.N. Williams, “The Logic of Genre: Theological Method in East and West,”679-707.

162 Tuggy, “On Positive Mysterianism,” 214.

arising from a temporary dearth of systematizing information and the noetic effects of

sin. God may provide additional revelation at the eschaton as he reverses the effects of

the fall.163 In other words, trinitarians can hope to attain a satisfying and overtly non-

contradictory perception of Deity by grace.164

But why would God reveal an apparent contradiction under pre-eschatological

conditions? Assuming that he will impart knowledge at the eschaton, making divine

triunity perspicuous, why reveal the Trinity as an apparent contradiction now? "It would

not serve any good purpose for him to deliberately confuse us,” Dale Tuggy avers.

“Better to dole out bits of information about him which we can understand, and which

can therefore guide our decision-making.”165 Does not the believer, seeing that the

doctrine is, at best, an apparent contradiction, possess an epistemic defeater for

trinitarianism? Far from placing it at the center of Christian theology, must not rational

individuals reject the paradox of divine triunity?

The natural inference from “the doctrine of the Trinity appears to be a

contradiction” to “the doctrine of the Trinity is a contradiction” ought to be resisted

because TT1-7 and the sub-doctrines of trinitarianism are scripturally supported.

Although their compatibility is veiled, the divinity of the persons, divine threeness, and

163 S. Davis, Logic and the Nature of God, 142.

164 Trinitarians might hope for such a perception, assuming that the Trinity is not an absolute mystery: a mystery which cannot be resolved with revelation. “If the Trinity of the essentially and forever incomprehensible God,” Rahner avowed, “is not merely an object within some neutral horizon of knowledge, if the incomprehensible God himself opens this horizon of knowledge while being himself essentially threefold, then ‘Trinity’ and ‘mystery’ belong essentially together” (Rahner, The Trinity, 50-51). Absolute mysteries derive, not from a dearth of systematizing content and the noetic effects of sin, but from the unbridgeable Creator/creature gap. Either we lack the capacity, in principle, to grasp the systematizing content, which God knows, or God exercises his prerogative to withhold the systematizing content. Although decidedly susceptible to Tuggy’s objection, both options are possible.

165 Tuggy, “On Positive Mysterianism,” 214.

divine oneness are independently vital for Christian faith. Despite the absence of

comprehensive precision, the sub-doctrines are religiously crucial to orthodoxy. “This

fact alone,” James Anderson answers, “serves to insulate the doctrine, at least to some

degree, from epistemic defeat by the mere appearance of contradiction.”166 Perhaps it is

providentially better for the believer to know the sub-doctrines without systematizing

content than to possess a categorically unambiguous but anemic vision of God. As

Rahner declared, “the Trinity is a mystery of salvation, otherwise it would never have

been revealed.”167 Anti-trinitarians are in no epistemic position to assume that it is

providentially better for the believer to be ignorant of the sub-doctrines, apart from

systematizing content.

But, supposing that God desires that we know the sub-doctrines, why not also

reveal the pertinent systematizing content, along with the noetic capacity for

understanding? While we cannot assert that God would necessarily reveal propositions

which render TT1-7 meticulously consistent, should we not imagine that God would

probably reveal such propositions? Is it not reasonable to assume that a faith devoid of

apparent contradictions is probably superior to a faith containing apparent

contradictions? Tuggy fears that “the prior probability of God inducing [apparent

contradictions] in us is either low or inscrutable.”168 So the believer is not warranted

with regard to (3).

166 Anderson, “Positive Mysterianism Undefeated: A Response to Dale Tuggy,” 3.

168 Tuggy, “On Positive Mysterianism,” 215-216.

If it is probable that, apart from grace, it is impossible to know an account of the

Trinity that does not involve an apparent contradiction then, given (1), the believer may

be warranted with regard to (3). Vlastimil Vohánka argues that, since (A), apart from

grace, no one knows an account of the Trinity that does not involve an apparent

contradiction, though (B) many have made concerted attempts to know such an

account, probably (C), apart from grace, it is impossible to know such an account.169 (A)

is supported, in part, by divine transcendence and (B) is uncontroversial. Theologians

often caution that extant accounts of the Trinity are heuristic guides rather than

perspicuous descriptions of God. Vohánka calculates the probability of (C), where (I) is

all background information other than (A) and (B) relevant to (C):

P(C|I&A&B) =

P(C|I&B) x

P(A|I&B&C) P(¬C|I&A&B) P(¬C|I&B) P(A|I&B&¬C)

Assessing the likelihood odds, it is certain that, apart from grace, no one knows an

account of the Trinity that does not involve an apparent contradiction given (I&B&C). It

is, perhaps, not improbable that, apart from grace, no one knows an account of the

Trinity that does not involve an apparent contradiction given (I&B&¬C). Still,

P(A|I&B&C) / P(A|I&B&¬C) > 1. Assessing the prior odds, it may be that, with further

theological and philosophical development, (D) someone will know an account of the

Trinity that does not involve an apparent contradiction. But we have no reason to think

that (D) is probable. Thus, P(C|I&B) / P(¬C|I&B) ≥ 1 and P(C|I&A&B) / P(¬C|I&A&B)

> 1. So, while (A) and (B) do not entail (C), (C) is probable given (A) and (B).

169 Vlastimil Vohánka, “Mysterianism about Consciousness and the Trinity,” Theologica

Olomucensia, Acta Universitatis Palackianae Olomucensis 12 (2013): 81-90.

Now, perhaps (C) because trinitarianism is false and God will never reveal

systematizing content. (C) does not, however, strongly support anti-trinitiarianism.

Again, anti-trinitarians are in no epistemic position to know that a Christian faith

devoid of apparent contradictions is devotionally or intellectually preferable to

trinitarianism, as systematizing content might conflict with other providential aims or

be incompatible with our cognitive design plan.170 For all we know, the mystery of the

Trinity induces proper worship and provides believers with the necessary means to

reflect upon the Divine Being. Perhaps God could stimulate profound reflection by

another means which does not involve an apparent contradiction, but we have no reason

to think that any other means is available or appropriate, given his ultimate intent for

humanity.

Christians, therefore, endeavor to systematize within the boundaries of God’s

revelation in Scripture, despite our rational limitations. Assuming that TT1-7 are sound,

trinitarian theologies are, principally, theo-philosophical strategies for supplementing

the exegetically derived sub-doctrines with near schematizing content. Anti-trinitarian

theologies, in contrast, are eisegetical proposals, involving the outright rejection of one

of the sub-doctrines, in which the reading of Scripture is steered by a predetermined

and overtly consistent portrait of God. The inadequacy of certain, or even all, trinitarian

accounts must not prompt theologians to renounce the sub-doctrines.

Apparent contradictions are, in principle, susceptible to exposition, with

significant implications. The law of non-contradiction need not be neglected. With

regard to (4), trinitarian theology encompasses various possibly inexplicit terms: ‘one,’

170 Anderson, “Positive Mysterianism Undefeated: A Response to Dale Tuggy,” 11-12.

‘God,’ ‘divine,’ ‘being,’ ‘substance,’ ‘individual,’ ‘person,’ and ‘nature’; with ‘God’ and

‘person’ being the most conspicuous options. Christian theologians have, by and large,

avoided the extremes of utter mystery, on one side, and a univocal account of Deity

described in the terms of conventional metaphysics, on the other,171 “purposely breaking

171 A number of affirmations are relevant to Trinitarian theology, including existence statements

(e.g., “There is one God”), predications (e.g., “The Spirit is holy”), and identity/non-identity statements (e.g., “The Father is he who sends the Son” and “The Son is not the Spirit”). The proper interpretation of theological statements concerns, not only semantic issues relevant to a distinctive set of claims, but the exposition of Christian thought, as both the affirmations of Scripture and the linguistic practices of believers are integrated within a coherent framework. Indeed, theological claims are about God, but in which sense? The spectrum of positions on religious language range from univocity, according to which religious statements are literally construed, to verificationism, according to which religious assertions are literally meaningless.

On the univocal reading of Wise(g): “God is wise,” and Wise(s): “Solomon is wise,” the intension of the term ‘wise individual’ connotes wisdom, simpliciter, while the extension encompasses the members of the class—including God and Solomon, among others—denoted by the term. Accordingly, God and Solomon, exemplifying wisdom, are wise (individuals). Univocity implies that a commonality between God and creatures justifies the equivalent use of certain terms and that demonstrative theological arguments may contain premises that are equally relevant to creatures. The viability of arguments which employ exclusively theological or metaphysical premises does not hinge upon the doctrine of univocity. Univocity does not imply that theological language is sufficient to entirely explicate God. The univocity theorist may insist that some language which is appropriate to God is metaphorical, partial, or even potentially misleading, because it is possible to positively describe God to some extent. Furthermore, univocity does not indicate that a theological account framed in univocal language is the proper account. To the extent that it is compatible with scripture, it need only be regarded as a possible account. Perhaps another univocal, scripturally-consistent account is correct, or perhaps the truth about God with regard to a particular question is ultimately beyond our ken.

On the equivocal reading, Wise(g) and Wise(s) employ semantically dissimilar predicates, despite their grammatical similarity, as the extension of “wise individual” in Wise(g) excludes Solomon. In other words, God’s wisdom bears no resemblance to Solomon’s wisdom. On the doctrine of equivocity, there can be no positive descriptions of God as he has no (1) cause, owing to his transcendence, (2) parts, (3) qualities, or (4) relations, owing to his simplicity. See Thomas Williams, “Describing God” in Robert Pasnau, ed., The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy (New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 753. For instance, the Jewish theologian Maimonides maintained, contrary to Aristotle, that actions are events rather than accidents, which is consistent with divine simplicity since events are not properties. One may respond that distinct divine actions imply distinct powers, and therefore properties, in God. Maimonides answered that the single divine power has multiple affects, just as a single fire burns wood, cooks food, and warms the cook. Thus, multiple affects do not necessarily imply divine actions and, thereby, divine properties. See Jennifer Hart Weed, “Religious Language,” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.edu/rel-lang.

Consequently, Wise(g) and Wise(s) are not to be interpreted equivalently or similarly, as they are mere homonyms: Wise1 and Wise2, respectively. Divine predications are interpreted either noncognitively—expressing certain emotions about God—mystically, “seeing God as X,” or as divine actions which do not inhere in God’s essence. See William P. Alston, Divine Nature and Human Language: Essays in Philosophical Theology (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1989), 18. Elsewise, God is conceived in exclusively negative terms. Per the via negativa, although the religious speaker cannot specify Wise(g) due to divine transcendence, he is obliged to affirm that “God is not unwise,” where “unwisdom” is either non-Wise1 or non-Wise2. Unfortunately, the first interpretation

the rules in a way that indirectly displays what cannot be directly described” by means of

an adapted metaphysic which accommodates the Trinity.172 Thus, if (1), (3), and (4) then

the inference from apparent contradiction to actual contradiction is unwarranted. Why

assume that we are able, on the basis of “our creaturely repertoire of concepts and

categories,” to describe God’s triunity with such metaphysical precision as to eliminate

yields not-non-Wise1(g) or Wise1(g), which is uninformative, and the second yields not-non-Wise2(g) or Wise2(g), which is false. Apparently, the equivocity theorist intends to both affirm not-non-Wise2(g) and deny Wise2(g) on the grounds that mundane “unwisdom” is wholly inapplicable to God. By way of illustration, neither the sun nor the number 7 is non-hot (or cold). Both the sun and 7 are not-non-hot; the sun because it is hot and 7 because coldness is inapposite to numbers. Similarly, neither Solomon nor God is unwise because wisdom (in the mundane sense) is attributed to Solomon and unwisdom (in the mundane sense) cannot be attributed to God. On the doctrine of equivocity, Wise1 and Wise2 have disparate meanings. Doubtless, it is possible to specify the intension of Wise2. Can the intension of Wise1 be similarly specified? If not, “we literally do not know what we are saying when we say that God is wise.... All these pseudo-predications… no more constitute assertions than would a belch or a D-major chord” (Thomas Williams, “The Doctrine of Univocity Is True and Salutary,” Modern Theology 21 [2005]: 578). If so, argues Williams, the meaning of Wise1 is parsed by means of substitution: “‘God is x’ means that ‘God is y.’” The intension of the substitute expression, in turn, is either specific, being “drawn from the repertoire of expressions we use in order to talk about creatures,” (ibid., 578-579) or parsed by means of substitution: “‘God is y’ means that ‘God is z.’” And the regress of substitutions must ultimately terminate in a specific—and, therefore, univocal—expression, lest “God is x” be deemed wholly unintelligible.

The analogical reading is a mediating position, according to which Wise(g) and Wise(s) are neither univocal nor equivocal, but similar. To be sure, the similarity is properly linguistic, not metaphysical. God is, after all, the source of Solomon’s wisdom, not a mere co-exemplar. Creatures obtain their being from God; God possesses being in himself. Aquinas reasons, nonetheless, that humans, being made in his image, bear a resemblance to their Creator, disclosing certain perfections (creaturely wisdom, in this example) that are most eminently embodied by their Agent Cause (wisdom, itself). Creaturely wisdom is not a defective or diminished version of divine wisdom, but something derivative and dissimilar. The term ‘wisdom’ applies properly to God, as the archetype of wisdom, although we are more intimately familiar with derived instances of wisdom, as in Solomon. Creaturely wisdom approximates divine wisdom as our conception of wisdom, gained through acquaintance with wise creatures, fails to adequately convey divine wisdom. The theologian properly reaches toward God by means of his concepts, but does not wholly grasp God. The Muslim theologian Avicenna advanced a similar theory, according to which God can be described (1) positively, as perfect and necessary, on the basis of his individual existence, (2) negatively as compared to creatures, and (3) in terms of his role as the first cause of creatures. See T. Williams, “Describing God,” 752. The positive content of theological language is grounded in non-reciprocal relations of similarity between God and creatures. On the traditional rendering, creatures bear an incomplete resemblance to God but God bears no resemblance to creatures. The doctrine of creation, therefore, sanctions analogy, which establishes a conceptual bridge between contexts, where univocity implies that no bridge is needed and equivocity implies that no bridge is available.

172 Robert Masson, “Analogy and Metaphoric Process,” Theological Studies 62 (2001): 577.

all indistinctness?173 “Eye has not seen, and ear has not heard… what God has prepared

for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Heaven is beyond our fathoming; how

much more the Lord of heaven? With these considerations in mind, trinitarian

theologizing proceeds by way of analogy.

Traditional Analogies and Theories of the Divine Essence

Analogies are the primary mode of trinitarian analysis, illuminating the mystery

of God by casting indirect light and imaging the meaning of, as well as the logical

relations between, the basic propositions of trinitarian theology. They are the principal

means of respecting the dissimilarity between the uncreated and created orders and

method for realizing a verisimilitudinous percept of orthodoxy.174 Conceiving of God as

triune is not a purely negative undertaking. To affirm divine unity is not simply to deny

polytheism and to affirm divine threeness is not simply to deny unitarianism.

Alternatively, trinitarian theologizing is not a purely positive endeavor, but the

engagement of terms and images intended to approximate a transcendent vision, as

William Alston illustrates:

Let’s think of my three-year-old grandson wanting to know what I do when I go to my office. Telling him “I work” doesn’t completely satisfy his thirst for knowledge, and so I tell him that I “make things.” “Like we do with blocks at preschool?” he replies. “Well, not exactly,” I say, “but something like that. I don’t build structures with blocks or anything else you can hold in your hands, but I do make things.”175

173 Anderson, “In Defense of Mystery: A Reply to Dale Tuggy,” 155.

175 Alston, “Two Cheers for Mystery!,” 109.

Like so, one introduces a child to an idea beyond his imagining. Similarly, the

illustrations involved in the quasi-creational, quasi-identity, and quasi-generic theories

approximate Deity.

Robert Masson contrasts analogies, which leverage an identical or similar feature

of x and y in order to extend our knowledge of x, y, or both; similes, in which our

knowledge of x provides a means of contemplating unknown y; and metaphors, which

are imposed upon x and y, where no obvious analogy existed, permitting us to consider

x as y and y as x.176 Trinitarian analogies are not analogous in Masson’s sense, where

both x and y are known to a considerable extent and univocally comparable. The

mundane analogy between human cognition and computer processes, for example,

sheds light on mentality, technology, or both. It is speculative to develop a trinitarian

analogy in this strong sense since our knowledge of God as triune is revealed and closed

to scientific scrutiny. Alternatively, theological analogies are more robust than

metaphors in Masson’s sense, as the doctrine of the Trinity, in accordance with ultimate

mysterianism, encompasses intelligible content which is relevant to other facts.

Analogies of the Trinity are closest to Masson’s similes since creation, bearing a

resemblance to its creator, dimly reflects Deity, allowing the theorist to incorporate

scientific insights into theology and theological insights into science to a limited extent.

In the first moment of mysterian theology, a similarity between God and creation is

observed, in the second moment, ostensible features of the correlation which are

inappropriate to Deity are denied, and in the third moment, the transcendence of God is

176 Masson follows Mary Gerhard and Allan Melvin Russell (in Metaphoric Process: The Creation

of Scientific and Religious Understanding [Fort Worth, Texas: Texas Christian University Press, 1984]) in Analogy and Metaphoric Process, 584-589.

affirmed. The operating assumption behind trinitarian analogies is that Deity is a rough

archetype of certain features of creation and certain features of creation crudely image

Deity. In other words, Scripture is not the only material source of divine triunity.

Traditional categories of similitude—including the psychological analogy,

associated with Augustine177 and Thomas Aquinas,178 and the three-man analogy,

associated with the Basil and Gregory of Nyssa—developed out of the Arian controversy,

which commenced with the heretical preaching of Arius, early in the fourth century, and

culminated with the publication of Augustine’s On the Trinity, early in the fifth century.

The landscape of Christian theology during this period encompassed two ecumenical

peaks looming over a valley of schism: the definitive first councils at Nicaea and

Constantinople, which established the theological boundaries of orthodox trinitarianism

and anathematized the subordinationists.

While considerable agreement developed regarding the proper terminology of

trinitarianism—mi/a ousi/a, treij u(posta/seij which entered into Latin as una

substantia, tres personae—disputes regarding the signification of its terms ensued.

Traditional terms for divine oneness include ‘essence,’ ‘substance,’ and ‘being’ (ousi/a,

Latin: substantia),179 ‘nature’ (fu/sij, Latin: natura), and ‘Godhead’ (Qeo/thhj, Latin:

divinitas), whereas traditional terms for divine threeness include ‘substance,’

‘substantive existence,’ and ‘individual’ (u(po/stasij, Latin: subsistentia), ‘person’

177 See On the Trinity, 8-15. Compare The City of God, 11.

178 See Summa Theologica, 1.27-43. Especially questions 27-28, 30, 33-38, and 41-43.

179 Plantinga remarks, however, that “for the sake of routing Sabellius, Gregory [of Nyssa] uses ousia as a threeness term, in the sense of an individual pra~gma or a1tomon (thing or particular)” (“Gregory of Nyssa and the Social Analogy of the Trinity,” 329).

(u(po/stasij or pro/swpon), and ‘personality’ (pro/swpon, Latin: persona). The language

of trinitarianism is beset with terminological difficulties—questions of technical usage

set against common usage and etymology—complicated through translation and

semantic shift,180 compounded by the fact that ‘person’ has a somewhat different

connotation within the context of Christology.181 The most famous translation problem

in trinitarianism is that ousi/a and u(po/stasij are both translated substantia. And the

preposition ‘in’ carries a particularly heavy load. God exists “in three persons” or, per

the Latin formula, unam substantiam in tribus personis cohaerentibus. But ‘in’ may

indicate spatial relation: “Water is in the cup”; composition: “The medallion was cast in

gold”; part-whole relation: “One’s heart is in her circulatory system”; set membership:

“Three is in the set of prime numbers”; or class membership: “Chimps are in the primate

order.” Whether any connotation approximates the relationship between the divine

essence and persons is a pivotal issue for theology.

The Creed of the First Council of Nicaea occasioned confusion in that it

anathematized “those who say… ‘[the Son] is of another hypostasis’ or ‘ousia’” than the

Father, until the Council of Alexandria in 362, under the chairmanship of Athanasius,

determined that “three persons” was legitimate, barring a particularized interpretation

180 Jennifer Anne Herrick, “1+1+1=1: Making Sense of Nonsense: The Concept of the Trinity at

the End of the 20th Century” in On a Panegyrical Note: Studies in Honour of Garry W. Trompf, ed. Victoria Barker and Frances Di Lauro (Sydney, Australia: Department of Studies in Religion, University of Sydney, 2007), 282.

181 Rahner, The Trinity, 26-27. Social trinitarians are often accused of incautiously transferring elements of the Christological conception of personhood to trinitarian theology. See Mosser, “Fully Social Trinitarianism,” 136. Suffice it to say, the persistent debate over the union of the divine and human natures in Christ and the rise of contemporary kenotic theology indicate that one should not indiscriminately transfer knowledge of the Son as incarnate Lord to trinitarianism, wherein the Son is conceived to be eternal Deity.

in which the persons are considered alien substances or, in any sense, three gods.182

Hence Christians affirm that the Father, Son, and Spirit are one substance, which may

(analogously) refer to either an individual/being—Saul of Tarsus and the Apostle Paul

are the same human—or an essence—the Apostles Peter and Paul share humanness.183

Qua primary substance, Peter and Paul are discrete beings; qua secondary substance,

they are indistinguishable, both being human. The particularist interpretation of the

phrase “one substance” ostensibly implies numerical identity, corresponding to the

token reading and modalism, while the universalist interpretation evokes

particularization, corresponding to the type reading and tritheism.

Augustine’s (particularist) psychological analogy and Gregory’s (universalist)

three man analogy are firmly Nicene in orientation, steering clear of modalism and

tritheism respectively. They are, moreover, relatively consistent in conveying that God—

the divine essence—is the particular divinity that indivisibly constitutes the distinct

persons of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Despite their compatibility, the three-man

analogy has been widely represented as the antithesis to the psychological analogy and a

plain variation of the type reading. An examination of the three-man analogy and its

proximity to tritheism must involve a survey of the psychological analogy.

182 Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 253.

183 Origen, for instance, employed the term ousi/a as an expression of divine oneness in the secondary sense, as in the unity of species under a common genus, rather than the unity of primary substances under a common species. Tertullian employed substantia to denote the divine substratum. See Harry Wolfson, “Philosophical Implications of the Theology of Cyril of Jerusalem,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 11 (1957): 17-18.

The Psychological Analogy and the Divine Essence as a Particular

Augustine’s seminal analogy likens the Son and Spirit to the mental activities of

knowing and loving which, although an “inadequate image,” compared to the Trinity,

“our feeble mind perhaps can gaze upon this more familiarly and more easily.”184 His

comparison between that which is somewhat understood and accessible—the mind—and

that which is scarcely understood and inaccessible—the Trinity—is sincere, as the

language of faith is intended to shed light on both divine triunity, as a vehicle for

theologizing, and human cognition, as an investigation into the structure and processes

of the mind.185 Whereas the psychological analogy would be foundational and integral to

Aquinas’s renowned formulation of the doctrine, it is the culmination of Augustine’s

exegetical and philosophical explorations. Neil Ormerod states that “prior to those final

books of Augustine’s De Trinitate the theology of the Trinity was largely a series of

unrelated insights seeking cohesion within a unified view. In the systematics of Aquinas’

Summa Theologiae, however, that unified view is fully in possession.”186 Indeed, the

analogy has been pervasive and determinative for western trinitarianism, saturating the

air that Catholic and protestant theologians breathe. It is, for this reason, easy to

overlook his singular achievement.187

185 Lewis Ayres, Augustine and the Trinity (New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 276ff. In the words of Neil Ormerod, “the psychological analogy has deeply embedded within it the value of human rationality…. Be Attentive, Be Intelligent, Be Reasonable, Be Responsible” (“The Psychological Analogy for the Trinity: At Odds with Modernity,” Pacifica 14 [2001]: 291).

186 Ormerod, “The Psychological Analogy for the Trinity: At Odds with Modernity,” 282-283.

187 The psychological analogy is a usual suspect for theologians who blame contemporary neglect and abuse of the doctrine on the deficiencies of traditional accounts. Ormerod outlines a number of modern objections to the analogy in “The Psychological Analogy for the Trinity: At Odds with Modernity,” 284-287, including Baruch Spinoza’s objection that the will and intellect of God are so alien that no

He broached the analogy by explaining that in perfected acts of knowing, three

things are present: the knower, that which is known, and knowledge. In knowing

oneself, however, the knower and that which is known are identical. Similarly, in loving,

three things are present: the lover, the beloved, and love. And in loving oneself, the lover

and the beloved are identical. Still, the mind, knowledge of the mind, and love of the

mind are three things. Yet the three are one in that knowledge and love “exist in the

soul,” not as mere accidents—“as though in a subject; as color, or shape, or any other

quality or quantity, are in a body”—but “so evolved from it as to be perceived and

reckoned up substantially.”188 Knowledge and love are quasi-substances encompassed

by the substance of the mind, not “as color and the colored subject are; so that color is in

the colored subject, but has not any proper substance in itself… but as two friends are

also two men, which are substances, while they are said to be men not relatively, but

friends relatively.”189 Unlike friends who might dissolve their friendship without ceasing

to be, the relations between the mind and its knowledge and love are internal in that the

mind cannot cease to be without its knowing and loving ceasing to be, and vice versa.

parallel can be drawn to the human mind, Barth’s objection that the theory of the vestigium trinitatis threatens to replace Scripture as the source of the doctrine, Colin Gunton’s similar complaint that the foundations of the trinitarianism are in the economy of salvation, rather than speculations about the threefold structure of the mind, Moltmann’s objection that the analogy reduces God to an absolute subject, and LaCugna’s objection to the movement from God-for-us to God-in-Godself results in a split between okonomia and theologia, among others. We might also note Rahner’s protest that once the Father’s knowledge and love are personified “the knowing Word and the loving Spirit themselves must in their turn have a word and a love as persons proceeding from them” (The Trinity, 31). Commentators who are sympathetic to the analogy ascribe the objections to misreadings and false assumptions about the influence of Neoplatonism on Augustine’s theology. See, for example, Anne Hunt, “Psychological Analogy and Paschal Mystery in Trinitarian Theology,” Theological Studies 59 (1998): 197-218; Ormerod, “The Psychological Analogy for the Trinity: At Odds with Modernity,” 281-294; and Ayres, “Augustine on the Trinity.” 123-137.

189 Ibid.

Knowledge and love, too, are inseparable in that one cannot love something without

knowing it. And just as the components of commingled substances—a drink composed

of wine, water, and honey, for instance—permeate the whole, so knowledge and love

pervade the mind. The three are inseparably one, “severally a substance and all together

are one substance or essence, whilst they are mutually predicated relatively.”190

Knowledge of a thing, Augustine elaborated, bears a similarity to the thing

known. When one thinks of something, a “phantasm of memory,” or an image of that

thing, arises in her mind. A perfect self-conception, therefore, bears an absolute likeness

to the mind from which it arises.191 “In knowing itself, then, it begets knowledge itself

equal to itself.”192 Knowledge, he supposed, is a product of both the knower and the

thing known. So the mind is the parent of its own knowing when it knows itself. Love,

alternatively, is present in the lover as a desire before being directed at something.

Hence love, unlike knowledge, is unbegotten.

Augustine identified another analogy to the Trinity in the memory,

understanding and will “which are not three lives but one life, not three minds but one

mind, it follows that they are certainly not three substances, but one substance.”193 Each

is known in relation to, direction toward, and containment of one another. “I remember

that I have memory, understanding, and will; and I will that I will, remember, and

190 Ibid., 9.5.8.

191 Ibid., 9.11.16.

192 Ibid., 9.12.18.

193 Ibid., 10.11.18.

understand; and at the same time I remember my whole memory, understanding, and

will.”194 The three are equal, distinct, and consubstantial.

The analogies between mind-knowledge-love or memory-understanding-will and

Father-Son-Spirit are heuristics for contemplating divine triunity, not strict

comparisons to Deity, since one cannot love, know, or remember herself in distinction of

herself. One must not envision, for instance, that the Father understands only by the

Son or loves only by the Holy Spirit, as the memory-understanding-will analogy strictly

suggests. The Father is, after all, divine in himself (TT1), not by means of Son and Spirit,

as though properties of God. Analogical knowledge of the Trinity ascends, respecting the

grammar of Scripture, by means of grace despite our fallen intellect.195 “We see in some

way or other,” within the mind, “him by whom we are made.”196

In expounding his account of divine triunity in books 5-7 of On the Trinity,

Augustine drew upon Aristotelian categories in order to demonstrate, not that the

mystery is philosophically provable, but that the orthodox creeds do not discernibly

contravene logic. He adapted the categories to his purposes by exploiting an

absolute/relative distinction, which may reveal a middle platonic influence, and denying

that all categories apply to God:197 “Other things that are called essences or substances

admit of accidents, whereby a change, whether great or small, is produced in them. But

194 Ibid., 10.11.18.

195 Ayres, “Augustine on the Trinity,” 126.

196 Augustine, On the Trinity, 15.8.14

197 Paul Thom, The Logic of the Trinity: Augustine to Ockham (New York, New York: Fordham University Press, 2012), 22.

there can be no accident of this kind in respect to God.”198 For Augustine, God

exemplifies no accidents since Deity is unchangeable and incorruptible. And, although

‘substance’ applies to God, the term does not carry a univocal meaning. God cannot be

assayed as a mundane being.

Regarding the divine substance, he preferred the term essentia in speaking of

God so as to distinguish Divinity from mundane substantia. Still, a modified application

of substance/essence is appropriate to God, who is an unconditionally simple being.

According to divine simplicity, God is categorically incomposite, lacking both physical

composition and the metaphysical structures implied by ordinary predications.199 The

claims that “God is wise” and “Solomon is wise”—Wise(g) and Wise(s), respectively—are

logically dissimilar, not merely because their syntactic resemblance masks a critical

modal disparity—Wise(g) being necessary, given that God cannot fail to be wise, and

Wise(s) being contingent, given that Solomon might have been a fool—but because, so

say simplicity theorists, Wise(g) is not a genuine predication, as property

exemplification, whether essential or accidental, implies composition. God does not

have wisdom; rather, God is wisdom.200 And, by the same token, God is all other divine

attributes: “This Trinity is one God, alone, good, great, eternal, omnipotent; itself its

199 T. Williams, “Describing God,” 750.

200 Christian theology has traditionally identified God with his properties, in part, due to the Platonic insight that beings are graded according to their degreed qualities: things possessing beauty are judged more or less beautiful than other things possessing beauty, more or less just than other things possessing justice, and so on. But only beauty, per se, possesses unlimited beauty and is the cause of beauty in beautiful things; only justice possesses unlimited justice and is the cause of justice in just things. In the same way, only being possesses unlimited being and is the cause of being in existents. “The Christian God being such a thing, it is not surprising that in due course He was thought of as being all the attributes that He possesses” (Thom, The Logic of the Trinity: Augustine to Ockham, 2).

own unity, deity, greatness, goodness, eternity, omnipotence.”201 Simplicity erases the

ontological boundary between the divine essence and persons, preventing us from

imagining that the Father, Son, and Spirit are ontologically posterior to a Platonic

essence. The persons are not instances of, but identical to, the divine essence, which is

Being itself. In this way, Augustine explicated divine oneness.

Concerning divine threeness, he chastised subordinationists for dividing the

divine persons by averring that all predications about God pertain to being. They

reasoned by the contrapositive of the indiscernibility of identicals that, since the Father

is unbegotten and the Son is begotten, the Father and Son are discrete and ontologically

graded beings. Augustine responded that Christ’s testimony “I and the Father are one”

must indicate, according to their exegetical rule, that the Father and Son are one

according to substance, as they permitted no other interpretive option. “Let them admit,

then, that unbegotten and begotten are not spoken according to substance. And if they

do not admit this, on the ground that they will have all things to be spoken of God

according to substance, then the Son is equal to the Father according to substance.”202

Ironically, the argument that the divine persons are particulars, on the assumption that

anything said of the Father, Son, or Spirit pertains to substance, yields modalism.

Statements about the divine persons, Augustine countered, belong, not to the

category of substance, but more appropriately to the category of non-accidental

unchanging relation.203 The Father never began to be Father “because the Son was

202 Ibid., 5.3.4.

203 Ayres, “Augustine on the Trinity,” 131-132.

always born, and never began to be the Son.”204 And, since the Father is father, only in

eternal and unchangeable relation to the Son, as the Son is son, only in eternal and

unchangeable relation to the Father. The Father and Son are relationally distinct. The

Spirit, too, is relationally distinct from the Father and Son although the relativity of the

Spirit is not evident in the name but “is apparent when he is called the gift of God.”205 As

gift, the Spirit is correlative to giver: “For he is gift of the Father and the Son.”206 And

relations, being non-inherent, residing metaphysically “between” their relata, introduce

no complexity, change, or division in God. In individuating the persons, he invoked no

entities other than the divine essence, as he considered the relations to be neither

present-in the essence nor anything in addition to the relata. The relationally distinct

divine persons do not divide the substance of God and, therefore, cannot be discrete

gods, just as Abraham, who is one man, is husband to Sarah, father to Isaac, and uncle

to Lot.

Despite the fact that relational individuation seems to border on modalism,

associations pertinent to mundane beings must be resisted. The Father, Son, and Spirit

205 Ibid., 5.11.12.

206 Indeed, western theologians acknowledge that the Son and Spirit are indistinguishable on the relational theory, excepting the Filioque clause of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. See David Brown, “Trinity” in A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, ed. Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), 528. Eastern theologians are concerned to show that (1) generation and spiration are diverse modes of procession and (2) the Father, alone, spirates the Spirit. While the doctrine of double causation clarifies the hypostatic distinction between the Son and Spirit, it clouds the hypostatic distinction between Father, as source of divinity, and Son, as divinely sourced. Various eastern thinkers, nonetheless, have granted that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, through the Son. See John Breck, “The Relevance of Nicene Christology,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 31 (1987): 53-54. The Son is not believed to produce the Spirit by procession but, perhaps, to communicate the charismata—uncreated energy (or attributes) of the Spirit received as spiritual endowments—with the Father, either in the economy of salvation or by means of eternal “manifestation,” or simply to “mediate” or “accompany” the procession of the Spirit without subverting the Father’s position as sole source and cause of divinity (56-58).

are not relationally individuated in a narrowly Aristotelian sense. Concerning the

divinity of the persons, Augustine observed,

When we speak of a master, essence is not intimated, but a relative which has reference to a slave; but when we speak of a man, or any such thing which is said in respect to self not to something else, then essence is intimated. Therefore when a man is called a master, man himself is essence, but he is called master relatively; for he is called man in respect to himself, but master in respect to his slave.”207

The Trinity encompasses the relatives Father, Son, and Spirit, each of which is Deity in

substance, as a master is master relative to a slave while both are man in substance. The

Son and Spirit are no mere properties of the Father—scientia and amor—but properly is

qui scit and amator.208 The relevant question with regard to the divine persons is “three

what?”209 So, in speaking of the person of the Father, we refer, not to a mundane

relation, but to a divine relative that is (something like) a primary substance which is

208 John King-Farlow, “Is the Concept of the Trinity Obviously Absurd?,” Sophia 22 (1983): 38. King-Farlow advances an interesting version of the analogy in which “a very selfish, but uxorious man,” an “evilly triune man,” exhibits distinct personalities. The selfish man’s fundamental social orientation, in his principle persona, is two-fold: first, to develop a clear knowledge of his wife—her beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors—and, second, to place himself at the center of her interests and activities. “With these two sources of orientation are associated hosts of plans to keep her under survey, to draw her out in conversation, to ask others about her goings on, to please her in new ways, to avoid anything that might cause a chill between them, and, above all, to draw her closer to… himself” (39). In his secondary persona he feels entitled to control his wife and insists that she ought not to resist, believing that he is the agent of their mutual happiness. “Under the guidance of this Persona he is most prone to dwell upon various value judgments and utter them to his closest friends. He is obsessed with accepting and expanding obligations” (40). In his tertiary and most volatile persona “[his] primary orientation is that of inferring from what he knows… that he is not achieving what he believes he ought to achieve” (40). The husband and the drama produced by his social maneuvers provide a schema for envisioning emerging personas as distinct centers of consciousness, with each persona exemplifying unique attitudes and attendant behaviors. The third persona, moreover, can be explained in terms of the second, and the second in terms of the first, but not vice versa. The triune God is, of course, nothing like the evil, pathetic husband “but… one may try to conceive of someone whose first orientation is unreflective love for everything; whose second orientation is reflective awareness of things’ response and non-response to love with strongly endorsing recommitment; whose third orientation is inferring that love is best, whatever happens, and enjoying experiences of deep satisfaction with himself and the universe” (40). Still, the split personality construal of divine oneness ends in mystery.

indiscrete from the being of God. ‘Father,’ ‘Son,’ and ‘Gift’ are relational names,

implying a relative—the Father cannot be a divine father without reference to the Son—

but ‘person’ is a substantive term which is predicated without reference to relatives.210

Then again, the divine persons are not beings in an Aristotelian sense either.

“Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are called three men, because man is the specific name

common to all men” but, although ‘divine’ is the name common to the divine persons,

the Father, Son, and Spirit are not called three ‘gods.’211 Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are

discrete men (as per their specific name) and discrete animals (as per their generic

name), but the Father, Son, and Spirit, who are individual divine persons are not

discrete gods. The reason, Augustine held, is that mundane species and genera are

divisible into their various particulars, whereas the divine essence is indivisible.212 The

persons, therefore, do not fall under the divine essence, as to a species or genus, due to

simplicity. The Father, Son, and Spirit are not instances of divinity, as Abraham, Isaac,

and Jacob instantiate humanness. What is more, ‘person’ is a generic name with

applications to both humankind and God, not a specific name, “although there is so

great a difference between man and God.”213 It was unclear to Augustine which specific

name, if any, is appropriate to the divine persons. For this reason, the rule of

substitutivity—“the Father is a different god than the Son since he is a different person

than the Son”—is simply inapplicable. Still, so as not to conflate mundane and

210 Ibid., 7.4.9.

211 Ibid., 7.4.8.

212 Richard Cross, “Quid Tres?: On What Precisely Augustine Professed Not to Understand in De Trinitate 5 and 7,” Harvard Theological Review 100 (2007): 222-226.

theological metaphysics, the Father, Son, and Spirit are better termed ‘persons’ than

‘substances.’

For Augustine, the divine substance is to the divine persons as a material

substratum is to a material being, not as a universal is to a particular.214 One cannot

infer from the existence of three statues formed from one lump of gold that there are

“three golds,” since ‘gold’ is a mass noun: an undifferentiated noun that cannot be

modified by an indefinite article or number without a unit of measure.215

Correspondingly, one cannot infer from the existence of three, consubstantial divine

persons that there are three gods. Nonetheless, the material analogy underdetermines

divine threeness since the persons are not composed of the divine substance. Three gold

statues comprise more matter than one gold statue from the set of three, yet the Father,

Son, and Spirit are not more than the Father, alone, as the divine persons and essence

entirely overlap. Once again, the metaphysics of substance does not strictly apply to the

divine persons, as “God exists more truly than he is thought.”216 The apparent

contradictoriness of Augustine’s account results from a sophisticated attempt to

conceive that which cannot ultimately be grasped; a meditation on the received

affirmations which surpass our rational abilities to comprehend.217

214 George Rudebusch, “Aristotelian Predication, Augustine, and the Trinity,” The Thomist 53

(1989): 596-597.

215 Cross, “Quid Tres?: On What Precisely Augustine Professed Not to Understand in De Trinitate 5 and 7,” 227.

217 For a synopsis of Augustine’s trinitarian mysterianism, see Lewis Ayres, “‘Where Does the Trinity Appear?’: Augustine’s Apologetics and ‘Philosophical’ Readings of the De Trinitate,” Augustinian Studies 43 (2012): 120-125.

The Three-Man Analogy and the Divine Essence as a Universal

Basil and Gregory of Nyssa advanced allusive three-man analogies which liken

the divine essence to mundane secondary substance and the divine persons to mundane

primary substance.218 As Adam, Eve, and Seth are distinct particulars but the same in

essence, so the divine persons are distinct in the (divinely analogous) primary sense but

the same in the (divinely analogous) secondary sense, as Basil taught, “the distinction

between ou)si/a and u(po/stasij is the same as that between the general and the

particular; as, for instance, between the animal and the particular man.”219 The

comparison cannot, of course, be expressed univocally, wherein the divine essence is

ontologically prior to the persons, at the risk of fostering polytheism. A strict

primary/secondary distinction in Deity would suggest that the Father, Son, and Spirit

are discrete instances of the divine essence, or three gods. The divinity of the Son is not,

however, a copy or unrepeatable instance of the divine essence in Cappadocian thought,

but the common substance which permeates the Father and the Spirit.220 The divine

essence encompasses both the common nature of Godhood which is said-of the divine

individual and the individuals, as such.

The Council of Chalcedon implicitly validated the notion that the divine essence

is a universal in declaring that Christ is both consubstantial with the Father and

218 The Cappadocians did not unanimous employ the analogy. As Cross explains, “like Augustine, Gregory [of Nazianzus] is far more hesitant than his two Cappadocian friends to use the analogy to three human beings—indeed, he explicitly restricts the relevance of the analogy by arguing that species such as man are merely concepts” (“Quid Tres?: On What Precisely Augustine Professed Not to Understand in De Trinitate 5 and 7,” 231). Therefore, Nazianzen’s theology is not in view at this point.

219 Basil of Caesarea, “Letter 236: To the Same Amphilochius” 278. The citation is from Basil: Letters and Select Works, 276-279.

220 Richard Cross, “Perichoresis, Deification, and Christological Predication in John of Damascus,” Medieval Studies 62 (2000): 84.

humanity: o9moou/sion tw~ Patri/ kata\ th\n qeo/thta kai\ o(moou/sion h(mi~n to\n au)ton kata\

th\n a)nqrwpo/thta. Presumably, the divine essence is (something like) a universal since

humanness, to which Christ is equivalently consubstantial, is a universal.221 Depicting

the divine essence in this way, therefore, comports well with Christology.

Gregory effectively articulated the three-man analogy in On ‘Not Three Gods,’

opening with an appraisal of the type reading: “Peter, James, and John, being in one

human nature, are called three men…. and acknowledging no difference of nature

between them, we are in some sense at variance with our confession, when we say that

the Godhead of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is one, and yet forbid

men to say ‘there are three Gods.’”222 In endeavoring to escape this “monstrous

dilemma,” he reasoned that the plural of ‘God’ is not ‘gods,’ properly speaking, but

‘divine natures.’ He regarded ‘God’ in TT7 a mass noun in accordance with the type

reading.

We say that gold, even though it be cut into many figures, is one, and is so spoken of, but we speak of many coins or many staters, without finding any multiplication of the nature of gold by the number of staters; and for this reason we speak of gold, when it is contemplated in greater bulk, either in plate or in coin, as ‘much,’ but we do not speak of it as “many golds” on account of the multitude of the material—except when one says there are ‘many gold pieces’ (Darics, for instance, or staters), in which case it is not the material, but the pieces of money to which the significance of number applies: indeed, properly, we should not call them “gold” but “golden.”223

221 Christophe Erismann, “The Trinity, Universals, and Particular Substances: Philoponus and

Roscelin,” Traditio 53 (2008): 278.

222 Gregory of Nyssa, “To Ablabius: On ‘Not Three Gods,’” 331. Gregory preferred the term ‘nature’ (fu/sij) to ‘essence’ (ousi/a). For consistency, I will use the latter term.

223 Ibid., 335.

We cannot acknowledge multiple Gods, or divine natures, any more than

multiple golds.

By comparison, Peter, James, and John are particulars who share the human

essence, which “is one, at union itself, and an absolute indivisible unit, not capable of

increase by addition or of diminution by subtraction, but in its essence being and

continually remaining one, inseparable even though it appear in plurality, continuous,

complete, and not divided with the individuals who participate in it.”224 As the human

essence neither increases nor decreases with the fluctuating human population,

remaining undivided despite the individual participation of Peter, James, and John, so

the divine essence is indivisible and unchanging. Still, supposing that humanness is

indivisible, three men are discrete beings. Why, then, are not three divine persons

discrete beings? The pluralization of ‘man’ into ‘men,’ Gregory reckoned, is “an abuse of

language.” He advised that “it would be much better to correct our erroneous habit, so

as no longer to extend to a plurality the name of the nature, than by our bondage to

habit to transfer to our statements concerning God the error which exists in the above

case.”225 On this supposition, Peter and James share humanness but differ in virtue of

their unique bundles of accidents. ‘Man,’ in accordance with the type reading, refers to

the universal human essence, not to the particulars Peter or James. For Gregory,

pluralizing the term implies multiple human essences. Peter, again, is humanness plus

certain accidents which comprise his particular human instance. Scriptural references to

“men” are not endorsements of specious metaphysics but cases of divine

224 Ibid., 332.

225 Ibid.

condescension.226 Even so, while erroneous habits in speaking of the human essence are

quite inconsequential, great caution is required in speaking of God, as Christians must

not profess polytheism. Whereas there are three who are God, there is only one God.

Gregory’s immanentist theory of universals, according to which the divine

essence is an atomic and innate divinity which constitutes the Father, Son, and Spirit,

rather than an independent and ontologically prior entity or the mere collection of

divine particulars, avoids the tritheistic implications of the Platonic model-copy and

nominalist theories of essences. Doubtless, if it were the case that the Father, Son, and

Spirit simply participate in the divine essence, as per Platonism, the essence would be

more divine than the persons. Christophe Erismann states that “other problems come

from the fact that the Platonic idea involves degrees of participation: the universal is

never entirely participated; moreover, the possibility that such a universal could be

more or less completely exemplified opens the way to the heresies that hold that the

Father is more God than the Son.”227 Alternatively, if it were the case that the essence is

a sheer concept, as per nominalism, the divine persons would be discrete beings on

ontological par. Cross conjectures that, although appearing to flout common sense when

applied to mundane beings, Gregory’s theory was advanced in direct opposition to the

collectivist theory of universals.228 Apparently, Gregory preferred the queer entailments

of immanentism to graded and polycentric polytheism. One might, of course, endorse

226 Ibid., 335-336. Compare Plantinga, “Gregory of Nyssa and the Social Analogy of the Trinity,”

227 Erismann, “The Trinity, Universals, and Particular Substances: Philoponus and Roscelin,” 283.

228 Cross, “Gregory of Nyssa on Universals,” 407-408.

immanentism in the case of God and collectivism in the case of humanity, but that

would sever the analogy between God and humanity since Peter, James, and John would

be one in an utterly different way.

Notwithstanding, the comparison is analogical. Owing to simplicity, the divine

essence is neither concrete nor abstract, strictly speaking.229 For Gregory, as for

Augustine, the attributes of God are identical to the divine essence, despite the fact that

omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, and so on are conceptually

distinguishable.230 The discernible divine attributes are not purely subjective but actual

aspects of Deity. In emphasizing the unity of God’s nature, he stressed the inherent

compossiblity and profound unity of the attributes, or ‘energies,’ which is beyond all

limitation.231 “If the Divine and unalterable nature is incapable of degeneracy, as even

our foes allow,” Gregory reasoned, “we must regard it as absolutely unlimited in its

goodness: and the unlimited is the same as the infinite.”232 Therefore, Father, Son, and

Spirit do not have divine tropes, as inherited and delimited portions of divinity, but

share the simple essence, which pervades the persons without discrete instantiation.

Since the persons do not exemplify the essence as an extrinsic fourth item, Godhood is

numerically one in the strongest sense, such that the persons are the same Deity without

229 Cross, “Latin Trinitarianism: Some Conceptual and Historical Considerations,” 204.

230 Ibid., 208-209.

231 On divine simplicity in Gregory’s thought, see Basil Krivocheine, “Simplicity of the Divine Nature and the Distinctions in God, According to St. Gregory of Nyssa,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 21 (1977): 76-104. Krivocheine concludes that “the distinction between the incognoscible nature and the distinguishable energies which allow us some form of knowledge of and participation in God constitutes a fundamental feature of Gregory’s theology” (104). Gregory’s teaching on God’s limited comprehensibility is consistent with ultimate mysterianism.

232 Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, 1.15.

difference of degree. The essence is the intrinsic substrate, and indivisible component,

of the persons.233 Hence, there are not three gods.

Concerning divine threeness, each person is the divine essence coupled with an

individuating personal property: unbegottenness for the Father, begottenness for the

Son, and mission or procession for the Spirit.234 The Father differs from the Son in that

he is unbegotten, the Son begotten; the Father uncaused, the Son caused. The Father, in

consequence, is properly identified as “the God,” “the only God,” and “Fount of

Divinity,” whereas the Son is “the only-begotten God.”235 In coming from the Father, the

Son is of the Father’s essence. Yet the Father, alone, enjoys aseity, deriving from

nothing. Gregory did not consider aseity to be a divine property which the Father has

and the Son lacks but an expression of the unbegottenness of the Father, which is his

efficient cause.236 Unbegottenness, in turn, is not entailed by the divine essence but is

applied conceptually to the Father.237 He did not regard the causal relations between the

Father, Son, and Spirit to be entities beyond the divine persons.238 The persons are, as

234 Ibid., 336. Compare Plantinga, “Gregory of Nyssa and the Social Analogy of the Trinity,” 331 and Cross, “Two Models of the Trinity?,” 281.

236 Jacobs, “On ‘Not Three Gods’—Again: Can A Primary-Secondary Substance Reading of Ousia and Hypostasis Avoid Tritheism?,” 352.

238 Ibid., 204.

Augustine would argue, relationally individuated. Accordingly, in begetting the Son, the

Father does not determine what the Son is, but how the Son exists.239

‘God,’ Gregory confessed, refers not to the unnameable divine essence but to the

observable divine operations. “We fashion our appellations from the several operations

that are known to us,”240 although no appellation signifies God, as such. Yet persons

who are engaged in the same pursuits are described in the plural as orators, surveyors,

farmers, and shoemakers, among other things. Insofar as the Father, Son, and Spirit

perform the divine operations, are they not three gods? Gregory answered that, unlike

discrete orators delivering distinct orations, the divine persons act cooperatively.

In the case of the Divine nature we do not similarly learn that the Father does anything by himself in which the Son does not work conjointly, or again that the Son has any special operation apart from the Holy Spirit; but every operation which extends from God to the Creation, and is named according to our variable conceptions of it, has its origin from the Father, and proceeds through the Son, and is perfected in the Holy Spirit.241

And in jointly operating in “one motion” the divine persons are not perceived to be three

gods. Salvation is effected by the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit, and yet

Christians are not compelled to confess three Saviors.242 The singularity of God’s action

communicates divine oneness. Thus, Gregory concluded, “the Father is God; the Son is

God; and yet by the same proclamation God is One, because no difference either of

239 Jacobs, “On ‘Not Three Gods’—Again: Can A Primary-Secondary Substance Reading of Ousia

and Hypostasis Avoid Tritheism?,” 350.

240 Gregory of Nyssa, “To Ablabius: On ‘Not Three Gods,’” 333.

241 Ibid., 334.

242 Ibid., 335.

nature or of operation is contemplated in the Godhead.”243 Divine oneness is both a

unity of common essence and operation.

Substance metaphysics as applied to creatures and as applied to God in

Cappadocian thought differs in, at least, two ways. First, unlike creaturely essences

which are species that fall under genera, the divine essence falls under no genus. “The

divine nature,” Cross clarifies, “is a very unusual kind of universal, since it turns out to

be such that the only distinction between itself and its instances (namely, the divine

persons) is relational.”244 And second, the divine persons are not spatially separated,

which permits ontic overlapping or perichoresis. There is, nevertheless, an analogy

between human and divine begetting and proceeding. Just as Adam was unbegotten of

any other human, Seth was begotten of Adam, and Eve proceeded from Adam, so the

Father is unbegotten, the Son is begotten of the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from the

Father.245 “Generation and procession are unbroken, non-organic, non-mutative, and

non-successive, which is the basis for perichoretic unity.”246 The divine persons are

consubstantial—co-extensional, not merely composite—because the processions are

eternal and passionless.

243 Ibid., 336.

245 Jacobs, “On ‘Not Three Gods’—Again: Can A Primary-Secondary Substance Reading of Ousia and Hypostasis Avoid Tritheism?,” 342-343.

246 Ibid., 343.

Perichoresis

The doctrine of perichoresis has garnered renewed attention in recent years.

Moltmann envisions the essential unity of the divine persons in terms of their love

relationships. Divine oneness is ensured by an intra-divine covenant.247 For Tuggy,

declarations of divine “coinherence” or “mutual permeation,” although “dark

assertions,” are intended to affirm “that the three persons are somehow ontologically, or

metaphysically, and not just relationally ‘mixed together.’”248 Likewise, Davis observes

that perichoresis is something deeper than a voluntary covenant; it is the “ontological

embrace” between the divine persons.249 And Kilby explains that “in order to describe

perichoresis, the social theorist points to those things which do to some degree bind

human persons together…. What binds God into one is then said to be like all the best

that we know, only of course, unimaginably more so. It has to be more so, since it has to

make the three persons into one God and not just into one family of Gods.”250 Many

recent discussions, especially those within the analytic philosophical context, make

247 For an incisive appraisal of Moltmann’s doctrine of perichoresis, see Randall E. Otto who

charges Moltmann with denuding perichoresis of metaphysical content by developing an analogia relationis while denying the analogia entis in “The Use and Abuse of Perichoresis in Recent Theology,” Scottish Journal of Theology 54 (2001): 372-384. Relations, however, presuppose beings which stand in relations.

249 S. Davis, “A Somewhat Playful Proof of the Social Trinity in Five Easy Steps,” 105.

250 Kilby, “Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrines of the Trinity,” 441. Compare Chia, “MIA OUSIA TREIS UPOSTASEIS: Athanasius and the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity,” 44-47.

scant reference to the ancient doctrine.251 Presumably, contemporary advocates hope to

convey more than the appearance of historical credibility.

Although Gregory never used the term ‘perichoresis,’ his doctrine of divine

oneness involves a holistic union of being in keeping with Jesus’ testimony, “I and the

251 There are, however, notable exceptions. Oliver Crisp, for example, has advanced a historically-

rooted analytic assessment of the doctrine in “Problems with Perichoresis,” Tyndale Bulletin 56 (2005): 119-140. He distinguishes between ‘nature-perichoresis,’ which denotes the hypostatic union of Christ’s divine and human natures, and ‘person-perichoresis,’ which denotes the triunity of the Father, Son, and Spirit, explaining that nature-perichoresis—or the doctrine that Christ’s natures interpenetrate without commingling—is distinct from the communicatio idiomatum—or the doctrine that attributes diffuse between natures, such that either nature encompasses apparently incompossible characteristics. One interpretation of consubstantiality, which Crisp designates the strong person-perichoresis thesis (SPT), postulates that the divine persons share all properties. The Trinity, however, incorporates both one-owner (personal) properties—for example, being-unoriginate, which the Father, alone, exemplifies—and two-owner properties—for example, being-originate, which both the Son and Spirit exemplify. SPT is, therefore, untenable insofar as it entails that all divine properties have three owners.

SPT, runs afoul of the identity of indiscernibles: the principle that, for any particular x and any particular y, if x exemplifies property P if and only if y exemplifies property P then x is identical to y; that is, (∀x)(∀y) [(∀P)(Px ↔ Py) → (x = y)]. The contrapositive of the identity of indiscernibles is the principle that, if it is not the case that x and y are numerically identical then it is not the case that x and y are qualitatively identical, or if x and y are discrete then x and y are distinguishable. So the identity of indiscernibles entails that (∀x)(∀y) [(x ≠ y) → (∀P)((Px ∧ ¬Py) ∨ (¬Px ∧ Py))]. Crisp explains that “if the SPT obtains, then God cannot be triune and subsist in three persons, because, on SPT, there are no properties that might individuate the persons of the Trinity. For there are no properties which one, and only one, person of the Trinity possesses on SPT. This, in turn, means there can be no distinct, divine persons to speak of. For distinct persons require distinct properties in order to individuate them. But there can be no such properties given SPT. So there can be no distinct divine persons on SPT. And if there are no persons, there is no Trinity. Hence, the SPT leads to the denial of the Trinity” (138; compare Paasch, who says that “the Father is simple, and so anything ‘in’ the Father is, strictly speaking, identical to the Father. Consequently, if the Son is going to inherit any properties from the Father, then surely he would have to inherit them all” [“Arius and Athanasius on the Production of God’s Son,” 401]).

But why cannot two or more individuals be indistinguishable with regard to their properties? Suppose that three red disks exemplify all and only the same properties, having precisely the same geometric genus, circumference, shade of red, and so on. See Moreland, “Theories of Individuation: A Reconsideration of Bare Particulars,” 251 and Moreland, Universals, 3. Indeed, it would be impossible to distinguish any individual disk from the others based upon its properties. All the same, the distinguishability of particulars is an epistemic, rather than ontological, question. Indiscernibility is not a sufficient condition for numerical identity. One may consider, therefore, that their individuators are not properties, but some other constituent. Crisp answers that positing another individuative constituent is superfluous since the divine persons exemplify metaphysically necessary one-owner properties; for example, being-the-son. “Since it is metaphysically necessary that the second person of the Trinity have this property, and since it is impossible for the second person of the Trinity to fail to exist, the second person of the Trinity must have this property, and this property, and others, serve to individuate the second person from the other persons of the Trinity. So [another constituent] is not an option for individuating the persons of the Trinity” (138). He opts for weak person-perichoresis, according to which the divine persons co-exemplify three-owner properties (divine attributes) and individually exemplify one-owner (personal) properties. The Father communicates the divine essence without the hypostatic property of unbegottenness. Compare Breck, “The Relevance of Nicene Christology,” 55.

Father are one.... understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father” (John 10:30-

38; cf., 14:7, 17:21). In response to Eunomius he stated,

The Son is surely of the essence of him who has generated or “produced” him, not of that of some other among the things which we contemplate as external to that nature. And if he is truly from him, he is not alien from all that belongs to him from whom he is, as in the other cases too it was shown that all that has its existence from anything by way of generation is clearly of the same kind as that from whence it came.252

And, being of the same impartible divine nature, the Father and Son are consubstantial.

The Son “has the Father in himself, and contains all things that belong to the Father,”

embracing all divinity.253 The Son is in the Father “as the beauty of the image is to be

found in the form from which it has been outlined.” The Father, conversely, is in the Son

in a “different sense… as that original beauty is to be found in the image of itself.”254

Despite the asymmetry of their mutual indwelling, he acknowledged a reciprocal

glorification of the divine persons.

You see the revolving circle of the glory moving from Like to Like. The Son is glorified by the Spirit; the Father is glorified by the Son; again the Son has his glory from the Father; and the Only-begotten thus becomes the glory of the Spirit. For with what shall the Father be glorified, but with the true glory of the Son: and with what again shall the Son be glorified, but with the majesty of the Spirit? In like manner, again, Faith completes the circle, and glorifies the Son by means of the Spirit, and the Father by means of the Son.255

252 Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, 3.4.

253 Ibid., 11.2.

254 Ibid., 1.39.

255 Gregory of Nyssa, “On the Holy Spirit: Against the Followers of Macedonius” in Select Writings and Letters of Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, 324.

The Father, Son, and Spirit are actively and comprehensively interconnected such that

“the Three together form one circle of glorious divinity” in Gregory’s theology,256

dynamically ‘moving around’ (perifora/n) one another and ‘intermingling’

(a)naku/klhsin), containing and being contained.257 Theories of the ontic overlap of the

persons would continue to develop within the tradition which conceives of the divine

essence as a universal.

In Stoic thought ‘perichoresis’ indicated the envelopment and permeation of

matter by God—a ‘complete mixture’ (kra~sij di’ o3lwn) of two substances wherein the

characteristics of both are preserved—which Christians adopted to express both static,

mutual ‘indwelling’ or ‘co-inherence’ (Latin: circuminsessio) and dynamic ‘reciprocity’

or ‘interpenetration’ (Latin: circumincessio) typified by the Trinity, the incarnation, and

deification.258 Nazianzen employed the notion in illuminating the unity of Christ’s

human and divine natures as reciprocal and unconfused aspects of his solitary person.

He understood “the names [of Christ]” to be “mingled like the natures, and flowing into

(perixwrousw~n) one another, according to the law of their intimate union;”259 that is,

the revealed divine and human descriptions of Christ—including their distinct natures

256 Daniel F. Stramara Jr., “Gregory of Nyssa’s Terminology for Trinitarian Perichoresis,” Vigiliae

Christianae 52 (1998): 260.

257 Ibid., 260-263.

258 Verna Harrison, “Perichoresis in the Greek Fathers,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 35 (1991): 54; Otto, “The Use and Abuse of Perichoresis in Recent Theology,” 368; and Dănuţ Mănăstireanu, “Perichoresis and the Early Christian Doctrine of God,” Archaeus 11-12 (2007-2008): 61-62.

259 Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistle 101: To Cledonius the Priest against Apollinarius, 440. The citation is from Select Orations of Saint Gregory Nazianzen, 439-443.

and various properties—combine correlatively, which Nazianzen also denoted with the

terms mi~cij, kra~sij, and su/gkra~sij.260

Following Nazianzen, Maximus the Confessor instructed that “the soul’s salvation

is the consummation of faith. This consummation is the revelation of what has been

believed. Revelation is the inexpressible interpenetration (perixw/rhsij) of the believer

with the object of belief and takes place according to each believer’s degree of faith.

Through that interpenetration the believer finally returns to his origin.”261 Verna

Harrison avers that, for Maximus, the union of the saints with God involves an

interpenetration of energies by grace, whereas the union of Christ with God involves an

interpenetration of natures.262 Christ’s natures are reciprocal, synchronistically pivoting

on his person.263 Interpenetration was deemphasized in Christology so as to avoid

monophysitism. Stoic mixture theory, nonetheless, was deemed applicable to the special

case of identity with differentiation found in the incarnation.

John of Damascus extended perichoresis to trinitarian theology, incorporating

the concepts of mutual inclusivity.264 Leonard Prestige proposed that Damascene had

misinterpreted Maximus, believing that perichoresis indicates the process of

260 Harrison, “Perichoresis in the Greek Fathers,” 55.

261 Maximus the Confessor, Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy, and Virtue and Vice, 19. The citation is from The Philokalia: The Complete Text, ed. St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth (London, U.K.: Faber and Faber Limited, 1981), 164-284.

262 Harrison, “Perichoresis in the Greek Fathers,” 58.

263 Leonard Prestige, “PERIXWREW and PERIXWRHSIS in the Fathers,” Journal of Theological Studies 29 (1928): 243.

264 See, for example, John of Damascus, On the Faith, Against the Nestorians, 36. Pseduo-Cyril was, in fact, the first theologian to apply perichoresis to the Trinity. See De Trinitate, 10. Damascene’s doctrine has been more influential.

permeation, rather than the result of the union of divine and human natures in

Christ.265 Cross judges that Damascene incongruently applied perichoresis to both the

active interpenetration of Christ’s divine nature into his human nature (rooted in

Neoplatonic theories of participation), resulting in the deification of his humanity, and

the static state of mixture and exchange between his natures and his person (rooted in

Stoic mixture theory).266 For Damascene, Christ’s human properties are ascribed to the

Word and the Word’s divine properties are ascribed to Christ, where ‘Word’ and ‘Christ’

refer to the person. The exchange between natures is not direct but mediated through

the person. His human nature indirectly shares the divine attributes, being deified

through active participation.267 Both natures are, therefore, thoroughly united in the

person while separately preserved, which is the ultimate perichoretic state.

Prestige assessed the application to trinitarianism a significant theological

advance.

From the time of Saint John the Evangelist there had not been found any convenient general term to describe the mutual relations of the three Persons of the Godhead to each other. Origen had safeguarded the timelessness of their active relations by his phrase ‘eternal generation,’ and Gregory of Nyssa had done more perhaps than any other to illustrate their mutual involution, but no one phrase existed which was capable of finally disposing both of Sabellianism and of tritheism by casting a ray of explanatory definition over their simultaneity of being, and shewing in a single illuminating term how they were really three, eternally and not just successively, without being three of a species and consequently three Gods.268

265 Prestige, “PERIXWREW and PERIXWRHSIS in the Fathers,” 243-244.

266 Cross, “Perichoresis, Deification, and Christological Predication in John of Damascus,” 71-72.

267 Ibid., 71.

268 Prestige, “PERIXWREW and PERIXWRHSIS in the Fathers,” 244.

The sub-doctrine of divine oneness received a valuable revision in which the unity of

(something like) the divine species was associated with the divine being. Universal

oneness conceptually coalesces into particular oneness as each person contains the

others and is contained in the others: the Son and Spirit in the Father; the Father and

Spirit in the Son; the Father and Son in the Spirit. Damascene, who like Gregory

maintained that the divine essence is a universal,269 reiterated,

We do not speak of three Gods, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit but rather of one God, the holy Trinity, the Son and Spirit being referred to one cause, and not compounded or coalesced according to the synæresis of Sabellius. For, as we said, they are made one not so as to commingle, but so as to cleave to each other, and they have their being in each other (perixw/rhsin) without any coalescence or commingling. Nor do the Son and Spirit stand apart, nor are they sundered in essence according to the diæresis of Arius. For the Deity is undivided amongst things divided, to put it concisely: and it is just like three suns cleaving to each other without separation and giving out light mingled and conjoined into one.270

Harrison explains that, in Damascene’s thought, hypostatic perichoresis is static

and prior to other instances of perichoresis, including the union of natures in Christ,

because of divine eternality. Whereas Christ’s natures are in (e)n) one another and move

into (ei0j) one another, the divine persons are eternally in one another, as movement is

deemphasized. And, whereas there is an asymmetry in the perichoretic union of Christ’s

natures—the mutual permeation being facilitated by the divine nature which deifies the

269 Concerning universals and particulars, Damascene stated that “there is that which is more

particular and is numerically different, as, for example, Peter, an individual, a person, and a hypostasis. This signifies a definite person…. But that which includes the individuals is called species and is more general than the individual, because it does include several individuals…. This is what is called nature and substance and form by the holy Father” (Dialectica in Saint John of Damascus, The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, vol. 37, trans. Frederic H. Chase Jr. [Washington D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1958], 17-18).

270 John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 1.8. The citation is from Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ser. 2, vol. 9, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995), 1b-101b.

human nature without forfeiting its properties—the perichoretic union of the divine

persons is symmetrical.271 In both Christology and trinitarianism, ‘perichoresis’ signifies

a holistic unity which preserves diversity. Neither are distinct natures mingled in Christ

nor distinct persons fused in God, producing a hybrid nature or person. An all-

embracing convergence of natures and persons is preserved.

The prevalent notion that perichoresis involves the metaphor of dance is based

either on an etymological mistake or a play on words, where the verb ‘to contain’

(xw/rein) is confused with the verb ‘to dance’ (xw/reuo), yielding ‘to dance around’

(perixwre/uo).272 Michael Lawler considers the mistake “a fortuitous error… though

perichorein and perichoreuein are not related etymologically, they are most definitely

related in what they connote.”273 Certainly the metaphor of dance suites the dynamic

connotation of perichoresis to some extent, but it diminishes the static connotation in as

much as it is considered the illustration of divine oneness. In moving from asymmetrical

permeation, to an interchange of properties in Christ, to the symmetrical

interpenetration of the Father, Son, and Spirit, perichoresis is intended to underscore

the eternal ontic unity of the divine persons. Excessive appeals to “dance” and “love”

mislead worshippers into conceiving of the union of the divine persons as an activity

rather than a substantial reality. Attempts to deontologize trinitarianism, while

understandable given the considerable difficulties involved in applying precise

philosophical concepts to Deity, misrepresent the purpose of the traditional doctrine.

271 Harrison, “Perichoresis in the Greek Fathers,” 61-63.

272 Mănăstireanu, “Perichoresis and the Early Christian Doctrine of God,” 61-62.

273 Michael Lawler, “Perichoresis: New Theological Wine in an Old Theological Wineskin,” Horizons 22 (1995): 53.

Anti-metaphysical theologies of the Trinity cannot honestly utilize the term

‘perichoresis’ in advancing their causes. Historical formulations of perichoresis are

attempts to provide ontological depth to the trinitarian pronouncement that “each of

these is a full substance and all together are one substance,” not merely co-specific

beings or a community.

Tritheism and the Conditions of Divine Oneness

It would be inaccurate to categorize Augustine as a strict token theorist and

Gregory as a strict type theorist, although some modern interpreters have portrayed

them as such. As Barnes notes, “characterizations based on polar contrasts are borne out

in the details that are realized clearly and distinctly through the contrasts…. There is a

penchant among systematic theologians for categories of polar opposition, grounded in

the belief that ideas ‘out there’ in the past really existed in polarities.”274 The

Augustinian and Cappadocian theologies of the Trinity differ neither in their operating

conceptions of Deity nor theological aims. Both indicate that the relationally

individuated Father, Son, and Spirit share the divine essence, agreeing that divine

oneness is twofold in that (1) the substance of each divine person is the simple divine

being (call this the ontic condition of divine oneness) and (2) their operations are

unified (call this the functional condition of divine oneness).275 Perichoresis is a means

274 Barnes, “Augustine in Contemporary Trinitarian Theology,” 239. He adds, contrary to the

notion that ancient trinitarianism encompassed dissimilar models of the trinity, that the psychological analogy can be found in Greek theologians, including Eusebius of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa.

275 Richard Cross, “Latin Trinitarianism: Some Conceptual and Historical Considerations,” 212. Compare Plantinga, “Gregory of Nyssa and the Social Analogy of the Trinity,” 350.

of affirming the ontic and functional conditions, particularly on the quasi-generic

model.

The discrepancy between the two approaches concerns the nature of universals,

not the doctrine of God, which is not significant enough to constitute distinct schools of

thought. Augustine held that universals are aggregates of particulars. And, since the

divine persons are not constituent parts of God, the divine essence is not a universal. As

Cross observes, “his puzzlement, it seems, springs simply from the lack, in his ontology

of created substance, of anything like an immanent, singular, universal of the sort

accepted by the Cappadocians.”276 Augustine rejected the notion that the essence is a

genus or species, and that the persons are a species or individual beings because the

term ‘person’ denotes a genus in standard metaphysics. Besides, speaking of the essence

as a genus/species without vigilant and categorical qualifications insinuates tritheism.

Gregory recognized the same problem but opted to impugn the assumption that species

nouns are count nouns. Cross concludes that “viewed in this way, it is hard to see the

divergence as implying anything more than an expression of a different set of

philosophical choices (here about the divisibility/indivisibility of species), resulting in a

different selection of appropriate analogy.” 277

Both views, nonetheless, place the divine essence and persons on par. There is no

sense in which the essence causes or is ontically prior to the persons.278 Whether a

particular or universal, the essence is the area of ontic overlap among, or the substratum

276 Cross, “Two Models of the Trinity?,” 283.

277 Cross, “Quid Tres?: On What Precisely Augustine Professed Not to Understand in De Trinitate 5 and 7,” 231

278 Cross, “On Generic and Derivation Views of God’s Trinitarian Substance,” 476.

of, the Father, Son and Spirit, not a fourth divine item.279 It is not extrinsic to the

persons, but entirely “immanentized without partition” in each.280 Simplicity,

furthermore, ensures that no divine person possesses part of the impartible essence;

each possesses the whole. Thus, neither is the divine essence composed of particulars

nor is Godhead simply a community.

Tritheistic theologies renounce the indivisible, immanent divine essence that

constitutes and unifies the persons as either a mental abstraction or a fourth

metaphysical item which the discrete persons individually exemplify. In the first case,

the divine essence is a concept or term; in the second case, it is the property of divinity;

in neither case is it the simple divine being. Whether the essence is regarded as an

abstraction or a form, particularity descends to the Father, Son, and Spirit, as attested in

the staccato history of tritheism.

280 Jacobs, “On ‘Not Three Gods’—Again: Can A Primary-Secondary Substance Reading of Ousia and Hypostasis Avoid Tritheism?,” 337.

CHAPTER 3 — TRITHEISM

Aristotelian and Neoplatonic logic—epitomized by Aristotle’s Categories and

Porphyry’s Isagoge—exerted a considerable influence on medieval theology, with

various results. Particularist and nominalist interpretations occasionally incited

tritheism.281 In the mid-sixth century, for example, John Ascoutzanges, a Syrian

miaphysite and obscure churchman of some philosophical training, gained a following

by professing that there are as many gods as divine persons on the authority of a

patristic florilegium.282 Erismann traces the particularist interpretation of Aristotle to

one statement in On the Soul:283

We must be careful not to ignore the question whether soul can be defined in a single unambiguous formula, as is the case with animal, or whether we must not give a separate formula for each sort of it, as we do for horse, dog, man, god (in the latter case the “universal” animal—and so too every other “common predicate”—being treated either as nothing at all or as a later product).284

Cross reports a consensus among later Neoplatonists, seeking a synthesis of Platonism

and Aristotlianism, that universals are concepts, contrary to both the classical Platonist

281 Erismann, “The Trinity, Universals, and Particular Substances: Philoponus and Roscelin,”

277-278.

282 Michael the Syrian identified Ascoutzanges’s philosophy, not his interpretation of the Fathers, as his primary motivation for tritheism. See Uwe Michael Lang, “Patristic Argument and the Use of Philosophy in the Tritheist Controversy of the Sixth Century” in The Mystery of the Holy Trinity in the Fathers of the Church: The Proceedings of the Fourth Patristic Conference, Maynooth, 1999, ed. D. Vincent Twomey and Lewis Ayres (Dublin, Ireland: Four Courts Press, 2000), 79 and Uwe Michael Lang, “Notes on John Philoponus and the Tritheist Controversy in the Sixth Century,” Oriens Christianus 85 (2001): 30-31.

284 Aristotle, On the Soul, 1.1.402b. The citation is from The Works of Aristotle, Great Books of the Western World, vol. 8, ed., Robert Maynard Hutchins (Chicago, Illinois: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1984), 631-668.

Tritheism

view that universals exist independently of their particular instances—in which

particulars are caused by universals—and the collectivist view that universals are

collections of particulars.285

John Philoponus: Miaphysite Tritheism

Sixth century miaphysitism—according to which Christ, as a divine ‘person’ (both

u(po/stasij and pro/swpon), has a single ‘nature’ (fu/sij),286 contrary to the

Chalcedonian definition that Christ, being consubstantial with both the Father and

humankind, subsists ‘in two natures’ (e)n du/o fu/sesin), unconfusedly, unchangeably,

indivisibly, and inseparably, in which the theanthropic duality is preserved against

Apollinarius and Eutyches and the unipersonality of Christ is preserved against

Nestorius—is commonly associated with tritheism. To miaphysites, the language of

Chalcedon bordered on Nestorianism; to Chalcedonians, miaphysitism was a form of

monophysitism: the Christological heresy that Christ has a single, synthetic divine-

human nature that is neither properly divine nor human. Early medieval

monophysitism encompassed various factions, including those censured as Eutychians,

Dioscorians, Severians,287 other anti-Chalcedonian ‘dissidents’ (a)posxistae), and non-

286 Iain R. Torrance, Christology after Chalcedon: Severus of Antioch and Sergius the Monophysite (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1998; reprint, London, U.K.: Canterbury Press Norwich, 1988), 15.

287 Lang, John Philoponus and the Controversies over Chalcedon in the Sixth Century: A Study and Translation of the Arbiter (Louvain, Belgium: Peeters Publishers, 2001), 8, n. 27.

Chalcedonian ‘hesitants’ (diakrinome/noi).288 Miaphysites, nonetheless, rejected

theologies that mixed the divine and human aspects of Christ so as to render him a third

species.289

The Egyptian polymath and miaphysite John Philoponus reasoned that the

person of Christ encompasses neither two universal natures, or essences, of Godhead

and humanity, elsewise the Father and Spirit are consubstantial with humankind, nor

two particular natures, or individuals/beings, elsewise Christ is two discrete persons:

the divine Word and the man Jesus, as on Nestorianism.290 “If Christ is the same as his

natures,” Philoponus announced, “just as man is the same as the nature of man, that is,

rational moral living being, and there are two natures of Christ and not one, then there

will also be two Christs, as Nestorius thinks, and not one according to the Scriptures.”291

Hence, being one person, he has a compound nature. “Whether someone prefers to call

288 W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement: Chapters in the History of the

Church in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries (New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1972; reprint, Cambridge, U.K.: James Clark and Company Limited, 2008), xiii.

289 Regarding the context of sixth century Christological disputes, in general, and the brand of miaphysitism which sought to mediate monophysitism and Chalcedon, in particular, see I. Torrance, Christology after Chalcedon: Severus of Antioch and Sergius the Monophysite, 3-14; Lang, John Philoponus and the Controversies over Chalcedon in the Sixth Century: A Study and Translation of the Arbiter, 3-10 and 22-41; John E. McKenna, “John Philoponus: Sixth Century Alexandrian Grammarian, Christian Theologian, and Scientific Philosopher,” Coptic Church Review 25 (2004): 103-115; and Leslie S.B. MacCoull, “John Philoponus: Egyptian Exegete, Ecclesiastical Politician” in Bountiful Harvest: Essays in Honor of S. Kent Brown, eds. Andrew C. Skinner, D. Morgan Davis, and Carl Griffin (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2012), 211-221. Regarding the context of sixth century theological metaphysics, see Edward G.T. Booth, “John Philoponus: Christian and Aristotelian Conversion,” Studia Patristica 17 (1957): 407-411.

290 Philoponus, The Arbiter, 7.23. All citations are from Lang, John Philoponus and the Controversies over Chalcedon in the Sixth Century: A Study and Translation of the Arbiter, 171-216. Compare Lang, “Notes on John Philoponus and the Tritheist Controversy in the Sixth Century,” 35-36 and Christian Wildberg, “John Philoponus,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philoponus.

291 Philoponus, The Arbiter, 2:12.

Tritheism

it one nature or hypostasis or one Christ, makes no difference to us; for the rest will

necessarily be implied by each of these.”292 He submitted, moreover, that “if there are

two natures of Christ and not one and every dyad, qua dyad, by being severable, is

therein divided and not united, the two natures of Christ then also, qua natures, will be

two and not one, in this divided and not united.”293 Philoponus imagined that the

division would be starker than the numerical division of particulars under a common

species, such as the men Peter and Paul, “for these, though divided numerically, are

none the less united in the common species... Divine and human nature, however,

unless they have come to a unity of composite nature, would be divided in every respect,

the duality not having been removed by composition.”294 For miaphysites, the

Chalcedonian formula destabilizes the unipersonality of Christ by aligning the divine

and human natures without recognizing genuine union.

He conceived of the divine and human natures in the incarnate Word as

systematically conjoined, as when ropes are interwoven, rather than juxtaposed, as

when stones are stacked together to form a house, or blended, as when water and wine

are mixed.295 Union occurs neither in juxtaposition, in which there is no affinity between

the natures, nor in blending, in which the natures are annihilated through confusion.

Natures which are unaffected or destroyed are unmixed. The unity of natures is not

292 Ibid., 10:47.

293 Ibid., 4:17.

294 Ibid.

295 See Leslie S.B. MacCoull, “A New Look at the Career of John Philoponus,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 3 (1995): 51; Leslie S.B. MacCoull, “John Philoponus and the Composite Nature of Christ,” Ostkrichliche Studien 44 (1995): 198-199; and Lang, John Philoponus and the Controversies over Chalcedon in the Sixth Century: A Study and Translation of the Arbiter, 51-52.

accidental but holistic, qua natures.296 Notwithstanding, nothing in creation is mixed as

the divine and human natures are mixed in Christ, although the operations of rational

souls on bodies bear a resemblance. He asked,

How should the union of the divine and the human nature… be properly said of him or believed, unless those that have been united, have emerged as truly one, evidently unchanged and unconfused, while one of them has not turned into the nature of the other, in the same way as man, who is out of soul and body, is also one nature, while neither the incorporeal soul has been changed into a body, nor the body into the incorporeal substance of the soul?297

In appealing to the relationship between souls and bodies, Philoponus did not intend to

invoke Platonic divisibility but the absolute government of the divine Word over Christ’s

humanity and the unity of his composite operations, just as speaking or seeing cannot

be attributed to either the soul or body, exclusively.298 Thus, his “dynamical and

structured” account of Christ’s complex nature hinges upon a loose analogy which

ultimately yields an “image-less kind of knowing that is necessary to think together the

divine nature of God himself and the human nature he has become.”299

In opposition to Chalcedon, Philoponus maintained that the divinity of Christ is

affected through union with flesh, whereas his humanity is made impeccable through

union with divinity. In divine freedom and power the Son became flesh in the

296 Lang, John Philoponus and the Controversies over Chalcedon in the Sixth Century: A Study

and Translation of the Arbiter, 48 & 51-52.

297 John Philoponus, Letter to Justinian, 3. All citations are from Uwe Michael Lang, “John Philoponus and the Fifth Ecumenical Council: A Study and Translation of the Letter to Justinian,” Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum; Internationale Zeitschrift für Konziliengeschichtsforschung 37 (2005): 429-436.

298 Lang, John Philoponus and the Controversies over Chalcedon in the Sixth Century: A Study and Translation of the Arbiter, 45.

299 McKenna, “John Philoponus: Sixth Century Alexandrian Grammarian, Christian Theologian, and Scientific Philosopher,” 113.

Tritheism

incarnation (John 1:14), existing “out of two natures” but not “in two natures,”300

wherein the distinct properties are preserved.301 Accordingly, Philoponus sought to

delineate miaphysitism from Nestorian juxtaposition and Eutychian blending. He

disputed the Eutychian doctrine that the divine nature of Christ inundates and dissolves

his human nature.302 Miaphysites rejected a stark duality of natures in Christ but,

nonetheless, acknowledged a ‘difference’ (diafora/) between his divinity and

humanity.303 “When he became flesh by the Holy Spirit,” Philoponus appealed in a letter

to Emperor Justinian, “his divinity was not changed into flesh nor again his holy flesh

into divinity,”304 contrary to the aphthartodocetic tendency of monophysitism to

subsume Christ’s human nature under the divine nature such that his single, blended

nature is alien to humanity. An alien Christ who fails to bear humanness would not

“fulfill the requirement of the Law” (Romans 8:4) as the redeemer humanity.

300 Philoponus initially conceded that “if [the Chalcedonians] acknowledge his totality as

composite, for Christ is composite, we shall permit them to say that he is ‘in’ those two natures out of which he is, even if they use the locution improperly…. But if they are fully proved nowhere at all to call the whole of him ‘one composite nature’ and refrain from affirming it as if it were an absurdity, then we too shall justly blame the locution ‘in two’” (The Arbiter 10:45), and warned that “those who do not confess that Christ is one composite nature, but, on the contrary, dare to anathematise those who say so, must then of necessity understand [the phrase] that Christ is ‘in’ two natures not as a whole ‘in’ parts, but, as it pleases the impious Nestorius, as in two hypostases or individuals” (46).

302 MacCoull, “John Philoponus and the Composite Nature of Christ,” 199 and Lang, John Philoponus and the Controversies over Chalcedon in the Sixth Century: A Study and Translation of the Arbiter, 28.

303 As Lang explains, Stephen Niobes (possibly Stephen of Alexandria) incensed the miaphysites by reasoning recognizing a “difference” also implies division and number in Christ in John Philoponus and the Controversies over Chalcedon in the Sixth Century: A Study and Translation of the Arbiter, 33-40.

304 Philoponus, Letter to Justinian, 2.

Miaphysitism forms the theological component of Philoponus’s doctrine of God;

particularism is the philosophical component. Before the emergence of nominalism,

Aristotle’s Neoplatonic commentators reasoned that universals exist either ‘prior to’

(ante rem), ‘in’ (in re), or ‘posterior to’ (post rem) particulars. In the first case,

universals have ontological precedence over particulars, existing in platonic heaven; in

the second case, universals and particulars exist interdependently within the sensible

world; and in the third case, universals are abstractions produced by conceptually

detaching differentiae that modify the species.305 Concerned to avoid the problem of

‘chorismos’ (xwrismo/j)—that is, to explain the correspondence and exchange between

the profoundly dissimilar sensible and intelligible realms—Neoplatonists denied that

universals exist prior to particulars.306

Philoponus, like Gregory of Nyssa, considered the divine essence to be a

universal. But, whereas Gregory thought that the essence exists immanently and

indivisibly in the distinct divine persons, securing their indissoluble unity, Philoponus

believed that the essence exists posterior to the Father, Son, and Spirit. For Gregory,

universal divinity is wholly realized in the divine persons as the unity of individuals

within a species amounts to co-exemplification of a real essence. For Philoponus, the

divine essence is a conceptual abstraction. In bidding to persuade Justinian, he asserted

that “what is not limited is also without hypostasis. Of such kind is that which is called

universal, and it is obvious that it cannot be composed with anything. For how [should]

305 Erismann, “The Trinity, Universals, and Particular Substances: Philoponus and Roscelin,” 282

and Lang, “Notes on John Philoponus and the Tritheist Controversy in the Sixth Century,” 39.

306 Lang, “Notes on John Philoponus and the Tritheist Controversy in the Sixth Century,” 38-39.

Tritheism

that which does not even have an existence of its own but is conceived only in thought

[be composed of anything]?”307 Conceiving of the divine essence as a universal in an

analogical in re sense established the absolute unity of God for Gregory but undermined

divine oneness for Philoponus who subscribed to conceptual post rem universals.

With the divine essence deontologized, the path to tritheism is clear. Again,

according to miaphysitism, the distinct persons are identical to their natures. “The same

common nature… when it exists in each individual, is then proper to this one and not

common to anyone else.”308 Given that the persons are distinct, the natures are distinct.

And distinct natures, or substances, are particular beings according to particularism.

That the teaching of the Church has such conceptions regarding nature and hypostasis is evident from the fact that we confess one nature of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, but we teach as doctrine three hypostases (or prosopa) of them, each of which is distinguished from the others by a certain property. For what should the one nature of the divinity be if not the common intelligible content of the divine nature seen on its own and separated in the conception of the property of each hypostasis? But because we understand the term ‘nature’ more particularly, we see that the common intelligible content of nature becomes proper to each particular (or hypostasis) and then cannot fit with any other of those under the same species.309

Natures inhere in their particulars as unique instances. And assuming that the divine

persons are particular natures, either the universal divine essence is an extra-mental

fourth divine item, which Philoponus denies—resulting in a Quaternity of

natures/essences—or the universal divine essence is purely conceptual, which

308 Philoponus, The Arbiter, 7.22.

309 Ibid., 7.23.

Philoponus affirms—rendering the Father, Son, and Spirit heteroousial.310 Therefore,

the Father, Son, and Spirit are discrete beings, or gods, as there is no common nature

beyond their equivalent particular natures. The divine essence is conceptually

abstracted from their semblance.

Certain opponents of Philoponus, overreacting to miaphysite tritheism,

maintained that the single divine substance became incarnate, prompting allegations of

modalism.311 Philoponus, it seems, found the teaching of Ascoutzanges appealing insofar

as the proffered alternatives are modalism and patripassianism. For this reason, he

leveraged particularism in theorizing about the incarnation.

Not the entire Holy Trinity has become incarnate, but only the Son of God and Word. To say that one nature of the Trinity, that of the Word, has become incarnate, means the one that is defined as being [the nature] of God the Word. When he who confesses [this] distinguishes the nature of the Father and of the Spirit, it is evident that he refers to each one of the three hypostasis also as nature.312

The Son’s nature is not divinity, in toto. Cross distinguishes between individual

natures, according to which beings are conceived to be an essence plus a unique

collection of accidents, and particular natures, according to which beings are pure

particulars with no reference to extra-mental universals.313 Those who suppose the

divine essence to be (something like) an in re universal will accept that the divine

persons have individual natures—namely, the divine essence plus unique personal

properties—but not particular natures. Philoponus held that tokens of the same type—

311 Lang, “Notes on John Philoponus and the Tritheist Controversy in the Sixth Century,” 32.

Tritheism

Peter and Paul, for instance—have particular natures which are individuative and

irreducibly distinct from the concept ‘humanness.’ Peter and Paul are properly

described as ‘human’ in a conceptual sense but do not share humanness in an ontic

sense. In rejecting the Chalcedonian distinction between person and nature, Philoponus

reasoned from divine threeness to tritheism, maintaining that the Father, Son, and

Spirit are particular natures, or beings, and that the common nature or essence is a

conceptual abstraction without concrete existence.314

Although miaphysitism was associated with tritheism, it was ontological

particularism which nullified secondary substances and undermined the oneness of God

within certain theological circles. The synonymity of ‘person’ and ‘nature’ in miaphysite

Christology complemented the tritheistic implications of particularism. Philoponus was

condemned by Bishop John of Cellia and the Alexandrian miaphysite clergy in 567 and

posthumously anathematized at the Third Council of Constantinople in 680.315 The

majority opinion has been that, in eliminating in re universals, Philoponus taught

tritheism.

Roscelin of Compiègne: Nominalist Tritheism

In the late eleventh century, Roscelin of Compiègne, the reputed founder of

nominalism and teacher of Peter Abelard,316 persuaded that trinitarianism collapses into

314 Cross, “Two Models of the Trinity?,” 283. He adds that “it is easy to see how Augustine would

have wanted to avoid such a position. If the available model of universals is nominalist and Neoplatonist, then the divine essence cannot be a universal.”

316 Whether Roscelin founded a new school of thought or simply emphasized an extant position is unsettled. The sixteenth century historian Johannes Aventinus recognized Roscelin as the founder of “a

modalism, reasoned that the divine persons are separate beings so as to underscore

divine threeness against patripassianism.317 Anselm recounted,

While I was still abbot in the monastery of Bec, a certain cleric in France [namely, Roscelin] presumed to say this: “If,” he said, “the three persons are only one thing and not three things, each intrinsically separate, like three angels or three souls, such that they are none the less identical in will and power, then the Father and the Holy Spirit as well as the Son became flesh.”318

But, since the Father and Spirit are incorporeal, he deduced, the divine individuals must

be discrete beings. Roscelin’s rationale was the theological requirement to attribute

incarnation to the Son, alone.

According to his nominalism, universals are ‘vocal sounds’ (flatus vocis) or, at

best, mere terms. The man Peter and the man Paul are existents, but the essence ‘man’

is simply a title ascribed to particulars. Not only were in re universals—both essences

and properties—and relations eliminated but, apparently, he observed no metaphysical

distinction between particulars and tropes, or any sort of metaphysical composition,

whatsoever. In Roscelin’s estimation, composition raises a boot-strapping problem. For

new way of philosophizing” which influenced Abelard, Ockham, Buridan, and Marsilius of Inghen. Constant Mews identifies Roscelin’s philosophical inspiration as the sixth century grammarian Priscian in “Nominalism and Theology before Abaelard: New Light on Roscelin of Compiègne,” Vivarium 30 (1992): 4-6. Concerning the political background which has some bearing on Anselm’s reply to Roscelin, see Constant J. Mews, “St. Anselm and Roscelin: Some New Texts and Their Implications,” Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge (1998): 42-45 and Oliver J. Herbel, “Anselm the Neo-Nestorian?: Responding to the Accusation in Light of On the Incarnation of the Word,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 52 (2008): 181-182.

317 Admittedly, as with many figures who have been immortalized as heretics, reconstructions of Roscelin’s theology are based on scant writings and the reports of his opponents—in this case, a letter addressed to Abelard, from his own hand, and a reproof by Anselm in On the Incarnation of the Word. It is more important, for our purposes, to grasp the view ascribed to Roscelin, which the church recognized and denounced as tritheism, than to determine whether he held the alleged view in detail.

318 Anselm, “On the Incarnation of the Word” in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, ed. Brian Davies and G.R. Evans (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 233. All citations are from Davies’s and Evan’s translation.

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instance, a wall, as a proper part of a house, exemplifies the property being-part-of-the-

house, on realism, as the house is composed of the wall along with its other proper parts

and their relations, which he called “the remainder.” The house is the wall and the

remainder. But, per realism, properties—in this case, being part-of-the-house or, stated

equivalently, being-part-of-the-wall-and-the-remainder—precede the particulars in

which they inhere—namely, the wall. A property which makes reference to the house,

therefore, precedes the wall which, as a part of the house, precedes the house.319 Given

such puzzles, Roscelin opted to reject the reality of universals.

His restriction of existents to particulars was, perhaps, total.320 In identifying

universals as terms, Roscelin went beyond conceptualism, in which universals are

ideas.321 If harbored within the divine Mind, ideas are objective and eternal realities,

short of Platonic realism, not subjective and fleeting mental events. On nominalism,

divinity is neither a real essence exemplified by, nor a conception properly applicable to,

the divine persons, but a name. The unity of the Father, Son, and Spirit is merely

linguistic.322

319 Kluge W. Eike-Henner, “Roscelin and the Medieval Problem of Universals,” Journal of the

History of Philosophy 14 (1976): 409-411.

320 Ibid., 406-407.

322 Of his impact on subsequent philosophy and theology, Eike-Henner states that “a reconstruction of his system… shows him to have been exceedingly influential in the development of both conceptualism and realism. Finally, the very fact of Roscelin’s heretical opinions on the nature of the Trinity forced Anselm to formulate more precisely the metaphysical and logical import of this central Christian doctrine—a fact of immense historical and doctrinal value” (“Roscelin and the Medieval Problem of Universals,” 406). Mews echoes a similar sentiment: “Roscelin has always seemed a maverick figure… Yet both Anselm and Abelard considered Roscelin’s ideas sufficiently important for both to seek to answer them. Roscelin occupies a pivotal role in the evolution of both scholastic philosophy and theology” (“St. Anselm and Roscelin: Some New Texts and Their Implications,” 41-42).

In applying nominalism to the doctrine of God, Roscelin preferred the formula

una essentia, tres substantiae to una substantia, tres personae, which is technically

correct but misleading, as he drew no distinction between ‘person’ and ‘substance’ in the

primary sense.323

It must be understood that in the substance of the Holy Trinity, any names do not signify one thing and another with respect to parts or as to qualities, but it alone, neither divided into parts nor altered by means of qualities, is taken to signify ‘substance.’ So nothing other than ‘substance’ is signified by ‘person,’ even though we are accustomed, out of a custom of speaking, to triple ‘person,’ not ‘substance,’ just as the Greeks are accustomed to triple ‘substance.’324

Again, among those for whom the divine essence is a universal, substantia is to persona

as secondary substance is to primary substance, allowing for the analogical differences

between divine and mundane substances. Shifting the language of ‘divine substance’

from the universal to the particular—thereby holding that substantia is persona—

Erismann notes, “is all that needed doing: since the person can only be singular and

individual—there is no such thing as a collective person—‘substance’ and ‘essence’ are

then necessarily understood as referring to particular beings, otherwise they could not

be synonyms of ‘person.’”325 So, if the distinct names ‘Father,’ ‘Son,’ and ‘Spirit’ signify

323 Erismann, “The Trinity, Universals, and Particular Substances: Philoponus and Roscelin,” 301

and Mews, “Nominalism and Theology before Abaelard: New Light on Roscelin of Compiègne,”17-21.

324 “Sciendum est vero, quod in substantia sanctae trinitatis quaelibet nomina non aliud et aliud significant, sive quantum ad partes sive quantum ad qualitates, sed ipsam solam non in partes divisam nec per qualitates mutatam significant substantiam. Non igitur per personam aliud aliquid significamus quam per substantiam, licet ex quadam loquendi consuetudine triplicare soleamus personam, non substantiam, sicut Graeci triplicare solent substantiam” (Roscelin of Compiègne, “Epistola Roscelini ad P. Abaelardum” in Abhandlungen der philosophisch-philologisch Klasse der Königlisch Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, ed. J.A. Schmeller [Munich, Germany: Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1850], 202). The translation is mine.

Tritheism

particulars, and nothing like indiscrete individuals, properties, or relations, then the

divine individuals are discrete. Godhead encompasses three primary divine substances,

or gods, Roscelin supposed.

Although similar to quasi-generic trinitarianism, Roscelin’s nominalist theology

diminishes the significance of the processions by overemphasizing the generic parity of

the divine persons in contrast to the eternal origination of the Son and Spirit in the

Father, which accentuates consubstantiality. As a consequence, nominalist tritheism is

unmistakably anti-Arian and anti-Sabellian.326 He was censured at the Council of

Soissons between 1090 and 1092 and, despite a retraction, continued to promote

tritheism thereafter, which prompted Anselm’s response in The Incarnation of the

Word.327

Anselm condemned “those contemporary logicians (rather, the heretical

logicians) who consider universal essences to be merely vocal emanations, and who can

understand colours only as material substances, and human wisdom only as the soul,”

declaring that they “should be altogether brushed aside from discussion of spiritual

questions.”328 He wondered “in what way can those who do not yet understand how

several specifically human beings are one human being understand in the most hidden

and highest nature how several persons, each of whom is complete God, are one

326 Ibid., 300-301.

327 Anselm related that Roscelin “had abjured what he said only because he feared that the populace would kill him. Therefore, for this reason, some brothers pressed me with their pleas to resolve the question with which he was so involved, so that he would acknowledge that he could not extricate himself except by entangling himself in the incarnation of God the Father and the Holy Spirit, or in a plurality of gods” (“On the Incarnation of the Word,” 234).

328 Ibid., 237.

God?”329 The connection to theological realism in Christology, as in the case of

Philoponus, is relevant: “Those who cannot understand anything to be a human being

unless an individual will in no way undertand a human being other than a human

person. For every individual human being is a person. Therefore, how will they

understand that the human being assumed by the Word is not a person, that is, that

another nature, not another person, has been assumed?”330 There is a correlation

between the human essence which the Word assumes in the incarnation and the divine

essence which the Word shares with God eternally. She who fails to understand one will

fail to understand the other. The incarnation and the logic of salvation require Christ’s

real consubstantiality with both God and man. And, since consubstantiality is required

within Christology and interrelated to trinitarianism, divine triunity cannot be

impossible.

Anselm conceded that the Father and Son are “two things,” as Roscelin believed,

provided that we confess two relations, not two substances. Roscelin, however, “seems

to proclaim the kind of distinction that would prevent the same man being

simultaneously a father and a son. For he thinks that he by this distinction alone frees

the Father from sharing the incarnation with the Son.”331 Concerning the question of

patripassianism, Anselm answered that Roscelin’s objection targets modalism rather

than trinitarianism, which assures real, relational distinctions between the divine

persons. “Such reasoning… is really the heresy of Sabellius…. But if this is so, the Father

329 Ibid.

330 Ibid., 237-238.

331 Ibid., 239-240.

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does not differ from the Son, nor the Son from the Father. Therefore, there is one

person, not two. For although God will be Father and Son, we affirm two persons

because we believe the Father and the Son to be distinct from one another.”332 We

cannot conflate the divine persons with the divine being, as we conflate human persons

with human beings. In the incarnation, the Son, not the divine essence, adopted a

human nature. Unless principles of human individuation apply to God, the property

becoming-flesh cannot be predicated of the persons of the Father and Spirit.333

Anselm thought it impossible to appeal to Scripture with Roscelin, as to a fellow

Christian, since he blissfully disregarded the oneness of God, about which Scripture is

explicit.334 The only recourse was to demonstrate absurdities in Roscelin’s arguments by

means of a series of pithy arguments. What, for one, accounts for the plurality of gods?

Each of the divine persons, being wholly divine, would render the other two superfluous.

He considered the suggestion that the Father, Son, and Spirit, together, constitute God

absurd since God’s existence would depend on the persons as constituents, but God

depends on nothing.335 And what would unify their distinct powers? “For three human

beings cannot be one king.”336 Finally, he proffers a dilemma: either God is not the

supreme good, or there are several supreme goods, or there is only one God.337 No one

332 Ibid., 242.

333 Ibid., 250.

334 Ibid., 238.

335 Ibid., 245.

336 Ibid.

337 Ibid., 248.

affirms that God is not the supreme good. But, there cannot be several supreme goods,

since only one can be supreme. Therefore, there is only one God.

Roscelin failed to grasp that the relational distinctions of the persons are of such

a quality that, although he is substantially the same as the Father and Spirit, the

incarnation of the Son does not occasion the incarnation of the Father and Spirit. There

is, consequently, no need to posit that the divine persons are distinct substances.

Whether Anselm understood Roscelin correctly, he was charged with, and recanted of,

tritheism. As in the case of Philoponus, a theology which effectively deontologized the

divine essence and particularized the divine persons was judged to be tritheistic.

Gilbert of Poitiers: Realist Tritheism

The leading metaphysician of the twelfth century, Gilbert of Poitiers, was also

investigated for teaching tritheism at the Council of Rheims in 1148.338 His theological

troubles were due, in large measure, to his philosophical originality. Paul Thom records

that “he seems to have thrown out virtually everything in the Categories ontologically

and replaced it with a new theory of his own”: an Aristotelian/Neoplatonic hybrid that

suited his commentaries on Boethius.339 In question was a distinction he drew between

subsistence, or ‘that by which a thing is’ (id quo est), and subsistent, or ‘that which a

thing is’ (id quod est), such that everything is what it is in virtue of something that

338 Gillian R. Evans provides an accessible history of the council, including the pertinent

theological and political elements, in Bernard of Clairvaux (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 123-129.

339 Thom, The Logic of the Trinity: Augustine to Ockham, 79. Christophe Erismann says that, with his account of universals, Gilbert advanced “a radically original solution, which is in strong contrast to all earlier doctrines” (“Explaining Exact Resemblance: Gilbert of Poitiers’s Conformitas Theory Reconsidered” in Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy, vol. 2, ed. Robert Pasnau [New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2014], 1).

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makes it what it is.340 The wise Solomon, for instance, is caused by, or composed of,

unshared subsistences—the humanness-of-Solomon and the wisdom-of-Solomon,

among others—as an individual subsistent. In effect, substances are composed of tropes

for Gilbert.341

His examiners at Rheims inquired as to whether, correspondingly, God has a

trope of divinity; or whether the Father, Son, and Spirit have tropes of paternity (the

property of being-divine which is particular to the Father), filiation (the property of

being-divine which is particular to the Son), and spiration (the property of being-divine

which is particular to the Spirit). If so, God’s oneness is grounded, not in the immanent

divine essence, but in the resemblance of the tropes of divinity which the Father, Son,

and Spirit possess. Hence, divinity, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit appear to be

discrete beings in Gilbert’s theology. But to theoretically detach the essence from the

persons is, the council suspected, to deny simplicity; and to deny simplicity is to affirm

tritheism. Thom believes that the suspicions of the council were valid in one significant

respect, despite Gilbert’s assent that God is incomposite. “Gilbert endorses the

horizontal but not the vertical integration of the divine perfections. He holds that

divinity is the same as divine greatness, divine goodness, and so forth; but in

340 Christophe Erismann, “The Medieval Fortunes of the Opuscula Sacra” in The Cambridge

Companion to Boethius, ed. John Marenbon (New York, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2009), 170.

341 Erismann, “Explaining Exact Resemblance: Gilbert of Poitiers’s Conformitas Theory Reconsidered,” 4.

commenting on Boethius’s analysis of simplicity, he denies that God is divinity, or is the

divine essence,” except in a manner of speaking.342

Bernard of Clairvaux responded to Gilbert’s philosophy with an orthodox creed,

specifying that (1) the divine essence is God, not that which causes divine beings, (2)

there is only one divine substance, and (3) there are no eternal entities beyond the

consubstantial Father, Son, and Spirit.343 Even so, Bernard had difficulty demonstrating

that Gilbert taught tritheism.

At Rheims, according to the account of John of Salisbury, Bernard faced in Gilbert of Poitiers an opponent who could not be foot faulted or rattled. Gilbert had ready arguments, and they were sound. He could not be tripped up on his logic. He was impressively firm. If there were statements he could not be led to admit, however hard he was pressed, he merely asserted that he had not read it but was willing to accept the faith and doctrine of the Holy See. Those present said that they had never heard anyone like him.344

His philosophy was, perhaps, too nuanced for the theological court to detect

unambiguous heresy and was, by all accounts, compliant with church teachings. In fact,

it is not clear that he considered the divine essence to be a fourth metaphysical item.

Though he is usually classified as an innovative realist, he may have been a particularist.

Erismann contends that Gilbert’s ontology employs a theory of conformitas, or exact

resemblance, among tropes belonging to individuals of the same species or genus, which

342 Thom, The Logic of the Trinity: Augustine to Ockham, 84-85. Also see his analysis of Gilbert’s

theory of simplicity in “Trinitarian Semantics of Gilbert of Poitiers,” Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics 7 (2007): 9-10.

343 Thom, The Logic of the Trinity: Augustine to Ockham, 79-80.

344 Evans, Bernard of Clarivaux, 126.

Tritheism

avoids the need for immanent universals.345 It appears, at least, that the council

interpreted Gilbert as a realist and rejected his philosophy. The man, however, was not

condemned.

After Rheims, he was careful to distinguish between universal and mundane

metaphysical doctrines, teaching that the humanness-of-Plato individuates Plato from

Cicero but that paternity does not individuate the Father from the Son, as divine

subsistences, being of another order, do not serve to individuate.346 He faulted the

Arians for assuming that, because there is only one divine essence, the Father, alone, is

God and the Sabellians for supposing that the Father, Son, and Spirit are identical. In

God, however, three quod est do not entail three quo est. To say that “Socrates is a man,”

“Plato is a man,” and “Aristotle is a man” is to signify discrete things. But to say that “the

Father is God,” “the Son is God,” and “the Spirit is God” is to signify the same thing.347

In the natural world, a thing is what it is in virtue of its unique substantial property, but

345 Erismann, “Explaining Exact Resemblance: Gilbert of Poitiers’s Conformitas Theory

Reconsidered,” 3-22. Erismann reduces Gilbert’s ontology to 3 theses: first, nothing can exist in two individuals; second, a causal property can cause one and only one being; and, third, the relation between two essential properties that belong to two co-specific beings is exact resemblance (3). Resemblance, in turn, holds for essential properties, not beings or accidents. “It is therefore inappropriate to say that Plato resembles Socrates if this means that Platonity—the sum of the determinations of Plato—resembles Socrateity—the sum of the determinations of Socrates. However, we can say that Plato resembles Socrates as to rationality; for Plato’s particular rationality is conform [sic.] to Socrates’ particular rationality” (12). John Marenbon accedes that “Gilbert is a type of trope theorist (just like Abelard). There is no universal rationality or whiteness. Rather each instance of whiteness or rationality or any accident or differentia is a singular thing. The only individuals are the quod ests of which the quo ests are the whole properties—an assemblage of all the accidental and differential quo ests—of a singular person of a natural kind” (“Gilbert of Poitiers’s Contextual Theory of Meaning and the Hermeneutics of Secrecy,” in Logic and Language in the Middle Ages: A Volume in Honour of Sten Ebbesen, ed. Jakob Leth Fink, Heine Hansen, and Ana María Mora-Márquez [Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Publishers, 2013], 63).

346 Thom, The Logic of the Trinity: Augustine to Ockham, 87.

347 Gilbert of Poitiers, De Trinitate, 1.3.37.

in divine reality the Father, Son, and Spirt are what they are in virtue of a single

subsistence: deity.348

Gilbert was accused of annulling simplicity by postulating a metaphysical

distinction between the divine essence and being, or beings—between divinitas and

Deus. Were the divine essence, as such, a detached form, nothing would bind the Father,

Son, and Spirit. At best, the divine persons would have tropes of divinity, subsisting as

divine particulars, or gods.

Tritheism and Theological Rationalism

Philoponus, Roscelin, and Gilbert were steadfast anti-Arians and anti-Sabellians,

countenancing neither a distinction of substance among the divine persons nor their

numerical identity. Yet they opposed the immanentist ontology of the Cappadocians,

opting for univocal particularist, nominalist, and realist theories of the Christian Deity.

Philoponus was censured for conflating ‘person’ with ‘nature’ and, thereby, enumerating

as many natures in Godhead as persons. In orthodox thought, the divine nature, or

essence, is singular, indivisible, and entirely shared by the Father, Son, and Spirit. Of

course, his deviation from trinitarianism originates in a rejection of Chalcedonian

Christology. Roscelin’s opposition to the doctrine of the Trinity also had both

philosophical and theological roots. The threat of patripassianism invites radical

theories of personal individuation which nominalism “solves” without postulating

metaphysical entities beyond the divine persons. In the cases of Philoponus and

Roscelin, the divine essence was nullified such that nothing could guarantee the

348 Thom, The Logic of the Trinity: Augustine to Ockham, 89.

Tritheism

consubstantiality of the persons. In the case of Gilbert, the divine essence was divided

from the persons as an extrinsic entity, or so his accusers believed. Similarly, a detached

essence cannot ensure divine oneness.

If interpreted correctly, Roscelin intended to teach tritheism so as to avoid

patripassianism and provide a coherent apologetic against skeptics of the Christian

doctrine of God. Philoponus, too, had apologetic and polemical aims in defending

miaphysitism. Tritheism was, perhaps, an acceptable consequence in his estimation.

Gilbert, in contrast, did not appear to have any theological reasons to question the

doctrine of the Trinity, per se. Whether these figures have been accurately represented

in the theological tradition, an impression of tritheism is manifest in each.

A larger contributing factor to tritheism than particular philosophical preferences

may be a “rationalistic approach which seeks to explain the divine by concepts and

principles derived from the created order.”349 Anselm believed this of Roscelin, writing

against him in order to “curb the presumption of those who, since they are unable to

understand intellectually things the Christian faith professes, and with foolish pride

think that there cannot in any way be things that they cannot understand, with

unspeakable rashness dare to argue against such things rather than with humble

wisdom admit their possibility.”350 The possibility which must be admitted is that,

mysteriously, the Father, Son, and Spirit are distinct—approximate particulars—and,

yet, identical to the simple divine being. The relationship between a species and

349 R.Y. Ebied, A Van Roey, and L.R. Wickham, Peter of Callinicum: Anti-tritheist Dossier

(Louvain, Belgium: Department Oriëntalistiek, 1981), 33.

350 Anselm, “On the Incarnation of the Word,” 235.

individuals of that species is a useful paradigm, but must not be taken in a univocal

sense. The comparison, respecting the Creator/creature distinction, is ultimately

mysterious, not literal. Metaphysical claims which eliminate the constituting and

unifying essence are tritheistic.

CHAPTER 4 — SOCIAL TRINITARIANISM

Legitimately social accounts of the Trinity (analogously or univocally) liken God

to an intimate community. Analogically construed, God is something like a society or

community of divine persons—distinct loci of knowledge, will, emotions, and action—

possessing a unity which exceeds that of co-specific individuals. Univocally construed,

God is a society or community of divine persons who achieve an interpersonal unity

which is supposed to meet biblical and creedal standards of divine oneness. The

mechanism and necessary condition of divine oneness is, not only that “the Father, the

Son, and the Spirit are numerically distinct persons… [who] have some property or

properties in common,” as Brandon Carey states, but the moral union of the divine

persons.351 Social theorists earnestly attempt to incorporate TT7, beyond the type

theory. Whether prominent accounts successfully do so is another question. Those who

allege that social trinitarianism is necessarily polytheistic must bear in mind the

distinctively social depiction of divine oneness.

Varieties of Social Trinitarianism

In spite of this, various type theories have been designated ‘social models.’ The

first—covenantal divinity—emphasizes the functional condition of divine oneness in

which the Father, Son, and Spirit are considered one God to the extent that they submit

351 Carey, “Social Trinitarianism and Polytheism,” 97. While acknowledging that social accounts

involve the personal intercourse of the Father, Son, and Spirit, Carey avers, “commitment to three numerically distinct divine persons” (n. 1) exposes social trinitarianism to the charge of polytheism. Notwithstanding, the doctrine of the Trinity entails the individuation of the persons so, assuming that personal individuation does not necessarily entail polytheism, commitment to “numerically distinct divine persons” is no defect of the social model. Perhaps he means to emphasize TT7 by impugning commitment to three distinct divine beings. Of course, the social model as an approach to trinitarianism must also attempt to incorporate TT7.

to a covenant of wills, embodying incomparable loyalty and love. The intra-divine pledge

involves either a submission of will and power, on the part of the Son and Spirit, to the

authority of the Father (call this monarchial covenantal divinity), adherence to the

majority determination of the covenant partners (call this democratic covenantal

divinity), or an equitable division of duties and functions such that conflict cannot occur

(call this triumvirate covenantal divinity). Paulsen explains that, in monarchial

covenantal divinity, “it is the will of the Father that the Son and Holy Ghost freely take

as their own” such that “while the Son and Holy Ghost possess distinct minds and wills

and exhibit distinct actions, the Godhead thinks, wills and acts ad extra as one.”352 This

conception implicitly acknowledges the quasi-creational model and the preeminence of

the Father without implying ontic superiority over the Son and Spirit. Layman

articulates democratic covenantal divinity in stating that “social Trinitarians will deny

that there are three Lords of the universe, even though there are three divine selves. For

it is the community of divine persons that has ultimate authority.”353 This conception is

most consistent with the quasi-generic model which stresses the ontic unity and equality

of the persons. Swinburne opts for triumvirate covenantal divinity:

Unity of action could be secured if the first God solemnly vows to the second God in [eternally] creating him that he will not frustrate any action of his in a certain sphere of activity, and expresses the request that in return the second God should not frustrate any action of his in the other

352 David L. Paulsen and Brett McDonald, "Joseph Smith and the Trinity: An Analysis and

Defense of the Social Model of the Godhead," Faith and Philosphy 25 (2008): 55. Compare David Paulsen, Jacob Hawken, and Michael Hansen, “Jesus Was Not a Unitarian,” BYU Studies Online 49 (2010): 15-16.

353 Layman, “Tritheism and the Trinity,” 294. The emphasis is Layman’s.

Social Trinitarianism

sphere. The vow of the first God would create an obligation on him not to frustrate any action within his allocated sphere of activity.”354

This conception is the most novel.

In all forms, covenantal divinity depicts the Father, Son, and Spirit as centers of

consciousness in moral union. Yet, ostensibly, the divine persons are unbound in the

substantive sense denoted by historical trinitarianism. Proponents of covenantal

divinity must incorporate the ontic condition of God’s oneness beyond a contingent

contract among gods. And, in fact, those who endorse covenantal divinity typically offer

additional grounds of unity.

The second type—mereological divinity—explicitly addresses the ontic condition

in that the divine persons are considered proper parts of the divine Whole. As a body is

composed of parts—a head, a torso, two arms, and two legs—or a team is composed of

players, so the divine persons are collectively identical to God and God is distributively

identical to the Father, Son and Spirit.355 Bodies and teams can be described as one

thing or many things depending on the manner in which one conceptualizes a given

portion of reality. One might say “my body was aching after the marathon. My feet and

legs were throbbing and even my arms, shoulders, and neck were in pain.” Or “the

basketball team played well last night. Michael, Kobe, and Larry each scored in the

double digits.” So too, Einar Bøhn reasons, the terms ‘God’ and ‘Father, Son, and Spirit,’

while dividing their referent differently, range over the same thing. Deity can be

conceptualized as ‘God,’ having a cardinality of one, or as ‘Father, Son, and Spirit,’

354 Swinburne, “Could There Be More than One God?,” 232.

355 Bøhn, “The Logic of the Trinity,” 363-374.

having a cardinality of three. “It is not true,” Bøhn insists, “that God is one in number

and that God is not one in number, simpliciter. Rather, what is true is that God is one in

number relative to one way of conceptualizing that portion of reality that he is, but not

one in number relative to another way of conceptualizing it.”356

Proponents of mereological divinity neither describe the divine persons in terms

of moral union nor assume that divine threeness is basic to divine oneness, as is often

purported of social trinitarians. On the contrary, the whole and its parts are considered

to be on par, neither being conceptually basic to the other.357 Depending on the subject,

wholes might be analyzed in terms of their parts and parts might be analyzed in terms of

their place or function within the whole. Nevertheless, mereological divinity is

committed to the type reading of the Athanasian Creed, which social trinitarianism

approximates.

The key problem with this account is that, insofar as ‘God’ is the collective term

for the Father, Son, and Spirit, TT1-3 are false. The Father is no more God than

Bentham’s head is Bentham. While the parts are identical to the whole and the whole is

identical to the collection of parts, no part is identical to the whole and the whole is not

identical to any part. Bøhn holds that non-competing conceptions of Deity—‘God’ and

‘Father, Son, and Spirit’—identify the same portion of reality, such that God “can equally

well be conceptualized as a plurality of three divine persons” or “as a divine person.”358

Yet, in which sense can God be considered a divine person, assuming that he is not a

356 Ibid., 367. The emphasis is Bøhn’s.

357 Ibid., 365-369.

358 Ibid., 369-370.

fourth divine instance, since the singular term specifies the same object as the plural

term, neither reference being privileged nor exceeding the other?

Children of the 1980’s may remember the cartoon Voltron: a science fiction series

in which members of the Voltron Force pilot robot lions that combine to form the super-

robot Voltron. The lions embodied the characteristic personas of their individual pilots

when independent but, when united, became impersonal parts of Voltron, who

possessed a distinct personality of his own. The parallel to mereological divinity is

evident. Is God to be thought of as a super-person, encompassing the Father, Son, and

Spirit, if not identical to the Father, Son, or Spirit? While not rendering God a mere

community of persons, mereological divinity implies either an impersonal whole or a

makeshift conception of composite personhood, exceeding the traditional theological

notion of ‘divine person.’359

A final type—perichoretic divinity—utilizes the doctrine of perichoresis, in which

the divine persons are thought to enjoy an incomparable inter-subjectivity resulting

from a communal awareness of their distinctive conscious states—emotions, thoughts,

359 Bøhn protests that “nowhere… have I used the mereological notions of composition, parthood,

proper parthood, etc. I have only relied on a primitive notion of plural identity, not merelogical notions. Obviously, relying on a primitive concept of identity is not thereby relying on the extremely controversial thesis of Composition as Identity” (Ibid., 371; the emphasis is Bøhn’s). He explains that “the divine portion of reality is both one God and three persons, but it is only when conceptualized as the later that it is divided into three…. The only way we can make sense of such a claim is by using the singular word (or term) ‘God,’ but really be thinking of it or conceptualizing it through the plural concept of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit; or be using the plural word (or term) ‘the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,’ but really be thinking of it or conceptualizing it through the singular concept of God” (371; the emphasis is Bøhn’s). Even so, his analogies, particularly a body and its parts, seem to invoke composition. In personal correspondence, Bøhn answers that other suitable analogies—a pair of shoes and its individual shoes, a team and its players, a kilometer and its meters (365-366)—can be entertained by those who reject composite objects (8/4/2013). He denies, therefore, that his account is bound to any mereological system or theory or composition. One wonders, in that case, whether Bøhn is tackling, or merely restating, the logical problem of the Trinity. Is not the trinitarian puzzle that God, on Christian theology, is conceived of as both one and three? What is the proposed solution, if not that “God is both one and three in the way that a whole and its parts are singular and plural?”

and volitions. Modern versions typically eschew the philosophical influences on the

ancient doctrine-namely, Stoic mixture theory and the Neoplatonic theory of

participation. Still, in exploiting the concept, perichoretic models categorically sanction

the ontic condition.

The divine persons are (or are something like) individual centers of

consciousness under each conception. Proponents of covenantal divinity, after

emphasizing the functional condition of divine oneness, must either proffer other modes

of unity in order to meet the ontic condition or flout TT7 by insisting that the oneness of

God is simply the moral union of discrete divine beings. For that reason, austere

covenantal divinity is tritheism. Mereological divinity, while neither emphasizing nor

precluding the functional condition, interprets the relationship between the divine

persons and God as a part/whole problem. In this way, one might affirm the ontic

condition in the cogent terms of the type reading by, undoubtedly, risking TT1-3.

Perichoretic divinity stresses the ontic condition while securing TT1-3 to the degree that

perichoresis is not a theory about the relationship between parts and wholes.

The Case for Social Trinitarianism

In light of the threat of tritheism, one may justifiably wonder why so many find

the social model appealing. Proponents typically advance three reasons: first, as a type

reading, social trinitarianism avoids the tendency in Christian theology toward “mere

monotheism”; second, it avoids logical concerns about relative identity; and third, it

underscores the biblical portrait of the Father, Son, and Spirit as persons in

communion. These points constitute the case for social trinitarianism.

The Problem of Mere Monotheism

Social theorists allege that a slippery slope runs from the quasi-identity model to

“mere monotheism,”360 wherein the Christian Deity is regarded a generic divine

personality and the Trinity is rendered a quaint theological embellishment.361 Rahner

contended that a tendency to elevate divine oneness over divine threeness yields a

theology proper that is excessively metaphysical, diminishing the significance of the

Trinity to the central questions of theology since “everything which matters for us in

God has already been said in the treatise On the One God.”362 Moltmann protests that

segregating the treatise de Deo uno from the treatise de Deo trino produces a “double

divine unity—a unity of the divine essence, and the union of the triune God.” He

determines that “the first unity forces out the second…. The representation of the

trinitarian persons in a homogeneous divine substance, presupposed and recognizable

from the cosmos, leads unintentionally but inescapably to the disintegration of the

doctrine of the Trinity into abstract monotheism.”363

360 Important assessments of the token tendency to conceive of God as a single, generic divine

person—including those of Rahner and Moltmann—employ the phrase ‘mere monotheism’ or something similar. Perhaps ‘crypto-unitarianism’ is a better term since ‘monotheism’ is customarily acknowledged to be the definiendum of TT7, without implying that the single divine being is uni-personal. Kilby chides Moltmann: “He too sets up a contrast between the undesirable corollaries of the alternative, which he calls Christian monotheism, and by which he means Christian trinitarianism as it has traditionally been understood in the West” (“Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrines of the Trinity,” 433).

361 Rahner adduces a number of doctrines about which Christians tend to conceive of God in “mere monotheistic” terms—including the doctrines of creation, salvation and, ironically, the incarnation—in The Trinity, 10-15.

362 Ibid., 17.

363 Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, 17. His claim that affording logical priority to the treatise de Deo uno leads “inescapably to the disintegration of the doctrine of the Trinity” is exaggerated. Systematic discussions of the treatise de Deo uno can be conditioned by and integrated with a robust understanding of the Trinity, while remaining topically distinct from and prior to the treatise de Deo trino for pedagogical and apologetical reasons. As Rahner explains, “things do not

Moltmann reasons that models of the Trinity which envision God as absolute

subject inevitably relinquishes the trinitarian conception of ‘person,’ as a “subject of acts

and relationships” and “must surrender the concept of person to the one, identical God-

subject, and choose for the trinitarian Persons another, non-subjective expression. For

this, Western tradition would seem to offer the neuter concept, ‘mode of being.’”364 A

person, as a center of consciousness, is an individual substance capable of feeling,

thinking, willing, acting, and relating, possessing complex and free affective, cognitive,

conative, and relational capacities.365 The center of consciousness construal locates

divine subjectivity in the Father, Son, and Spirit, individually. The psychological

analogy, alternatively, gives the impression that the Son and Spirit are modifications of

the Father, who is the divine mind and subject.366 The social model spurns any ordering

relation among the divine persons that might indicate an ontic superiority of the Father

over the Son and Spirit.367 As paired centers of consciousness, inequality among the

persons must be functional and economic, only.

Whether the divine persons are subjects of acts and relationships is, of course,

contentious. Those in the tradition of Augustine stress that the term ‘person,’ as a

terminus technicus in trinitarian parlance, is ambiguous apart from its technical

necessarily have to be this way every time the two treatises On the One God and On the Triune God are separated and studied in sequence…. The important question is: what is said in both treatises and how well are they related to each other, when thus separated in the usual way?” (The Trinity, 20; the emphasis is Rahner’s).

366 King-Farlow, “Is the Concept of the Trinity Obviously Absurd?,” 38.

367 Bøhn, “The Logic of the Trinity,” 368.

context. The modern view of personhood, we hear, derives from a Cartesian fixation on

intellect and will. Indeed, u(posta/sij does not connote individual mentality, as does the

modern notion of ‘person.’ “The word [person] has drifted semantically in a wide arc

over the course of centuries,” Johnson cautions. “Applying the word in its contemporary

usage to the triune God almost inevitably yields the notion of three distinct somebodies.

When Christians are not being their usual atrinitarian monotheistic selves, we are

tritheists.”368 Although personhood ordinarily involves subjectivity, divine persons must

not be thought of as individual subjects. Social theorists respond that quasi-identity

models exaggerate the dissimilarity between divine and human persons due to either an

extravagant construal of human isolation as contrasted with divine interdependence369

or the influence of Aristotelianism, wherein Deity is regarded “an impersonal but

superlative neuter,”370 thereby yielding a categorical disanalogy and creating theoretical

space for effectively modalistic renditions of Christian theology.

They detect, moreover, a substantial resemblance between divine and human

persons, although divine persons do not experience seclusion, remain inaccessible to

one another, or suffer any divisive disorder of human society. The use of personal

pronouns in reference to the Father, Son, and Spirit, and analogies to human

personhood are sanctioned by Scripture and the creeds.371 Indeed, Augustine developed

368 Johnson, “To Let the Symbol Sing Again,” 304.

369 Kilby, “Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrines of the Trinity,” 434.

370 Herbert C. Wolf, “An Introduction to the Idea of God as Person,” Journal of Bible and Religion 32 (1964): 27. Wolf further states that Aristotelianism has incited docetic and Nestorian Christologies, and a transference of the intimate aspects of personal fellowship with Deity to Mary.

371 Van Inwagen, “And Yet There Are Not Three Gods But One God,” 248.

illustrations of the Trinity deriving from human personality and consciousness,

involving memory, understanding, and will. Likewise, Tertullian invited his readers to

consider the internal dialogue between a reasoner and his reason.

Observe, then, that when you are silently conversing with yourself, this very process is carried on within you by your reason, which meets you with a word at every movement of your thought, at every impulse of your conception. Whatever you think, there is a word; whatever you conceive, there is reason. You must needs speak it in your mind; and while you are speaking, you admit speech as an interlocutor with you, involved in which there is this very reason, whereby, while in thought you are holding converse with your word, you are (by reciprocal action) producing thought by means of that converse with your word. Thus, in a certain sense, the word is a second person within you, through which in thinking you utter speech, and through which also, (by reciprocity of process,) in uttering speech you generate thought. The word is itself a different thing from yourself. Now how much more fully is all this transacted in God, whose image and likeness even you are regarded as being, inasmuch as he has reason within himself even while he is silent, and involved in that Reason his Word!372

Reflexive self-consciousness approximates a social distinction of persons. Whether

particular social accounts the Trinity are crude or misleading, the social model

accentuates the personal intercourse of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Christians do not,

after all, worship or commune with modes of subsistence.373 For this reason, Gregory of

Nyssa plainly described the Spirit as a personal agent.

We conceive of it as an essential power, regarded as self-centered in its own proper person, yet equally incapable of being separated from God in whom it is, or from the Word of God whom it accompanies, as from melting into nothingness; but as being, after the likeness of God’s Word,

373 Herrick, “1+1+1=1: Making Sense of Nonsense: The Concept of the Trinity at the End of the 20th Century,” 284.

existing as a person, able to will, self-moved, efficient, ever choosing the good, and for its every purpose having its power concurrent with its will.374

He did not, of course, consider the Trinity a society or sanction a theory of divine

oneness based on moral union, but he did depict the divine persons as (something like)

distinct selves.375

In spite of this, Cross thinks that Gregory’s language is simply inchoate. He

retorts,

On the rejected Social Trinitarian views, we posit either three deities (three tropes), or three persons such that there is a distinction between each person’s relation to the deity (e.g., the Father’s having deity ≠ the Son's having deity)…. The views of the theologians I have been discussing here—Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, and Aquinas—to the extent that they entail that the only features that distinguish the persons are relations, are on the face of it incompatible with the claim that there are three mental subjects in God, since distinction of mental subject seems to be more than just a relational matter, and it certainly seems to be more than a question of relations between the persons, such as the Trinitarian relations are supposed to be.376

No doubt, Gregory did not consider the Father, Son, and Spirit to be literal centers of

consciousness. Equally, however, he (and Augustine) did not consider the divine

persons to be literal relations. After all, he held to a quasi-generic, not modalist,

374 Gregory of Nyssa, The Great Catechism, 2. His apparent advocacy of the centers of

consciousness view must be gauged against a notable exception to the three-man analogy within the same chapter: “As, then, by the higher mystical ascent from matters that concern ourselves to that transcendent nature we gain a knowledge of the Word, by the same method we shall be led on to a conception of the Spirit, by observing in our own nature certain shadows and resemblances of his ineffable power. Now in us the spirit (or breath) is the drawing of the air… This, on the occasion of uttering the word, becomes an utterance which expresses in itself the meaning of the word.... The like doctrine have we received as to God’s Spirit; we regard it as that which goes with the Word and manifests its energy, and not as a mere effluence of the breath; for by such a conception the grandeur of the Divine power would be reduced and humiliated, that is, if the Spirit that is in it were supposed to resemble ours.” Once again, Gregory’s quasi-generic trinitarianism tolerates the psychological analogy.

theology. Rather than discount Gregory’s language as anomalous, he should be read as

affirming that the Spirit is (something like) “a person, able to will, self-moved, efficient,

ever choosing the good, and for its every purpose having its power concurrent with its

will,” in such way as to also be considered (something like) a reflexive divine relation,

internal to, and indivisible from, Deity. To read Gregory univocally, as if he were

endorsing functional divinity, would be to mistake his analogical quasi-generic

trinitarianism for functional divinity. His idiom should not be seen as inconsistent with

his account of the Trinity but interpreted as analogically consistent with the tradition

that defines the divine persons as identical to Deity and relationally distinct. Employed

as an analogy, the centers of consciousness view is theologically serviceable.

The Problem of Relative Identity

Quasi-identity theories invoke relative identity, or imply something similar, so as

to render TT1-3 approximate identity statements without contradicting TT4-6.

Unfortunately, relative identity is counterintuitive, as Tuggy explains:

One would be incredulous if told, for example, that John and Peter were the same apostle but different men, or that Rover and Spot were the same mammal but different dogs. Why should one be less incredulous at… the claim that the Son is the same being as, but a different person than the Father? It seems that this sort of refined [Latin trinitarianism] is to attempt to illuminate the obscure by the obscure.377

377 Tuggy, “The Unfinished Business of Trinitarian Theorizing,” 173-174. Merricks raises the

objection as follows: “Let’s pretend, for example, that being the same dog as does not entail being the same as (i.e., being identical with). But then we must admit that we have no idea what the relation of being the same dog as is supposed to be. And it seems that all alleged ‘relative identity relations’ are likewise unintelligible” (“Split Brains and Godhead,” 302). And Yandell: “Whether there is any good reason to replace plain identity by relativized identity is a controversial matter on which the vote, for whatever it is worth, seems to have gone against relativizing identity” (“The Most Brutal and Inexcusable Error in Counting?: Trinity and Consistency,” 204).

Relative identity theorists, however, do not deny that there exists x and y such that x

and y are identical A’s and identical B’s, as Rover and Spot are identical mammals and

identical dogs, but that for all x and y, x and y are identical A’s and B’s where x and y are

identical A’s and x is a B. And, on the quasi-identity reading, the relationship between

the Father and Son is qualitatively unlike that of Rover and Spot. Adducing examples for

which relative identity does not hold fails show that the divine persons are not relatively

identical. Still, the theory appears to be ad hoc apart from an unambiguously non-

theological application. How should we understand the unique relative identically of the

Father, Son, and Spirit without some conceptual comparison?

Tertullian posed a non-theological approximation of relative identity in Against

Praxeas.

I am sure that monarxi/a (or Monarchy) has no other meaning than single and individual rule; but for all that, this monarchy does not, because it is the government of one, preclude him whose government it is, either from having a son, or from having made himself actually a son to himself, or from ministering his own monarchy by whatever agents he will…. If, moreover, there be a son belonging to him whose monarchy it is, it does not forthwith become divided and cease to be a monarchy, if the son also be taken as a sharer in it; but it is as to its origin equally his, by whom it is communicated to the son; and being his, it is quite as much a monarchy (or sole empire), since it is held together by two who are so inseparable.378

The fourth century co-regents Diocletian, Augustus of the Western Roman Empire, and

Maximian, Augustus of the East, wielded the same emperorship over an undivided

empire. As a result, citizens of Rome were obliged to recognize both as emperor; that is,

he who exercises absolute civic authority over all residents of the empire while being

subject to no one.379 The possibility that Diocletian and Maximian might decree

contradictory edicts would not destabilize the unity of the emperorship since insane,

sadistic, and stupid emperors might contradict themselves without dividing the

empire.380 Certainly the unity of the divine persons exceeds mere co-regency, as the Son

and Spirit, A.P. Martinich explains, “are naturally members of the Father’s own

substance, pledges of his love, instruments of his might, nay, his power itself and the

entire system of his monarchy.”381

Although some comparison is imaginable, nothing is strictly identical relative to

one conception and non-identical relative to another as, perhaps, is Deity. Social

theorists—or at least those who endorse functional and mereological divinity—claim to

avoid the ad hocness of the quasi-identity model. Once again, however, they do so by

risking tritheism and partialism, respectively. Proponents of perichoretic divinity,

conversely, suppose that the Father, Son, and Spirit are relatively identical as distinct

persons who share a mysterious ontic mixture or overlap such that their seemingly

discrete divinities are really one.382 Relative identity theorists of various sorts might

answer that functional and mereological theories fail to incorporate the oneness of God

in the way required by Christian theology. It is, therefore, doubtful that avoiding relative

identity is a particular advantage of social trinitarianism.

379 Martinich, “God, Emperor, and Relative Identity,” 186.

380 Ibid., 188.

382 Once again, the divinities of the Father, Son, and Spirit are “seemingly discrete” since actually discrete divinities are independent gods. Trinitarians, of course, insist that the divine persons are distinct but not discrete.

The Intra-divine Love Argument

Critics of the social model can reasonably resist the problem of mere

monotheism—the claim that social trinitarianism, alone, properly articulates TT4-6—

and the problem of relative identity—the claim that quasi-identity theories

overemphasize TT1-3, subverting the individuation of the persons. The most compelling

rationale for the social model is the argument from intra-divine love (IDL), which Davis

states as follows:

(IDL1) Necessarily, God is perfect, and perfect in love.

(IDL2) Necessarily, if God does not experience love of another, God is imperfect.

(IDL3) Therefore, necessarily, God experiences love of another.

(IDL4) Necessarily, it is possible that only God exists.

(IDL5) Necessarily, if social trinitarianism is false, there is no ‘other’ in the Godhead.

(IDL6) Necessarily, if God alone exists, and if social trinitarianism is false, then God does not experience love of another, and thus is not perfect.

(IDL7) Therefore, necessarily, social trinitarianism is true.383

IDL1 is an entailment of biblical theism. Any deficiency of love in God would

effectively controvert 1 John 4:8. God is not simply loving, but the embodiment of love.

IDL2 rests on the intuition that perfect love involves love of another, without impugning

the appropriateness of modest self-love, which can be conducive to other-love. Much

can be said about the nature of perfect love, but that it encompasses love of another

seems innocuous. IDL3 follows from IDL1-2. IDL4 expresses the Christian doctrine that

creation, including persons made in God’s image, is a consequence of God’s free creative

activity. Nothing compelled the Father to create beings in his image, much less the need

to express repressed loving-kindness. As per Christian theism, God is both eternally,

383 S. Davis, Christian Philosophical Theology, 65. An earlier version appears in “A Somewhat

Playful Proof of the Social Trinity in Five Easy Steps,” 103-105.

perfectly loving and unreservedly free. Therefore, by IDL5-6, God must exist as a

plurality of divine persons eternally sharing other-love.384

The movement from a two-person to a three-person love relationship can be

envisioned as that of giving-receiving love, modeled on fathers and sons, becoming

inclusive of a third, as exclusion is emphatically antithetical to divine love.385 “The

divine love of a first god G1,” Swinburne says, “would be manifested first in creating

another god G2 with whom to share his life, and the divine love of G1 and G2 would be

manifested in creating another god G3 with whom G1 and G2 cooperatively could share

their lives.”386 Needless to say, the creation of G2 and G3 would be eternal since God is

eternally perfectly loving. Religious monotheists of various sorts acknowledge that God’s

wisdom and power are eternal, but only Christians trust that perfect divine love

transcends creation, as a unique consequence of trinitarianism.387

The social model entails that Godhead contains three persons, as centers of

consciousness, in loving relationship. But why not a fourth divine person? Should not

Godhead, in fact, encompass a countless number of persons transmitting boundless

love? Swinburne intuits that giving, mutual love between two divine persons, and

cooperative, shared love between two divine persons and a third exhausts perfect

384 Brian Hebblethwaite makes a similar argument in “Perichoresis—Reflections on the Doctrine

of the Trinity,” Theology 80 (1977): 257.

385 John Wren-Lewis, “Modern Philosophy and the Doctrine of the Trinity,” Philosophical Quarterly 5 (1955): 223. Wren-Lewis was neither a social trinitarian nor a theistic realist, however. His position was that the Trinity is a metaphor of love in its various manifestations. Advocates of IDL, who run the metaphor in the other direction, can appropriate his insights.

387 Peter van Inwagen, “And Yet They Are Not Three Gods but One God” in Philosophy and the Christian Faith, ed. Thomas V. Morris (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 241.

love.388 IDL, interpreted in this way, fits the traditional language of procession: giving,

mutual love corresponds to the Father begetting the Son, and cooperative, shared love

corresponds to the Father and Son producing the Spirit. The Son depends on the Father,

and the Spirit depends on the Father and Son. The dependence relations are not,

however, necessary for individuating the divine persons, since the Father, Son, and

Spirit are individuals in that they exemplify (something like) their own tropes of

divinity.

The Case against Social Trinitarianism

Critics raise a handful of objections against social trinitarianism—namely, the

problems of uncreedality, theological projection, ontological fragility, worthiness of

worship, and personifying Godhead. As it turns out, the problems of uncreedality,

theological projection, and personifying Godhead are inconclusive. The others pose

stern challenges to the functional and mereological views. The problem of ontological

fragility, in particular, is decisive against univocal versions of social trinitarianism.

The Problem of Uncreedality

The Athanasian Creed pronounces that “the Father is God, the Son God, the Holy

Spirit God; and yet there are not three Gods, but there is one God.” Critics insist that the

social model, which indicates that there are three instances of divinity, is manifestly

uncreedal 389 Seeing as the Creed predicates increateness, infinity, eternality and

almightiness individually to the Father, Son, and Spirit, Bøhn remarks, “there is no

reason to read the last case, according to which each three persons are God, as being a

case of numerical identity. Following the predicative pattern, there is instead all the

reason to read the last case too as being a case of the ‘is’ of predication, rather than the

‘is’ of identity.”390 Brower responds that the authors of the Creed would have employed

the term divinus rather than deus, had they intended to distinguish being divine from

being deity.391 Semantic obscurities, therefore, complicate the contention that

parallelism augments a predicative reading of “is God.”

Still, supposing that social trinitarianism is uncreedal, it is not facilely so. The

interpreter confronts significant ambiguities and the power of dormant biases to distort

one’s reading is substantial. Thus, creedal arguments against social trinitarianism are

typically inconclusive.392

The Problem of Theological Projection

More significantly, Kilby charges social theorists with projection, wherein human

personhood is first conceived, certain features are then excised, and the remainder is

ascribed to God.393 She detects a curious awareness of the inner life of God within social

accounts. How can one venture to speak with such assuredness about experiences of

Deity? Martinich adds that social trinitarians “believe that the key to the solution of [the

logical problem] lies … in constructing some new concept, say, that of ‘person in

390 Bøhn, “The Logic of the Trinity,” 367.

392 Michael C. Rea, "Polytheism and Christian Belief," Journal of Theological Studies 57, no. 1 (2006): 135.

393 Kilby, “Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrines of the Trinity,” 439-444. Compare Wolf, “An Introduction to the Idea of God as Person,” 32.

community’ or ‘a society of persons....’ The almost clinical accounts of the love life and

intimate activities of the Trinity are at best very hard to reconcile with the spirit of the

Trinity as a mystery.”394 Do social trinitarians pretend to know too much? And are

political agendas, perhaps, driving the rush to social trinitarianism? Kilby protests,

Wilson-Kastner has her eyes on the danger to women of lacking a sense of self and so emphasizes that each of the persons is “self-possessed.” Moltmann is focused on the excessive individualism of the modern West and so maintains that the persons are constituted by their relations. To adjudicate the difference, then, one would need to decide whether, all things considered, it is better for us to think of ourselves as self-possessed and going out into relationships, or as entirely constituted by our relationships. Once that question has been settled, the Christian theologian can then say, that is how God is too.395

Social theorists conceptually shift from devotion as the unifying feature of human

sociality to the divine life, rendering the oneness of God minimally cogent on the quasi-

generic view. Again, Kilby fears that projection is theologically perilous to the extent that

social theorists insincerely ascertain that the Trinity provides us with unanticipated

insight into the very societal analog that had been projected into God. “Projection, then,

is particularly problematic in at least some social theories of the Trinity because what is

projected onto God is immediately reflected back onto the world, and this reverse

projection is said to be what is in fact important about the doctrine.”396 There is

something circular about such proposals. Whether projection is legitimate depends

upon one’s answer to the question of relevance. Why, again, has the Trinity been

revealed? Charles Arand sensibly professes that “the doctrine of the Trinity is not given

394 Martinich, “Identity and Trinity,” 169.

395 Kilby, “Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrines of the Trinity,” 440-441.

396 Ibid., 442. The emphasis is Kilby’s.

as a model for human relationships within society or the church. It is revealed in order

to show us the depths of love of God for us in Christ Jesus.”397

On the other hand, is it wrong to affirm with van Inwagen that “if you and I are

one day members of the Risen Church, then you will indeed be a restored image of God

and I shall indeed be a restored image of God. But there is more: The love we have for

each other will be a restored image of the love that the Persons of the Trinity have for

one another”?398 One’s opinion regarding the degree of correspondence between human

sociality and divine union is determined by deeper biblical and intuitive preferences for

either the token or type reading. So, again, although raising suspicions about the

capacity of the social model to “uncover” insights about human relationality, the

objection is inconclusive.

The Problem of Ontological Fragility

Ontological fragility is a weightier problem for social trinitarianism.399 Is God, in

any sense, susceptible to fission? Austere simplicity would seem to collapse any robust

quasi-generic distinctions between the divine persons, effectively nullifying the divine

attribute principle. The distinct predications “the Father is all-knowing,” “the Son is all-

knowing,” and “the Spirit is all-knowing” collapse into “God is all-knowing” or “God is

all-knowingness.” Wise(g) is considered a quasi-identity statement, and the logical

status of quasi-identity is the characteristic burden of divine simplicity, as all personal

properties are inscrutably identical to the divine essence. Then again, the Christian

397 Arand, “Confessing the Trinitarian Gospel,” 204.

398 Van Inwagen, “And Yet They Are Not Three Gods But One God,” 242.

tradition encompasses diverse doctrines of simplicity. Gregory spoke of the divine

essence as simple and indivisible, against the Arians “who multiply different generic

essences in the Trinity, such that the second and third persons do not possess all the

same essential divine properties (eternity, for instance) as the first,”400 rather than God,

as such. A notion of simplicity in which the divine essence exemplifies no accidents,

undergoes no change, and is entirely unlimited neither shoulders the burden of quasi-

identity nor proscribes distinct centers of consciousness in Godhead.

Rea contends, nevertheless, that mereological divinity “is not interestingly

different from the polytheistic Amun-Re theology of Egypt’s ‘New Kingdom’ period.”401

Amun-Re was considered to be a composite of the discrete gods Amun and Re, who was

worshipped alongside other gods—including Amun and Re—rather than a unitary,

divine reality of which Amun and Re were distinct avatars. As Rea explains, “syncretistic

combinations [in Egyptian religion] represented not the absorption of one god by

another or the identification of one god with another, but rather the introduction of a

new composite deity who had the others as parts.”402 Thus, Amun-Re is the complex

divine entity of which Amun and Re are constituents. Critically, Rea observes, “experts

on religion with no Trinitarian axes to grind” judge Amun-Re worship to be a form of

polytheism.403 Egyptologists do not regard the relations which obtain between Amun,

401 Rea, "Polytheism and Christian Belief," 135.

402 Ibid., 139-140.

403 Ibid., 144.

Re, and Amun-Re a basis for monotheism. Mereological divinity, therefore, should be

considered a form of polytheism. He concludes:

So far as I can tell, what reflection there is on the nature of monotheism and polytheism outside the literature on Social Trinitarianism tends generally to support the thesis that I have been urging—namely, that mereological relations, familial relations, and relations of necessary mutual interdependence among deities are neither alone nor in conjunction sufficient to secure monotheism.404

The reply that such experts utilize inappropriate criteria for delineating monotheism

and polytheism is unconvincing in the absence of a more extensive religious account of

the normative conditions for one-godded religions as opposed to multi-godded

religions.405

Covenantal divinity fares no better as it pertains to establishing divine oneness. A

clear case of polytheism—for instance, one in which Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon govern

the world—would not count as monotheism should they merely love one another

unconditionally and defer to one another consistently. In response, the covenantal

theorist might emphasize the radical disanalogy between collaboration modeled on

flawed, human sociality and perfect divine cooperation. Certainly, while we cannot

imagine three, capricious pagan deities comprising anything like the triune God of

Christian worship, the Father, Son, and Spirit are not pagan deities; being morally

perfect, wholly beneficent, and mutually deferring. Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon are

incapable of willing and acting in perfect partnership; the Father, Son, and Spirit are

entirely able.

404 Ibid., 144-145.

405 Ibid., 144.

Suppose, however, that the divine persons attempt to realize equally good, but

incompossible, states of affairs. The divine attribute principle, implied in the type

reading of the Creed, indicates that the Father, Son, and Spirit individually exemplify

omnipotence and omnibenevolence, among other attributes. Divine person x, being all-

powerful, can bring about any possible state of affairs A, if he so wills. Likewise, divine

person y can bring about state of affairs B. However, if A and B are incompossible then

either (1) x realizes A and y is thwarted, (2) y realizes B and x is thwarted, or (3) x and y

are deadlocked and both are thwarted.406 Absurdly, (1), (2), and (3) would obtain given

that the divine persons are omnipotent. Thus, both democratic and triumvirate

covenantal divinity, which involve more than one divine will, are impossible.

Monarchial covenantal divinity, in which the wills of the Son and Spirit are the will of

the Father, remains possible.

Swinburne answers that the essential goodness of the divine persons defuses the

problem of competing gods for the type theorist. Omnipotence guided by

omnibenevolence permits the divine persons to realize a number of good states of affairs

without conflict. “Since each [divine person] would recognize the others as having the

divine properties, including perfect goodness, it is plausible to suppose that each would

recognize a duty not to prevent or frustrate the acts of the other, to use his omnipotence

to forward them rather than frustrate them.”407 The Father, Son, and Spirit might avoid

a clash of wills by means of an agreement: divine person x might draw up an equitable

plan for distributing power, to which y would ascent, not including the case in which y

406 Harriet E. Baber, "Trinity, Filioque, and Semantic Ascent," Sophia 47 (2008): 150.

draws up an incompatible plan at the same moment. The authority of any divine person

to draw up a plan for distributing power must derive from something more than merely

exemplifying the same type of nature as the other persons. Utilizing the processional

resources of trinitarian theology, Swinburne reasons that the Father has the authority to

determine the initial division of responsibilities among the divine persons as the eternal

source of being for the Son and Spirit.408 Once the Father has established a separation of

powers, each person is free to govern without possibly frustrating the others. The

problem of competing gods does not, therefore, preclude monarchial covenantal divinity

(or triumvirate covenantal divinity founded on monarchial covenantal divinity).

Swinburne insists that the dilemma turns on omnipotence.409 So long as the wills

of the Son and Spirit are initially the will of the Father, and the unopposable activities of

the divine person are subsequently restricted to separate areas of government, their

powers cannot collide. Allowing for other divine attributes, however, the problem of

competing gods is lethal for covenantal divinity. If the Father is individually

omnipotent, no one can pry a secret from his mind by any means—trickery, compulsion,

or sheer power of omniscience. And yet, the Son is individually omniscient. So, either

the Father has the power to keep a secret or the Son knows the Father’s mind. In the

former case, the Son is non-omniscient due to the Father’s power and, in the latter case,

408 Any social model with retains the generation of the Son evokes a creationist impression of

divine begottenness. If divinity is not constituted by the Father, but is a set of properties shared by the divine persons, then the generation of the Son would appear to be an act of creation. But trinitarianism entails that the Son is God, not a creature. It would not matter that the Son is eternally produced, as an eternally contingent being is still a creature. See Paasch, “Arius and Athanasius on the Production of God’s Son,” 404.

409 Swinburne, “Could There Be More than One God?,” 230. He says that “any limits to omniscience would arise from there being a class of states of affairs lying beyond the power of the one such being to affect, but not for reasons of logic. So it all turns on omnipotence.”

the Father is non-omnipotent due to the Son’s omnipotence. In either case, the

attributes of the other place necessary, rather than contractual, limitations on divine

power. Covenantal divinity, therefore, characteristically yields an anemic version of

Godhood by the standards of historical Christian theology. Any version of social

trinitarianism which is not highly analogical, involving an appeal to mystery, is

vulnerable to the problem of ontological fragility.

The Problem of Worthiness of Worship

Layman sketches allied objections to trinitarianism, which the social model

supposedly solves: the argument from worthiness of worship (WW) and the argument

from divine attributes (DA).410 WW is as follows:

(WW1) The Father is worthy of worship, the Son is worthy of worship, and the Holy Spirit is worthy of worship.

(WW2) The Father is a distinct self from the Son, the Father is a distinct self from the Holy Spirit, and the Son is a distinct self from the Holy Spirit.

(WW3) Therefore, there are three selves worthy of worship.

(WW4) For any x, if x is worthy of worship then x is God.

(WW5) Therefore, there are three Gods.

He notes that quasi-identity theorists will endorse WW4 only if the range of the

quantifier is restricted to substances. Thus (WW4*): “For any substance x, if x is worthy

of worship then x is God.”411 Tritheism is avoided provided that the divine persons are

not discrete substances. But why should the Father, Son, and Spirit fail to be

substances? Layman is blunt: “This is plainly a philosophical embarrassment. It just

isn’t adequate to speak of mysteries in this way when one is confronted with such a clear

410 Layman, “Tritheism and the Trinity,” 293-297.

411 Ibid., 294.

and forceful objection.”412 In contrast, the social trinitarian rejects WW4 on the grounds

that the antecedent—being worthy of worship—is insufficient for being the Christian

Deity, per se. Although the Father is worthy of worship, he is not God, Layman believes,

because he is not the community of divine persons. “God belongs to the general

metaphysical category of persons-in-relationship…. It is natural to suppose that such

entities are metaphysically composite, the components of persons and relationships.”413

And, since there is no more than one divine community, there is no more than one God.

DA evinces a similar dilemma:

(DA1) If x is divine then x is worthy of worship.

(DA2) If x is worthy of worship then x is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good.

(DA3) There are three distinct divine selves.

(DA4) Therefore, there are three distinct divine selves who are all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good.

(DA5) If x is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good then x is God.

(DA6) Therefore, there are three distinct divine selves who are each God.

Quasi-identity theorists will accept DA6 on the grounds that the divine persons are

relatively identical to the single-same divine substance. Once again, Layman is candid:

“The traditional Trinitarian makes the incomprehensible claim that three selves are not

three substances…. We are left with no reason worthy of the name for thinking that the

Trinitarian is not a tritheist.”414 He trusts that social theorists, alternatively, can

consistently deny DA5 since, while each divine person is all-powerful, all-knowing, and

412 Ibid., 295.

413 Ibid. Note that Layman’s classification of God as “persons-in-relationship” does not constitute an account of complex personhood, as a composite of persons and relationships is not a “he.” Thus, his account is also vulnerable to the problem of personifying Godhead. See below.

414 Ibid., 296.

all-loving, none is God. The Father, Son, and Spirit are uncreate and worthy of worship,

but only the community is Lord (per democratic covenantal divinity).

Moreover, one can deny DA4 on the grounds that no divine person is all-

powerful, all-knowing, and all-good, although God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-

good. He proposes that, possibly, no individual divine person knows all true

propositions or has the ability to realize any possible state of affairs. Nonetheless, the

Father, Son, and Spirit may, collectively, know all true propositions and have the ability

to realize any possible state of affairs. With regard to being all-good, Layman suggests,

perhaps the individual divine persons possess certain supererogatory powers of

graciousness—moral faculties exceeding that which is essential to secure worthiness of

worship—and, yet, the Trinity exemplifies all supererogatory powers of graciousness.

“The point is simply to suggest that it isn’t obviously logically impossible that God

should be [omnipotent,] omniscient [and omnibenevolent] even if the divine selves are

not.”415

Whether the alternatives are philosophical embarrassments, his solution must be

judged theologically unacceptable by historical standards. Trinitarian theology, as

traditionally expressed, does not permit a bald type reading of TT1-3. The Father, Son,

and Spirit are not simply divine beings under a common species but sharers of the single

divinity. Layman’s proposal is philosophically clear-cut but theologically impermissible,

fitting the staccato history of tritheism.

415 Ibid., 297.

The Problem of Personifying Godhead

Finally, 0n covenantal and mereological divinity, while each divine person

exemplifies the divine attributes, none is strictly identical to God: the divine whole or

community. Hence, the problem of personifying Godhead: contrary to the ordinary

Christian practice of referring to Deity, simpliciter, in personal terms, covenantal and

mereological divinity imply that God is a non-person. But, surely, the statement “he is

Father, Son, and Spirit” seems to be as theologically legitimate as “he so loved the

world” or “he is risen.” Consider, for example, the ancient admonition of Tertullian:

“The simple… are startled as the dispensation (of the Three in One), on the ground that

their very rule of faith withdraws them from the world’s plurality of gods to the one only

true God; not understanding that, although he is the one only God, he must yet be

believed in with his own oi0konomi/a,”416 and the modern précis of Thomas Torrance:

“Since there is only one Form of Godhead in the indivisible unity of his self-revelation as

Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we believe that he is eternally triune in himself.”417 Van

Inwagen, too, advises that “it would, I think, be heretical to maintain that the God who

speaks in the Hebrew Bible is simply God the Father, one of the persons of the Trinity….

And if this is so, God, the Triune God, must be a person.”418 In reply, the social

trinitarian might propose that the Trinity exemplifies personalizing properties or that

the Father, Son, and Spirit comprise a composite person.

416 Tertullian, Against Praxeas, 3. The emphasis is mine.

417 Thomas F. Torrance, “The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity according to St. Athanasius,” Anglican Theological Review 71 (1989): 395. The emphasis is mine.

418 Van Inwagen, “Three Persons in One Being: On Attempts to Show that the Doctrine of the Trinity Is Self-Contradictory,” 94.

But, again, to suppose that the Trinity is a person like the Father, Son, and Spirit

yields quaternitarianism and undermines the oneness of God. Imagining the Trinity to

be a composite person obliges the social trinitarian to articulate a conception of

compound personhood that is distinct and intelligible. Tuggy desponds that “sadly, for

all its lovely virtues, this seems to be the death of [social trinitarianism].”419 Is the

Husband of Israel really an impersonal society? If so, the divine persons have been

deceptive and the prophets have fundamentally misunderstood the God of Abraham,

Isaac, and Jacob who declares, “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14).420

Social trinitarians can make the case that confessions in which the Trinity is

depicted as personal are either mistaken or short-hand for more theologically complete

statements. For instance, the claim that “he is the Father, Son, and Spirit” might be

understood to mean that “he is the Father, from whom the Son and Spirit proceed.” The

question remains whether the processions play any role in social trinitarianism, which

effectively levels the ontic status of the persons, but as long as one’s social model

preserves some such notion, functional and mereological theorists can plausibly engage

in the common Christian practice of referring to the triune Deity in personal terms.

Tritheism and Univocal Theologizing

Metaphors, which are part and parcel of trinitarian theologizing, indicate an

analogical relationship between God and some aspects of creation. Advocates of the

social model tend to employ (or, at least, seem to employ) concepts univocally and are

420 Ibid., 170.

reticent to distinguish the economic and immanent trinities.421 Compliance with

Rahner’s rule—“the ‘economic’ Trinity is the ‘immanent’ Trinity and the ‘immanent’

Trinity is the ‘economic’ Trinity”422 or the God who we encounter in the economy of

salvation is the Living God behind our theological formulations—either bridges or

collapses the distinction between Deus in se and Deus pro nobis. A moderate or bridging

construal suggests that the divine persons, as known through salvation history, are

broadly consistent with the divine persons as subsisting sans salvation history. A strict

or collapsing construal suggests that the stark personal dissimilarities between the

transcendent and sending Father, the immanent and saving Son, and the indwelling and

sanctifying Spirit, signify unambiguous divisions in se.423 Popular social models are

inclined toward the strict construal which threatens to destabilize consubstantiality.

“God is identical with the three divine selves in a special relationship,” Layman insists,

“God is a social entity, analogous (ontologically) to a marriage,” in strict social terms.424

As Anselm Min counsels,

The central issue… is not so much whether one begins with the unity or with the differentiation, as how one proceeds and with what

421 Mosser, “Fully Social Trinitarianism,” 136.

423 Randall Rauser identifies two versions of the strict reading in “Rahner’s Rule: An Emperor without Clothes?,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 7 (2005): 81-94. According to the first version of the strict reading, the rule simply denies that there are distinct Godheads: the economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity. No one has ever suggested, of course, that there are two Trinities and Rahner was certainly not rejecting a fantastical heresy. According to the second version of the strict reading the properties which God exemplifies immanently are identical to the properties which God exemplifies economically. In other words, the properties associated with the persons of the economic Trinity (e.g., being creator, being redeemer, being incarnate, being sanctifier, and being savior) are properties of the Father, Son, or Spirit in the immanent Trinity. This, however, amounts to either a contradiction or denial of divine freedom.

424 Layman, “Tritheism and the Trinity,” 293-297. The emphasis is Layman’s.

conceptualities. One may begin with the model of three human individuals in their distinctiveness, but if she does not take care to apply that model of God analogically, i.e., with negation and eminence, then she is likely to end up in tritheism: the three divine persons would be no more than three divine subjects united together in a loose collection with no essential connection.425

Social trinitarians must be willing to break the illustrative metaphor in asserting the

ontic condition of divine oneness and resist the temptation to claim or imply that there

is more than one divine token, or that the essence transcends the persons. Otherwise,

the social model stumbles headlong into the problem of ontological fragility and

tritheism.

425 Anselm K. Min, Paths to the Triune God: An Encounter between Aquinas and Recent

Theologies (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 281.

CHAPTER 5 — DELINEATING SOCIAL TRINITARIANISM AND TRITHEISM

Social theorists who aim to avoid tritheism decline to speak univocally of a divine

society. Supposing the Father, Son, and Spirit to be a community (or three tropes of

divinity) invites the problem of competing gods and indicates tritheism. Those who

insist that mutuality and community are, in some mysterious sense, descriptive of the

Christian God who is (something like) a single primary essence—establishing the ontic

oneness of Deity beyond mere functional and mereological unity—cannot be accused of

tritheism. In other words, the generic model is tritheistic; the quasi-generic model,

which incorporates TT7 in the traditional Christian sense, is trinitarian.

David Paulsen: Elyonic Monotheism

Mormon scholar David Paulsen contends that Joseph Smith, the founder of the

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), taught a form of social trinitarianism,

termed ‘Elyonic monotheism,’ according to which the Father, Son, and Spirit are

discrete divine beings who share a covenantal unity that is sufficiently robust to

constitute divine oneness by biblical and creedal standards.426 As a covenantal theology,

Elyonic monotheism upholds TT1-6 but denies a substantive interpretation of TT7.

However, as an LDS doctrine, it specifies TT1-3 in an idiosyncratic way.

Regarding the divinity of the persons, Paulsen explains that the Father, Son, and

Spirit are individually self-existent and eternal. Contrary to subordinationism, “none

depends upon the others for his existence, nor could one annihilate either of the

others…. For Smith, at any time t the existence of each of the Father, Son, and Holy

426 Paulsen and McDonald, "Joseph Smith and the Trinity: An Analysis and Defense of the Social

Model of the Godhead," 47-74.

Delineating Social Trinitarianism and Tritheism

Ghost is an unchanging fact about the universe.”427 The Mormon scriptures

acknowledge Christ’s Godhood, as 1 Nephi 19:10 states, “the God of our fathers, who

were led out of Egypt, out of bondage, and also were preserved in the wilderness by him,

yea, the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, yieldeth himself… as a

man, into the hands of wicked men, to be lifted up… and to be crucified… and to be

buried in a sepulcher.”428 By the same token, the Christ of the Book of Mormon bids the

people of Nephi to “arise and come forth unto me, that ye may thrust your hand into my

side, and also that ye may feel the prints of the nails in my hand and in my feet, that ye

may know that I am the God of Israel, and the God of the whole earth, and have been

slain for the sins of the world” (3 Nephi 11:14). The Father and Spirit are, likewise,

recognized as divine.

Concerning the LDS doctrine of divine threeness, Paulsen clarifies that “Smith

did not teach that the Godhead was three different modes or manifestations of the same

person or being. Nor did he suggest that the Godhead was in some way merely like or

analogous to three persons; he taught that it actually consists of three distinct

persons…. For Smith, each of these persons is uncreate and self-existent.”429 Indeed,

trinitarians acknowledge that the divine persons are distinct, being neither unitarians

nor modalists. In the words of Rahner, “every doctrine of the Trinity must emphasize

that the ‘hypostasis’ is precisely that in God through which Father, Son, and Spirit are

427 Ibid., 53.

428 For a summary of Mormon Christology, see David L. Paulsen, Jacob Hawken, and Michael Hansen, “Jesus Was Not a Unitarian,” 13-14.

429 Paulsen and McDonald, "Joseph Smith and the Trinity: An Analysis and Defense of the Social Model of the Godhead," 52. The emphasis is Paulsen’s and McDonald’s.

distinct from one another.”430 Paulsen means, of course, that the divine persons are

particularized, according to Smith. The individuation of the divine persons is exactly

like, not analogous to, the individuation of Peter, James, and John.

And, yet, according to 2 Nephi 31:21, the Mormon plan of salvation “is the

doctrine of Christ, and the only and true doctrine of the Father, and of the Son, and of

the Holy Ghost, which is one God, without end.” Concerning divine oneness, Paulsen

notes two senses in which the three divine persons are one God. First, each exemplifies

the divine essence, as a discrete individual of the same kind. On Smith’s theology, in

fact, the Father and Son are “linked through a very literal familial relationship,” as

“[God the Father] is literally the Father of the spirit of Jesus Christ and also of the body

in which Jesus Christ performed His mission in the flesh.”431

Obviously, Mormon thought anthropomorphizes the Father, who is paired with

Heavenly Mother. Suffice it so say, Christian theologians refrain from conceiving of the

fatherhood of God in male terms, as he is spiritual, lacking material parts (John 4:24;

cf., Luke 24:39) and not, therefore, physically male.432 Whereas males are fit for

430 Rahner, The Trinity, 11-12; footnote 6. The emphasis is mine.

431 Paulsen and McDonald, "Joseph Smith and the Trinity: An Analysis and Defense of the Social Model of the Godhead," 56. They cite “A Doctrinal Exposition by the First Presidency and the Twelve” in Messages of the First Presidency, ed. James R. Clark (Salt Lake City, Utah: Bookcraft, 1970), 5.23-24.

432 On traditional Christian theology, spirit is incorporeal substance. The human spirit, or soul, is the mind—encompassing spiritual, intellectual, volitional, and emotional capacities—distinct from the body. Death, therefore, is to be “absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). God, as an infinite, incorporeal substance, is invisible (Colossians 1:15; 1 Timothy 1:7). According to Mormon thought, spirit is invisible, refined matter (Doctrine and Covenants 131:7-8). The traditional Christian conception derives, nonetheless, from the doctrine that God has created all things, both visible and invisible, out of nothing. He is not composed of matter because he is the cause of matter, which began to exist with the universe. In response to Paulsen’s doctrine of divine embodiment, see Stephen T. Davis, “David Paulsen on Divine Embodiment” in Mormonism at the Crossroads of Philosophy and Theology: Essays in Honor of David L. Paulsen, ed. Jacob T. Baker (Draper, Utah: Greg Kofford Books, 2012), 214-217, who argues that corporeal depictions of God in the Bible are anthropomorphisms. After all, on a

complementary union with females (Mark 10:6-9), the Lord of Israel has no consort.

According to traditional Christian theism, God is great—righteous, never unjust; able,

never impotent; comprehending, never ignorant—in maximal degree, being perfectly

holy and good, all-powerful, and all-knowing, among other things. No one complements

his perfection or serves as his companion. The eternal Deity is incomparable. Other

beings are creatures whose existences are ultimately derived from his creative actions.

Hence, early Christians rejected Gnostic theogonies and artistic attempts to directly

depict the Father or insinuate creatureliness in any way.433

Despite the Christian tradition, the Father produced the Son by means of sexual

intercourse with Heavenly Mother, according to Smith, who conceived of persons (both

human and divine) as fundamentally uncreated, eternal intelligences: “the mind of

man—the intelligent part—is as immortal as, and is coequal with, God himself.”434 The

doctrine of intelligences, however, seems to be at odds with the literal procreation of the

Son. If the Son is an eternal intelligence then the Father, in siring the spirit and body of

Jesus Christ, merely produced accidents of the Son, not his person. The Son, who is

neither casually nor counterfactually dependent upon the Father, cannot be “linked

through a very literal familial relationship.” Conversely, if the Father, in siring the spirt

and body of Jesus Christ, produced the person of the Son then the Son is not “uncreate

reified reading of corporeal/creational depictions of God, why not accept that God is a fire, a rock, or bread as well?

433 Wainwright, “The Doctrine of the Trinity: Where the Church Stands or Falls,” 118.

434 Joseph Smith, “The King Follett Discourse,” 1844. The citation is from Stan Larson, “The King Follett Discourse: A Newly Amalgamated Text,” BYU Studies Quarterly 18 (1978): 203.

and self-existent.”435 In the former case, the Father produced temporal parts of the

eternal Son; in the latter case, he produced a temporal Son who is united with an eternal

non-personal accident. The Son cannot be both eternal/uncreate and literally a son of

the Father.

In any event, if familial oneness were a sufficient condition for trinitarian

oneness then, again, Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon might be considered triune. Yet, no

three pagan gods—their mutual devotion notwithstanding—constitute a Trinity, as

delineated by the ecumenical creeds. Mere familial oneness is a paradigm for the sort of

polycentric polytheism that trinitarians have endeavored to avoid. Presumably, familial

oneness is a necessary condition for divine oneness, on Elyonic monotheism. But does

not every descendant of Heavenly Father and Mother meet this criterion?436 Could the

Godhead have included the Father, Son, and Socrates; or the Father, Heavenly Mother,

Solomon, and Gandhi?437 If so, familial oneness is irrelevant to trinitarian theology,

which is concerned to account for the unique oneness of the Father, Son, and Spirit.

435 Paulsen reveals a difference of opinion within the LDS church as to whether persons are

eternal intelligences or temporal spirit/bodies. He remarks that, while B.H. Roberts, a member of the First Council of the Seventy, “assumed the co-eternity of individuals,” Mormon Apostle “Bruce R. McConkie has recently argued that ‘the intelligence or spirit element became intelligences after the spirits were born as individual entities.’ This view implies that all of God’s children, qua animo, had a beginning in time—including Christ” (“A Dialogue on Openness Theology: Response to Professor Pinnock,” 520; footnote 86). Both views, therefore, seem to be authoritative.

436 According to LDS doctrine, Heavenly Father and Mother produced both the Son and a myriad of divine siblings. Surprisingly, the most explicit, early revelation of Heavenly Mother in Mormon theology is found in a hymn by Eliza R. Snow, wife to both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, titled “O My Father.” The idea that we have heavenly parents has been reiterated by Mormon authorities.

437 In fact, the Godhead will increase in members, contingent upon those who attain deity. Paulsen says that “Joseph realized that an essential property of divinity is a relationship of sacred and intimate unity with the persons of the Godhead…. The stunning reality, according to Joseph Smith, is that the very purpose of human life consists in the fact that humankind has been invited ‘into’ this relationship through the atonement of Jesus. God wants to related to us just as the divine persons relate to one another; God wants us to be in the Father and the Son as they are one in each other” (“Are Christians

Second, but more importantly, Paulsen explains that the divine persons are one

in the sense that they enjoy an exclusive and profound covenant of wills which is “a

result of the willing and free choices of the divine persons to align their distinct wills.”438

Moreover, “while the Son and Holy Ghost possess distinct minds and wills and exhibit

distinct actions, the Godhead thinks, wills and acts ad extra as one,”439 because the Son

and Spirit forfeit their wills to the will of the Father. There is, nonetheless, a “synergetic

bond” between the Father “who needed the Son to accomplish his purposes” and the

Son “who [needed] the Father for direction, power, and exaltation.”440 Thus, the unified

will of Godhead in salvation history is the will of the Father who presides over the Son

and Spirit in monarchical covenantal divinity. As traditionally conceived, perichoresis

depicts both the ontological confluence of the divine persons (again, the ontic condition)

and their cooperative, benign intercourse (again, the functional condition). Smithian

covenantal oneness, however, proscribes any ontic connotation, given that the divine

persons are particularized. Thus, Paulsen maintains, perichoresis is properly construed

in strictly functional terms. The divine persons are one God in that “there is one

perfectly united mutually indwelling divine community.”441

Mormon?: Reassessing Joseph Smith’s Theology in His Bicentennial,” BYU Studies Quarterly 45 [2006]: 76-77).

438 Paulsen and McDonald, "Joseph Smith and the Trinity: An Analysis and Defense of the Social Model of the Godhead," 54.

439 Ibid.," 55.

440 Paulsen, “Are Christians Mormon?: Reassessing Joseph Smith’s Theology in His Bicentennial,” 63-64.

441 Ibid., 64.

He attempts to show that perichoresis cannot involve an ontic condition by

means of two coherence problems for traditional trinitarianism based in the possibility

of divine love and free will. Paulsen appeals to intuitions pertinent to the intra-divine

love argument: “For ‘other-love’ to obtain,” he insists, “two conditions are necessary.

First, the other must truly be other. If the very being of one is tied to (or identical with)

another, they cannot be truly other to each other. The second necessary condition for

‘other-love’ is the possibility (logically at least) of one saying ‘no’ to the other.”442 Thus,

by affirming the ontic condition of perichoresis, the trinitarian denies these two

conditions for intra-divine love. But, to deny the conditions for intra-divine love is to

deny the functional condition for perichoresis.

The first condition for intra-divine love specifies that, insofar as the divine

persons share the single-same essence, intra-divine love amounts to narcissism (call this

the no self-love objection). The operative assumption is that genuine, interpersonal

relationality requires the divine persons to encounter one another as discrete others. In

the words of Moltmann, “love seeks a counterpart who freely responds and

independently gives love for love.”443 But how does consubstantiality imply divine

conceit? Unless the ontic condition entails that the divine persons are numerically

identical, intra-divine love does not amount to self-love. If the divine persons enjoy

individuation without particularization, Godhead encompasses three distinct persons.

Intra-divine love amounts to self-love on modalism, but not on trinitarianism.

442 Paulsen and McDonald, "Joseph Smith and the Trinity: An Analysis and Defense of the Social

Model of the Godhead," 64.

The second condition specifies that discreteness is necessary for personal

participation in free, loving fellowship (call this the free will objection).

(FWO1) If divine persons F and S are consubstantial then F cannot freely spurn S.

(FWO2) If F cannot freely spurn S then F cannot love S.

(FWO3) F and S are consubstantial.

(FWO4) Therefore, F cannot love S

Again, how does consubstantiality imply divine determinism? In other words, why

accept FWO1? Jesus’ cry from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

(Matthew 27:46) may reveal that the Father and Son, while exemplifying ontic oneness,

experienced limited opposition, short of unmitigated divorce. Although, given their

perfect beneficence, moral conflict and dissociation cannot occur.

Suppose, however, that the ontic condition prevents the Father, Son, and Spirit

from experiencing any opposition. Would the apparently loving overtures of the divine

persons be false? Why accept FWO2? The notion of free will advanced by Paulsen

appears to involve the controversial principle of alternative possibilities. But, whether

“the ability to do otherwise” is a necessary condition for freedom—divine or not—is a

contentious matter. Even if the ability to do otherwise is a condition for freedom, in

general, the ability to genuinely love another may not require libertarian free will. By

way of illustration, imagine that Mary—an exceedingly moral and entirely sane woman—

deeply loves her son. She considers it to be morally reprehensible for any mother to act

in an indifferent or spiteful manner toward her child. She would never dream of

replacing her warm affection for her son with either coolness or outright coldness.

Moreover, she has no desire to do anything other than love her son. In this situation,

Mary cannot simply choose to say “no,” as it pertains to loving her son, regarding him

with apathy or malice. It is inconceivable that she might say, with her moral sense and

rational capacities intact, “I’ve decided not to love my son. I believe it’s wrong for me to

deny him my love and I don’t want to do it. Furthermore, I have no ulterior motive in

doing this and am uncoerced. Still, I do it freely.” It appears that there is no possible

world in which Mary—a loving, moral, sane, and uncoerced mother—freely refrains from

loving her son as it would require an utterly impossible justification.444 She is, thus,

incapable of doing otherwise. But who would accuse her of false love? Her inability to

spurn her son is evidence of her love, not evidence against it. Whether divine love can be

so analyzed, it is not clear that, in general, genuine love involves the ability to do

otherwise.

The no self-love and freewill objections to consubstantiality are unsuccessful.

And the functional condition of divine oneness, alone, is insufficient to establish Smith’s

doctrine of God by biblical and creedal standards. Christian orthodoxy cannot permit

that the unity of the Father, Son, and Spirit is possibly dissoluble. Divine oneness is

necessary, let alone eternal. The analogical move from creaturely generation to divine

generation must, in the words of Nazianzen, “cast away… notions of flow and divisions

and sections, and… conceptions of the immaterial as if it were material birth,” in order

to “worthily conceive of Divine Generation.”445 Even if God were to eternally generate

angelic emissaries with critical missions to the world, though incorporeal and eternal,

the angels would be creatures from a traditional Christian perspective.

444 Peter van Inwagen, "When Is the Will Free?," Philosophical Perspectives 2 (1989): 399-422.

445 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 29: The Third Theological Oration on the Son, 8. The citation is from Select Orations of Saint Gregory Nazianzen, 301-309.

It is odd, in addition, that Paulsen associates Smithian oneness with perichoresis.

He says that the divine persons “together constitute one God or one mutually indwelling

divine community,”446 but his use of the term ‘indwelling’ is not historically

perichoretic.447 A sheer concord of divine wills, a “free and intimate cooperation, based

on love”448 among discrete gods, is needlessly burdened by the metaphysically heavy

language of ‘interpenetration’ and ‘co-inherence,’ to which perichoresis is inextricably

bound. Paulsen admits that, for Smith, divine oneness is “something other than

metaphysical of psychical identity. Rather, Joseph saw their oneness as a unity of heart,

mind, purpose, and mutual indwellingness.”449 Is this modification of perichoresis

warranted or simply a case of theological gerrymandering? Perhaps the doctrine is a

446 Paulsen, “A Dialogue on Openness Theology: Response to Professor Pinnock,” 517.

447 Paulsen defends divine embodiment in “Early Christian Belief in a Corporeal Deity: Origen and Augustine as Reluctant Witnesses,” Harvard Theological Review 83 (1990): 105-116, among other places. He summarizes the “LDS biblical case for divine embodiment” in “A Dialogue on Openness Theology: Response to Professor Pinnock,” 517: 1. Jesus Christ is God. 2. Jesus Christ was resurrected with an incorruptible body. 3. The separation of the spirit from the body is death. 4. Jesus Christ will never die again. 5. Thus, Jesus Christ will be embodied everlastingly. 6. Therefore, Jesus Christ is both God and embodied everlastingly. 7. Jesus is the express image of the Father. 8. Therefore, God the Father is embodied everlastingly. Of course, Paulsen is not a modalist. So 1 and 7 do not entail, on his understanding of 1, that the Father and Jesus Christ are the same divine persons. To be entirely clear, 1 should be “Jesus Christ is a god.” But since Paulsen’s argument is not modalist, it is not clear that premises 1-7 entail 8. The historical Christian doctrine that Christ is the image of the invisible God does not indicate that the Father is physical. Quite the opposite, he is the image of God the Father because the Father, being non-material, is invisible. The Son, too, was incorporeal and invisible prior to his incarnation.

449 Paulsen, “Are Christians Mormon?: Reassessing Joseph Smith’s Theology in His Bicentennial,” 63.

dogma in need of a theory but, as a scheme for rationalizing the consubstantiality of the

divine persons and affirming TT7, perichoresis runs ontologically deeper than

covenantal oneness.

The doctrine, historically construed, is not an viable option for LDS theology

since the Father and Son are believe to be embodied,450 as both Smith’s First Vision and

Doctrine and Covenants 130:22 indicate: “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as

tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones,

but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us.”

Embodied persons cannot metaphysically overlap. Despite the cautions of contemporary

Mormon scholars that divine embodiment is quite unlike human embodiment, Smith

appeared to think that the corporeality of the divine persons precludes perichoresis.451

Many men say there is one God; the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are only one God! I say that is a strange God anyhow—three in one, and one in three! It is a curious organization… All are to be crammed into one God, according to sectarianism. It would make the biggest God in all the world. He would be a wonderfully big God—he would be a giant or a monster.452

He believed that consubstantiality would render God a monstrous being, given his

material conception of the divine persons.

450 S. Davis, “The Mormon Trinity and Other Trinities,” 9-10.

451 See, for example, Stephen Robinson, “God and Deification” in How Wide the Divide?: A Mormon and an Evangelical in Conversation, Craig L. Blomberg and Stephen E. Robinson (Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1997), 88-89. Compare the section titled “The Argument from Divine Omnipresence,” in which Paulsen argues that divine presence exceeds the limitations of human presence, such that embodied divine persons can be said to be omnipresent, and the section titled “The Argument from Divine Indestructibility” (82-83) in which he argues that a “pneumikos body” (sic; pneumatikos?) conceived of as “a field of force” might be indestructible in David Paulsen, “Must God Be Incorporeal?,” Faith and Philosophy 6 (1989): 80-82.

452 Joseph Smith, “Sermon by the Prophet, the Christian Godhead, Plurality of Gods” in History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, vol. 6, ed. B.H. Roberts (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret News Publishing Company, 1912), 476.

It is certainly hard to imagine a better definition of ‘tritheism’ than that there

exist three, ontologically independent gods. As Smith preached,

I have always declared God to be a distinct personage, Jesus Christ a separate and distinct personage from God the Father, and that the Holy Ghost was a distinct personage and a Spirit: and these three constitute three distinct personages and three Gods. If this is in accordance with the New Testament, lo and behold! we have three Gods anyhow, and they are plural; and who can contradict it?453

Nonetheless, Paulsen maintains that the challenge of divine threeness for trinitarianism

is not to avoid the inference that the Father, Son, and Spirit are ontologically

independent but that they are ontologically graded, asserting that “the pole of the

tritheistic heresy was Arius who affirmed that there is one God (the Father) who is

unique, transcendent and indivisible, and whose being or essence cannot be shared or

communicated.”454 In other words, the problem of divine threeness is not the problem of

individuation without particularization but the problem of individuation without

diminution. But, by affirming TT1 and rejecting TT2-3—or, at least, denying that ‘God’

refers to an uncreate being in those cases—Arius endorsed unitarianism. So why identify

Arian unitarianism with tritheism? By their standard meanings, ‘unitarianism’ and

‘tritheism’ denote contrary positions.

Indeed, ontological subordinationism was considered a sort of tritheism by its

classical opponents, according to which the Father, Son, and Spirit constitute a

hierarchy of discrete gods.455 For, while the Son and Spirit are creatures, they are not

453 Ibid., 474.

455 In fact, denying the consubstantiality of the divine persons provoked allegations of ontological subordinationism. Sixth century miaphysites who held that the divine persons exemplify ontologically-

mere creatures. The Father is uncreate Deity, enjoying an incomparable mode of

divinity, and yet the Son and Spirit, due to their unmediated creation by the Father,

their significant functions within the economy of salvation, or the deifying grace which

they receive from the Father, merit praise proportionate to their derivative divinities.456

Thus, on ontological subordinationsim, there are three discrete beings worthy of the

designation ‘divine.’ Creating a hierarchy, or subnumerating, the Spirit to the Son and

the Son to the Father, produces graded polytheism. Basil repudiated those “who support

their subnumeration by talking of first and second and third ought to be informed that

into the undefiled theology of Christians they are importing the polytheism of heathen

error. No other result can be achieved by the fell device of sub-numeration than the

confession of a first, a second, and a third God.”457 The incommensurability of the

Father’s divinity with that of the Son and Spirit distinguishes ontological

subordinationism from tritheism. Austere subordinationism encompasses one self-

existent God and two contingent gods, rather than three gods, simpliciter. TT1 is, thus,

rendered, “the Father is the God,” while TT2-3 are rendered “the Son is a god” and “the

Spirit is a god.” Arian theology instructs, as Roland Chia explains, that “God [is] ‘a

monad’ (mona/j), unoriginated and ‘utterly one’ (a!narxoj menw/tatoj), [which] led to the

conclusion that Christ is but a creature and the Triad is temporal, not eternal…. It was

paired, discrete natures were denounced as ‘Arians.’ See Lang, “Notes on John Philoponus and the Tritheist Controversy in the Sixth Century,” 32 Basil, moreover had considered the doctrines of Sabellius and Arius to be diametrical boundaries between which orthodoxy is situated. See Lienhard, “Basil of Caesarea, Marcellus of Ancyra, and ‘Sabellius,’” 166 and Welch, “Faith and Reason in Relation to the Doctrine of the Trinity,” 25. Because polycentric polytheism was not on the historical spectrum, ontological subordinationism was the closest thing to tritheism in Christian theology.

456 Rowan Williams, “The Logic of Arianism,” 74.

457 Basil, On the Holy Spirit, 18. The citation is from Basil: Letters and Select Works, 1-50.

this stark monotheism, which has its source from the Platonic conceptuality of the

absolute, with its uncompromising view of divine transcendence, that Athanasius

challenged.”458 Despite its explicit depiction of the ontological independence of the

persons, the doctrine of Arius is unitarian.

Paulsen insists that tritheism as ontological independence without gradation is

unhistorical. “It will simply not do for critics of [Social Trinitarianism] to maintain…

that belief in three distinct beings amounts to the historical heresy of tritheism.”459 To

do so “shows a lack of historical awareness.”460 Ontological subordinationism was the

only widely appealing theology which bears a resemblance to polytheism, prior to the

advent of Mormonism.461 Nonetheless, ontological independence without gradation is

tritheism and has been contested whenever it has historically emerged. To say

otherwise, to answer Paulsen, is to show a lack of historical awareness.462 Not to

mention, should trinitarianism possibly entail that divine oneness amounts to a sheer

covenant of wills, why have the trinitarian debates been so philosophically technical and

458 Chia, “MIA OUSIA TREIS UPOSTASEIS: Athanasius and the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity,”

460 Ibid., 50.

461 As Carl Mosser remarks bluntly, “Mormonism’s heresies are legion; they are also very interesting and often unique in the history of heresy” (“And the Saints Go Marching On” in Francis J. Beckwith, Carl Mosser, and Paul Owen, eds., The New Mormon Challenge: Responding to the Latest Defenses of a Fast-Growing Movement [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 2002], 85).

462 As a further example, Paulsen and McDonald raise the same objection which Anselm addressed in response to Roscelin: “If Jesus’ body is not the Father’s body and Jesus’ spirit will forever inhabit his body, it seemingly follows that the Father and the Son are not one identical Spirit” ("Joseph Smith and the Trinity: An Analysis and Defense of the Social Model of the Godhead," 59. The emphasis is Paulsen’s and McDonald’s). The key arguments of Elyonic monotheism have been historically addressed by proponents of trinitarian orthodoxy.

nuanced? If the history of trinitarianism is simply a confrontation between unitarians,

on one side, and tritheists, on the other, why has it not been glaringly obvious to both

camps?

He states that Mormons “reject the conventional view that the Father, Son, and

Holy Ghost constitute one metaphysical substance, affirming rather that they are so

lovingly interrelated as to constitute on perfectly united community. This understanding

of the Godhead is known in contemporary Christian discourse as ‘social trinitarianism’

or as ‘the social analogy of the Trinity.’”463 Elsewhere, he says that,

The social analogy of the Trinity reasserts the religious teaching that the Godhead is composed of three substantively separate and distinct persons who are perfectly one in thought, word, intention, and action. Essentially, social trinitarianism begins with the construct of a ‘divine society’ and then bases the oneness of the Persons in the harmony and union of activity of that society.464

Except, for Paulsen, the community and moral union of the divine persons is literal, not

analogical. Terms like ‘perichoresis,’ ‘indwelling,’ and ‘analogy,’ while historically

Christian, are inapt to Elyonic monotheism. If social trinitarianism is what Paulsen says

it is, why has it been deemed an analogy?465 This is a clue that Elyonic monotheism is

not plausibly Christian. The majority of theologians who avow social trinitarianism hold

463 Paulsen, “A Dialogue on Openness Theology: Response to Professor Pinnock,” 538. The

emphasis is mine.

464 Paulsen, “Are Christians Mormon?: Reassessing Joseph Smith’s Theology in His Bicentennial,” 66. The emphasis is mine.

465 Paulsen admits that his version is quite out of step with traditional Christian, and even modern social attempts at trinitarianism, saying that “Latter-day Saints do not see the doctrine of the trinity as a mystery in the sense of a doctrine that is incomprehensible, but in the sense of a spiritual truth that was once hidden but now re-revealed through Joseph Smith” (“Are Christians Mormon?: Reassessing Joseph Smith’s Theology in His Bicentennial,” 65).

that the Godhead is only like a community since the Father, Son, and Spirit are, in fact,

one substance. Elyonic monotheism, in contrast, is a clear instance of tritheism.

Richard Swinburne: The Christian God

For Richard Swinburne, a god is “pure limitless intentional power:”466 pure in

that nothing acts upon him; limitless in that he can accomplish any logically possible

choice; and intentional in that he intends to do that which he accomplishes. In addition

to freedom (implicit in pure power), omnipotence (implicit in limitless power), and

personhood (implicit in intentional power), being unbounded with respect to power

connotes omniscience since ignorance of possible choices would restrain his exercise of

power. If God exists, on this reckoning, he is almighty: the free, omnipotent,

omniscient, and personal cause and sustainer of all other beings and states of affairs.

With the title of his 1998 foray into trinitarian theology, Swinburne provocatively

asks, “Could there be more than one God?” He answers that almighty being x can

actively cause and sustain almighty being y if and only if the creative act is inevitable

and eternal.467 Now, in order to be almighty, y must cause and sustain all other beings

and states of affairs, including x. But to suppose that y actively causes and sustains x

would be circular. He reasons, instead, that that y permissively causes and sustains x in

that, while not bringing about the existence of x, he could bring about the non-existence

of x in a compatibilist sense: that is, y would never exercise the power to annihilate x

467 Ibid., 225-241. He elaborates his account in The Christian God (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 170-191.

because his goodness dictates that he must permit x.468 So, although mutually

dependent, goodness restricts x from annihilating y and y from annihilating x.

His ultimate project is to demonstrate, not only that there could be more than

one God, but that there are three almighty beings of necessity. And it is possible that

more than one divine being exists only if it is necessary that more than one divine being

exists. Swinburne argues that x would actively cause and sustain y because his goodness

dictates that he share love. Since, of course, there is no appropriate time at which x

might begin to share love with y, x inevitably causes y eternally. X and y reciprocally

and eternally share mutual love since the goodness of y also dictates that he share love

with x. Love is not exhausted, however, with mutual love. X and y, together, inevitably

cause z eternally, to whom they offer shared love. Even though x has no active cause, he

is permitted to exist by y and z; y is actively caused by x and permissively caused by z;

and z is actively caused by x and y.469 Once perfect mutual and shared love occur, there

is no overriding moral reason to cause a fourth divine being. And, without an overriding

moral reason, caused beings are contingent, not inevitable, eternal, and divine. There

are, therefore, three and only three almighty beings which are metaphysically

necessary: that is, inevitably and eternally caused or permitted to exist by another

substance.

The divine persons individually exemplify almightiness and, together, directly or

indirectly temporally cause all other beings. Still, none is the self-existent God, with an

uppercase ‘g.’ The Trinity, a genetically-tripled Deity, is ontologically necessary: neither

468 Ibid., 232-233.

469 Swinburne, The Christian God, 177.

actively/passively caused nor sustained to exist, as opposed to the metaphysically

necessary modes of the individual divine persons. Thus, says Swinburne, the Trinity

exemplifies the property of being-deity or Godhood, while the Father, Son, and Spirit

exemplify the property of being-divine. The Trinity, alone, is God.

Swinburne does not appeal to mystery or invoke analogy. Divine threeness is

expounded in terms of the type reading without quasi-generic qualifications. The unity

of the Father, Son, and Spirit is strictly generic, founded in their genetic, productive

relations. He endorses TT7 by remarking that the Trinity is “not unnaturally understood

as an individual thing which does not have parts capable of independent existence.”470

And, on his view, the divine persons are incapable of independent existence, as the

almighty Father and Son are mutually bound of metaphysical necessity since an

independent Father who refrains from loving the Son (and vice versa) is less than

almighty. “They are therefore not unnaturally said to form one ‘first substance,’ and we

may follow a natural tradition in calling that substance ‘God.’”471

He further endeavors to mitigate the charge of tritheism, against the problem of

competing gods, by stressing that each almighty being would remain within his own

sphere of authority and activity, recognizing the good intentions of the others and

refraining from causing conflict. A good actor performs and allows others to perform

morally required acts, and no good actor performs morally prohibited acts or prevents

others from performing morally permissible acts, so as not to annul their freedom. As

long as the Father, Son, and Spirit retain exclusive areas of operation, there can be no

471 Ibid.

conflict concerning permissible courses of action. And, once again, each divine being

would remain within his own sphere because the Father, being the source of being for

the Son and Spirit, enjoys a de facto authority which justifies his position as the

determiner of the initial division of power. Thus, a monarchial covenantal divinity of the

immanent Trinity is the basis for a benevolent triumvirate covenantal divinity of the

economic Trinity.

Since the individually omniscient Father, Son, and Spirit know the future

intentions of the others, their wills cannot collide. Although Swinburne denies that

contingent free actions are properly knowable, the divine persons might compensate for

freedom by predetermining to act compatibly in any situation, operating according to a

flawless and instantaneous utilitarian calculus. “They would,” Kelly James Clark

surmises, “always know the effect of their choice upon the other and will that which

would maximize the happiness of the world in which they both exist.”472 Thus, the triune

God is a logically indivisible, collective substance as a result of the genetic and generic

relations of the Father, Son, and Spirit which supposedly ensure divine oneness in an

appropriately ontic sense. Finally, Swinburne believes, harmonious cooperation

guarantees monotheism against the suspicion that the divine persons are independently

active gods.

If successful, Swinburne has secured divine oneness while articulating the deity

and individuation of the persons with remarkable clarity. Alston worries, however, that

the Father is “more ultimate” than the Son and Spirit, who depend upon the Father’s

472 Kelly James Clark, “Trinity or Tritheism?,” Religious Studies 32 (1996): 469.

active causing and sustaining.473 Assuming that Swinburne’s notion of permissive

causation and sustenance is entirely unlike active causation and sustenance, Alston is

correct. Swinburne, however, believes that they are sufficiently comparable to secure

ontic equality. Notwithstanding, his theory is not unique in apparently rendering the

Son and Spirit inferior to the Father, as any view which emphasizes asymmetrical

processions approaches subordinationism.474

Edward Feser protests that Swinburne’s a priori case does not preclude the

existence of other uncaused divine beings who, in turn, eternally cause almighty beings

with whom to share love.475 Are there possibly other Fathers and Godheads which our

Father in heaven permits to exist due to his benevolence? Although a somewhat

tangential objection, the possibility of other Trinities conflicts with Christian

monotheism. According to Swinburne, however, the Godhead actively causes all other

beings to exist. “A divine individual who exists of ontological necessity would be such

that there is no cause active or permissive of his existence at any time. But, if he is the

creator and sustainer of any universe there may be, any other substance can only exist if

he is, at least in part, the cause of its existence. Hence there cannot be, beside an

473 William Alston, “Swinburne and Christian Theology,” International Journal for Philosophy of

Religion 41 (1997): 45. It would be more accurate to say that the Son and Spirit are not actually ultimate due to this asymmetry.

474 William Hasker forces the argument: “In a certain way, Swinburne finds himself aligned with the Arian side in this controversy…. He is in agreement with the anti-Nicenes in blurring the fundamental distinction between creatures and the Creator. He does this, no by making the Creator less than fully divine (as the Arians did), but by allowing that the Creator, the Son-Logos, was himself created even though fully divine. None of the ancient Fathers, I believe, would have accepted that a person could be both fully divine (‘true God,’ as they would say) and created, even in the special sense in which, according to Swinburne, the Son and Spirit are created” (Metaphysics and the Tri-Personal God [New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2013], 154; the emphasis is Hasker’s). Swinburne might respond that his doctrine of divine causation is, in fact, similar to Cappadocian natural volition. See footnote 51.

475 Feser, “Swinburne’s Tritheism,” 178-179.

ontologically necessary divine being, another such.”476 In a world with multiple

Trinities, no being would be ontologically necessary since each almighty being would

permit the existence of all other almighty beings, whether genetically related or not.

Nevertheless, one wonders why being almighty does not entail self-existence.

Suppose that no other being actively causes or sustains the Father, Son, or Spirit—the

Father does not eternally create the Son, the Son does not eternally sustain the Father,

and so on, as the divine persons encounter one another in a fraternity of actively

uncaused gods. (Swinburne contends that one divine being is the source, or active cause,

of all others because the existence of two or more ultimate sources is inconsistent with

natural theological arguments for theism. But, of course, the theistic arguments might

also indicate a society of cooperative gods which produces a single effect, such that we

discern only one cause.) Each would be almighty, in Swinburne’s sense, expressing

perfect love—one to another—and passively causing the others to exist since essential

goodness prohibits any one from annihilating any other. Still, three divine beings in an

eternal, benevolent Mexican standoff would not be one God in the relevant Christian

sense. And it is not obvious that the addition of active causal relations transforms such a

conception into trinitarianism. We may wonder, as well, whether the Trinity is properly

self-existent. Although not causally sustained by the Father, Son, or Spirit, the existence

of the Trinity is counterfactually dependent upon the existence of the divine persons.

Insofar as the Trinity and the individual divine persons are non-identical, the Trinity is

not self-existent.477

Another significant shortcoming of Swinburne’s formulation is that the

production of the Son and Spirit are supported by fallible moral intuitions. One might

argue, given different moral intuitions, that the divine beings have an overriding moral

reason to eternally cause a fourth almighty being, so as to realize a deepened and

distinct form of love. Quaternitarian intuitions may be no weaker that Swinburne’s

support for trinitarianism.478 What is more, despite attempts to curtail the problem of

competing gods, our intuitions about divine freedom may still indicate that the Son has

no overriding obligation to allow the morally permissible acts of the Father. Simply

being actively caused to eternally exist by another divine being does not necessitate this.

The relevant intuitions are, once again, fallible.

Mutual causal relations among the divine persons do not secure TT7 or deliver

Swinburne’s “Collective,” as he terms it, from the threat of tritheism. With three,

unambiguous instances of almightiness, each having his own trope of divinity, we must

explain how “they” might cooperate so as to avoid conflict. But, again, is not the God of

Israel, which the church recognizes at the triune Deity, “he” in some passable sense? The

Creed does not plausibly sanction a collection of almighty beings or describe divine

oneness in terms of a single divine community.479 In spite of his philosophical

cautiousness and theological acumen, Swinburne’s account can be judged tritheistic.

478 Feser, “Swinburne’s Tritheism,” 179.

479 Clark, “Trinity or Tritheism?,” 473.

Stephen T. Davis: Perichoretic Monotheism

Stephen Davis terms his theory “perichoretic monotheism” which encompasses

six claims. First, God is like a community. The divine persons are distinct centers of

consciousness, although not a literal community. Second, each possesses the divine

essence. Third, each is equally and essentially divine. Being divine, moreover, entails

necessity, eternality, uncreatedness, omnipotence, omniscience, and perfect goodness.

Fourth, the divine persons are individuated by their relations to one another: the Father

begets the Son, and the Father and Son spirate the Spirit. Fifth, each is involved in the

extra-trinitarian acts. And, sixth, the divine persons ontically overlap by means of

perichoresis. He holds, finally, that the Trinity is a mystery—“an apparent contradiction

which there is good reason to believe”—as distinguished from total mystery, taking the

form “M is not f,” where M is the mysterious subject and f is any predicate.480 “It is best

to see orthodox Trinitarian language as aiming us in the right direction by showing what

can and cannot be said about God. No human explanation and no analogy drawn from

human experience can ever fully capture the reality of God’s being.”481 Where analogies

and accounts are inadequate to wholly describe God, theology provides partial and

theologically serviceable explanations.

Concerning the deity of the persons, Davis states that “the three Persons each

possess the generic divine nature as an attribute” and that “each of the Persons equally

480 S. Davis, Logic and the Nature of God, 141 & 142.

481 Stephen T. Davis, “Perichoretic Monotheism: A Defense of a Social Model of the Trinity” in The Trinity: East/West Dialogue, ed. Melville Y. Stewart (Boston, Massachusetts: Kluwer Academic Press, 2003), 37.

possesses the divine essence in its totality.”482 In other words, the Father, Son, and

Spirit do not have literal tropes of divinity but share the divine essence. On this score,

Davis upholds the historic quasi-generic model, unlike Paulsen and Swinburne who

must tackle the problem of competing gods. In stating that the Father, Son, and Spirit

share the divine essence, per se, Davis indicates that they share a single omnipotence,

omniscience, and so on. The problem of competing gods is irrelevant should the divine

persons wield a single instance of divine power. “The Persons share a universal nature

(which we call ‘divinity’)…. The three Persons are all one kind of being, namely, God (of

which there is but one instance).” Still, he insists that “they are three centers of

consciousness, will, and action. (God is like a community, but because of perichoresis

cannot be said to be a community).”483 The divine persons share the single divine

essence, as though a property, without dividing Deity into three discrete beings and,

thereby, producing a community of gods. Once again, these claims are in line with the

tradition of quasi-generic trinitarianism.

Concerning divine threeness, as for Swinburne, God’s benevolence necessitates

love of another: “‘other’ in the sense of a separate center of consciousness, will, and

action.”484 Otherwise, the Father would lack perfection. Although he does not assert that

the Father, Son, and Spirit are three omnipotents, he states that “it is possible for

Christians coherently to say things like ‘The Father is omnipotent’ or ‘The Son is

omnipotent’ or ‘The Spirit is omnipotent.’ It is also possible for Christians coherently to

482 S. Davis, Christian Philosophical Theology, 63.

483 Ibid., 65. The emphasis is Davis’s.

484 Ibid., 68.

say, ‘God (where this means the Godhead) is omnipotent.’ But there are not four

omnipotent things.”485 The omnipotence of God, according to Davis, is neither

shorthand for the individual powers of the Father, Son, and Spirit nor a collective

power. The divine persons exemplify the single power of Deity. So there are (something

like) three tropes of 0mnipotence which he ostensibly associates with relational

individuation in stating that “something like the Filioque clause is necessary; otherwise

there could conceivably be no way to distinguish the Son from the Spirit.”486 The quasi-

tropes of divinity are quite necessary for individuating without particularizing the divine

persons, rendering the Father, Son, and Spirit loving others in a robust, but not literally

communal, sense. This, for Davis, is the essence of social trinitarianism.487

The shared divine essence proves the oneness of God and is the ground of

functional accord. “Each is ‘in’ the others; each ontologically embraces the others; to be

a divine Person is by nature to be in relation to the other two; the boundaries between

them are transparent; their love for an communion with each other is such that they can

be said to ‘interpenetrate’ each other.”488 So three things are relevant to divine oneness:

(1) the shared divine essence, (2) the functional unity of the divine persons, and (3)

perichoresis. Davis remarks that perichoresis “reaches toward the truth that the core of

God’s inner being is the highest degree of self-giving love,” such that “the boundaries

between them are transparent to each other; and each ontologically embraces the

485 Ibid., 70.

486 Ibid., 71.

487 Ibid., 68. The emphasis is Davis’s.

488 Ibid., 63.

others.”489 Thus, love relationships not only individuate but unify. The languages of

“ontological embrace” surpasses both functional and mereological divinity in affirming

TT7. Although no interpenetrating physical substances can perichoretically mix, the

divine persons enjoy categorically unrestrained overlap. Still, there remains a

distinction of individuals as the divine persons enjoy unshared cores.

Unshared personal cores would seem to constitute another basis for

individuating the Father, Son, and Spirit, beyond quasi-tropes/relations. Davis denies,

however, that there are two bases of personal individuation, “since there can be no

relationship without things that are related, this is a logical implication of their

relationships; that is simply another way of saying that the basis of all immanent

differentiation among the Persons is their relationship.”490 Critics might object that the

unshared cores support that intra-divine relations, which only serve to distinguish the

persons. We know that the divine persons are individuals because of their relations to

one another, but the properties individuate in a metaphysical, rather than epistemic,

sense. The doctrine of relational individuation was developed to avoid the implication

that the simple Deity has internal individuating features, transforming the divine

essence/particular into a community. Davis’s theory, the critic might argue, gives a

literal impression of the divinities of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Such an objection,

however, would mistake his perichoretic, quasi-generic account for the type theory,

strictly construed. Whether quasi-generic trinitarianism can be expressed with utter

perspicuity, proponents deny that the divine persons have literal tropes of divinity

489 Ibid., 72.

490 Ibid.

which ground their relational distinctions. Personal individuation is found in

(something like) tropes or, in historical terms, primitive divine relations.

His analogy of ontic overlap involves circles in three possible states. In the first

state, the circles border on one another, in the second, they partially overlap, and in the

third, they entirely overlap.

First State Second State Third State

To imagine divine triunity is to imagine that the first, second, and third states are

simultaneous—“each of these is a full substance and all together are one substance”—

which is impossible for geometric beings like circles, let alone physical beings, but actual

for the Christian Deity. So “again, there is either one omnipotent thing or three

omnipotent things—you can sensibly talk either way—but not four.”491 It must be noted

once more, however, that to conceive of the Father, Son, and Spirit as omnipotents is

not, as for Paulsen and Swinburne, to raise the problem of competing gods. Davis’s

assertion is a contradiction when speaking of circles but a merely apparent

contradiction when speaking of Deity, as the analogy is only an approximation.

The geometric model has an advantage over physical analogies of perichoresis in

that physical sharing or mixing cannot represent holistic overlap. For example, although

491 Ibid., 73.

he does not explicitly appeal to perichoresis, Zeis recounts the case of Chang and Eng

Bunker, the famous Siamese Twins, in reference to the Trinity: “If Chang, qua

substance, was in North Carolina in 1898, then so was Eng. But it does not follow that

since Chang, qua person, was married to Sarah Yates, that Eng was also married to

Sarah. In fact Eng was not married to Sarah, but to Adelaide Yates.”492 Similarly, J.P.

Moreland and William Lane Craig pose Cerberus, the mythological three-headed dog, as

an analogy of perichoretic triunity. As Cerberus is one dog with three centers of

consciousness, so “God is a soul which is endowed with three complete sets of rational

cognitive faculties, each sufficient for personhood.”493 Of course, the sameness of being

which conjoined twins experience is less than total. While attached at the liver, the

Bunker brothers were entirely discrete, save a bit of cartilage and flesh. Chang could not

distinguish his bit of shared liver, cartilage, and flesh from Eng’s, but he could

distinguish his head from Eng’s. Perichoresis, in contrast, involves complete

interpenetration. And in endorsing holistic overlap, Davis eludes the charge of tritheism.

Tritheism and Analogical Theologizing

While there is no standard definition, social accounts assume a general type

reading of the creeds, emphasize personal intercourse among the Father, Son, and Spirit

in a robust sense, and give scant consideration to the question of relative identity. Clark

Pinnock initially identified Paulsen’s doctrine as “a social Trinity,” comparable to his

own open theistic model. “Open theists do not think of the Trinity as a self-enclosed

492 Zeis, “A Trinity on a Trinity on a Trinity,” 53.

493 J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downer’s Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 2003), 593.

group of divine beings… which smacks of tritheism. Instead, open theists are dealing

with a mysterious symbol of God who saves us and whose triune nature is something

incomprehensible in theory,” whereas Paulsen’s view “consists of three individual

personal and separate beings, collectively constituting the object of faith…. What Latter-

day Saints do not hold is that the three persons are ontologically one being.”494 Yet, after

further dialogue, Pinnock concluded, “Latter-day Saints are tritheists, which fits their

polytheistic outlook in general. The Father, Son, and Spirit refer to three individual and

separate deities who collectively constitute a Trinity or the cosmic committee of three.

This is not what I have taken the social Trinity to be,” reiterating that God “is like, but

not exactly like, a koinonia of persons in love.”495 Paulsen’s theory, while social, is anti-

trinitarian in that the divine persons are considered discrete beings rather than

indiscrete individuals, and Godhead is regarded a voluntary community of gods rather

than the divine essence, per se.

Alston considered Swinburne’s theory “a form of ‘social trinitarianism’ in which

the distinctness of the persons takes precedence over the unity of the Godhead.”496

Swinburne concurs, stating that his doctrine is “a moderate form of social

Trinitarianism but one which stresses both the logical inseparability of the divine

persons in the Trinity, and the absence of anything by which the persons of the Trinity

are individuated expect their relational properties.”497 Still, each divine member of

494 Pinnock, “A Dialogue on Openness Theology: Open and Relational Theologies,” 509.

495 Ibid., 545.

496 Alston, “Swinburne and Christian Theology,” 39.

Swinburne’s Collective possesses his own trope of divinity. The Father, Son, and Spirit

exemplify, not the single-same essence, but the same type of essence. So, despite their

causal relations, the divine persons are individuated, at least, by tropes of the divine

attributes.

Interestingly, although social trinitarians are typically thought to establish divine

oneness in the infinite devotion and affection of the persons, Swinburne accounts for

divine threeness in terms of intra-divine love. Like Pinnock in response to Paulsen, soon

after labeling his theory “social trinitarianism,” Alston changed course, deciding that

“Swinburne embraces a fairly straightforward form of tritheism.”498 Apparently, both

Pinnock and Alston vacillated somewhat in delineating quasi-generic trinitarianism

from tritheism, as orthodox and heretical forms of the type reading. In Alston’s

estimation, by pressing the function of natural theology too far, Swinburne reduces the

Christian perception of Deity from “something we will understand only when we see the

Triune God face to face” to “something that any bright philosophy or theology student

can clearly grasp here and now.”499

Finally, Davis claims to advance a social model of the Trinity, and there is no

good reason to doubt that his account is trinitarian. Whereas Paulsen and Swinburne

explicitly maintain that the divine persons are discrete beings, Davis hopes to “back

away considerably from the visual image of three individuals that naturally springs to

mind,” by invoking mystery.500 Given divine transcendence and the apparently

498 Alston, “Swinburne and Christian Theology,” 55.

499 Ibid., 56.

500 Davis, Christian Philosophical Theology, 63.

contradictory nature of revelation, univocal accounts are bound to collapse into heresy.

It is a tall order to specify what Scripture refrains from specifying. Davis is willing to

speak analogically of the divine persons as a community without stipulating

particularization. Tritheistic impressions must be rescinded such that Deity is

understood to be a single being. “The predicate ‘… is God’” of TT1-3 “does not refer to an

individual but is a property meaning something close to ‘is divine.’”501 The qualification

“something close to” is critical, as property exemplification is an analogy, permitting the

full deity and genuine individuation of the persons despite God’s impartible oneness.

501 Ibid., 75. The emphasis is mine.

CONCLUSION

Our venture began with an appraisal of the heretical poles of trinitarian

theology—ontological subordinationism, modalism, and polytheism—and the

corresponding quasi-creational, quasi-identity, and quasi-generic models of the Trinity.

On the quasi-generic model, the Father, Son, and Spirit are (something like) discrete

instances of the divine essence, or gods. Still, in acknowledging TT7, quasi-generic

trinitarianism implies that the divine persons are the indivisible Deity, such that both

divine threeness and divine oneness are substantial. The unity of God is not regarded as

the unity of a natural kind—an essence, universal, or species—per se, as there can be no

such supplemental metaphysical items relative to God. On the contrary, divinity is

merely analogous to a universal which is immanently and entirely present in its

particulars. There is one Divine Being—and so, one instance of divinity—which eternally

subsists as three distinct, not discrete, persons.

The doctrine of perichoresis, which matured within the quasi-generic theological

tradition, repudiates tritheism by accentuation the ontic oneness of God and the unified

operations of the divine persons. The ontic and functional conditions of divine oneness

were assumed to substantiate Christian monotheism, in which the Father, Son, and

Spirit are individuated by (something like) relations. The divine essence—or area of

ontic overlap among the Father, Son, and Spirit—and the divine persons are considered

to be on par, with each person possessing the impartible essence. Although their

operative metaphors are different, quasi-identity and quasi-generic theorists agree on

these points.

Tritheistic theologies, in contrast, deny that the divine essence—as either a

mental abstraction of a fourth metaphysical item which the discrete divine persons

individually exemplify—is indivisible and immanent to the Father, Son, and Spirit.

Social models of the Trinity which permit a substantial, not merely relational,

distinction between the divine persons are tritheistic, as the functional condition of

divine oneness is individually insufficient for Christian monotheism. Social models

which emphasize the ontic condition of divine oneness, typically by reference to

perichoresis, are not tritheistic. And, in order to emphasize both the ontic and

functional conditions, the social theorist must tolerate a divine metaphysic of real

distinction among the persons without particularization. Theorists must be willing to

modify certain metaphysical categories for the sake of theology, rather than restrict

theology to mundane philosophical boundaries.

Philoponus, Roscelin, and Gilbert have been suspected of theological rationalism

in refusing to admit that the divine persons, while really distinct as approximate

particulars, are identical to the simple Deity. Again, theological metaphor is essential to

respecting the analogical relationship between God and some aspects of creation. The

individual/species paradigm, in particular, must not be understood in a univocal sense

when applied to the Trinity, since eliminating or detaching the constituting and unifying

divine essence amounts to tritheism. By accepting the individual/species paradigm but

opposing the immanentist ontology of the Cappadocians, Philoponus, Roscelin, and

Gilbert effectively confessed three gods. Likewise, social theorists who are unwilling to

unequivocally assert the ontic condition of divine oneness or ultimately deny that the

divine persons are to Deity as particulars are to a common species endanger

Conclusion

consubstantiality. Social versions of the Trinity must not imply that the Father, Son, and

Spirit are co-specific beings or, otherwise, remain strictly generic.

The theologies of Paulsen and Swinburne, for instance, fail to adequately

incorporate TT7 in that divine oneness is deemed a community of discrete beings,

whether voluntary or necessary, with the Father, Son, and Spirit each possessing a

personal trope of divinity. Davis avoids a strictly generic construal by invoking

perichoresis as the mysterious mechanism which ensures divine oneness, such that the

persons are considered to be like a community rather than discrete beings in moral

union. And in accepting theological mystery, Davis permits the ontic oneness of God by

speaking of “community” within Deity analogically. Those who theologize univocally,

while assuming that the divine persons are individuals of the divine species, inevitably

profess tritheism.

In order to avoid tritheism, Christian theologians must, first, ascertain the

relevance of the Trinity. The incarnation of the Son and descent of the Spirit are the

disclosure of God as Savior and Sanctifier. One cannot know God apart from the persons

of Christ, who has established the church, and the Spirit, who guides the church. The

doctrines of God, salvation, and the church are, thus, interwoven. The Trinity is

intelligible insofar as it has implications for central doctrines of Christian theology. To

consider the Trinity a contradiction, detached from the rest of theology, is to deprive

Christian belief of its structuring logic.

The doctrine arises from the faithful experience of God, as attested by prophets

and apostles, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, who revealed God and inaugurated the

government of the Spirit in the church. Trinitarianism is a devotional interpretation of

Jesus’ knowledge of God. The triune God known in worship gives life to the creeds

which, in turn, give understanding to the worshipper, connecting one’s heart and mind.

Confessing the Son and Spirit as true revelation of the one God resounds with the

Christian adoration of Deity, as the doctrine interprets the church’s experience of God.

As a consequence, inattention to the Trinity subverts the full expression of Christian

faith, as church worship and practice that is not fundamentally trinitarian becomes

idiosyncratic and, in due course, heretical, gradually detaching from the faithful

experience of God.

Unified in the Spirit, we are bound to one Father. Tribalism is abolished within

the Christian communion as the trinitarian religion discloses the God and Father of all

humanity. The people of God are not mere servants of Deity, obligated to passionless

servitude, but grateful children, enveloped in the life of the Son who calls out “Abba

Father.” Whereas unitarianism secures the solidarity of humanity, Christians are lead

into the presence of the Lord though the companionship of Jesus Christ as cherished

sons and daughters. More than one people under God, we are truly one family in Christ,

our head.

We have been adopted into the family of God which is not, once again, a

community but a perichoretic unity. And, although we are not perichoretically joined to

the Father, Son, and Spirit, our distinctive existences are preserved in union with God

through the Son and Spirit, just as the individual divine persons are preserved in the

oneness of God. The Christian hope of salvation does not involve a loss of self or

liberation from suffering by annihilation, but the absolute fulfillment of individuality.

“To him who overcomes, to him I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give

Conclusion

him a white stone, and a new name written on the stone which no one knows but he who

receives it” (Revelation 2:17). The everlasting survival and dignity of human personhood

is altogether upheld in trinitarianism.

Second, theologians should emphasize the scriptural data concerning the oneness

of God. The Divine Being is emphatically singular: “Before me there was no God formed,

and there will be none after me” (Isaiah 43:10). No theology which locates divinity in a

multiplicity of beings is reasonably Christian. And the ontic oneness of God cannot be

annulled by insisting that three divine beings necessarily and eternally produce one

another. The production of divine persons involves the eternal inheritance of the single-

same divine essence, rather than the conception of a distinct particular nature, as in

creaturely progeneration. Acknowledging discrete divine beings—whether the Father,

Son, and Spirit are simply eternal, as for Paulsen, or inevitably brought into existence,

as for Swinburne—negates TT7. For both Paulsen and Swinburne, the divine persons

covenant so as to avoid a conflict of wills, at least over morally permissible questions.

But, by historical Christian sensibilities, the possibility that the Father, Son, and Spirit

might undertake different courses of action is unimaginable. The oneness of God cannot

feasibly indicate that there is a community of gods; otherwise, nothing as complex as

trinitarianism would have developed in Christian history. A theology’s susceptibility to

the problem of competing gods is a sign of tritheism.

Third, despite divine oneness, theologians must concede that the quasi-generic

analogy, which likens the Father, Son, and Spirit to co-specific beings, is theologically

viable. Although the divine essence is not literally a universal, as the divine persons are

not literally discrete beings, conceiving of the divine essence as (something like) a

secondary substance is a convenient heuristic for the Christian doctrine of God. Gregory

of Nyssa keenly grasped the advantages of the quasi-generic account, despite the

looming threat of tritheism. He was not, however, willing to concede polytheism for the

sake of perspicuity. Whether his philosophical moves and consequent trade-offs are

theologically tolerable, he vigilantly rejected tritheism. Nonetheless, God can be

understood as something like a community.

There are others with considerably different sensibilities who feel that too much

wrangling with tritheism is an indication that Christian theology has gone off course.

Christianity, after all, entails monotheism. And yet, while any consideration of

polytheism is beyond the pale of orthodoxy, an excessive aversion to quasi-generic

trinitarianism is liable to drive critics to the opposite extreme: modalism. To be blunt,

particular antipathy for the individual/species paradigm indicates a deficient notion of

the individuation of the Father, Son, and Spirit. The quasi-generic model, with its

distinctive interpretation of divine threeness, should not be hastily discounted. Opting

for a reactionary theology so as to unambiguously steer clear of tritheism can create

other problems. Therefore, recognizing the viability of the quasi-generic model, in

combination with divine oneness, is vital to developing a serviceable doctrine of the

Trinity.

Fourth, one must ensure that her model is not literally generic. Univocal

accounts, in which the divine persons are thought to exemplify the divine nature, are

tritheistic. Again, whereas the type reading upholds the comparable divinity and

individuation of the Father, Son, and Spirit, trinitarians champion monotheism. The

quasi-generic model is intended to secure the consistently of the type reading without

Conclusion

collapsing into tritheism in that the unity of the divine persons resembles sameness of

species. The divine persons do not, however, have distinct tropes of divinity as the

predicate “is God” in TT1-3 exceeds property exemplification. The single instance of

Divinity pervades the persons, facilitating ontic overlap. Insofar as the divine essence is

not a literal universal, or separate metaphysical entity, tritheism is precluded.

The Trinitarian Triangle with Heretical Poles

Accordingly, trinitarians must renounce theological rationalism and the

temptation to envision the divine persons as literally co-specific beings. The Father, Son,

and Spirit, while approximate particulars, are the simple Divine Being. God, as presider

over the metaphysical arrangements of creation, cannot be naively compared to

mundane beings. He is not like creatures, being noncomplex and incomposite. Divine

simplicity proscribes tritheism by eliminating the hard divide between the divine

essence and persons.

God’s oneness is ultimately mysterious: escaping our rational grasp due to an

overabundance of revelational content, dearth of pertinent, systematizing content, and

cognitive distance from Deity. Our notions of being, identity, and individuation are too

unsophisticated to describe the transcendent God with perspicuous detail. As a result,

we are epistemically ill-positioned to develop a comprehensive theology proper. The

apparent contradictoriness of trinitarianism, nonetheless, is mitigated because

Christians are justified in believing both the individual propositions of trinitarianism

and that one might reasonable expect to encounter an apparent contradiction in

Christian theology. For this reason, trinitarianism proceeds by way of analogy, with the

quasi-generic model standing as one of three orthodox heuristics, each of which is

intended to systematize TT1-7 and, thereby, demonstrate the rational acceptability of

the doctrine of the Trinity, despite apparent contradiction, by highlighting their rarified

meanings.

Fifth, theorists must not rely on intra-divine love as unitive mechanism of divine

oneness. For Swinburne and Davis, love plays and individuative function, as divine

benevolence necessitates that the lover give love to the beloved. Otherwise, God is not

actually, but only potentially, perfectly loving. Again, IDL fits the traditional language of

procession: giving, mutual love corresponds to the Father begetting the Son, and

cooperative, shared love corresponds to the Father and Son producing the Spirit. The

love shared by the divine persons, therefore, is relevant to divine threeness. But appeals

to intra-divine love, with regard to divine oneness, suggest that the union of the divine

Conclusion

persons is an activity rather than a substantial reality, and that the functional condition

is sufficient to establish divine oneness.

Neither can on appeal to the misleading metaphor of dance in attempting to

appropriate the credibility of perichoresis. The metaphor, based in either an

etymological mistake or a play on words, diminishes the static connotation of

perichoresis, which underscores the eternal ontic unity of the divine persons. Love does

not, as an enigmatic phenomenon, transform a trio of gods into the Deity of

monotheism. Perichoresis implies, on the contrary, that the Father, Son, and Spirit co-

exemplify the divine attributes, such that there are not three tropes of divinity but one

instance of omnipotence within God; one instance of omniscience; one instance of

omnipresence; and so forth. Social trinitarian accounts that feature three instance of

each divine attribute within God are not strictly perichoretic, despite enthusiastic

appeals to love. The social model, properly understood, is as metaphorical as any other

trinitarian account but, as a version of quasi-generic trinitarianism, implies tritheism

when expounded univocally.

“Christianity,” said Leonard Hodgson, “began as a trinitarian religion with a

unitarian theology.”502 Despite anti-trinitarian doubts, unitarianism is not, as far as

Christians are concerned, a necessary condition for monotheism. Theologians discern a

robust ontological oneness in the triune God which suits philosophical monotheism and

a personal threeness which fits the worshipper’s religious experience of God. And this

experience enlightens theology, elevating our conception of God while restraining

philosophical presumptions. Such is the history of trinitarianism. In response to the

502 Hodgson, The Doctrine of the Trinity, 103.

simplistic objection that divine triunity flouts the oneness of God, Christians teach that

the Trinity is the highest expression of monotheism, articulating a multiplicity within

unity which prevents the divine oneness from disintegrating into pantheism.

Polytheism, alternatively, is repugnant to the Christian mind. Social accounts of

the Trinity, in utilizing a societal model to emphasize the individuation of the divine

persons, may appear tritheistic. Trinitarian social theorists should reclaim the resources

of the quasi-generic tradition, including a concept of (something like) a universal of

divinity which immanently and indivisibly pervades the Father, Son, and Spirit, securing

divine oneness and establishing the foundation of their loving communion. In this way,

social trinitarians can speak of the one God as three subjects, contrary to the Barthian

insistence that there is, in God, only one divine Subject. After all, the New Testament

depicts the Father, Son, and Spirit as distinct subjects in personal communion. The

social model ably captures this fact of Scripture.

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