{"id":11852,"date":"2010-02-08T09:06:32","date_gmt":"2010-02-08T09:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/02\/08\/whether-jesus-exists-necessarily\/"},"modified":"2010-02-08T09:06:32","modified_gmt":"2010-02-08T09:06:32","slug":"whether-jesus-exists-necessarily","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/02\/08\/whether-jesus-exists-necessarily\/","title":{"rendered":"Whether Jesus Exists Necessarily"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lukas Novak comments by e-mail:<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

You list the following propositions in your post, <\/font>Christology, Reduplicatives, and Their Truth-Makers<\/font><\/a>:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

and then say that "each of these propositions is one that a Christian who understands his doctrine ought to accept." And then you develop a way how the (quite obvious) inconsistency could be explained away.<\/p>\n

What I want to point out is that in fact the third proposition most certainly is not something that a Christian who understands his doctrine ought to accept. Quite to the contrary!<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There is more to Dr. Novak's e-mail than the above excerpt, but it may help if I give an explicit argument for (3):<\/font><\/p>\n

4. God is a necessary being: he exists in every possible world.<\/font><\/p>\n

5. God's creation of a physical universe  is a libertarianly free act:  there are possible worlds in which God creates  a physical universe and there are possible worlds in which he does not.  So, although God exists in every possible world, he does not create in every possible world.<\/font><\/p>\n

6. The existence of  a physical universe and of each physical thing in it is contingent.  (from 5)<\/font><\/p>\n

7. Jesus is a man (a rational animal) born in Bethlehem of Mary,  etc.<\/font><\/p>\n

8.  Animals, rational or not, are physical denizens of the physical universe.<\/font><\/p>\n

9. Jesus is a contingent being. (from 6, 7, 8)<\/font><\/p>\n

10.  That which exists contingently (in some but not all worlds) does not exist necessarily (in all worlds).  (Self-evident modal principle)<\/font><\/p>\n

3.  The man Jesus does not exist necessarily. (from 10)<\/font><\/p>\n

This appears to be a 'knock-down' argument.  Surely, (4) and (5) are propositions an orthodox Christian must accept. (6) follows from (5).  No orthodox Christian can deny (7). (8) is an analytic truth. (9) is a valid consequence of (6), (7), and (8) taken together.  (1) is a self-evident modal axiom. (3) follows directly from (10).<\/font><\/p>\n

I suggest that this crystal-clear argument is more worthy of acceptance that the obscure doctrine of supposita with which Novak attempts to rebut (3).<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lukas Novak comments by e-mail: You list the following propositions in your post, Christology, Reduplicatives, and Their Truth-Makers: 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. and then say that "each of these propositions is one that … Continue reading “Whether Jesus Exists Necessarily”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,235,288],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-doctrine","category-modal-matters","category-trinity-and-incarnation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11852\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}