Question Is the doctrine of the trinity illogical?

Accepted:
August 25, 2011

Comments

The doctrine of the Trinity has been receiving more attention today than almost ever before by philosophers. One can easily parody the Trinity as holding that one plus one plus plus one equals one! But there is a huge, nuanced body of literature in which philosophers have proposed various models in which there can be one God and yet the divine nature is not homogonous, but constituted by three persons. Really easy access to the latest work can be found on the free Enclopedia of Philosophy (online) for the entry "Trinity." I myself favor the periochoretic model, defended by Stephen Davis. Here are three recent books:

Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism? by Thomas McCall

An Introduction to The Trinity by Declan Marmion and Rik van Nieuwenhove

And just published last month, I think, you might consider The Cambridge Companion to The Trinity edited by Peter Phan.

The Stanford article is written by Dale Tuggy, a Christian philosopher who is skeptical of the different models, and so that entry will get you into some of the challenges facing the Trinity, but I believe Tuggy's worries can be addressed effectively. William Hasker is a first-rate philosopher who has replied to Tuggy in a recent issue of the journal Religious Studies. Check it out! Good wishes! If I have time, I will spend more time with a follow-up reply in the next few days going through some of the arguments.

I thought I would add just a tad more.

Here is one argument against the Trinity and a reply:

It has been argued that the Trinity involves Tri-theism or the supposition that there are three Gods (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). There cannot be three Gods for this reason: If there is a God, God is omnipotent. A being is omnipotent if it is maximally powerful; there can be no being more powerful than an omnipotent being. But if the Trinity is true, neither of the persons in the Godhead are omnipotent, because the power of each can be challenged by the power of the other. The Father cannot make a universe, unless the Son or Holy Spirit consent. That is less powerful than if only the Father exists.

Here is a reply: If God exists, God is essentially good. That is, God cannot will that which is not good. If the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit share an essentially good nature, their wills cannot conflict. This seems more plausable when one takes up what I mentioned in my earlier reply: the parichoretic model of the Trinity which understands each Person as interpenetrating or being in a state of co-inherence with mutual, unequaled access to the mind of the other.

Here is one other interesting argument from medieval philosophy, but revived today by Richard Swinburne and Stephen Davis.

If God exists, God is perfect in love. (This might be justified either by an appeal to revelation or some kind of ontological argument to the effect that if God exists, God is maximally excellent)

The three highest loves are: love of self; love of another; and the love of two for a third.

IF God is Triune, God has self-love (each of the Persons possess this), the Father loves the Son, and the Father and the Son love the Holy Spirit.

Why not the love of three for four, etc? Swinburne thinks that is a further love that extends the three highest, so love of three for four or five or... are all goods, but they are not the chief, maximal perfections of love from which the other loves follow. A further point can be made that in classical theism, the love in the Triune Godhead, does lead to the love of more, namely the love of creation.

In any case, check out the reference I gave earlier, starting with the free online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Question Is the doctrine of the trinity illogical? Accepted:August 25, 2011

Question Is the doctrine of the trinity illogical?

Accepted:
August 25, 2011