podcast episode 69 – James Lee on the Trinity and Ontological Pluralism

In this episode we hear Mr. James Lee (PhD student in Philosophy at Syracuse University) present his paper “His Ways (of Being) Are Not Our Ways” at the Society of Christian Philosophers meeting on November 8, 2014 at Niagara University.

Mr. Lee notes that if we translate standard, creedal trinitarian claims into the sort of logic taught in introductory college classes, we get what he calls “The Initial Formulation” (from his handout):

But this group of claims is demonstrably incoherent. To see this, let’s translate back into semi-normal English:

• TL1 – The Father isn’t the Son, and the Father isn’t the Spirit, and the Son isn’t the Spirit. (Those three are numerically distinct from one another.)
• TL2 – The Father is God (is divine), the Son is God (is divine) and the Spirit is God (is divine). Each of those three “is God” – that is, is divine.
• TL3 – There exists some x which is God (divine) and for any y, y is God (divine) only if x just is y. That is, there is some unique God.

Now, it is provable that if any two of these is true, the remaining one is false. Here are informal paraphrases of how each argument would go:

• If TL1 and TLS2 then not-TL3.
  • If Father, Son, and Spirit are three, and each is God (is divine) then it is false that there’s exactly one being which is God (is divine). (There would be three!)
• If TL1 and TL3 then not-TL2.
  • If Father, Son, and Spirit are three, and there is a unique being who is God (divine), then it is false that each of Father, Son, and Spirit is God (divine). (Only one of them can be that unique being.)
• If TL2 and TL3, then not-TL1.
  • If each of Father, Son, and Spirit is God (divine), and there’s only one being who is God (divine), then it is false that Father, Son, and Spirit are numerically distinct. (They would have to be one and the same being, the one who is God.)

There’s nothing controversial about this reasoning; each argument seems valid, and so it can’t be denied that the three claims TL1, TL2, and TL3 are an inconsistent set, a set such that not all of them can be true.

Why is this a problem? Because we all know that inconsistent sets of claims can’t all be true – so at least one third of the Initial Formulation is false. If “the” doctrine of the Trinity requires these three claims, then, it is false – “the” doctrine would then be a conjunction of claims, one of which is false, which makes the whole theory false. (e.g. If you assert A and B and C, and A and B are true, but C is false, then the whole claim “A and B and C” is false.)

Here’s where the Christian philosopher/analytic theologian says to him- or herself:

There must by something wrong with the formulations. Let’s see if we can reinterpret the traditional language so that it comes out seemingly self-consistent.

Self-consistency, of course, isn’t everything. We’d also want a Trinity theory to be well grounded in the Bible and/or post-biblical catholic tradition. But self-consistency is a necessary condition for a doctrine being reasonably believed.

In this talk, Mr. Lee explains some standard ways of making the claims come out self-consistent, each of which he thinks is problematic. He then explores a new way, based on the idea that there are fundamentally different kinds of being or existence (ontological pluralism).

You’ll want to have Mr. Lee’s handout in front of you as you listen to this talk.

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Links for this episode:

• “Ontological Pluralism” at Wikipedia
• “Ways of Being” by Dr. Joshua Spencer – an introduction to ways of being in contemporary metaphysics, recommended by Mr. Lee.
• episode 2 – the “Athanasian” creed
• episode 68 – Dr. Harriet Baber on Relative Identity and the Trinity
• previous trinities posts on
  • Dr. W.L. Craig’s Cerberus analogy
  • social trinitarianism
  • Brian Leftow’s “Latin” Trinity theory
  • relative identity
• Dr. Kris McDaniel (his publications – see particularly his “Ways of Being”)