This article aims to provide a metaphysical elucidation of a specific model of the doctrine of the Trinity: Monarchical Trinitarianism, within the formal, neo–Aristotelian ontological and metaphysical framework of Jonathan Lowe (i.e. his four–category ontology and serious essentialism). Formulating the model through this ontological and metaphysical framework will enable us to explicate it in a clear and consistent manner, and the important 'multiple–natures' problem raised against the proposed model will be shown to be ineffective.

In this thesis, I argue that the Functional Monotheism model is not tri-theistic, but is a model of pro-Nicene Trinitarianism. In establishing this thesis, I focus on countering a specific objection prevalent in the Analytic Theology literature; the Tri-Theism Objection, which has charged the Functional Monotheism model with “tri-theism”. This objection, formulated by Kelly James Clark and Edward Feser, asserts that the Functional Monotheism model is tritheistic and thus should be rejected as a possible model of scriptural monotheism and “orthodox” (...) Trinitarianism. I argue against this objection by demonstrating that the Functional Monotheism model, once certain necessary philosophical clarifications and modifications are made, is not tri-theistic (in the classical sense of the term), but is in fact in line with “strict” (Second Temple) Jewish monotheism and “orthodox” (pro-Nicene) Trinitarianism. The Functional Monotheism model, contra the proponents of the objection, is therefore not subject to a charge of tri-theism, and thus should be taken as a viable model of “orthodox” Trinitarianism that can aid analytic theologians in their Trinitarian theorising. (shrink)

The fundamental problem of Christology is the apparent contradiction of Christ as recorded at Chalcedon. Christ is human and Christ is divine. Being divine entails being immutable. Being human entails being mutable. Were Christ two different persons there’d be no apparent contradiction. But Chalcedon rules as much out. Were Christ only partly human or only partly divine there’d be no apparent contradiction. But Chalcedon rules as much out. Were the very meaning of ‘mutable’ and/or ‘immutable’ other than what they are, (...) there’d be no apparent contradiction. But the meaning is what it is, and changing the meaning of our terms to avoid the apparent contradiction of Christ is an apparent flight from reality. What, in the end, is the explanation of the apparent contradiction of Christ? Theologians and philosophers have long advanced many consistency-seeking answers, all of which increase the metaphysical or semantical complexity of the otherwise strikingly simple but radical core of Christianity’s GodMan. In this paper, I put the simplest explanation on the theological table: namely, Christ appears to be contradictory because Christ is contradictory. This explanation may sound complicated to the many who are steeped in the mainstream account of logic according to which logic precludes the possibility of true contradictions. But the mainstream account of logic can and should be rejected. Ridding theology of the dogma of mainstream logic illuminates the simple though striking explanation of the apparent contradiction of Christ — namely, that Christ is a contradictory being. Just as the simplest explanation to the apparent roundness of the earth has earned due acceptance, so too should the simplest explanation of the apparent contradiction of Christ. (shrink)

Classical Trinitarians claim that Jesus—the Son of God—is truly God and that there is only one God and the Father is God, the Spirit is God, and the Father, Son, and Spirit are distinct. However, if the identity statement that ‘the Son is God’ is understood in the sense of numerical identity, logical incoherence seems immanent. Yet, if the identity statement is understood according to an ‘is’ of predication then it lacks accuracy and permits polytheism. Therefore, we argue that there (...) is another sense of ‘is’ needed in trinitarian discourse that will allow the Christian to avoid logical incoherence while still fully affirming all that is meant to be affirmed in the confession ‘Jesus is God.’ We suggest a sense of ‘is’ that meets this need. (shrink)

For as long as the Christian church has been working out its understanding of the second person of the Trinity, it has employed analytic philosophical reflection to sharpen theological comprehension. In recent times, there has been a rekindled appreciation for the employment of analytic reflection in the service of theology. Analytic theology has established itself as a way of doing theology that employs analytic philosophical analysis in the project of faith in divinely revealed truths seeking understanding. In this issue, the (...) fresh insights of analytic theology are applied to a theme most central to Christian theology—the Son of God. (shrink)

This article discusses the theoretical issues and findings of a recent trend in phenomenology of religion: the manifestation of the Trinity. Section one highlights the classical model of the Trinity as mystery. The Trinity is as an elusive phenomenon that can be grasped only as an article of faith. Section two outlines important features of manifestation and experience in Husserl's phenomenology, which lays the conceptual groundwork for the phenomenology of religion. Section three discusses two proposals of a phenomenology of the (...) Trinity, in which faith can be understood as an intentional stance may make possible the Trinity's manifestation as a subjective phenomenon. The conclusion locates the principal weakness of the phenomenology of the Trinity in the proponents' tendency to ignore doctrinal development and theological debate, especially of the fourth and fifth‐centuries, which gave shape to the Trinity as a doctrine as such. (shrink)

The doctrine of the Trinity is central to mainstream Christianity. But insofar as it posits “three persons” (Father, Son and Holy Spirit), who are “one God,” it appears as inconsistent as the claim that 1+1+1=1. -/- Much of the literature on “The Logical Problem of the Trinity,” as this has been called, attacks or defends Trinitarianism with little regard to the fourth century theological controversies and the late Hellenistic and early Medieval philosophical background in which it took shape. I argue (...) that this methodol- ogy, which I call “the Puzzle Approach,” produces obviously invalid arguments, and it is unclear how to repair it without collapsing into my preferred method- ology, “the Historical Approach,” which sees history as essential to the debate. I also discuss “mysterianism,” arguing that, successful or not, it has a different goal from the other approaches. I further argue that any solution from the His- torical Approach satisfies the concerns of the Puzzle Approach and mysterianism anyway. -/- I then examine the solution to the Logical Problem of the Trinity found in St. Gregory of Nyssa’s writings, both due to his place in the history of the doctrine, and his clarity in explicating what I call “the metaphysics of synergy.” I recast his solution in standard predicate logic and provide a formal proof of its consistency. I end by considering the possibilities for attacking the broader philosophical context of his defense and conclude that the prospects for doing so are dim. In any case, if there should turn out to be any problem with the doctrine of the Trinity at all, it will not be one of mere logical inconsistency in saying that “These Three are One.”. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the philosophical consequences of one tradition in Trinitarian theology, which emphasizes that each of the persons of the Trinity is wholly God. I pay special attention to Leftow’s claim that the persons of the Godhead must be divine in the same sense of the word ‘divine’ as the Godhead itself. I argue that the existing philosophical account of the Trinity which best captures this view is what I have termed the ‘Strong Theory of Relative Identity,’ (...) first proposed Peter Geach. I then develop what I take to be the most pressing objection to this account of the Trinity, namely that it cannot be supplemented with a coherent model-theoretic semantics. I end with a suggestion for responding to this objection. (shrink)

Social Trinitarianism is a family of views that bear some resemblance to each other in a way that distinguishes them from other Trinitarian accounts. In this paper, we address recent objections by Carl Mosser against ST, objections which have not received much attention by defenders of ST. Mosser claims that proponents of ST offer a narrative that is historically inaccurate, employs concepts of personhood and perichoresis that are incompatible, upholds dubious hermeneutical assumptions, and is unable to preclude Mormon theology within (...) its fold. We argue that all four criticisms fail, especially for a specific version of ST: Perichoretic Monotheism. (shrink)

A nested mode ontology allows one to make sense of apparently contradictory Christological claims such as that Christ knows everything and there are some things Christ does not know.

The theorizing about the doctrine of the Trinity by contemporary analytic philosophers of religion has recently been imbued with an air of enthusiastic excitement and self-confidence. My intuition is that there’s room for saying something more in support to the embarrassment and puzzlement traditionally related to the predication of God’s onefoldness and threefoldness. My purpose is to deliver a general argument for (weak) trinitarian skepticism. My view is that the argument provides substantive reasons in support to the common sense intuition (...) that either God’s onefoldness and threefoldness aren’t actually compatible or God’s onefoldness and threefoldness aren’t robustly construed. (shrink)

Recent work on the subject of faith has tended to focus on the epistemology of religious belief, considering such issues as whether beliefs held in faith are rational and how they may be justified. Richard Swinburne, for example, has developed an intricate explanation of the relationship between the propositions of faith and the evidence for them. Alvin Plantinga, on the other hand, has maintained that belief in God may be properly basic, that is, that a belief that God exists can (...) be part of the foundation of a rational noetic structure. This sort of work has been useful in drawing attention to significant issues in the epistemology of religion, but these approaches to faith seem to me also to deepen some long-standing perplexities about traditional Christian views of faith. (shrink)

The Christian doctrine of the Trinity poses a serious philosophical problem. On the one hand, it seems to imply that there is exactly one divine being; on the other hand, it seems to imply that there are three. There is another well-known philosophical problem that presents us with a similar sort of tension: the problem of material constitution. We argue in this paper that a relatively neglected solution to the problem of material constitution can be developed into a novel solution (...) to the problem of the Trinity. (shrink)

Philosophers often talk as if what it takes for a person to persist through time were up to us, as individuals or as a linguistic community, to decide. In most ordinary situations it might be fully determinate whether someone has survived or perished: barring some unforeseen catastrophe, it is clear enough that you will still exist ten minutes from now, for example. But there is no shortage of actual and imaginary situations where it is not so clear whether one survives. (...) Here reasonable people may disagree. There are "fission" cases where each of one's cerebral hemispheres is transplanted into a different head; Star-Trek-style "teletransportation" stories; actual cases of brain damage so severe that one can never again regain consciousness, even though one's circulation, breathing, digestion, and other "animal" functions continue; and stories where one's brain cells are gradually removed and replaced by cells from someone else, to name only a few favorites. (shrink)

I reconsider in this article the problem of the Holy Trinity from the standpoint of some recent theories of the ontology of relations. After having presented the problem and after having introduced some basic ontological concepts, I shall briefly dwell on the ontology of non-symmetrical relations and on the O-Roles theory suggested by Francesco Orilia. Afterwards, I shall develop my own solution to the problem of the Holy Trinity by exploring the status of Intratrinitarian relations and of divine Persons. Among (...) other things, I shall defend the thesis that divine Persons are not substances, but peculiar modes of God. I shall also ground the distinction between the properties attributed to God himself and the ones attributed to specific divine Persons. Finally, I shall anticipate and face some objections against my account and argue that it is legitimate to maintain that there is no kind of persons in general—which is a consequence of my view. (shrink)

The Doctrine of the Trinity says that there is one God, that there are three divine Persons, and that each divine Person is God. The Logical Problem of the Trinity is that these claims seem logically inconsistent. We argue that any coherent and orthodox solution to the Logical Problem must use the technique of paraphrase: a logically or metaphysically more perspicuous reformulation. If so, discussions of paraphrase deserve more prominence in the literature on the Doctrine of the Trinity. We also (...) show that such explicit discussion has important implications for theorizing about the Trinity. (shrink)

This book, provides a critical approach to all major logical paradoxes: from ancient to contemporary ones. There are four key aims of the book: 1. Providing systematic and historical survey of different approaches – solutions of the most prominent paradoxes discussed in the logical and philosophical literature. 2. Introducing original solutions of major paradoxes like: Liar paradox, Protagoras paradox, an unexpected examination paradox, stone paradox, crocodile, Newcomb paradox. 3. Explaining the far-reaching significance of paradoxes of vagueness and change for philosophy (...) and ontology. 4. Proposing a novel, well justified and, as it seems, natural classification of paradoxes. (shrink)

Perichoresis, or “mutual indwelling,” is a crucial concept in Trinitarian theology. But the philosophical underpinnings of the concept are puzzling. According to ordinary conceptions of “indwelling” or “being in,” it is incoherent to think that two entities could be in each other. In this paper, I propose a mereological way of understanding “being in,” by analogy with standard examples in contemporary metaphysics. I argue that this proposal does not conflict with the doctrine of divine simplicity, but instead affirms it. I (...) conclude by discussing how mutual indwelling relates to the concepts of unity and identity. (shrink)

Some Trinitarians, such as Thomas Aquinas, wish to claim that God is mereologically simple; that is, God has no parts distinct from Himself. In this paper, I present Simple Trinitarianism, a view that takes God to be simple but, diverging from Aquinas, does not identify the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit with anything in our ontology. Nonetheless, Simple Trinitarians would like Trinitarian sentences to be true; thus, they must give a non-standard semantics for those sentences. I will focus on one (...) possible semantics a Simple Trinitarian may give: taking Trinitarian claims to be translatable into feature-placing sentences, which posit property instantiation without requiring commitment to any objects that instantiate those properties. (shrink)

Este trabajo presenta y discute diferentes intentos recientes para resolver el así llamado «problema de la Trinidad». Las declaraciones dogmáticas han asumido que (a) sólo hay un Dios; (b) que hay tres personas diferentes, el Padre, el Hijo y el Espíritu Santo; y (c) que esas tres personas son un solo Dios. Pero si hay tres personas diferentes y esas tres personas diferentes son Dios, entonces parece que, o bien no hay un único Dios, o no hay realmente tres personas (...) diferentes. Han aparecido cuatro posiciones principales en el debate reciente en Teología Filosófica para resolver este problema: (i) la teoría social de la Trinidad, (ii) la teoría «latina» de la Trinidad, (iii) la teoría de la Trinidad basada en identidades relativas, y (iv) la teoría de la Trinidad basada en relaciones de constitución. Se presentan y discuten críticamente las cuatro posiciones. This work presents and discusses different recent attempts to solve the so-called «problem of the Trinity». The dogmatic declarations have assumed that: (a) there is only one God; (b) that there are three different persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and (c) that those three persons are just one God. But if there are three different persons and those three different persons are God, then it seems that, either there is not just one God, or there are not really three different persons. There have appeared four main positions in the recent debate in Philosophical Theology to solve this problem: (i) the social theory of the Trinity, (ii) the «latin» theory of the Trinity, (iii) the theory of the Trinity based on relative identity, and (iv) the theory of the Trinity based on relations of constitution. All four positions are presented and critically discussed. (shrink)

Many philosophers say that the same atoms may compose at once a statue and a lump of matter that could outlive the statue. I reject this because no difference between the statue and the lump could explain why they have different persistence conditions. But if we say that the lump is the statue, it is difficult to see how there could be any human beings. I argue that this and analogous problems about material objects admit only of solutions that at (...) least appear to be radically at odds with our ordinary thinking. (shrink)

Anselm’s On the Incarnation of the Word is presented as a letter to Pope Urban II for the purpose of exposing and correcting the theological errors of Roscelin of Compiègne, who maintained that since only the Son became incarnate, we must conclude that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are numerically distinct substances. In this paper I argue that Anselm’s rejection of this conclusion involves an account of the Holy Trinity which includes a strongly relativized conception of identity, (...) that is, one which allows an object x and an object y to be the same F, but different Gs. I further contend that Anselm buttresses this account with two non-theological examples of relative identity. Although it may well be the case that advocates of Latin Trinitarianism are generally committed to such an account, since they affirm that the Father is the same substance as the Son but not the same person as the Son, I take Anselm’s defense of this position to be theologically significant, first, because it may well be the first explicit defense of Relative Trinitarianism, and second, because Anselm’s position as a bishop and a Doctor of the Church is an indication of its theological soundness. (shrink)

This paper employs recent developments in the theory of truthmakers to offer a novel solution to the most discussed philosophical challenge presented by the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. According to the view developed, the Father, Son, and Spirit each serve as the only substantial constituent of equally minimal truthmakers for claims about God. Because they do, there is a clear and robust sense in which each is a substance that “is” God as much as anything is, while the three (...) remain distinct from each other. The view is shown to hold certain prima facie advantages over rival extant approaches. (shrink)

Recent work on the subject of faith has tended to focus on the epistemology of religious belief, considering such issues as whether beliefs held in faith are rational and how they may be justified. Richard Swinburne, for example, has developed an intricate explanation of the relationship between the propositions of faith and the evidence for them. Alvin Plantinga, on the other hand, has maintained that belief in God may be properly basic, that is, that a belief that God exists can (...) be part of the foundation of a rational noetic structure. This sort of work has been useful in drawing attention to significant issues in the epistemology of religion, but these approaches to faith seem to me also to deepen some long-standing perplexities about traditional Christian views of faith. (shrink)