Trinity and Incarnation – Page 4 – Maverick Philosopher

More on One Person-Two Natures: Response to Timothy Pawl

A recent argument of mine questioning the coherent conceivability of the one person-two natures doctrine of Chalcedonian Christology begins with the premise

1. If N is a nature of substance s, then s cannot exist without having N. Natures are essential to the things that have them. In possible worlds jargon: If N is a nature of s, then in every possible world in which s exists, s has N. (The modality in play here is broadly logical or metaphysical.)

I pointed out that the argument's conclusion can be best resisted by denying (1). Professor Tim Pawl agrees. He comments:

I think the Aristotelian who wants to maintain Chalcedonian Christology could deny 1 and affirm a nearby proposition:

1’. For any one-natured substance s, if N is a nature of s, then s cannot exist without having N.

Adding the antecedent I’ve added to your 1 here allows for us to say that 1’ remains true in the case of Christ, since the antecedent is false. 1’ does all the work that the Aristotelian would want 1 to do, since every case we think of in mundane (non-christological) situations is a case where the thing in question is single-natured. I wouldn’t think the Aristotelian has any evidence for 1 that would not count as evidence for the revised 1’ as well.

The purpose of this entry is to evaluate Tim's response. But first some preliminaries.

Assumptions. Preliminaries, and Ontological Background

I am not questioning, let alone denying, the fact of the Incarnation. (To insert an autobiographical remark: I am inclined to believe it.) Thus I am not maintaining that there is no sense in which, in a sentence from the Angelus, 'the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." My question is whether the Incarnation is coherently conceivable within a broadly Aristotelian ontological framework. A negative answer, should one be forthcoming, does not foreclose on the question whether the Incarnation is coherently conceivable within some other ontological framework.

By 'coherently conceivable' I mean 'thinkable without broadly-logical contradiction.' Coherent conceivability is a notion weaker than that of (real as opposed to epistemic) possibility. I am not asking whether the Incarnation is possible, but whether it is coherently conceivable (within a broadly Aristotelian framework). Conceivability is tied to our powers of conception; possibility is not.

Whatever is actual is possible. So if the Incarnation is actual, then it is possible whether or not we can coherently conceive how it is possible, whether or not we can render it intelligible to ourselves, whether or not it satisfies the exigencies of the discursive intellect. So if it should turn out that the Incarnation is not coherently conceivable, the defender of the Incarnation has a mysterian move available to him. He can say, look, "It's the case; so its possibly the case; it's just that our cognitive limitations make it impossible for us (in this life) to understand how it could be the case." The present topic, however, is not mysterianism.

My precise question is this: is it coherently conceivable that one person, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Word of God, the Logos, have both an individual divine nature and an individual human nature? I will assume that a person, as per Boethius, is an individual substance of a rational nature. I will also assume the doctrine of the Trinity.

'Substance' is elliptical for 'primary substance' or 'individual substance' or 'first substance' (prote ousia). If abstract entities are entities that are non-spatiotemporal and causally inert, then individual or individualized natures are not abstract entities. Some of them are spatiotemporal, and all of them are causally efficacious. Thus the individual nature of Socrates is in space and time. (The individual nature of the Logos is not in space and time but it is causally efficacious.) What ties an individual substance to its individual nature is not the external asymmetrical nexus of exemplification: substances don't exemplify their natures; a substance is (identical to) its individual(ized) nature. (See Aristotle, Metaphysics, Z.6) Socrates is not a bare particular, and his nature is not a (conjunctive) property that he exemplifies. Of course, there is a sense in which Socrates and Plato are of the same nature in that both are human. This common humanity, however, has no extramental reality: it is not a platonic object exemplified by the two philosophers.

The nature or essence of an individual substance is the what-it-is of the thing or as Aristotle puts it, to ti ên einai, literally “the what it was to be” of a thing, essentia, quod quid erat esse. (Compare Hegel: Wesen ist was gewesen ist.) It follows that the nature or essence of Socrates is not accidental to him. The idea that the nature of an individual thing could be accidental to it is wholly un-Aristotelian, although it would make sense in an ontological scheme according to which Socrates is a bare particular and his nature is a conjunctive property the conjuncts of which are his non-relational properties. (We find such a scheme in D. Armstrong and R. Grossmann, et al.)

It also seems obvious to me that there is an important difference between the event or fact of the Incarnation and any theological doctrine about it. Theology, I take it, is a type of applied philosophy: it is philosophy applied to the data of revelation. The Incarnation is one such datum since it is God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ. So it seems obvious to me that we ought to distinguish the datum from its doctrinal formulation. To repeat myself, I am concerned with the latter.

Evaluation of Tim Pawl's Response

Tim makes a time-honored move in alleviation of the contradiction that issues from my reductio ad absurdum argument: he makes a distinction. One can always avoid or remove a contradiction by making a distinction. He distinguishes between one-natured substances and substances that have more than one nature. He then restricts my (1) to one-natured substances. The result of the restriction is (1'). Accordingly, it is only one-natured substances that are under the requirement that their natures be had by them essentially. Now if we plug (1') into my argument in lieu of (1), no contradiction results. Although a one-natured substance has its one nature essentially (in every world in which the substance exists), a multi-natured substance may have a nature that it has accidentally (in only some of the worlds in which the substance exists).

Unfortunately, this trades one problem for another. For now the problem is to understand how an Aristotelian substance that has two natures can have one of them accidentally. The Logos exists necessarily. In the patois of possible worlds, it exists in every possible world. And it is divine (has the divine nature) essentially, i.e., in every world in which it exists. Since it exists in every world, it has the divine nature in every world. But it has the human nature only in some worlds. So the Logos has the human nature accidentally.

The problem is: How can any substance have a nature accidentally? Don't forget: we are operating within an Aristotelan framework and our precise question is whether the one person-two natures doctrine is coherently conceivable within that framework. As I said above, the nature or essence of an individual substance cannot be accidental to it. (The connection between a substance and its nature cannot be assayed as the external asymmetrical nexus of exemplification.) The idea that the nature of an individual thing could be accidental to it is wholly un-Aristotelian.

To sum up. Professor Pawl makes a distinction between single-natured substances which stand under the requirement that their natures be had essentially by them and multi-natured substances that are not subject to this requirement. This distinction blocks the contradiction my reductio issued in. But Pawl's distinction does not succeed in rendering the Chalcedonian formulation coherently conceivable within the Aristotelian framework because it requires a notion that makes no sense within that ontological framework, namely, the notion that a substance can have a nature accidentally.

To modify the Aristotelian framework in that way is not to extend it or enrich it in the light of new data, but to destroy it. What the Christologist ought to do is reject the framework. He needn't abandon the Incarnation. There are other approaches to it. I hope to sketch one in a separate post.

Is it Coherently Conceivable that One Person Have Two Natures?

For Shaun Deegan, who 'inspired' a sloppy prototype of the following argument hashed out over Sunday breakfast at a Mesa, Arizona hash house.

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The Question

More precisely: is it coherently conceivable that one person, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Word of God, the Logos, have both an individual divine nature and an individual human nature? (A person, as per Boethius, is an individual substance of a rational nature.)

This is not the same as the question: Is the Incarnation coherently conceivable? For my concern is whether the Incarnation is coherently conceivable within a broadly Aristotelian ontological framework. My answer: I don't think so. My answer leaves open the question whether the Incarnation is coherently conceivable within some other ontological framework.

The Argument

1. If N is a nature of substance s, then s cannot exist without having N. Natures are essential to the things that have them. In possible worlds jargon: If N is a nature of s, then in every possible world in which s exists, s has N. (The modality in play here is broadly logical or metaphysical.)

2. The Logos L is a necessary being: L exists in every possible world.

3. The Logos has the individual divine nature DN.

4. The Logos has the individual divine nature in every possible world. (from 1, 2, 3)

5. The Logos has the individual human nature HN.

6. The Logos has the individual human nature HN in every possible world. (from 1, 2, 5)

7. The individual human nature HN exists in every possible world. (from 6)

8. No individual human nature exists in every possible world.

9. (7) and (8) are logical contradictories.

Therefore, by reductio ad absurdum,

10. One of the premises is false.

But which one? Let's examine the premises. No classical Trinitarian theist could reject (2) or (3). And no believer in the Incarnation could reject (5). No classical theist could reject (8) given that God might have refrained from creating a natural universe with human beings. So it seems that someone who adheres to each of these theological commitments must reject (1), which is a plank in the Aristotelian platform.

Or, if you adhere to Aristotelian principles, it seems you must abandon the orthodox Chalcedonian line on the Incarnation.

Bare Particulars versus Aristotelian Substances

In this entry I will attempt to explain the difference between a bare particular and an Aristotelian primary substance. A subsequent post will consider whether this difference is theologically relevant, in particular, whether it is relevant to the theology of the Incarnation.

What is a Particular?

Particulars in the sense relevant to understanding 'bare particular' may be understood in terms of impredicability. Some things can be predicated of other things. Thus being black can be predicated of my cat, and being a property can be predicated of being black; but my cat cannot be predicated of anything. My cat is in this sense 'impredicable.' Particulars are subjects of predication but cannot themselves be predicated. Particulars, then, are ultimate subjects of predication. Thus my cat is an ultimate subject of predication unlike being black which is a subject of predication, but not an ultimate subject of predication. Particulars have properties but are not themselves properties. Properties may be characterized as predicable entities.

Three Senses of 'Bare Particular'

1. The first sense I mention only to set aside. It is a complete misunderstanding to suppose that philosophers who speak of bare or thin particulars, philosophers as otherwise different in their views as Gustav Bergmann, David Armstrong, and J. P. Moreland, mean to suggest that there are particulars that have no properties and stand in no relations. There is no such montrosity as a bare particular in this sense.

In order to explain the two legitimate senses of 'bare particular' I will first provide a general characterization that covers them both. A bare particular is a particular that lacks a nature or (real) essence. It is therefore quite unlike an Aristotelian primary substance. Every such substance has or rather is an individual nature. But while lacking a nature, a bare particular has properties. This 'having' is understood in terms of the asymmetrical external nexus of exemplification. A bare particular is thus tied to its properties by the external nexus of exemplification. To say that the nexus that ties a to F-ness is external is to say that there is nothing in the nature of a, and nothing in the nature of F-ness to require that a exemplify F-ness. After all, a, as bare, lacks a nature, and F-ness, while it has a nature, is not such that there is anything in it to necessitate its being exemplified by a. In this sense a bare particular and its properties are external to each other.

This mutual externality of property to bearer entails what I call promiscuous combinability: any bare particular can exemplify any property, and any property can be exemplified by any bare particular. (A restriction has to be placed on 'property' but we needn't worry about this in the present entry.)

David Armstrong holds that (i) there are conjunctive properties and that (ii) for each bare or thin particular there is the conjunctive property that is the conjunction of all of the particular's non-relational properties. He calls this the particular's nature. But I will avoid this broad use of 'nature.' What I mean by 'nature' is essence. Bare particulars lack essences, but not properties. Therefore, no property or conjunction of properties on a bare-particularist scheme is an essence. Note that it is given or at least not controversial that particulars have properties; it is neither given nor uncontroversial that particulars have essences.

I should also point out that talk of Aristotelian natures or essences would seem to make sense only within a constituent ontology such as Aristotle's.

From the foregoing it should be clear that to speak of a particular as bare is not to deny that it has properties but to speak of the manner in which it has properties. It is to say that it exemplifies them, where exemplification is an asymmetrical external tie. To speak of a particular as an Aristotelian substance is also to speak of the manner in which it has properties.

Consider the dog Fido. Could Fido have been a jellyfish? If Fido is a bare particular, then this is broadly logically possible. Why not, given promiscuous combinability? Any particular can 'hook up' with any property. But if Fido is an Aristotelian substance this is not broadly logically possible. For if Fido is a substance, then he is essentially canine. In 'possible worlds' jargon, Fido, if a substance, is canine in every possible world in which he exists. What's more, his accidental properties are not such as to be exemplified by Fido — where exemplification is an external tie — but are rather "rooted in" and "caused" by the substance which is Fido. (See J. P. Moreland who quotes Richard Connell in Moreland's Universals, McGill-Queen's UP, 2001, p. 93) The idea is that if Fido is an Aristotelian substance, then he has ingredient in his nature various potentialities which, when realized, are manifestations of that nature. The dog's accidental properties are "expressions" of his "inner nature." They flow from that nature. Thus being angry, an accident of Fido as substance, flows from his irascibility which is a capacity ingredient in his nature. If Fido is a bare particular, however, he would be externally tied to the property of being angry. And he would also be externally tied to the property of being a dog.

It follows that if particulars are bare, then all of their properties are had accidentally, and none essentially.

We now come to the two legitimate senses of 'bare particular.'

2. The second sense of 'bare particular' and the first legitimate sense is the constituent-ontological sense. We find this in Bergmann and Armstrong. Accordingly, a bare particular is not an ordinary particular such as a cat or the tail of a cat or a hair or hairball of cat, but is an ontological factor, ingredient, or constituent of an ordinary particular. Let A and B be round red spots that share all qualitative features. For Bergmann there must be something in the spots that grounds their numerical difference. They are two, not one, but nothing qualitative distinguishes them. This ground of numerical difference is the bare particular in each, a in A, and b in B. Thus the numerical difference of A and B is grounded in the numerical (bare) difference of a and b. In one passage, Bergmann states that the sole job of a bare particular is to individuate, i.e., to serve as the ontological ground of numerical difference.

Particulars, unlike universals, are unrepeatable. If F-ness is a universal, F-ness is repeated in each F. But if a is F, a is unrepeatable: it is the very particular it is and no other. One of the jobs of a Bergmannian bare particular is to serve as the ontological ground of an ordinary particular's particularity or thisness. A Bergmannian bare particular is that ontological constituent in an ordinary particular that accounts for its particularity. But note the ambiguity of 'particularity.' We are not now talking about the categorial feature common to all particulars as particulars. We are talking about the 'incommunicable' thisness of any given particular.

3. The third sense of 'bare particular' and the second legitimate sense is the nonconstituent-ontological sense. Summing up the above general characterization, we can say that

A bare particular is a particular that (i) lacks a nature (in the narrow sense lately explained); (ii) has all of its properties by exemplification where exemplification is an asymmetrical external nexus; and as a consequence (iii) has all of its properties accidentally, where P is an accidental property of x iff x exemplifies P but can exist without exemplifying P.

Note that this characterization is neutral as between constituent and nonconstituent ontology. If one is a C-ontologist, then bare particulars are constituents of ordinary particulars. If one is an NC ontologist who rejects the very notion of an ontological constituent, then bare particulars are ordinary particulars.

Conclusion

I have explained the difference between a bare particular and an Aristotelian substance. In a subsequent post I will address the question of how this deep ontological difference bears upon the possibility of a coherent formulation of the Incarnation doctrine.

Substance, Supposit, Incarnation, Trinity, and the Heresy of Nestorius

I need to answer three questions. This post addresses only the first.

1. What is the difference between an Aristotelian primary substance and a supposit (hypostasis, suppositum)?

2. Is there any non-theological basis for this distinction?

3. If the answer to (2) is negative, is the addition of suppposita to one's Aristotelian ontology a case of legitimate metaphysical revision or a case of an ad hoc theoretical patch job? According to Marilyn McCord Adams, "Metaphysical revision differs from ad hoc theoretical patching insofar as it attempts to make the new data systematically unsurprising in a wider theoretical context." ("Substance and Supposits," p. 40)

The First Question

By 'substance' I mean an Aristotelian primary substance, an individual or singular complete concrete entity. Among the characteristics of substances are the following: substances, unlike universal properties, cannot be exemplified or instantiated; substances, unlike accidents, cannot inhere in anything; substances, unlike heaps and aggregates, are per se unities. Thus Socrates and his donkey are each a substance, but the classical mereological sum of the two is not a substance.

Now what is a supposit? Experts in medieval philosophy — and I am not one of them, nota bene — sometimes write as if there is no distinction between a substance and a supposit. Thus Richard Cross: "Basically a supposit is a complete being that is neither instantiated or exemplified, nor inherent in another." ("Relations, Universals, and the Abuse of Tropes," PAS 79, 2005, p. 53.) And Marilyn McCord Adams speaks of Socrates and Plato as "substance individuals" and then puts "hypostases or supposits" in apposition to the first phrase. (PAS 79, 2005, p. 15)

My first question, then, is: Is there any more-than-verbal difference between a substance and a supposit, and if so, what is it?

One answer that suggests itself is that, while every substance has a supposit, some substances have alien supposits. That is, some substances are their own supposits, while others are not their own supposits, but have alien supposits. (I take the phrase 'alien supposit' from Adams, p. 31 et passim.) A substance has an alien supposit if and only if it is not its own supposit. I understand Aristotle to maintain or at least be committed to the proposition that every (primary) substance is essentially its own supposit. (I rather doubt that the Stagirite ever raised the question of alien supposition.) If so, then no substance is possibly such as to have an alien supposit. If alien supposition is metaphysically or broadly logically possible, however, then we have a ground for a more-than-terminological distinction between substances and supposits. Whether the converse of this conditional holds is a further question. For it may be that there is a ground for the distinction even if alien supposition is not possible.

Incarnation, Trinity, and the separated soul's survival between death and resurrection are theological examples of alien supposition. Whether there are non-theological examples is a further, and very important question, one the answer to which has consequences for questions (2) and (3) above.

The Incarnation is an example of alien supposition as I will now try to explain.

The orthodox view is that God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, the Word, becomes man in Jesus of Nazareth. Although the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us as we read in the NT, the Word does not merely assume a human body, nor does it acquire a universal property, humanity; the Word assumes a particularized human nature, body and soul. The eternal Word assumes or 'takes on' a man, an individual man, with an intellectual soul and and animal body. But now a problem looms, one that can be articulated in terms of the following aporetic tetrad:

a. A person is a (primary) substance of a rational nature. (Boethian definition)

b. There is only one person in Christ, the Word, the Second Person of the Trinity. (Rejection of the heresy of Nestorius, according to which in Christ there are two persons in two natures rather than one person in two natures.)

c. The individual(ized) human nature of Christ is a primary substance of a rational nature.

d. Every (primary) substance is its own supposit, which implies that every substance of a rational nature has its own personhood.

The tetrad is logically inconsistent: any three limbs taken in conjunction entail the negation of the remaining one. Thus the conjunction (a) & (c) & (d) entails the negation of (b). For if there are two primary substances of a rational nature, the Word and Christ, then there are two persons each with his own individualized nature, contra Chalcedonian orthodoxy, according to whch there is exactly one person in two natures. The solution to the tetrad is to deny (d), the very natural Aristotelian assumption that every substance is its own supposit. One does this by maintaining that, while the individualized human nature of Christ is a substance, it is not a substance that supports itself: it has an alien supposit, namely, the Second Person of the Trinity.

If the Incarnation as Chalcedonian orthodoxy understands it is actual, then it is possible. If so, alien supposition is possible, which straightaway entails a distinction between substance and supposit: while every substance has or is a supposit, not every substance has or is its own supposit. The individualized human nature of Christ is a supposited substance but is not itself a supposit.

Let me now say a bit about the Trinity. Here too a problem looms that can be cast in the mold of an aporetic tetrad.

a. A person is a (primary) substance of a rational nature. (Boethian definition)

e. There are exactly three divine persons, Father, Son, Holy Ghost . (Rejection of 'Quaternity')

f. The individualized nature of God is a primary substance of a rational nature.

d. Every (primary) substance is its own supposit, which implies that every substance of a rational nature has its own personhood.

Again, the tetrad is inconsistent, and again the solution is to reject (d) by saying that, while the individualized divine nature is a primary substance, it is not one that supposits itself: it has three alien supposits, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

The Son is thus the alien supposit of both God's divine nature and Christ's human nature.

My first question concerned the difference between a substance and supposit. My tentative answer is that while only substances can be supposits, there are substances that are not their own supposits nor are they supposits for anything else, an example being the individualized human nature of Christ.

Is there a non-theological basis for the distinction? if not, then the suspicion arises that the distinction is purely ad hoc, crafted to save tenets of orthodox Christian theology. But this is a question for another occasion.

What's wrong with ad-hocery?

Christology, Reduplicatives, and Qua-Entities

For Dave Bagwill, who is trying to understand the Chalcedonian definition.

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Consider this triad, and whether it is logically consistent:

1. The man Jesus = the 2nd Person of the Trinity.
2. The 2nd Person of the Trinity exists necessarily.
3. The man Jesus does not exist necessarily.

Each of these propositions is one that a Christian who understands his doctrine ought to accept. But how can they all be true? In the presence of the Indiscernibility of Identicals, according to which, roughly, if two things are identical, then they share all properties, the above triad appears inconsistent: The conjunction of (1) and (2) entails the negation of (3). Can this apparent inconsistency be shown to be merely apparent?

Reduplicatives to the rescue. Say this:

4. Jesus qua 2nd Person exists necessarily while Jesus qua man does not exist necessarily.

(The stylistically elegant ‘while’ may be replaced for truth-functional purposes with the logician's ampersand.) Now one might object that reduplicative formulations are not helpful unto salvation from inconsistency since in the crucial cases they entail outright contradictions. They merely hide and postpone the difficulty. Thus, given that being a Person of the Trinity entails existing necessarily, and being a human animal entails existing contingently, (4) entails

5. Jesus exists necessarily & Jesus does not exist necessarily.

And that is a plain contradiction. But this assumes that reduplicative constructions need not be taken with full ontological seriousness as requiring reduplicative truth-makers. It assumes that what we say with reduplicatives can be said without them, and that, out in the world, there is nothing that corresponds to them, or at least that we have no compelling reason to commit ourselves to reduplicative entities, qua-entities, one might call them. That assumption now needs to be examined. Suppose we parse (4) as

6. Jesus-qua-2nd Person exists necessarily & Jesus-qua-man does not exist necessarily

where the hyphenated expressions function as nouns, qua-nouns (to give them a name) that denote qua-entities. It is easy to see that (6) avoids contradiction for the simple reason that the two qua-entities are non-identical. But what is non-identical may nonetheless be the same if we have a principled way of distinguishing between identity and sameness. (Hector-Neri Castaneda is one philosopher who distinguishes between identity and a number of sameness relations.) Essentially what I have just done is made a distinction in respects while taking respects with full ontological seriousness. This sort of move is nothing new. Consider a cognate case.

Suppose I have a red boat that I paint blue. Then we can say that there are distinct times, t1 and t2, such that b is red at t1 and blue at t2. That can be formulated as a reduplicative: b qua existing at t1 is red and b qua existing at t2 is blue. One could take that as just a funny way of talking, or one could take it as a perspicuous representation of the ontological structure of the world. Suppose the latter. Then, adding hyphens, one could take oneself to be ontologically committed to temporal parts, which are a species of qua-entity. Thus b-at-t1 is a temporal part that is distinct from b-at-t2. These temporal parts are distinct since they differ property-wise: one is red the other blue. Nevertheless, they are the same in that they are parts of the same whole, the temporally extended boat.

The conceptual move we are making here is analogous to the move we make when we say that a ball is green in its northern hemisphere and red in its southern hemisphere in order to defuse the apparent contradiction of saying that it is red and green at the same time. Here different spatial parts have different properties, whereas in the boat example, different temporal parts have different properties.

Can we apply this to the Incarnation and say that Jesus-qua-God is F (immortal, impassible, necessarily existent, etc.) while Jesus-qua-man is not F? That would avoid the contradiction while upholding such obvious truths as that divinity entails immortality while humanity entails mortality. We could then say, borrowing a term from the late Hector-Neri Castaneda (1924-1991), that Jesus-qua-God is consubstantiated with Jesus-qua-man. (Hector the atheist is now rolling around in his grave.) The two are the same, contingently the same. They are ontological parts of the same substance, and are, in that sense, consubstantiated. Jesus is God the Son where ‘is’ expresses a contingent sameness relation, rather than strict identity (which is governed by the Indiscernibility of Identicals and the Necessity of Identity).

The idea is that God the Son and Jesus are, or are analogous to, ontological parts of one and the same whole. This is an admittedly bizarre idea, and probably cannot be made to work. But it is useful to canvass all theoretical possibilities.

One Person, Two Natures

A reader inquires,

The Creed of Chalcedon (A.D 451) set forth the following dogma, among others: (my emphasis)

".. one and the same Christ ….to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son . . ."

The deliberate language of 'two natures' in 'one Person' is really remarkable. When you find some time, can you give me a bit of direction in determining, first – what it is for a person to 'have a human nature' and second – depending on that answer, is there any way to explain the concept of a person having two 'natures'? I even find the statement that human persons have both an 'animal nature' and a 'human nature' troublesome. There is a category mistake that I sense but cannot yet explain.

The reader poses three questions. After answering them, I will pose a fourth question that the reader doesn't explicitly ask.

Q1. How can a human person have both an animal nature and a human nature? I don't see much of a difficulty here. If man is a rational animal (Aristotle), then Socrates, in virtue of being human, is an animal. Now he is both animal and human essentially as opposed to accidentally. Thus Socrates could not have existed without being an animal: he could not have been inanimate, say a statue or a valve-lifter in a '57 Chevy. And he could not have existed without being human: he could not have been nonhuman like a cat or a jelly fish. Whether or not every essential feature of a thing is part of its nature, every nature is essential to a thing that has it. So I see no problem in saying that Socrates has both an animal nature and human nature, where the latter includes the former, though not conversely. Nature N1 includes nature N2 just in case it is impossible that something have N1 but not have N2.

Q2. How can a person have two natures? This is answered above. Humanity and animality are distinct — the first includes the second, but not conversely — but there is nothing to prevent one and the same individual substance from having both of them.

Q3. What is it for a person to have a human nature? On the Boethian definition, a person is an individual substance of a rational nature. So the question might be: How can a rational individual — an individual being that has the capacity to reason — also be human? Well, I don't see much difficulty here. Not every person is a human being, but every human being is a person. So humanity includes personhood.

Q4. How can one and the same person have two seemingly incompatible natures? I suspect that this is the question the reader really wants to pose. There is no obvious problem about one person having two natures if they are logically compatible as they are if one includes the other. The problem is that while humanity includes animality, humanity appears to exclude divinity. Among the marks of humanity: animality, mortality, mutability, passibility; among the marks of divinity: spirituality (non-animality), immortality, immutability, impassibility.

According to Chalcedon, one and the same person is both fully human and fully divine. Now, necessarily, anything human is passible, thus capable of suffering. But, necessarily, nothing divine is passible; hence nothing divine is capable of suffering. So if one and the same person is both human and divine, then one and the same person is both capable of suffering and not capable of suffering. This is a contradiction. Herein lies the difficulty.

The reader needs to tell me whether this is the problem that is exercising him. (Note that the problem can be developed using attributes other than passibility.)

I wonder whether the reader would be satisfied with the following strategy and the following analogy. Christ qua human is capable of suffering, but Christ qua divine is not. This removes the contradiction. Analogy: Obama qua president is commander-in-chief of the armed forces, but Obama qua citizen is not.

I am not endorsing either the reduplicative strategy or the analogy.

The Crucified God

The Crucified God is an outstanding weblog by my remarkable young friend, Steven Nemes. Compare his Good Friday meditation on Moltmann with the Simone Weil passage I quoted in the immediately preceding entry.

The Lost Early History of Unitarian Christian Theology

A lecture by Dale Tuggy.

Incarnation, Substance, and Supposit

I am still digesting the discussions in Prague. In this post I present part of the rambling and over-long paper I delivered, beefed up somewhat, in an attempt to formulate more clearly my main points.

The orthodox view of the Incarnation is that God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, the Word or Logos, becomes man in Jesus of Nazareth. Although the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us as we read in the New Testament, the Word does not merely assume a human body, nor does it acquire a universal property, humanity; the Word assumes a particularized or individualized human nature, body and soul. The eternal Word assumes or 'takes on' a man, an individual man, with an intellectual soul and an animal body. And it does this without prejudice to its divine nature. But now a problem looms, one that can be articulated in terms of the following aporetic tetrad:

a. A person is a (primary) substance of a rational nature. (Boethian definition)
b. There is only one person in Christ, the Word, the Second Person of the Trinity. (Rejection of the heresy of Nestorius, according to which in Christ there are two persons in two natures rather than one person in two natures, as orthodoxy maintains.)
c. The individual(ized) human nature of Christ is a primary substance of a rational nature.
d. Every (primary) substance is its own supposit, which implies that every substance of a rational nature has its own personhood.

The tetrad is logically inconsistent: any three limbs taken in conjunction entail the negation of the remaining one. Thus the conjunction (a) & (c) & (d) entails the negation of (b). The solution to the tetrad is to deny (d). One does this by maintaining that, while the individualized human nature of Christ is a substance, it is not a substance that supports itself: it has an alien supposit, namely, the Second Person of the Trinity. If the Incarnation as Chalcedonian orthodoxy understands it is actual, then it is possible. If so, alien supposition is possible, which straightaway entails a distinction between substance and supposit: while every substance has or is a supposit, not every substance has or is its own supposit. The individualized human nature of Christ is a supposited substance but is not a supposit.

Given the substance-supposit distinction, we can secure the coherence of both the Incarnation and Trinity doctrines. Christ is one person (one supposit) in two natures while God is one nature in three persons (three supposits).

In correspondence, Dennis Monokroussos writes, "(c) is unacceptable to the orthodox Christian. There are two natures in the Word, but not two primary substances." I admit that I should have said something in defence of (c). But I think it is clear that on orthodoxy the Son's assumption of human nature is the assumption of a particular(ized) human nature with all that that entails, namely, a particular human soul and a particular human body with the very materia signata that a human body must have to be a concrete physical entity. Thus, in the Incarnation the Son becomes one with a particular human concrete primary substance. It is not the case that the Son assumes human nature in the abstract, whether human nature as a universal or human nature as particularized but taken in abstraction from matter and existence. The Son of God become man, a man, a living, breathing, suffering man mit Haut und Haar, skin and hair. So, contra Monkroussos, there are two distinct primary substances, the Son, and the man Jesus. There are two individual natures and two individual primary substances. But there is, on orthodoxy, for soteriological reasons that needn't detain us, only one person, only one supposit of a rational nature.

The distinction between substance and supposit can now be explained as follows. Since there are primary substances that are their own supposits and primary substances that are not, to be a primary substance and to be a (metaphysical as opposed to logical) supposit are not the same. The man Jesus is not a primary substance that is its own supposit: it has an alien supposit, namely, the Second Person of the Trinity. (I borrow the phrase 'alien supposit' from Marilyn McCord Adams.)

The problem that needs solving is this. If there are two individualized natures, one divine, the other human, and both including rationality, then there are two persons (assuming the Boethian definition of person.) But orthodoxy requires that there be only one person. The contradiction is avoided in the time-honored manner by making a distinction, in this case the distinction between substance and supposit. The distinction allows that an individualized rational nature needn't be its own personal supposit.

The main point of my paper is that the substance-supposit distinction is ad hoc because crafted for the precise purpose of removing theological contradictions. What makes it ad hoc is that there are no non-theological examples of the distinction.

You might grant me that the distinction is ad hoc, but then ask: what is wrong with that? What is wrong with it is that it does not advance the project of understanding how the doctrines in question (Trinity and Incarnation) are rationally acceptable. If the theological doctrines are rendered intelligible by a distinction crafted for that very purpose, then we are turning in a very tight circle: the doctrines in question are intelligible because the substance-supposit distinction is valid, and the distinction is valid because the doctrines are intelligible. In other words, the doctrines and the distinction stand and fall together. Hence the distinction, which has no application apart from the theological doctrines, does nothing to show how the doctrines are possible or intelligible to our finite, discursive reason.

If my problem is to understand how it is possible that two individualized rational natures be one person, you are not helping me if you make a distinction the validity of which presupposes the possibility in question.

"Look, the Incarnation as orthodoxy understands it is actual; therefore it is possible: esse ad posse valet illatio."

To which I respond: the precise question is whether the doctrine can satisfy a necessary condition of rational acceptability, namely, freedom from contradiction. For if it is not free of contradiction, then it cannot be actual. If such freedom is purchased in the coin of a distinction that is as questionable as the doctrine it is meant to validate, then no progress is made.

Nothing I have said entails that the Incarnation is not actual. For our inablity to understand how it is possible does not entail that it is not possible. (Compare: our inability decisively to refute Zeno and demonstrate how motion is possible is consistent with motion's being actual.) One can make a mysterian move here: the Incarnation (and the Trinity) are actual, but our cognitive architecture is such as to prevent us from ever understanding how they are possible. What is unintelligible to us, might be intelligible to angelic intellects or to God.

Compare the mysterianism of Colin McGinn. He maintains that consciousness is wholly natural, a brain-function, but that our cognitive architecture is such as to prevent us from every understanding how it could be a brain function. That naturalism is true, he takes 'on faith,' relying (apparently) on the magisterium, the teaching authority of Science, while insisting (rightly in my opinion) that it is utterly unintelligible to us how meat could give rise to consciousness. How could meat mean? Gushing over the complexity of brain meat cuts no ice, to mix some metaphors.

On the other hand, if we cannot understand how X is possible, is that not some sort of reason for suspecting that it is not possible?

SEP Trinity Entry Updated

Dale Tuggy recently updated his article on the Trinity in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Theology Wagging the Ontological Dog?

Dennis M. writes,

On Ockham and supposita: A little perplexity at the end, when you write that “[w]hat is curious here is how very specific theological doctrines are allowed to drive the general ontology.” One man’s modus ponens is another’s modus tollens, I suppose, but if Ockham is trying to maintain theological orthodoxy it doesn’t seem too strange to me. Presumably his Christian faith came first, and wasn’t based on any complicated metaphysical arguments. Isn’t it reasonable for him to hold the faith unless it just can’t be done, no way and no how, rather than revise it for the sake of a more straightforward ontology – especially if he is concerned with the risk to his salvation? Maybe I’m misunderstanding something simple here.

I agree that Ockham's Christian faith came first. But I don't agree that the content of his faith wasn't based on any complicated metaphysical arguments. The theological dogmas had to be hammered out in the councils in the teeth of various competing teachings, later to be branded 'heretical,' and that hammering-out involved metaphysical reasoning using principles and distinctions and logical operations not to be found in the Scripture. To state the obvious, the church fathers made use of Greek philosophical conceptuality.

For example, if the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, what exactly does that mean? That God took on a human body? That is, roughly, the Appolinarian heresy. Does it mean that there are two persons in Christ, the Word and the person of the man Jesus? That, roughly, is the Nestorian heresy. If Jesus died on the cross, did a real man die on the cross, or merely a phantom body as the Docetists maintained? Did God the Father suffer on the cross as the Patripassians held? And so on.

Therefore, if Ockham's faith was, or was in part, faith that certain dogmatic propositions are true, then his faith was based on "complicated metaphysical arguments." Of course, there is much more to a living religious faith than giving one's intellectual assent to theological propositions. And one can and should question just how important doctrine is to a vital religious faith.

The problem I am trying to command a clear view of can be approached via the following aporetic tetrad:

a. A person is a (primary) substance of a rational nature. (Boethian
definition)

b. There is only one person in Christ, the Word, the Second Person of the Trinity. (Rejection of the heresy of Nestorius, according to which in Christ there are two persons in two natures rather than one person in two natures.)

c. The individual(ized) human nature of Christ is a primary substance of a rational
nature.

d. Every (primary) substance is its own supposit, which implies that every
substance of a rational nature has its own personhood.

Now let's say you have been schooled in Aristotle's metaphysics and are also an orthodox Christian. So you are inclined to accept all four propositions. But they cannot all be true. So one of them must be rejected. Suppose you reject (d). You are then allowing your theological convictions to influence your ontology, your metaphysica generalis.

Is this kosher? Well, if there are non-theological cases in which a distinction between substance and suppositum is warranted, then clearly yes. But if there aren't, then the rejection of (d) and the attendant distinction between substances and supposita smacks of being ad hoc. You are in a logical bind and you extricate yourself by making a distinction that caters to this very bind.

The distinction is made to accommodate a piece of theology, namely, the orthodox Incarnation doctrine.
And so the distinction between primary substance and supposit is open to the charge of being ad hoc. The Latin phrase means 'to this' and suggests that the distinction has no independent support and is a mere invention pulled out of thin air to render coherent an otherwise incoherent, or not obviously
coherent, theological doctrine.

Again, I ask: Is this (philosophically) kosher?

If our question as philosophers of religion is whether the Incarnation doctrine is rationally acceptable, then it is hard to see how it can shown to be such by the use of a distinction which has no independent support, a distinction which is crafted for the precise purpose of making the doctrine in question rationally acceptable. To rebut this objection from ad hocness, someone will have to explain to me that and how the primary substance-supposit distinction has independent warrant. Is there some clear non-theological case in which the distinction surfaces?

If I ask whether the Incarnation doctrine is rationally acceptable, and you make an ad hoc distinction that removes a putative contradiction, this simply pushes the question back a step: is your distinction rationally acceptable? Arguably, it is not if it is purely ad hoc.

But I admit that the objection from ad-hocness or ad-hocceity is not decisive. Dennis might say to me, "Look, the theological dogma has the force of divine revelation because it was elaborated by fathers of the church under the guidance of the Holy Ghost. So what more support could you ask for?"

At this point we have a stand-off. If the Incarnation doctrine in its specific Chalcedonian formulation is divinely revealed, then of course it is true, whether or not we mere mortals can understand how it is true. But note also that if the doctrine is divinely revealed, then there is no need to defend it by making fancy distinctions. The main point, however, is that anyone who worries about the rational acceptability of the orthodox Incarnation doctrine will also worry about how any group of men can legitimately claim to be guided by the Holy Ghost. How could anyone know such a thing? Any person or group can claim to be under divine inspiration. But how validate the claim?

This looks to be another version of the Athens versus Jerusalem stand-off. The religionist can say to the philosopher: "We have our truth and it is from God, and we are under no obligation to prove its 'acceptability' to your puny 'reason.' To which the philosopher might respond, "You are asking us to abandon our very way of life, the life of inquiry and rational autonomy, and for what? For acquiescence in sheer dogmatism, dogmatism contradicted by other dogmatisms that you conveniently ignore."

Dennis also brings up the soteriological angle. Is one's salvation at risk if one questions or rejects a particular doctrinal formulation of the Incarnation? Is it reasonable to think that salvation hinges on the acceptance of the Chalcedonian definition? Is it reasonable to think that Nestorius is in hell for having espoused a doctrine that was rejected as heretical? Not by my lights. By my lights to believe such a thing is border-line crazy. How could a good God condemn to hell a man who, sincerely, prayerfully, and by his best intellectual lights, in good faith and in good conscience, arrived at a view that the group that got power labelled heretical or heterodox?

What is the Difference Between a Substance and a Supposit?

I need to answer three questions. This post addresses the first.

1. What is the difference between an Aristotelian primary substance and a supposit (hypostasis, suppositum)?

2. Is there any non-theological basis for this distinction?

3. If the answer to (2) is negative, is the addition of suppposita to one's Aristotelian ontology a case of legitimate metaphysical revision or a case of an ad hoc theoretical patch job? According to Marilyn McCord Adams, "Metaphysical revision differs from ad hoc theoretical patching insofar as it attempts to make the new data systematically unsurprising in a wider theoretical context." ("Substance and Supposits," p. 40)

The First Question

By 'substance' I mean an Aristotelian primary substance, an individual or singular complete concrete entity together with its accidents. Among the characteristics of substances are the following: substances, unlike universal properties, cannot be exemplified or instantiated; substances, unlike accidents, cannot inhere in anything; substances, unlike heaps and aggregates, are per se unities. Thus Socrates and his donkey are each a substance, but the mereological sum of the two is not a substance.

Now what is a supposit? Experts in medieval philosophy — and I am not one of them, nota bene — sometimes write as if there is no distinction between a substance and a supposit. Thus Richard Cross: "Basically a supposit is a complete being that is neither instantiated or exemplified, nor inherent in another." ("Relations, Universals, and the Absue of Tropes," PAS 79, 2005, p. 53.) And Marilyn McCord Adams speaks of Socrates and Plato as "substance individuals" and then puts "hypostases or supposits" in apposition to the first phrase. (PAS 79, 2005, p. 15)

My first question, then is: Is there any more-than-verbal difference between a substance and a supposit, and if so, what is it?

One answer that suggests itself is that, while every substance has a supposit, some substances have alien supposits. (I take this phrase from Adams, p. 31 et passim.) A substance has an alien supposit iff it is not its own supposit. I understand Aristotle to maintain or at least be committed to the proposition that every (primary) substance is essentially its own supposit. If so, then no substance is possibly such as to have an alien supposit. If alien supposition is metaphysically or broadly logically possible, however, then we have a ground for a more-than-terminological distinction between substances and supposits. Whether the converse of this conditional holds is a further question. For it may be that there is a ground for the distinction even if alien supposition is not possible.

The Incarnation is an example of alien supposition as I will now try to explain.

a. A person is a (primary) substance of a rational nature. (Boethian definition)

b. There is only one person in Christ, the Word, the Second Person of the Trinity. (Rejection of the heresy of Nestorius, according to which in Christ there are two persons in two natures rather than one person in two natures.)

c. The individual(ized) human nature of Christ is a primary substance of a rational nature.

d. Every (primary) substance is its own supposit, which implies that every substance of a rational nature has its own personhood.

Let me now say a bit about the Trinity. Here too a problem looms that can be cast in the mold of an aporetic tetrad.

a. A person is a (primary) substance of a rational nature. (Boethian definition)

e. There are exactly three divine persons, Father, Son, Holy Ghost . (Rejection of 'Quaternity')

f. The individualized nature of God is a primary substance of a rational nature.

d. Every (primary) substance is its own supposit, which implies that every substance of a rational nature has its own personhood.

The Son is thus the alien supposit of both God's divine nature and Christ's human nature.

Trying to Understand Ockham on Supposita in Light of the Incarnation

I am presently working through Marilyn McCord Adams, "Aristotelian Substance and Supposits" (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supplementary volume 79, 2005, 15-72). The Czech scholastics and sometime MavPhil commenters Novak, Novotny, Vohanka, et al. have kindly invited me to read a paper at a conference on the Trinity in Prague this September and now I am under the gun to write something worth their time and attention.

Adams writes, p. 39, "(Ockham is willing to conclude that 'A human supposit can be assumed' is true, even though 'A human supposit is assumed' is contradictory; just as 'A white can be black' is true, even though 'A white is black' is impossible.)"

My present purpose is to make sense of this quotation.

I give 'A white can be black' a de re reading as follows:

1. A white thing is (logically) possibly such that it is not white.

For example, here is a piece of white paper. Heeding Mick Jagger's injunction, I can paint it black. But I wouldn't be able to do this if it were not logically possible for this thing that is actually white to be non-white. Although, necessarily, nothing white is non-white, the piece of paper is contingently white.

I give 'A white is black' a de dicto reading:

2. It is not (logically) possible that a white thing be non-white.

On these readings, both (1) and (2) come out true. (1) is about a thing (res) and ascribes a modal property to it; (2) is about a proposition (dictum) and ascribes a modal property to it.

I give 'A human supposit can be assumed' a de re reading:

3. A human supposit is (logically) possibly such that it is assumed.

From the opening page of Adams' paper, I gather that a supposit is an Aristotelian primary (individual) substance. So Socrates and Plato are human supposits, while a donkey is a supposit that is not human. And from her gloss on Boethius, I gather that a person is a primary substance of a rational nature. So Socrates and Plato are persons while a donkey is not.

Now if God incarnate is one person in two natures, as Chalcedonian orthodoxy has it, then God cannot assume a man. For a man is a supposit of a rational nature, hence a person. If God were to assume a man, then God the Son — a person — would be assuming a second person. But pace Nestorious, there are not two natures and two persons in Christ, but one person in two natures. So what is assumed in the Incarnation is not a supposit but a particularized human nature. This is why 'A human supposit is assumed' is contradictory. That is, in de dicto terms,

4. It is (logically) impossible that a human supposit be assumed.

(3) and (4) can both be true. It is impossible that a human supposit be assumed, for it it were it wouldn't be a supposit; but something that is a human supposit is possibly such that it is assumed. But this has the strange consequence that human supposits are only contingently supposits. So Socrates is not essentially a supposit, and if a supposit is a primary substance, the Socrates is not essentially a primary substance.

Thus Adams ascribes to Ockham the view that "The property of being a supposit is not essential to any creatable/created thing, because any creatable/created thing whatever can exist wthout it." (p. 39) So whatever is a supposit might not have been. Or rather whatever is a supposit might not have been its own supposit: every supposit is possibly such as to have an 'alien supposit,' namely God.

What is curious here is how very specific theological doctrines are allowed to drive the general ontology.

Good Friday: At the Mercy of a Little Piece of Iron

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, tr. Craufurd, Routledge 1995, p. 75:

The infinite which is in man is at the mercy of a little piece of iron; such is the human condition; space and time are the cause of it. It is impossible to handle this piece of iron without suddenly reducing the infinite which is in man to a point on the pointed part, a point on the handle, at the cost of a harrowing pain. The whole being is stricken in the instant; there is no place left for God, even in the case of Christ, where the thought of God is not more at least [at last?] than that of privation. This stage has to be reached if there is to be incarnation. The whole being becomes privation of God: how can we go beyond? After that there is only the resurrection. To reach this stage the cold touch of naked iron is necessary.

'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' There we have the real proof that Christianity is something divine. (p. 79)

Garrigou-Lagrange on Thomas on the Divine Persons as Subsistent Relations

What follows is the whole of Chapter 16 of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange's Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought. My critical comments are in blue.

Chapter 16: The Divine Persons

Person in general is a being which has intelligence and freedom. Its classic definition was given by Boethius: Person is an individual subject with an intellectual nature. [548] Hence person, generally, is a hypostasis or a suppositum, and, specifically, a substance endowed with intelligence. [549] Further, since person signifies substance in its most perfect form, it can be found in God, if it be stripped of the imperfect mode which it has in created persons. Thus made perfect, it can be used analogically of God, analogically, but still in its proper sense, in a mode that is transcendent and pre-eminent. Further, since revelation gives us two personal names, that is, the Father and the Son, the name of the third person, of the Holy Spirit, must also be a personal name. Besides, the New Testament, in many texts, represents the Holy Spirit as a person. [550].

Now, since there are three persons in God, they can be distinct one from the other only by the three relations which are mutually opposed (paternity, and filiation, and passive spiration): because, as has been said, all else in God is identical.

Comment: The persons are distinct, numerically distinct. And they are really distinct: distinct in reality, not merely relative to our thought. What makes the persons distinct given that each is God and there is only one God? What is the principium individuationis within the Godhead? The relations between them. Thus the Father is distinct from the Son because the Father stands in the paternity relation to the Son but not vice versa. It is difficult to see, however, how a relation between x and y can constitute the numerical difference between x and y. I should think that the numerical difference between x and y is a logically prior condition of their standing in any relation. So I am already having difficulty following the Thomist account.

These real relations, since they are subsistent (not accidental): and are, on the other hand, incommunicable (being opposed): can constitute the divine persons. In these subsistent relations we find the two characteristics of person: substantiality and incommunicability.

Comment: If the relations were accidental, i.e., accidents, then they would be dependent in their being on something else, and the objection I just made would hold. So they are said to be subsistent, i.e., substances in their own right. And since they are 'incommunicable,' they have two characteristics of persons. The problem, however, is to understand how the relata of the relations (of paternity, filiality, etc.) can be (identical to) the relations. Paternity and filiality are different relations. So if the Father = paternity, and the Son = filiality, then it is easy to see how the Father and the Son are distinct. But what is difficult if not impossible to understand is how the Father could be identical to paternity and the Son to filiality.

A divine person, then, according to St. Thomas and his school, is a divine relation as subsistent. [551] Elsewhere the saint gives the following definition: [552] A divine person is nothing else than a relationally distinct reality, subsistent in the divine essence.

These definitions explain why there are in God, speaking properly, not metaphorically, three persons, three intellectual and free subjects, though these three have the same identical nature, though they understand by one and the same intellective act, though they love one another by one and the same
essential act, and though they freely love creatures by one and the same free act of love.

Comment: So the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father by the same act of loving. But acts are individuated by their objects. So loving the Father is a different act than loving the Son. It cannot be the same act on pain of incoherence. But Aquinas says that they love by the same act. He has to say this because he cannot admit that there are three separate unities of consciousness in the Godhead. For this would entail that there are three Gods.

Hence, while we say: The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, we also say: The Father is not the Son, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father, and the Holy Spirit is not the Son. In this sentence the verb "is" expresses real identity between persons and nature, and the negation "is not" expresses the real distinction of the persons from each other.

Comment: This is contradictory as I have explained many times before, assuming that 'nature' refers to an individual existing nature. If the 'is' is taken to be the 'is' of identity, logical inconsistency is unavoidable. If F = G and S = G. then F = S, by the symmetry and transitivity of identity. You cannot consistently with that go on to say that it is not the case that F = S.

These three opposed relations, then, paternity, filiation, and passive spiration, belong to related and incommunicable personalities. Thus there cannot be in God many Fathers, but one only. Paternity makes the divine nature incommunicable as Father, though that divine nature can still be communicated to two other persons. To illustrate. When you are constructing a triangle, the first angle, as first, renders the entire surface incommunicable, though that same surface will still be communicated to the other two angles; and the first angle will communicate that surface to them without communicating itself, while none of the three is opposed to the surface which they have in common.

Comment: Garrigou-Lagrange is fudging now. He says that the opposed relations belong to related personalities. This is not what he said before. Before he said that the persons just are subsistent relations. Well, which is it? Are the relations identical to persons, or do the relations belong to persons? This fudge is to be expected since the doctrine attempts to articulate discursively a reality that lies beyond the discursive intellect, a reality that is mystical.

Here appears the profundity of Cajetan's [553] remark: the divine reality, as it is in itself, is not something purely absolute (signified by the word "nature") nor something purely relative (signified by the name "person"): but something transcending both, something which contains formally and eminently [554] that which corresponds to the concepts of absolute and relative, of absolute nature and relative person. Further, the distinction between nature and the persons is not a real distinction, but a mental distinction (virtual and minor): whereas the distinction between the persons is real, by reason of opposition. On this last point theologians generally agree with Thomists.

Comment: Cajetan's remark is profound. The divine reality must be absolute, not relative. But it must also in some sense be personal since the reality of persons surpasses that of every other category of entity. But persons are relative to each other. So the divine reality must in some sense be multi-personal and yet absolute. As I see it, theology issues in 'necessary makeshifts' that try to articulate in coherent discursive terms a trans-discursive reality. So it is no surprise that every doctrine of the Trinity issues in problems, questions, and outright inconsistencies. The doctrines point beyond themselves to a reality that cannot be grasped in discursive terms.

This is why doctrinal fights are absurd. Some doctrines are better than others, but in the end all are untenable. The divine reality is not a doctrine!