New Book By Antonie Vos: The Theology of Scotus

Antonie Vos' long promised book is finally out from Brill.

There has been a dearth of new books published on Scotus lately, though not in ancient outdated studies republished by the reprint services, and Vos' volume makes a welcome addition. Thus far, I think the field of research in Scotus' theology has been dominated by Richard Cross, at least in English.

Here's the publisher's blurb, which gives a rough overview of the contents.

In this volume, Antonie Vos offers a comprehensive analysis of the philosophy and theological thought of John Duns Scotus. First, a summary is given of the life and times of John Duns Scotus: his background and years in Oxford (12-80-1301), his time in Paris and Cologne (1308-1309) and his year in exile in Oxford and Cambridge (1303-1304). From there on, Scotus' Trinitarian theology and Christology are introduced. Duns not only embraced the doctrine of the Trinity, he also proved that God must be Trinitarian by connecting the first Person with knowledge to the second One with will. Further insights of Scotus' are discussed, such as the theory of Creation, ethics, justification and predestination, and the sacraments. The volume concludes with an overview of historical dilemmas in Scotus' theological thought.

New Book on the Rise of Scotism

An important new tome has appeared from the hand of William Duba. Buy it here, for a suprisingly reasonable price.

Here is part of the publisher's blurb:

A rare survival provides unmatched access to the the medieval classroom. In the academic year 1330-31, the Franciscan theologian, William of Brienne, lectured on Peter Lombard’s Sentences and disputed with the other theologians at the University of Paris. The original, official notes of these lectures and disputes survives in a manuscript codex at the National Library of the Czech Republic, and they constitute the oldest known original record of an entire university course. An analysis of this manuscript reconstructs the daily reality of the University of Paris in the fourteenth century, delineating the pace and organization of instruction within the school and the debates between the schools. The transcription made during William’s lectures and the later modifications and additions reveal how the major vehicle for Scholastic thought, the written Sentences commentary, relates to fourteenth-century teaching. As a teacher and a scholar, William of Brienne was a dedicated follower of the philosophy and theology of John Duns Scotus (+1308). He constructed Scotist doctrine for his students and defended it from his peers. This book shows concretely how scholastic thinkers made, communicated, and debated ideas at the medieval universities. Appendices document the entire process with critical editions of William's academic debates (principia), his promotion speech, and a selection of his lectures and sources.​

Buy it now, I say.

It puts me in mind of this old gem...

Principal Conclusions of Scotist Theology (1697)

I came across the pamphlet translated below somewhere in the depths of the internet. It is a set of 60 theses proposed for debate in Florence ca. 1700, published with the title of Principal Conclusions... of Scotus. Some seem to be based on Scotus, some not, but perhaps based on later interpretations.

Conclusiones principaliores ex universa theologia subtilissimi doctoris Scoti.

Fr. Antonius Franciscus de Bononia, in conventu Omnium Sanctorum Florentiae s. Theol. Studens Generalis.

Florentiae 1697.

1. Aseity is the formal constitutive [feature] of God; existence is a quidditative predicate.

2. The existence of God can be demonstrated a posteriori, although not a priori.

3. ‘God exists’ [‘Deus est’] is a per se nota proposition.

4. The attributes of God are formally distinguished from each other and from the essence.

5. Creatures according to real being [esse reale] do not coexist with eternity, although they do according to objective being.

6. If God were able to will something new in time, this would not detract from his physical immutability.

7. God is invisible to the corporeal eye.

8. God is not naturally able to be seen by the created intellect, although he can be seen supernaturally.

9. God, by his absolute power, can be seen without the light of glory.

10. The divine essence can be seen without the Persons being seen.

11. It is possible for an impressed species to be representative of the divine essence.

12. There is inequality in the blessed vision, not only by reason of light but also by reason of the created intellect.

13. The divine will necessarily loves the divine essence.

14. Predestination to glory is prior to the prevision of merits.

15. Reprobation or damnation for punishment is posterior to the prevision of demerits.

16. The hidden mystery of the Trinity is evidently demonstrable by no natural reason.

17. There are only two divine processions, and neither more nor fewer are possible.

18. Relations of origin, formally distinct from the essence, do not bespeak perfection or do they involve imperfection.

19. The divine Persons are constituted by relative properties.

20. The absolute subsisting essence is given beyond the three personal subsistences.

21. The divine Father is perfectly blessed before he generates the Son.

22. The divine Word is produced by “speaking” [dictionem] but not through intellection.

23. The divine Word is produced from the cognition of the divine Persons.

24. The divine Word is not produced from the cognition of possible creatures.

25. The procession of the Holy Spirit is not generation, because it is in a free mode.

26. If the Holy Spirit did not procede from the Son, still he would be really distinct from him.

27. The incarnation of the divine Word was possible, although not naturally demonstrable.

28. The humanity assumed by the Word possesses its own existence [propriam existentiam].

29. The substantial assumption of any other creature was in the power of the Word.

30. Several Persons cannot assume the same nature in number, although two natures can be assumed by only one Person.

31. Christ is impeccable, not because of the hypostatic union, but through the beatific vision.

32. The merit of Christ was not unqualifiedly and intrinsecly affected by infinity [infinitate affectum]

33. Christ, whose grace alone was in the highest degree, did not satisfy from the entire rigor of justice.

34. A pure creature, aided by the powers of grace, could satisfy sufficiiently for the sin of Adam.

35. With no one sinning, still the divine Word from the force of the present decree would be incarnate.

36. The law of the holy gospel is prudently believable and to be believed [credibilis et credenda].

37. The assent of faith is not resolved into the authority of the Church, as into the formal object of believing

38. but in these aforementioned matters God is truthfully procaliming and has revealed mysteries.

39. Revelation, nevertheless, is not part of the formal object of faith, but only the necessary condition.

40. Falsity in no way is able to undermine divine faith.

41. Explicit faith in Christ under the concept of the Son of God is necesary by a mediate necessity for the salvation of adults.

42. It is probably that the habit of faith is educed from the potency of the subject.

43. Faith necessarily is discursive, either formally or virtually.

44. Faith is more certain than knowledge/science, utraque certitudine [?]

45. God and neighbor are loved by the same infused charity, and what was in the wayfaring state remains also in the homeland [patria].

46. Many angels can be under the same atomic species.

47. An angel is not in a place through operation, but through substance.

48. The angels are able to obtain species also from material things.

49. There are not as many representative species as there are objects.

50. The angels could sin in the first instant of their creation.

51. The cognition of the secrets of hearts is given to the angels.

52. The determination of the demons in evil does not come about from the inflexibility of their wills

53. but from the rejection of divine concurrence.

54. Original sin in human beings is not sin persisting morally.

55. Original sin consists in the lack of original justice and sanctifying grace.

56. In human acts there is found a true and proper principale of the voluntary.

57. A pure omission can be given without something positive.

58. A perfect voluntary act corresponds with a free one.

59. The sacraments cause grace morally, not physically.

60. The character of three sacraments, is it an absolute or relative form? Problem.

Praise be to God.

[These theses] will be publically exposed for contest at Florence in the church of All Saints, with the same one mentioned above responding. With the assistance of R. P. Seraphin of San Casciani, lector general of the same place and Custos of the Tuscan province. 1697. Month. Day. Hour.

Wanting to Be Someone Else

Suppose that some person all of a sudden becomes the king of China, but only on the condition that he forgets what he has been, as if he were born anew; practically, or as far as the effects could be perceived, wouldn't that be the same as if he were annihilated and a king of China created at the same instant in his place? That is something this individual would have no reason to desire.

- Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics, c.34.

If you wish even to be equal to Peter in glory, you will be; I say "in glory", for you are not able to will to be Peter in person: for if you were to will this, you would will for yourself to be nothing - which you cannot will.

- Alexander of Canturbury, De S. Anselmi similitudinibus, c.64.

This issue comes up in theology, because the Devil's sin is said to be desiring to be equal to God. But how can a creature desire to be equal to God? This would be the same as desiring to be God, which is equivalent to desiring not to be a creature, which is to desire not to exist, or to desire that a finite creature be infinite and uncreated, which is a contradiction, and, as Aristotle says, impossibles do not lie within the realm of choice.

In the Ordinatio, Book II D.6 Q.1, Scotus resolves this difficulty by noting that there are two equivocal ways of understanding choice. One, the kind of choice Aristotle meant when he said that choice is about what is possible, is the termination of a practical syllogism: when I deliberate about the range of means available to achieve my goals, and my mind determines which is the best means for the best end, my will responds by choosing that end. So when I deliberate about how to get from Maryland to California, I weigh the possibility of getting groped by a government goon at the airport against the labor and expense and time of driving, and wonder whether in fact I want to make the trip at all. At length I make my choice. I don't deliberate about whether to teleport or take a wormhole shuttle, because these are not real possibilities for me.

However, in another sense I can incline my will towards anything my intellect can apprehend, whether possible for me or not. And my intellect can apprehend any proposition formed from simple intelligibles. "Being equal to God" is something my mind can grasp, since I can grasp that there is such a thing as God exists; and I can recognize that "Being equal to God" is something the will can desire, since God the Son can will to be equal to God the Father. - Likewise "being the king of China" or "being St Peter" is something I can recognize as intelligible, possible, and willable in itself. This doesn't imply that the object of my apprehension is possible for me and so able to be the subject of my will as a practical choice. Wishing for time travel is like this, in my opinion. The past was once the present, and so "being at such-and-such a date in the past" is intelligible and was once actual for certain people. So saying "I wish I were in 1310" is intelligible. There's no intrinsic contradiction about being in 1310. The only contradiction is in thinking that it's possible for me, as this person here and now, to be in the past. That would be more or less like me wishing to be Peter. Peter may exist, and I may imagine what it's like to be him, imagine having his experiences and so forth; but whoever is having Peter's experiences is Peter, not me. I can imagine the past, and wish that my own present was happening in medieval Oxford rather than modern America, but whoever had a life in medieval Oxford could not be me, since my life is necessarily the one being lived by me right now.

There must be some sort of disorder in the will if one wills for oneself what is impossible for oneself. The implication in such an act of will is that God's will in creating me was wrong, and instead of creating me he should have created something different, or abstained from creating. I thus set up my will in opposition to God's as superior. This is intrinsically different from willing unactualized possibilities for myself, such as being stronger, being wiser, being more virtuous (even being more wealthy), even desiring things which are possible but over which I have no power: that's the point of petitionary prayer.

It strikes me that some such set of distinctions as this can allow us to avoid the pitfalls of Nietzschean resentment, on the one hand, and the Nietzschean will of the eternal return, on the other. For if it's sinful to will in vain that one's life and past and possibilities were those of other people, or that they should consist in incompatible elements, it's also sinful to complacently accept my life, past and present, as completely good, necessary, unchangeable, and perfectly willable, even though this isn't true. Instead I must recognize what is possible but not actual for myself, past present and future, allowing the necessary room for repentance about the past, effort in the present, and resolutions about the future.

Ockham Quodlibet I.3

This question asks whether in God paternity is distinct from the Father. Ockham notes, "This question is not about names but about the reality." That is, logically speaking of course the abstract property "paternity" is distinguished from the concrete suppositum of whom it is predicated; but is there any distinction in reality?

Ockham notes that every distinction is either real or formal or rational. In the first case one of the two distinct things can exist apart from the other; in the third case the two distinct things are distinct only in the mind. In the second case, you have a formal distinction when you have things such that something is the same as one of the distinct things and not the other, as in: the Son is the essence and is not the Father, therefore the Father and the essence are formally distinct.

[An aside: recall that in Quod. I.2 Ockham made it clear that the accepts the formal distinction only for distinguishing the persons from the essence in God and nowhere else. Generally then he accepts only two kinds of distinction, real and rational. This is why they call it his razor! Compare with more luxurious accounts of distinctions. For instance, the Scotist Petrus Thomae in his own Quodlibet, q.7, gives a very different classification of distinctions. First there are distinctions of reason, founded only on a mental act, and then there are distinctions not dependent on a mental act, real distinctions. But real distinctions can be broken down into 1) Essential distinctions, between essence and essence, which can be known by separability in actual existence or by essential dependence, since nothing is dependent on itself; 2) Distinctions between thing and thing, rather than between essence and essence, which can be known e.g. by causal dependence; 3) Distinctions between reality and reality, known by whether one can be abstracted without the other; 4) Distinctions between thing and reality - the difference is that a thing has a reality belonging to it, while a reality must have a thing of which it is; 5) Distinctions between formality and formality, with multiple ways to recognize is; 6) Distinctions between formality and thing, known by the lack of adequation between the two, since one thing can have many formalities but not vice versa, or by the fact that the thing is principle and the formality something pertaining to it. Petrus Thomae has at least one other way of formulating the distinction tree, but you get the idea. Even though Scotus also recognizes the principle of parsimony, it's not called Scotus' razor for a reason.]

Anyway, Ockham says that you can't think as though the Father were constituted from the coinciding of the divine essence and active generation. There's not some property of paternity which makes the Father himself; rather the Father just is paternity in God. The Father can't be constituted by paternity, because he just is paternity, and nothing can constitute itself. Similarly the Son just is filiation in God, etc. There is a legitimate formal distinction between the Father and the divine essence and a real distinction between the Father and the Son. But those are all the distinctions there are in God which don't arise from our own thinking about him.

Ockham Quodlibet I.2

In this question Ockham asks whether the relations of origin of the persons in God are distinct from the divine essence. Here we see him begrudgingly admitting Scotus' formal distinction in this case only, while rejecting it everywhere else in metaphysics or theology.

In a certain sense God's essence must be distinct from the relations of origin, and not merely notionally distinct, because it is the case that "the essence is three persons, and paternity is not three persons". But because of divine simplicity on the one hand and the separability criterion (presumably) on the other, it can't be a quote-unquote "real" distinction either. It has to be a formal distinction, though Ockham doesn't use the term until later on in the question when replying to objections. Logic simply requires the distinction here, but O. clearly isn't too happy about it, and he says "Nor do I posit any distinction or non-identity small or great other than" this one in God. But if we don't posit this one we get a straight contradiction.

This is a pretty big deal. The other interesting thing about this question is that we see Ockham trying to clear up a lot of difficulties using supposition theory, that is, the theory of reference in late mediaeval logic. This sort of logical analysis is, so far as I know, not to be found in Thomas or Bonaventure, or in Scotus either, and it shows both Ockham's devotion to logic-based solutions whenever possible and also his habitual use of contemporary developments in the art. Ockham himself was, of course, a great logician, and his Summa logicae one of the greatest books in the history of logic.

Anyway these supposition-based solutions are summed up in a catch-all sentence: "I say that all these paralogisms, whether affirmative or negative, are resolved by [accusing them of] the fallacy of the accident, such that in all the case some term is taken as supposing [supponens] for one absolute thing, which is [in fact] several relative things; and it suffices to apply [this point to all the arguments].

Ockham Quodlibet I.1

Okham opens his first quodlibet with Scotus-bashing from the outset. This first question gives us a good look at the way Ockham generally uses Scotus, that is, by referring to him in order to reject him, or by accepting one bit of Scotus' thought as a preliminary to discarding and refuting the rest. It also gives us a peek at his famous philosophical and theological minimalism.

The question is whether it can be proved by natural reason that there is only one God (spoilers: Ockham says no). He begins his answer by considering two "descriptions" of God: 1) God is something nobler or better than anything other than himself; 2) God is that than which nothing is better or more perfect. Note that 1) presumes God's unity while 2) leaves open the possibility of things just as good and perfect as God, though no more so.

First Ockham considers 1). According to description 1) it cannot be proved that God exists. But if it could be proved, then it could also be proved that there is only one God - Ockham uses Scotus' argument to show this. Nevertheless he doesn't think that we can prove the existence either of the "Anselmian" God or even that of a more moderately-conceived "Supreme Being". It seems that Ockham's general preference for physics over metaphysics leads him to accept proofs for a first mover, or a source of all contingent effects, but not the metaphysical arguments which are necessary to demonstrate God's more remote properties - infinity, for instance.

If we take description 2), we can neither prove God's unity nor demonstratively prove that God's unity cannot be proved. (Does this remind anyone else of Gödel?) But, taking 2), it can be demonstrated that God exists, otherwise we could have an infinite regress of good things. But God's unity (like most of his attributes) must be taken on faith. It cannot be proved that God knows or loves other things, "for many philosophers have considered that God neither understands nor wills something other than himself." Similarly it cannot be demonstrated that God is intensively infinite, nor that he is free.

Ockham must have Aristotle in mind most of all as a philosopher who (using physics, of course) proved God's existence but not these other attributes. However, it's not at all clear to me that the fact that many philosophers could not prove them proves that they are not provable by natural reason. For other explanations we need look no further than the opening chapters of St Thomas' Contra gentiles. But for Ockham all such "proofs" rest on doubtful or debatable principles. Accordingly, he considers a number of Scotus' arguments for these points and then rejects them all on similar grounds.

June is Ockham Month at The Smithy

My mentor and dissertation director Timothy Noone used to say that you can't know if you're a Scotist until you've grappled seriously with Ockham. I haven't read much Ockham since the graduate course I took on him some years ago, and it seems to me it's time to brush up. I'll be doing a little of that grappling this month.

People who don't read either frequently talk as though Scotus leads directly to Ockham: univocity and voluntarism to nominalism, the division of faith and reason, rebellion against the Church, and then Protestantism! Ergo Scotus is bad, Q.E.D.

Now this is a little like saying that Plato is bad because he leads to Nietzsche, insofar as without Plato there couldn't have been a tradition of Western metaphysics for Nietzsche to undermine. More seriously, it's like blaming Husserl for Heidegger, since Heidegger's thought is "phenomenological" and couldn't have arisen without Husserl, even though Husserl quite accurately described Heidegger as his "antipodes".

Ockham is Scotus' antipodes. Both British, both Franciscan, both post-Thomist pre-"decadence" scholastic system-builders who were responsible for much of the direction of philosophy and theology for at least the next century, still they don't have much in common. Seriously.

By the way, speaking of both Scotus and Ockham, recently I've heard more than one philosopher say - in a way that suggests that the opinion is pretty uncontroversial - that David Hume is the greatest philosopher ever to come out of the British Isles. That's pretty rich.

Anyhow, this month I'll be reading Ockham's first Quodlibet and commenting on it here. It has twenty questions, so - given that I probably won't post every day but probably can most days - that should be about right for June. Meanwhile perhaps Faber or Br Guzman will vary it up a bit. After that it's back to Scotus, but if Ockham turns out to be popular (to the limited extent possible!) there are seven Quodlibets, each with around twenty questions, which altogether present a pretty good mosaic of Ockham's thought, so I would definitely consider doing another Ockham month in the future.

The first post in the series will come tomorrow.

Bonaventurian Voluntarism

Voluntarism is especially associated by moderns with Scotus, and with the Franciscan tradition in general. It's often taken to mean that moral laws are assigned by God arbitrarily, so that voluntarism is in opposition to natural law theory. The truth is much more nuanced; Scotus accepts the notion of natural law, in that moral laws are fitting and congruent with the natures of the things involved. On the other hand he holds that God can suspend the natural moral law for precepts which have to do with creatures, although not those which have to do with Himself; it is altogether impossible for God to command idolatry, or hatred of God, or blasphemy. Such actions are absolutely immoral by their very natures. Laws having to do with creatures, however, can be suspended in certain circumstances, for instance, when God commands the Israelites to despoil the Egyptians, or Hosea to cohabitate with a prostitute. There can be circumstances in which the thing that would normally bad can be commanded as good, subject to the divine prudence.

I've been finding this same same account in Bonaventure as I've read through his commentary on the Sentences. It's come up several times, most recently for me in IV Dist. XXXII Art. I Q. III, where St B. discusses why God allowed a dispensation from the law of nature so that the Patriarchs could have many wives.

Chesterton and the Sanity of Christianity

As I read and re-read all the non-Christian or anti-Christian accounts of the faith, from Huxley to Bradlaugh, a slow and awful impression grew gradually but graphically upon my mind — the impression that Christianity must be a most extraordinary thing. For not only (as I understood) had Christianity the most flaming vices, but it had apparently a mystical talent for combining vices which seemed inconsistent with each other. It was attacked on all sides and for all contradictory reasons. No sooner had one rationalist demonstrated that it was too far to the east than another demonstrated with equal clearness that it was much too far to the west. No sooner had my indignation died down at its angular and aggressive squareness than I was called up again to notice and condemn its enervating and sensual roundness. In case any reader has not come across the thing I mean, I will give such instances as I remember at random of this self-contradiction in the sceptical attack. I give four or five of them; there are fifty more.

Thus, for instance, I was much moved by the eloquent attack on Christianity as a thing of inhuman gloom; for I thought (and still think) sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin. Insincere pessimism is a social accomplishment, rather agreeable than otherwise; and fortunately nearly all pessimism is insincere. But if Christianity was, as these people said, a thing purely pessimistic and opposed to life, then I was quite prepared to blow up St. Paul’s Cathedral. But the extraordinary thing is this. They did prove to me in Chapter I. (to my complete satisfaction) that Christianity was too pessimistic; and then, in Chapter II., they began to prove to me that it was a great deal too optimistic. One accusation against Christianity was that it prevented men, by morbid tears and terrors, from seeking joy and liberty in the bosom of Nature. But another accusation was that it comforted men with a fictitious providence, and put them in a pink-and-white nursery. One great agnostic asked why Nature was not beautiful enough, and why it was hard to be free. Another great agnostic objected that Christian optimism, “the garment of make-believe woven by pious hands,” hid from us the fact that Nature was ugly, and that it was impossible to be free. One rationalist had hardly done calling Christianity a nightmare before another began to call it a fool’s paradise. This puzzled me; the charges seemed inconsistent. Christianity could not at once be the black mask on a white world, and also the white mask on a black world. The state of the Christian could not be at once so comfortable that he was a coward to cling to it, and so uncomfortable that he was a fool to stand it. If it falsified human vision it must falsify it one way or another; it could not wear both green and rose-coloured spectacles. I rolled on my tongue with a terrible joy, as did all young men of that time, the taunts which Swinburne hurled at the dreariness of the creed —

“Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean, the world has grown gray with Thy breath.”
But when I read the same poet’s accounts of paganism (as in “Atalanta”), I gathered that the world was, if possible, more gray before the Galilean breathed on it than afterwards. The poet maintained, indeed, in the abstract, that life itself was pitch dark. And yet, somehow, Christianity had darkened it. The very man who denounced Christianity for pessimism was himself a pessimist. I thought there must be something wrong. And it did for one wild moment cross my mind that, perhaps, those might not be the very best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who, by their own account, had neither one nor the other.

It must be understood that I did not conclude hastily that the accusations were false or the accusers fools. I simply deduced that Christianity must be something even weirder and wickeder than they made out. A thing might have these two opposite vices; but it must be a rather queer thing if it did. A man might be too fat in one place and too thin in another; but he would be an odd shape. At this point my thoughts were only of the odd shape of the Christian religion; I did not allege any odd shape in the rationalistic mind.

Here is another case of the same kind. I felt that a strong case against Christianity lay in the charge that there is something timid, monkish, and unmanly about all that is called “Christian,” especially in its attitude towards resistance and fighting. The great sceptics of the nineteenth century were largely virile. Bradlaugh in an expansive way, Huxley, in a reticent way, were decidedly men. In comparison, it did seem tenable that there was something weak and over patient about Christian counsels. The Gospel paradox about the other cheek, the fact that priests never fought, a hundred things made plausible the accusation that Christianity was an attempt to make a man too like a sheep. I read it and believed it, and if I had read nothing different, I should have gone on believing it. But I read something very different. I turned the next page in my agnostic manual, and my brain turned up-side down. Now I found that I was to hate Christianity not for fighting too little, but for fighting too much. Christianity, it seemed, was the mother of wars. Christianity had deluged the world with blood. I had got thoroughly angry with the Christian, because he never was angry. And now I was told to be angry with him because his anger had been the most huge and horrible thing in human history; because his anger had soaked the earth and smoked to the sun. The very people who reproached Christianity with the meekness and non-resistance of the monasteries were the very people who reproached it also with the violence and valour of the Crusades. It was the fault of poor old Christianity (somehow or other) both that Edward the Confessor did not fight and that Richard Coeur de Leon did. The Quakers (we were told) were the only characteristic Christians; and yet the massacres of Cromwell and Alva were characteristic Christian crimes. What could it all mean? What was this Christianity which always forbade war and always produced wars? What could be the nature of the thing which one could abuse first because it would not fight, and second because it was always fighting? In what world of riddles was born this monstrous murder and this monstrous meekness? The shape of Christianity grew a queerer shape every instant.

I take a third case; the strangest of all, because it involves the one real objection to the faith. The one real objection to the Christian religion is simply that it is one religion. The world is a big place, full of very different kinds of people. Christianity (it may reasonably be said) is one thing confined to one kind of people; it began in Palestine, it has practically stopped with Europe. I was duly impressed with this argument in my youth, and I was much drawn towards the doctrine often preached in Ethical Societies — I mean the doctrine that there is one great unconscious church of all humanity rounded on the omnipresence of the human conscience. Creeds, it was said, divided men; but at least morals united them. The soul might seek the strangest and most remote lands and ages and still find essential ethical common sense. It might find Confucius under Eastern trees, and he would be writing “Thou shalt not steal.” It might decipher the darkest hieroglyphic on the most primeval desert, and the meaning when deciphered would be “Little boys should tell the truth.” I believed this doctrine of the brotherhood of all men in the possession of a moral sense, and I believe it still — with other things. And I was thoroughly annoyed with Christianity for suggesting (as I supposed) that whole ages and empires of men had utterly escaped this light of justice and reason. But then I found an astonishing thing. I found that the very people who said that mankind was one church from Plato to Emerson were the very people who said that morality had changed altogether, and that what was right in one age was wrong in another. If I asked, say, for an altar, I was told that we needed none, for men our brothers gave us clear oracles and one creed in their universal customs and ideals. But if I mildly pointed out that one of men’s universal customs was to have an altar, then my agnostic teachers turned clean round and told me that men had always been in darkness and the superstitions of savages. I found it was their daily taunt against Christianity that it was the light of one people and had left all others to die in the dark. But I also found that it was their special boast for themselves that science and progress were the discovery of one people, and that all other peoples had died in the dark. Their chief insult to Christianity was actually their chief compliment to themselves, and there seemed to be a strange unfairness about all their relative insistence on the two things. When considering some pagan or agnostic, we were to remember that all men had one religion; when considering some mystic or spiritualist, we were only to consider what absurd religions some men had. We could trust the ethics of Epictetus, because ethics had never changed. We must not trust the ethics of Bossuet, because ethics had changed. They changed in two hundred years, but not in two thousand.

This began to be alarming. It looked not so much as if Christianity was bad enough to include any vices, but rather as if any stick was good enough to beat Christianity with. What again could this astonishing thing be like which people were so anxious to contradict, that in doing so they did not mind contradicting themselves? I saw the same thing on every side. I can give no further space to this discussion of it in detail; but lest any one supposes that I have unfairly selected three accidental cases I will run briefly through a few others. Thus, certain sceptics wrote that the great crime of Christianity had been its attack on the family; it had dragged women to the loneliness and contemplation of the cloister, away from their homes and their children. But, then, other sceptics (slightly more advanced) said that the great crime of Christianity was forcing the family and marriage upon us; that it doomed women to the drudgery of their homes and children, and forbade them loneliness and contemplation. The charge was actually reversed. Or, again, certain phrases in the Epistles or the marriage service, were said by the anti-Christians to show contempt for woman’s intellect. But I found that the anti-Christians themselves had a contempt for woman’s intellect; for it was their great sneer at the Church on the Continent that “only women” went to it. Or again, Christianity was reproached with its naked and hungry habits; with its sackcloth and dried peas. But the next minute Christianity was being reproached with its pomp and its ritualism; its shrines of porphyry and its robes of gold. It was abused for being too plain and for being too coloured. Again Christianity had always been accused of restraining sexuality too much, when Bradlaugh the Malthusian discovered that it restrained it too little. It is often accused in the same breath of prim respectability and of religious extravagance. Between the covers of the same atheistic pamphlet I have found the faith rebuked for its disunion, “One thinks one thing, and one another,” and rebuked also for its union, “It is difference of opinion that prevents the world from going to the dogs.” In the same conversation a free-thinker, a friend of mine, blamed Christianity for despising Jews, and then despised it himself for being Jewish.

I wished to be quite fair then, and I wish to be quite fair now; and I did not conclude that the attack on Christianity was all wrong. I only concluded that if Christianity was wrong, it was very wrong indeed. Such hostile horrors might be combined in one thing, but that thing must be very strange and solitary. There are men who are misers, and also spendthrifts; but they are rare. There are men sensual and also ascetic; but they are rare. But if this mass of mad contradictions really existed, quakerish and bloodthirsty, too gorgeous and too thread-bare, austere, yet pandering preposterously to the lust of the eye, the enemy of women and their foolish refuge, a solemn pessimist and a silly optimist, if this evil existed, then there was in this evil something quite supreme and unique. For I found in my rationalist teachers no explanation of such exceptional corruption. Christianity (theoretically speaking) was in their eyes only one of the ordinary myths and errors of mortals. They gave me no key to this twisted and unnatural badness. Such a paradox of evil rose to the stature of the supernatural. It was, indeed, almost as supernatural as the infallibility of the Pope. An historic institution, which never went right, is really quite as much of a miracle as an institution that cannot go wrong. The only explanation which immediately occurred to my mind was that Christianity did not come from heaven, but from hell. Really, if Jesus of Nazareth was not Christ, He must have been Antichrist.

And then in a quiet hour a strange thought struck me like a still thunderbolt. There had suddenly come into my mind another explanation. Suppose we heard an unknown man spoken of by many men. Suppose we were puzzled to hear that some men said he was too tall and some too short; some objected to his fatness, some lamented his leanness; some thought him too dark, and some too fair. One explanation (as has been already admitted) would be that he might be an odd shape. But there is another explanation. He might be the right shape. Outrageously tall men might feel him to be short. Very short men might feel him to be tall. Old bucks who are growing stout might consider him insufficiently filled out; old beaux who were growing thin might feel that he expanded beyond the narrow lines of elegance. Perhaps Swedes (who have pale hair like tow) called him a dark man, while negroes considered him distinctly blonde. Perhaps (in short) this extraordinary thing is really the ordinary thing; at least the normal thing, the centre. Perhaps, after all, it is Christianity that is sane and all its critics that are mad — in various ways. I tested this idea by asking myself whether there was about any of the accusers anything morbid that might explain the accusation. I was startled to find that this key fitted a lock. For instance, it was certainly odd that the modern world charged Christianity at once with bodily austerity and with artistic pomp. But then it was also odd, very odd, that the modern world itself combined extreme bodily luxury with an extreme absence of artistic pomp. The modern man thought Becket’s robes too rich and his meals too poor. But then the modern man was really exceptional in history; no man before ever ate such elaborate dinners in such ugly clothes. The modern man found the church too simple exactly where modern life is too complex; he found the church too gorgeous exactly where modern life is too dingy. The man who disliked the plain fasts and feasts was mad on entrées. The man who disliked vestments wore a pair of preposterous trousers. And surely if there was any insanity involved in the matter at all it was in the trousers, not in the simply falling robe. If there was any insanity at all, it was in the extravagant entrées, not in the bread and wine.

I went over all the cases, and I found the key fitted so far. The fact that Swinburne was irritated at the unhappiness of Christians and yet more irritated at their happiness was easily explained. It was no longer a complication of diseases in Christianity, but a complication of diseases in Swinburne. The restraints of Christians saddened him simply because he was more hedonist than a healthy man should be. The faith of Christians angered him because he was more pessimist than a healthy man should be. In the same way the Malthusians by instinct attacked Christianity; not because there is anything especially anti-Malthusian about Christianity, but because there is something a little anti-human about Malthusianism.

Nevertheless it could not, I felt, be quite true that Christianity was merely sensible and stood in the middle. There was really an element in it of emphasis and even frenzy which had justified the secularists in their superficial criticism. It might be wise, I began more and more to think that it was wise, but it was not merely worldly wise; it was not merely temperate and respectable. Its fierce crusaders and meek saints might balance each other; still, the crusaders were very fierce and the saints were very meek, meek beyond all decency. Now, it was just at this point of the speculation that I remembered my thoughts about the martyr and the suicide. In that matter there had been this combination between two almost insane positions which yet somehow amounted to sanity. This was just such another contradiction; and this I had already found to be true. This was exactly one of the paradoxes in which sceptics found the creed wrong; and in this I had found it right. Madly as Christians might love the martyr or hate the suicide, they never felt these passions more madly than I had felt them long before I dreamed of Christianity. Then the most difficult and interesting part of the mental process opened, and I began to trace this idea darkly through all the enormous thoughts of our theology. The idea was that which I had outlined touching the optimist and the pessimist; that we want not an amalgam or compromise, but both things at the top of their energy; love and wrath both burning. Here I shall only trace it in relation to ethics. But I need not remind the reader that the idea of this combination is indeed central in orthodox theology. For orthodox theology has specially insisted that Christ was not a being apart from God and man, like an elf, nor yet a being half human and half not, like a centaur, but both things at once and both things thoroughly, very man and very God. Now let me trace this notion as I found it.

All sane men can see that sanity is some kind of equilibrium; that one may be mad and eat too much, or mad and eat too little. Some moderns have indeed appeared with vague versions of progress and evolution which seeks to destroy the u[[epsilon]][[sigma]][[omicron]][[nu]] or balance of Aristotle. They seem to suggest that we are meant to starve progressively, or to go on eating larger and larger breakfasts every morning for ever. But the great truism of the u[[epsilon]][[sigma]][[omicron]][[nu]] remains for all thinking men, and these people have not upset any balance except their own. But granted that we have all to keep a balance, the real interest comes in with the question of how that balance can be kept. That was the problem which Paganism tried to solve: that was the problem which I think Christianity solved and solved in a very strange way.

Beyond Being

We have remarked that Being, which for Plato is at times at least less than the Good or One, must be understood as finite Being. That this is the general classical view is stated by a number of modern commentators, not all of whom are prepared, however, to see what it implies for Plato and Plotinus. Fr Seeney, for example, rightly quotes with approval the remark of Fr Owens that 'Perfect Being for the Greeks meant limitation and finitude,' without at the same time admitting that to place the One beyond Being means for Plotinus simply to place it beyond finitude, to make it intrinsically infinite. Similarly Gilson regards the One beyond Being as a non-existent One. For these interpreters questions about the finitude of Being in the classical sense of the word do not arise. But here we may be merely playing with words. The question before us is not whether Plotinus said that the One is 'beyond Being,' but what he meant by saying this. And in view of the general Greek use of 'Being' to mean 'finite Being,' the prima facie meaning of the phrase 'beyond Being' should be 'infinite Being.'

-- John Rist, Plotinus: The Road to Reality, 24-25.

The relevance of this passage to Orthodox-Catholic dialogue should be obvious to the attentive reader! This is a point I have made in debate more than once, to little avail, I'm afraid.

St Bonaventure and St Thomas

In the framework of medieval Christianity, their closeness is much more apparent than their opposition. There are those who believe that the universal authority of Saint Thomas overshadows that of the equally great Saint Bonaventure. In fact, however, Bonaventure by his inspired genius seems to respond more genuinely and more deeply to some of the exigencies of modern thought. Plainly, his ontology of participation and essence, derived from Plato through Augustine, Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, and Hugh of Saint-Victor, does not have the same ring as Thomas' ontology of being and efficient causality. The Summa theologica represents the consummate mastery of theological data; it is the most coherent work available to the Christian as a means of understanding his Faith. In contrast, Bonaventure never considers the goal as being attained: he expresses faith in its upward surge, and sees understanding as a constant quest. Here, we recognize the "ascension" of Plato, which Augustine explained in terms of the constant striving of the Christian soul. This, perhaps, is what gives Bonaventure an original place even among the great Doctors of the Church, with whom he ranks in virtue of his religious and speculative genius.

--Bougerol, Introduction to the Works of Bonaventure

St Gregory on Heretics, II

III.47. When they had lifted up their eyes, they did not know him. Now when heretics consider the deeds of Holy Church, they look up at her, because they are placed down below and when they see her works, what they regard is placed on high; but when the Church is set amid sorrow they do not know her. For she seeks to accept evils so that, being purged, she can come to the reward of eternal recompense. Often she fears prosperity and rejoices to learn from discipline. Therefore heretics, who desire present good as the great thing, do not recognize her covered with wounds. For they do not read written in their own hearts what they see in her. When therefore the Church profits even from adversities, they are stuck in their own stupor, because what they see is unknown to their experience.

48. They tore their clothes, and scattered dust to heaven upon their heads. As we and all the faithful receive the clothes of the Church, for which reason the prophet says: You clothe all these like a decoration; so the clothes of the heretics are all those who by agreeing with them and sticking with them are wrapped up in their errors. For heretics have this property, that they are not long able to stand on the level they came to on leaving the Church; but daily they fall down to lower places and by thinking worse and worse things they cut themselves into many parts and are divided from each other more and more by their arguments and confusion. Therefore because they tear into pieces those they join to their faithlessness, it is rightly said that the friends who come tear their clothes. When the clothes are ripped the body is revealed, because often when the heretical followers are cut away, the malice of their thought is openly seen; so that discord reveals the treachery that the burdensome guilt of their previous harmony concealed.

49. Now they scatter dust to heaven upon their heads. What should we understand by dust except things of the earth? What is designated by the head, except that which is our principle part, namely the mind? What is meant by heaven except the command spoken by heaven? Therefore to scatter dust to heaven on the head is to corrupt the mind with a secular understanding and to think earthly things about heavenly words. For they dissipate the divine words more than they receive them. Therefore they scatter dust because they bring against the commands of God an earthly understanding which is in fact beyond the power of their minds.

50. They sat with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights. In daytime, we can know what we see; at night either, being blind, we see nothing, or if it is dim what we see is doubtful. So day stands for understanding and night stands for ignorance. By the number seven the whole universe is expressed; so that this transitory time is completed in no more than seven days. What then does is mean that the friends of blessed Job sat with him for seven days and seven nights, except that, whether in those things about which they really see the light, or in those things about which they suffer the darkness of ignorance, they act in a pretending condescention towards the Church (as though towards an invalid), and under a show of kindness prepare the treachery of deception? And although, whether in those things which they do understand, or in those which they are unable to understand, among themselves they can think great things about themselves, swelled up with the character of exaltation, still sometimes they make a show of respect to Holy Church, and while they use soft words, they pour in the poison. Therefore to sit on the ground is to show something of the image of humility, so that while they fake being humble they can persuade their hearers of the pride which they teach.

51. The ground or the earth can also stand for the incarnation of the Mediator. So that it was said to Israel: Make for me an altar of earth. To make an altar of earth for God is to hope in the incarnation of the Mediator. Our offering indeed is accepted by God when upon the altar of faith in the Lord’s incarnation our humility places whatever we do. We place an offering upon an altar of earth when we solidify our actions with faith in the Lord’s incarnation. But there are some heretics who do not deny the fact of the Lord’s incarnation, but think differently from us either about the divinity itself or about the quality of the incarnation. So those who profess along with us the true incarnation of the Redeemer, as it were sit equally on the ground with Job. They are said to sit with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights because, whether they understand something of the fulness of truth or are blinded by the darkness of their stupidity, still they cannot deny the mystery of the incarnation. To sit on the ground with blessed Job, therefore, is to believe along with Holy Church in the true flesh of the Redeemer.

52. Sometimes the heretics rage against us with punishments, sometimes they pursue us with words alone, sometimes if we are quiet they provoke us, and sometimes if they see us silent they are quiet too; friends to the silent, they are enemies to us if we speak. So because blessed Job had not yet said anything to them it rightly follows: And no one spoke a word to him. For we have silent adversaries if we neglect to beget sons of the true faith by our preaching. But if we begin to speak what is right, we will immediately feel the heavy blows of their response; they will instantly leap forward in enmity and burst out against us with the voice of indignation, because they fear lest a voice speaking what is right lead to the heights the hearts which the weight of their stupidity has dragged to the depths.

- St Gregory the Great, Moralia in Iob, my translation.

St Gregory on Heretics, I

III.42. In all this Job neither sinned with his lips nor said anything stupid against God. Therefore three friends of Job, hearing about all the evils that had happened to him, came each one from his own place: Eliphaz the Themanite, Baldad the Suhite, and Sophar the Naamathite. In the preface of this work we said that the friends of blessed Job, although they came to him with good intentions, nevertheless take on the appearance of heretics because they fall into guilt by speaking indiscretely. On account of which the same blessed Job says to them: I want to dispute with God, but first showing that you are weavers of lies and keepers of perverse dogmas. And so Holy Church in all the time of its pilgrimage is established in affliction, when she suffers wounds, when she grieves over the lapse of her members, and on top of this when she endures the enemies of Christ coming in the name of Christ. For to the augment of her suffering, in addition to her other troubles heretics also come and pierce her with unreasonable words.

43. But it is well said: They convened from their own place. Now the place of heretics is pride, because unless they were first swelled up in their hearts, they would not have come to the struggle with crooked assertions. So the place of the wicked is pride just as on the contrary the place of the good is humility. About which Solomon says: If a powerful spirit rises up against you, do not yield to him your place. As if he were to say openly: If you see that the spirit of the Temptor is stronger than you in anything, do not abandon the humility of penitence. Because he shows by the following words that our place is the humility of penitence when he says: Because to stop taking medicine produces the greatest sins. For what is the humility of weeping but the medicine of sin? Heretics therefore come from their place because they are moved against Holy Church from their pride.

44. Their perverse actions can be discerned from the interpretation of their names. For they are called Eliphaz, Baldad, and Sophar; and as we said above, Eliphaz interpreted means “contempt of God.” For unless they had contempt of God, they would never have thought perverse things about Him. But Baldad only means “age.” For while they avoid being beaten and by their perverse study they seek to be the victors, they neglect the behavior of the new life, and what they intend comes only from the old. Sophar means “destruction of the watchtower.” For those whose place is in Holy Church humbly contemplate with true faith the mysteries of their Redeemer; but when the heretics come with their false allegations, they destroy the watchtower, because they turn the minds of those they draw to themselves away from the watchfulness of upright contemplation.

45. But the places from which these men come are well described as congruent with the actions of heretics. For they are called Themanites, Suhites, Naamathites. Now Thema means “the South;” Suhi, “speaking;” Naama, “charming.” But who does not know that the South wind is hot? Therefore because heretics wish to taste of [divine things] more ardently, or as it were more than is necessary, they are eager to be inflamed with passion. Of couse ebbing away to the numbness of cold and again to the restlessness of an immoderate curiosity is each consistent with intemperate heat. And therefore because they desire to feel the heat of wisdom more than they ought, they are said to come from the South. Paul took care to temper the minds of the faithful away from this heat of an immoderate wisdom, when he said: Do not taste more than you ought to taste, but taste to sobriety. This is why David struck the valleys of the salt-pans, namely because our Redeemer in his severe judgment against those who think perverse things about him will quench the stupidity of an immoderate taste. But Suhi means “speaking.” Now you see that they desire to have this heat not in order to live well but in order to speak loftily. Therefore they come from Thema and from Suhi, that is, they are said to come from heat and from loquacity, because they like to show how well-studied they are in the scriptures; but they inflamed only with the passion of loquacious words and not with the heart of charity. Now Naama means “charming.” Because they do not wish to be learned, but to appear so, from erudite words they take on the appearance of living well; and through the heat of their loquacity they show in themselves a charming image, so that with the beauty of their tounges they can more easily persuade their hearers of perversities; and so they cleverly hide from the senses the foulness of their lives. Now the narration gives the names of these places in the right order. First it gives Thema, afterwards Suhi, and then Naama; because first inordinate heat kindles the heretics, then the sparkle of loquacity rouses them up, and then finally it shows men charming hypocrisies.

46. For they said to one another that they would all go visit and console him. Heretics speak to one another when they agree in thinking certain perverse things against the Church; and in certain things where they are all discordant from the truth, they harmonize together in falsity. For what do those do who teach us about eternity, but console us in the affliction of our pilgrimage? But the heretics, because they desire to teach Holy Church their own doctrines, approach her as consolers. Nor should we be surprised if those who are shown to be enemies are called friends, when it was said to the traitor himself [Judas]: Friend, why have you come? And the rich man burning in the fire of hell was called a son by Abaham; because although they refuse to be corrected by us, still it is fitting that we should name them not by their wickedness but out of our kindness.

- St Gregory the Great, Moralia in Iob, my translation.

Ruminations on the Fall

A post over at Vox Nova caused me to pause and think (imagine the scene in Fellowship where Gandalf suspects the ring might be the 'One' and sits in the corner muttering and smoking). Much of the content is standard pseudo-Dionysianism; God is beyond all being, predication, affirmation, negation, etc. etc., though no one ever seems to draw the obvious conclusion from this, viz. that God is completely unknowable. Longtime readers will already know the standard Scotistic responses that I could trot out, that there is a univocal concept of being, that theology presupposes said univocal concept, that the object of the intellect is being, and so on. I was more interested in their view that the fall has corrupted human nature, even that logic has been corrupted. Not just that the human capacity to reason has been corrupted, but that 'logic' was as well (I suppose then that if Adam hadn't sinned, not only would no one ever commit a fallacy of equivocation but fallacy's of equivocation would have been valid? and in light of recent posts here, perhaps square-circles would be possible beings?).

It is interesting to note that Scotus stands as opposed to this appearance of christian platonism, if it is that, rather than some baleful influence of Luther, as he does to negative theology. He really seems to have been one of the post positive theologians of the middle ages. Forget Doctor subtilis et Marianus, we should call him the Doctor Positivus. For his view of human nature with respect to the fall seems to be summed up in the notion that what was lost by Adam's sin was rectitude in the will. There was no darkening of the intellect, weakening of nature, etc., or anything of the kind. To be sure, the preternatural gifts were lost, though perhaps only immortality. A hasty consultation of Ott's Fundamentals reveals that these in fact are the only two effects of the fall that are 'de fide' (that is, loss of immortality and sanctifying grace; the latter of these Scotus would associate with a quality in the will). This trend towards the negative and pessimistic is by no means restricted to the vox nova crowd; they are just echoing what really seems to be the common opinion of the contemporary thomist-platonist movement. I suspect this may be the root cause of the hatred (yes, I say hatred) of the Cambridge Phantasists (for our newer readers, that is our preferred name for 'radical' 'orthodoxy'), who seek to counter nihilism by embracing a negation; Scotus is their polar opposite on this as well as probably many other issues.

I will close by nuancing somewhat Scotus' positive position. Although he does not think that the fall has corrupted human nature or damaged all our natural powers, his view that being is the object of the intellect requires qualification. For if true, we would expect that since God is infinite being, and being is the object of the intellect, our intellects would be moved by God in this life. Or to put it another way, we would know everything that falls under the concept of being. Scotus denies this, and says that pro statu isto, as far as the wayfaring state is concerned, the object of the intellect is the quiddity of sensible things. He says this may be part of the punishment of original sin (punishment; still not a darkening, though it may amount to what the endarkeners mean by the term), or part of the natural concord of the powers, or merely from the will of God. Whatever the reason, it is not from the nature of the intellect as intellect.

God as Being

The second paragraph of Scotus' De Primo Principio reads as follows (trans. Wolter):

O Lord our God, true teacher that you are, when Moses your servant asked you for your name that he might proclaim it to the children of Israel, you, knowing what the mind of mortals could grasp of you, replied: "I am who am," thus disclosing your blessed name. You are truly what it means to be, you are the whole of what it means to exist [or: you are true being, you are whole being]. This, if it be possible for me, I should like to know by way of demonstration. Help me then, O Lord, as I investigate how much our natural reason can learn about that true being which you are if we begin with the being which you have predicated of yourself.

In The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy Etienne Gilson comments on this passage:

Nothing can surpass the weighty fullness of this text, since it lays down at once the true method of Christian philosophy, and the first truth whence all the others derive. Applying the principle of St Augustine and St Anselm, the Credo ut intelligam, Duns Scotus, at the very outset of his metaphysical speculation, makes an act of faith in the truth of the divine word; like Athenagoras, it is in the school of God that he would learn of God. No philosopher is invoked as intermediary between reason and the supreme Master; but forthwith, after the act of faith, philosophy begins.

Gilson has a number of favorable remarks about Scotus in the present book. Here is another one, from an endnote: "Duns Scotus' proofs of God's existence should occupy a prominent place in any history of Christian philosophy, for they are immediately based on the idea of being and its essential properties, causality and eminence."

Contradiction in the Trinity?

Dr Vallicella has another post about the Trinity, here:

I don't assert, but I suspect that it's directed at least partially at me. He writes:

5. Is the doctrine thinkable (conceivable) without contradiction? . . . It is difficult to get some people to appreciate the force and importance of (5) because they are dogmatists who accept the Trinity doctrine as true simply because they were brought up to believe it, or because it is something their church teaches. Since they accept it as true, no question of its logical coherence arises for them. And so they think that anyone who questions the doctrine must not understand it. To 'set the objector straight' they then repeat the very verbal formulas the logical coherence of which is in question. "What's the problem? There is one God in three divine Persons!" They think that if they only repeat the formulas often enough, then the objector will 'get it.' But it is they who do not get it, since they do not understand the logical problems to which the doctrinal formulations give rise.

I suspect that this is directed at me, or at least that he thinks I'm one of these people. In his reply to my first letter to him he wrote As you no doubt will grant, the mere repetition of verbal formulas is not the same as an exposition of those formulas that shows them to be intelligible. After my response to his reply he wrote off the discussion as not worthwhile, then writes the above. I infer that he thinks my response was nothing more than a repetition of verbal formulas and that I don't understand the logical problem involved. Now I think that my response indicated no such thing. What I was attempting to do, at least, was to clarify the true sense that the verbal formulas hold, rather than a false and plainly contradictory sense. Now this is indeed different from directly showing that the doctrine is coherent. But, as I've already said, analyzing the doctrine must only come after getting the doctrine right. Now I suggest that the reformulations of the doctrine by Dr Vallicella and his sources distort it through the lens of a metaphysics not designed to accommodate it, so that the "logical problem" takes on the character of a petitio principii. I believe that the very way that Dr Vallicella presents the problem begs the question.

Now Dr Vallicella writes that "the gist of the Trinity doctrine is as follows:"

1. Monotheism: There is exactly one God.

2. Divinity of Persons: The Father is God; the Son is God; the Holy Ghost is God.

3. Distinctness of Persons: The Father is not the Son; and the Holy Ghost is not the Father or the Son.

And he follows this up with:

The problem is to show how these propositions are logically consistent, that is, how they can all be true, but without falling into heresy. If you cannot see the problem, you are not paying attention, or you lack intelligence, or your thought-processes are being distorted by ideological commitments.

So, presumably, Dr Vallicella thinks that responses such as the one I gave are not worth responding since I fall under one or all three of these deficiencies. Well, I wouldn't presume to make claims about my intelligence, and if my thought-processes were being distorted by ideological commitments I may well fail to observe it, but the problem is certainly not that I am not paying attention, since I have been studying Latin Trinitarian theology for many years now.

Now it's not that I "cannot see the problem," since there is a prima facie difficulty. How is God both one and three? How are the three identical with the one but not with each other? But the logic of the solution is not very difficult, hardly more difficult than the formulation of the problem. The key is to properly define the terms and distinguish the kinds of identity involved. But once this is done there is no logical problem at all, because the doctrine does not affirm and deny the same thing and in the same respect:

2. Divinity of Persons: The Father is God; the Son is God; the Holy Ghost is God.

It is orthodox to reformulate this as:

2a. Divinity of Persons: The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are identical with respect to the divine essence.

And now:

3. Distinctness of Persons: The Father is not the Son; and the Holy Ghost is not the Father or the Son.

It is orthodox to reformulate this as:

3a. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are distinct with respect to their personally constitutive relations of origin.

So: The divine persons are identical in one respect and distinct in another respect. This is very different from saying "3=1" or "~(things which are equal to the same thing are also equal to each other)".

As far as I'm concerned this dispenses with, at least, any obvious contradiction. The only way to make the contradiction reappear is by importing some such question-begging premise as the one I quoted in an earlier comment thread by Cartwright, from an article cited with approval by Dr Vallicella:

The heretical conclusion [tritheism] follows, by the general principle that if every A is a B then there cannot be fewer B's than A's.

Cartwright claims that this principle "is evident to the natural light of reason," but the examples he gives are not analogous to the case of the Trinity: "Thus, if every cat is an animal, there cannot be fewer animals than cats; if every senator from Massachusetts is a Democrat, there cannot be fewer Democrats than senators from Massachusetts. Just so, if every Divine Person is a God, there cannot be fewer Gods than Divine Persons." But these examples all presuppose a paradigm of the relation of essence to supposit which is explicitly denied in the doctrine of the Trinity, for reasons explained in my last post. In a quote from St Bonaventure I have already pointed out the difference between humanity in Peter and Paul, for instance, and divinity in the Father and the Son. In the first case Cartwright's principle is correct: If every apostle is a man, then there cannot be fewer men than apostles. But the multiplication of apostles involves necessarily the multiplication of individual instances of humanity. On the other hand since deity is not a common nature like humanity, the multiplication of divine supposits cannot be presumed to involve the multiplication of individual instances of deity. Furthermore it should be clear that the claim is not that "The Father is a God," and "The Son is a God, for this formulation, again, presupposes that "God" is a universal and "divinity" a common nature, a "multiply instantiable entity," which I have already denied.*

One may decide that the way that Catholic theology explains the relation of the essence to the divine persons, and their distinction from one another solely according to their personally constitutive relations of origin, is incoherent or otherwise unsatisfying. But in order to do so one must engage this problem and locate the contradiction somewhere further back than where Dr Vallicella does so.

As it stands Dr Vallicella's attempts to grapple with the Trinity are not as off the mark as Dawkins' flying spaghetti monsters or his absurd attempts to refute arguments to a First Cause by resorting to a childish infinite regress argument. The difference, however, is one of degree, not of kind. If Dr Vallicella's aim really is, as stated, to discover whether the doctrine is thinkable without contradiction, then he must attempt to think it as it is thought, without importing foreign premises.

*There is so little danger of Catholic doctrine falling into tritheism or affirming any multiplication of the divine essence that I would be more sympathetic to an objection claiming that the three persons could not be really distinct at all than to this one claiming that they are too distinct to preserve divine unity. After all the word person does not signify a substance at all, but a relation! And the divine persons are defined as internal relations in the one God. Just look at Aquinas, Summa I q.29 a.4: "Distinctio autem in divinis non fit nisi per relationes originis, ut dictum est supra. Relatio autem in divinis non est sicut accidens inhaerens subiecto, sed est ipsa divina essentia: unde est subsistens, sicut essentia divina subsistit. Sicut ergo deitas est Deus, ita paternitas divina est Deus Pater, qui est persona divina. Persona igitur divina significat relationem ut subistentem. Et hoc est significare relationem per modum substantiae quae est hypostasis subsistens in natura divina; licet subsistens in natura divina non sit aliud quam natura divina. Based on texts like this I could give more credence to an objection that there were not really three at all than to the objection that according to this doctrine God is not really one.

Reply to the Maverick Philosopher

Dr Vallicella has honored me by responding to my last post at his blog, here:

Here is most of the reply that I posted there:

According to him: You write that God is a nature, and that this nature is thrice instantiated in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. But the reader may notice that I never wrote any such thing. It is clear that Dr Vallicella taken the word “nature” in the wrong sense, and read “instantiation” into it when this is doctrinallly inappropriate. Again, he writes, Your talk of instantiation suggests that God is a multiply instantiable entity whose instances are F, S, HG.

But I very much wish to deny this. It is central to monotheism that there is only one instance of the divine nature, and so whatever the multiplication of persons in God may be taken to mean, it cannot mean that there is more than one instance of God or individual God, which as he rightly points out compromises monotheism. As St Bonaventure says (In Sent. I.2.1): “It is impossible for there to be several gods, and if the meaning of the word ‘God’ is correctly received it is not only impossible but even unintelligible.”

So his use of “nature” to mean “multiply instantiable entity” suggests that the divine nature is a universal which is individuated in three instances. But the divine nature is not a universal, apt to be applied to or predicated of many, but a “form” which is singular by necessity. Theologians explain this necessity because of God’s simplicity (in order for a universal to be multiply instantiated it has to enter into composition with some individuating factors, but the divine nature is neither composible nor composed), God’s infinity (the divine nature is without limitation, but every case of instantiation involves a delimitation of one instance from all others), and so forth. Duns Scotus writes (in Reportatio I-A 2.3.3), “Whatever is of itself just a ‘this’ cannot possibly be multiplied, but whatever exists in the divine that is of one sort, is just of itself ‘this’ [i.e. is individual per se]”.

Every orthodox theologian, therefore, denies that in the Trinitarian productions – the generation of the Son by the Father or the spiration of the Holy Ghost by the Father and the Son – God produces another God, precisely because the divine nature cannot be multiplied. Again, Scotus (Reportatio I-A 5.1.1): “The essence neither procreates nor is procreated, and all the arguments that I find why it does not generate really come down to this. If this thing generates, then it procreates a real thing distinct from this essence. For no real thing generates itself. Therefore, it procreates some real thing that is not in the divine nature, because intrinsically there is no diversity there . . .”

If the divine nature were multiplied, there would be a plurality of Gods, and so a plurality of divine existences, operations, etc. But it’s intrinsic to the doctrine of the Trinity that the being or existence of the Father and the Son is one being. The operation whereby God creates the world is one operation, equally belonging to all three persons, not three cooperative activites. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are not one God because they are each a (different) instance of the divine nature, but because they are each the same instance of the divine nature. Scotus once more (Reportato I-A 4.2): God is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost “by a singularity which is shared, by which ‘this God’ is common to all three. And a singularity or haecceity similar to this is not to be found in creatures, because in creatures nothing is a ‘this’ except by the ultimate haecceity, which is completely incapable of being shared.”

That is, for creatures a supposit or hypostasis is only distinguished from another one of the same nature by the multiplication of the nature through an individuating difference. “Humanity” is not a singular individual nature by itself, but only by an additional instantiating factor. But “deity” is a singular individual nature by itself.

This is why the divine persons are said to be distinguished from one another only by their relations of origin. The Son has the very same deity that the Father has, which means he shares every single attribute belonging to the Father, except Paternity. In begetting the Father communicates his numerically identical essence and existence to the Son, and fails to communicate only his ingeneracy, the fact that he is unbegotten. St Bonaventure writes (In Sent. 1.4.1.1): Whatever the Son has, he has either freom himself or from another; but he has deity, and not from himself, for then he would be unbegotten, therefore he has it from another.”

So there is no individuting factor in the three divine Persons except their relations of origin, and these relations are within the single divine nature or essence rather than multiplications of it. Paternity and Filiation are ways in which the one God is related to himself. The divine persons as distinct from one another have only relative subsistence, as opposed to the absolute subsistence of the divine nature. Again, this is contrast to the state of things we’re familiar with, in which for there to be many human persons there have to be many humanities. St Bonaventure once more (In Sent. 1.4.1.2): “Father and Son and Holy Ghost are united in this name ‘God’, not from diverse causes [of individuality] but by reason of one deity or essence. [In contrast] there is a union of diverse causes, for example, when Peter and John are united in ‘man’, but by reason of diverse instances of humanity, because the humanity of Peter is one thing while that of John is another. . . . but Father and Son and Holy Spirit are united in one deity or essence but are distinct by reason of the plurality of persons.”

Any nature except the divine nature is a “multiply instantiable entity”, not individual through itself, and so the multiplication of hypostases, persons, or supposits requires the multiplication of the nature through some individuating factor in addition to the essence, whereby John’s humanity is specifically identical to but numerically distinct from Peter’s humanity. But, as I said before, the divine nature is necessarily individual through itself, and so in the multiplication of supposits in God the nature “deity” remains numerically as well as specifically identical, and the supposits or person are only distinct through their constituting relations.

Substance and Hypostasis in the Trinity

In my experience a lot of the problems in modern philosophy of religion come about from not taking enough care to get right the religious position the philosopher is analyzing. Part of this difficulty stems from the way terminology shifts across the centuries, so that the modern philosopher takes for granted an anachronistic understanding of key terms.

Dr Vallicella and others at Maverick Philosopher have been discussing the logical coherence of the doctrine of the Trinity, as well as giving links to contemporary philosophy of religion discussions of the topic. Here is one of the posts: http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2010/01/some-water-analogies-for-the-trinity.html

More than once Dr Vallicella points out that God's substance can't be understood as matter, which is correct. But he fails to understand what "substance" means in trinitarian doctrine. He writes: "The sense in which water is a substance is not the sense in which God is a substance. Water is a substance in the sense of a stuff; God is a substance in the sense of a hypostasis (that which stands under) or hypokeimenon (that which is placed under), or as I prefer to say, an individual."

From the standpoint of traditional, classical Trinitarian theology, this is incorrect. God is a substance neither in the sense of stuff (hyle) nor in the sense of individual (hypostasis). Here's a representative explanatory snippet from St John of Damascus, showing the universal traditional use of the terms, from "De Fide Orthodoxa" c.48: "Substantia quidem communem speciem et complectivam speciem homoiodon (id est earum quae unum sunt specie) hypostaseon (id est personarum) significat, utputa Deus, homo; hypostasis autem atomon (id est individuum) demonstrat, scilicet Patrem, Filium, Spiritum Sanctum, Petrum, Paulum."

So "substance" here means something like "essence" or "being" (in the sense of ousia) rather than hypostasis; the whole doctrine of the Trinity depends on this distinction between the one nature, substance, being, essence, etc. on the one hand and the three individual persons or hypostases on the other. In most cases where there is one existing human nature (man), there is one individual hypostasis (Peter or Paul); in the case of the Trinity there is one divine nature (God) instantiated in three hypostases (Father and Son and Holy Spirit); conversely, in the Incarnation there are two existing natures (God and man), but only one hypostasis (Christ the Incarnate Logos). It is not good Trinitarian doctrine to say that there is one individual or hypostasis (God) who is identical to three individual persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).

There's no point in discussing the coherence of a doctrine if the doctrine is not first clearly understood. But the doctrine turns into unintelligible mush if these crucial distinctions are not carefully preserved.

Bonaventure contra Feeney

Each of these excerpts should be of interest to Protestants and those who encounter Protestant ideas. It's always nice to see an old author affirm something that people accuse of being a modern innovation. Each excerpt is from In Sent. IV. Dist. XVII. Pars I. Art. I. Q.IV, on whether confession is necessary for justification, and I translate without providing the Latin:

Again, it seems so from reason, for everyone having grace and justice enters into the kingdom of heaven, nor can anyone close the gate, justice and grace being preserved; but no one can enter into the kingdom of heaven except through the doorward [ostiarium] Peter, since the keys are given to him, from which no one is exempt: therefore no one can obtain grace nor have remission of guilt, unless he has it through the authority of the supreme Pontiff and those who are in communion with him. But no one is absolved by a priest without confession first, ergo etc . . . it should be replied that to enter without the power of the keys can be understood in two ways: either without the power, understood contrarily, as though despising the key of Peter; or without the power, understood privatively, and this [can be understood] in two ways: either simply privatively, so that one does not have the effect of absolution, neither in work nor in devotion nor in desire; or so that one has it in devotion and intention [proposito], and so has it in a certain way. In the first and second way one does not enter, nor is justified, but in the third way one may enter, and this in some way through the key, although not just as he who is actually absolved.

And the second:

God is more prone to being merciful than to condemning . . . God does not restrict his power to the sacraments. Therefore whenever man does what is in himself, God does what is in himself: therefore, if someone is sorry for his guilt in his heart, [even] if there is not a confessor or external confession, God does what is in himself: therefore he justifies.