{"id":11877,"date":"2010-01-30T05:30:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-30T05:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/01\/30\/augustine-and-the-child-at-the-seashore\/"},"modified":"2010-01-30T05:30:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-30T05:30:00","slug":"augustine-and-the-child-at-the-seashore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/01\/30\/augustine-and-the-child-at-the-seashore\/","title":{"rendered":"Augustine and the Child at the Seashore: Trinitarian Metatheory"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"St-augustine\"<\/a> I was told this story as a child by a nun. One day St. Augustine was walking along the seashore, thinking about the Trinity. He came upon a child who had dug a hole in the sand and was busy filling it with buckets of seawater. <\/p>\n

Augustine: "What are you doing?" <\/p>\n

Child: "I am trying to empty the ocean into this hole." <\/p>\n

Augustine: "But that\u2019s impossible!" <\/p>\n

Child: "No more impossible than your comprehending the Trinity." <\/p>\n

The point of the story is that the Trinity is a mystery beyond our comprehension.  It is true, even though we cannot understand how could it be true, where 'could' expresses epistemic possibility.  It is a non-contradictory truth that lies beyond our mental horizon.  Could there be such truths?<\/font><\/p>\n

Note that there are at least three other ways of thinking about the Trinity doctrine.  One could take the view that the doctrine is both true and contradictory, along the lines of dialetheism<\/a> according to which there are some true contradictions. (b) Or one could take the view that the doctrine is all of the following: true, non-contradictory, and intelligible to us, even though we cannot know it to be true by reason unaided by revelation.  Under this head would fall putative solutions to the consistency problem that aim to provide an adequate model or analogy, a model or analogy sufficient to render the orthodox doctrine intelligible to us.  (c) Finally, one could take the line that the doctrine is contradictory and therefore false.<\/font><\/p>\n

Thus there appear to be at least four meta-theories of the orthodox Trinity doctrine.  These are theories about the logico-epistemic status of the doctrine.  We could call them Mysterianism, Dialetheism, Intelligibilism, and Incoherentism.  The last two terms are my own coinages.<\/font><\/p>\n

Note that I have been talking about  orthodox (Athanasian) Trinity doctrine.  But religion and theology are, I would urge, open-ended, analogously as science is, and so there is no bar to theological innovation and development.  Perhaps one of the doctrines that got itself branded 'heretical' can be rehabilitated and made to work. It is worth pondering that the orthodox are heretics to the heretics:  had a given heretical sect acquired sufficient power and influence, had it drawn to its side the best minds and most persuasive exponents, then it would not be heretical but orthodox.<\/font><\/p>\n

Everyone likes to think of his own doxa<\/em> as orthotes<\/em> but not every doxa<\/em> can be such on pain of contradiction.  So we ought to be humble.  Apply the honorific 'orthodox' to your doctrine if you like, but smile as you do so.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was told this story as a child by a nun. One day St. Augustine was walking along the seashore, thinking about the Trinity. He came upon a child who had dug a hole in the sand and was busy filling it with buckets of seawater. Augustine: "What are you doing?" Child: "I am trying to … Continue reading “Augustine and the Child at the Seashore: Trinitarian Metatheory”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[331,335,92,288],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-athens-and-jerusalem","category-augustine","category-autobiographical","category-trinity-and-incarnation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11877","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=11877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}