{"id":6994,"date":"2015-09-12T12:07:38","date_gmt":"2015-09-12T12:07:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2015\/09\/12\/peter-kreeft-on-the-trinity\/"},"modified":"2015-09-12T12:07:38","modified_gmt":"2015-09-12T12:07:38","slug":"peter-kreeft-on-the-trinity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2015\/09\/12\/peter-kreeft-on-the-trinity\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Kreeft on the Trinity"},"content":{"rendered":"
This from reader D. B.:<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
\n
The doctrine of the Trinity does not say there is one God and three Gods, or that God is one Person and three Persons, or that God has one nature and three natures. Those would indeed be self-contradictory ideas. But the doctrine of the Trinity says that there is only one God and only one divine nature but that this one God exists in three Persons. That is a great mystery, but it is not a logical self-contradiction.<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/em>Peter Kreeft, Fundamentals of the Faith<\/em>, (Ignatius, 1988), p.42. <\/span><\/div>\n

I don't think that the doctrine as so stated (above) rises to a level of clarity that allows for Kreeft's last sentence. Do you?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I agree with you, Dave.<\/span><\/p>\n

First sentence:  Exactly right.<\/span><\/p>\n

Second sentence:  Right again.<\/span><\/p>\n

Third sentence:  Also correct.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fourth sentence:  this is a bare assertion sired by confusion.  The confusion is between the explicitly or manifestly  contradictory and the implicitly or latently contradictory.  The following are all explicitly self-contradictory:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

a. There is only one God and there are three Gods.
b. God is one person and God is three persons.
c.  God has one nature and God has three natures.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

To be precise, the above are self-contradictory in the logical presence of the proposition that nothing can be both numerically one and numerically three.  To be totally precise, then, I should say that the above three are near-explicitly self-contradictory to distinguish then from, say, 'God is one person and it is not the case that God is one person,' which is an explicitly formal-logical contradiction, i.e., a contradiction whose contradictoriness is rooted in logical form alone: *p & ~p.*  Such contradictions I call narrowly-logical<\/em> to distinguish them from (wait for it) broadly-logical<\/em> contradictions such as *Some colors are sounds.* But<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

d. There is exactly one God in three divine persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

though not explicitly or near-explicitly contradictory as are the above three examples, is nonetheless contradictory in that it entails (in the logical presence of other orthodox doctrinal claims and self-evident truths) contradictions.  How?   Well, consider this aporetic septad:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

1. There is only one God.<\/span>
2. The Father is God.<\/span>
3. The Son is God.<\/span>
4. The Holy Spirit is God.<\/span>
5. The Father is not the Son.<\/span>
6. The Son is not the Holy Spirit.<\/span>
7. The Father is not the Holy Spirit.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If we assume that in (2)-(7), the 'is' expresses absolute numerical identity, then it is clear that the septad is inconsistent.  (Identity has the following properties: it is reflexive, symmetric, transitive, and governed by the Indiscernibility of Identicals).  For example, from (2) and (3) taken together it follows that the Father is the Son by Transitivity of Identity.  (That identity is a transitive relation is an example of a necessary and self-evident truth.) But this contradicts (5): The Father is not<\/em> the Son.
<\/span><\/p>\n

So we have an inconsistent septad each limb of which is a commitment of orthodoxy.<\/span><\/p>\n

What this shows is that (d) above, while not explicitly and manifestly contradictory as are (a)-(c), is nonetheless contradictory in that it entails three explicit formal-logical contradictions, one of them being *The Father is the Son and the Father is not the Son.*<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, there are various ways one might try to evade the inconsistency of the above septad.  But this is not the present topic.  The present topic is whether Kreeft's fourth sentence is justified.  Clearly it is not.  The mere fact that (d) is not obviously contradictory as are (a)-(c) does not show that it is not contradictory.  I have just argued that it is.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kreeft says in effect that (d) is a "great mystery."  Why does he say that it is a mystery if not because it expresses a proposition that we find contradictory?  If we didn't find (d) contradictory we would have no reason to call it mysterious.  So Kreeft is in effect admitting that we cannot make coherent logical sense  of (d).  This suggests that Kreeft may be waffling between two views:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

V1:  The doctrine of the Trinity, though of course not rationally provable by us (because known by revelation alone) is yet rationally acceptable by us, i.e., free of logical contradiction, and can be see by our unaided reason to be free of logical contradiction<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

and<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

V2:   The doctrine of the Trinity cannot be seen by us to be rationally acceptable in the present life, and so must remain a mystery to us here below, but is nonetheless both true and free of contradiction in itself.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(V1) and (V2) are clearly distinct, the latter being a form of mysterianism.  I raised some doubts about Trinitarian mysterianism yesterday<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This from reader D. B.:   The doctrine of the Trinity does not say there is one God and three Gods, or that God is one Person and three Persons, or that God has one nature and three natures. Those would indeed be self-contradictory ideas. But the doctrine of the Trinity says that there is … Continue reading “Peter Kreeft on the Trinity”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,58,288],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic-corner","category-christian-doctrine","category-trinity-and-incarnation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6994","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=6994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6994\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}