Thanks to Bill Clinton, it is now widely appreciated that much rides on what the meaning of \u2018is\u2019 is. Time was, when only philosophers were aware of this. In our Trinitarian explorations with the help of our Jewish atheist friend Peter we have discussed the \u2018is\u2019 of identity and the \u2018is\u2019 of predication. We saw that \u2018The Father is God\u2019 could be construed as <\/p>\n 1. The Father is identical to God <\/p>\n or as <\/p>\n 2. The Father is divine. <\/p>\n Both construals left us with logical trouble. If each of the Persons is identical to God, and there is exactly one God, then (given the transitivity and symmetry of identity) there is exactly one Person. On the other hand, if each of the Persons is divine, where \u2018is\u2019 functions as copula, then tri-theism is the upshot. Either way, we end up contradicting a central Trinitarian tenet. <\/p>\n But there is also the \u2018is\u2019 of composition as when we say, \u2018This countertop is marble,\u2019 or in my house, \u2018This countertop is faux<\/em> marble.\u2019 \u2018Is\u2019 here is elliptical for \u2018is composed of.\u2019 Compare: \u2018That jacket is leather,\u2019 and \u2018This beverage is whisky.\u2019 To say that a jacket is leather is not to say that it is identical to leather \u2013 otherwise it would be an extremely large jacket \u2013 or that it has leather as a property: leather is not a property. A jacket is leather by being made out of leather. <\/p>\n Suppose you have a statue S made out for some lump L of material, whether marble, bronze, clay, or whatever. How is S related to L? It seems clear that L can exist without S existing. Thus one could melt the bronze down, or re-shape the clay. In either case, the statue would cease to exist, while the quantity of matter would continue to exist. It follows that S is not identical to L. They are not identical because something is true of L that is not true of S: it is true of L that it can exist without S existing, but it is not true of S that it can exist without S existing. I am assuming the following principle, one that seems utterly beyond reproach:<\/font><\/p>\n (InId) If x = y, whatever is true of x is true of y, and vice versa.<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n (This is a rough formulation of the Indiscenibility of Identicals. A more careful formulation would block such apparent counterexamples as: Maynard G. Krebs believes that the morning star is a planet but does not believe that the evening star is a planet.)<\/font><\/p>\n Returning to the statue and the lump, although S is not identical to L, S is not wholly distinct, or wholly diverse, from L either. This is because S cannot exist unless L exists. This suggests the following analogy: The Father is to God as the statue is to the lump of matter out of which it is sculpted. And the same goes for the other Persons. Schematically, P is to G as S to L. The Persons are like hylomorphic compounds where the hyle<\/em> in question is the divine substance. Thus the Persons are not each identical to God, which would have the consequence that they are identical to one another. Nor are the persons instances of divinity which would entail tri-theism. It is rather than the persons are composed of God as of a common material substance. Thus we avoid a unitarianism in which there is no room for distinctness of Persons, and we avoid tri-theism. So far, so good. <\/p>\n Something like this approach is advocated by Jeffrey Brower and Michael Rea, <\/font>here<\/font><\/a>. <\/p>\n But does the statue\/lump analogy avoid the problems we faced with the water analogy? Aren\u2019t the two analogies so closely analogous that they share the same problems? Liquid, solid, and gaseous are states of water. Similarly, a statue is a state of a lump of matter. Modalism is not avoided. If the Persons are like states, then they are not sufficiently independent. But a statue is even worse off than a state of water. Water can be in one of its states whether or not we exist. But a hunk of matter cannot be a statue unless beings like us are on the scene to interpret it as a statue. Thus my little ceramic bust of Beethoven represents Beethoven only because we take it as representing the great composer. In a world without minds, it would not represent anything. The Persons of the Trinity, however, are in no way dependent on us for their being Persons of the Trinity. <\/p>\n It might be counterargued that water is not to its states as lump to statue. Water must be in one of its three states, but a lump of bronze need not be in any statue-state. That is indeed a point of disanalogy between the two analogies. But notice that God and the Persons are necessarily related: God cannot exist without the Persons. A lump of bronze can<\/em> exist without being a statue. In this respect, the water analogy is better: water must be in one its three states just as God must be composed of the three Persons. <\/p>\n Besides the threat of modalism, there is also the fact that God is not a substance in the sense in which clay and water are substances. Thus God is not a stuff or hyle<\/em>, but a substance in the sense of a hypostasis<\/em> or hypokeimenon<\/em>. And it does no good to say that God is an immaterial or nonphysical stuff since what must be accommodated is the divine unity. The ground of divine unity cannot be matter whether physical or nonphysical. We saw that one and the same quantity of H2<\/sub>0 cannot be simultaneously and throughout<\/em> liquid, solid, and gaseous. Similarly, one and the same quantity of bronze cannot be simultaneously and throughout<\/em> three different statues. Connected with this is how God could be a hylomorphic compound, or any sort of compound, given the divine simplicity which rules out all composition in God. <\/p>\n In sum, the statue\/lump analogy is not better than the water\/state analogy. Neither explains how we can secure both unity of the divine nature and distinctness of Persons. Thanks to Bill Clinton, it is now widely appreciated that much rides on what the meaning of \u2018is\u2019 is. Time was, when only philosophers were aware of this. In our Trinitarian explorations with the help of our Jewish atheist friend Peter we have discussed the \u2018is\u2019 of identity and the \u2018is\u2019 of predication. We saw that … Continue reading “De Trinitate<\/i>: The Statue\/Lump Analogy and the ‘Is’ of Composition”<\/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":[58,143,113,139,288],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-doctrine","category-god","category-logica-utens","category-religion","category-trinity-and-incarnation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11897","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=11897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11897\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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