Philo­soph­i­cal the­ism, in con­tem­po­rary times, has been dom­i­nat­ed by philoso­phers who are Chris­tians. These the­is­tic philoso­phers have pub­lished a great amount of lit­er­a­ture defend­ing the ratio­nal­i­ty of belief in God, and any par­tic­i­pant in the great debate will sure­ly be famil­iar with the names of intel­lec­tu­al giants like Alvin Planti­nga, Richard Swin­burne, William Lane Craig, among many others.

Swin­burne, for exam­ple, gives the­is­tic belief, and in par­tic­u­lar Chris­t­ian belief, philo­soph­i­cal treat­ment in toto. I have noticed the fol­low­ing pro­gres­sion in his case for Chris­tian­i­ty. First, he argues that the notion of God-talk’ is per­fect­ly coher­ent, and there are no a pri­ori rea­sons to reject the­is­tic belief. See Swin­burne’s The Coher­ence of The­ism (Oxford, Claren­don Press : 1977) Next, he argues on cumu­la­tive grounds that nat­ur­al the­ol­o­gy ren­ders the exis­tence of God more prob­a­ble than not. Richard Swin­burne, The Exis­tence of God (Oxford, Claren­don Press : 1991)Final­ly, Swin­burne artic­u­lates var­i­ous argu­ments for Chris­t­ian par­tic­u­lar­ism, e.g. rea­sons to believe in the Chris­t­ian Rev­e­la­tion, the Res­ur­rec­tion of Christ, etc.Swin­burne’s argu­ments can be found in Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Atone­ment (Oxford, Claren­don Press : 1989), and Rev­e­la­tion (Oxford, Claren­don Press : 1992). He there­fore epit­o­mizes the clas­sic Lock­ean evi­den­tial­ist, who is pre­pared to give ratio­nal rea­sons for all his beliefs.

Of course, not all Chris­t­ian philoso­phers have the evi­den­tial­ist enthu­si­asm of Swin­burne. The reformed epis­te­mol­o­gists, spear­head­ed by Alvin Planti­nga and Nicholas Wolter­storff, approach the­is­tic belief ana­lyt­i­cal­ly, but not on evi­den­tial­ist grounds.See for exam­ple, Alvin Planti­nga & Nicholas Wolter­storff, Faith and Ratio­nal­i­ty(South Bend, The Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame Press : 1983) Although they may reject giv­ing argu­ments for reli­gious beliefs, and still claim that belief in God is ratio­nal, what is impor­tant to note is that they are pre­pared to dis­cuss the­ism in an ana­lyt­ic and ratio­nal manner.

These prefa­to­ry remarks are impor­tant to bear in mind, since I now wish to look at the philo­soph­i­cal ten­abil­i­ty of the (ortho­dox) Chris­t­ian depic­tion of God, which I feel has been large­ly ignored by con­tem­po­rary Chris­t­ian philoso­phers. My analy­sis will only be con­fined to divine ontol­ogy, and the con­tention I will be argu­ing for is that Chris­t­ian monothe­ism’ is onto­log­i­cal­ly inco­her­ent. This has fur­ther impli­ca­tions for Chris­t­ian par­tic­u­lar­ism (in so far as it is under­stood by Pauline ontol­ogy), for if, on a pri­ori grounds, the Chris­t­ian depic­tion of God is impos­si­ble, then it fol­lows a for­tiori, that the doc­tri­nal par­tic­u­lars which are con­tin­gent on this erro­neous ontol­ogy can­not be true.

I am writ­ing this piece with the inten­tion of hear­ing from Chris­t­ian philoso­phers who adhere to the Pauline ontol­ogy of God, believe in its coher­ence, and are will­ing to dis­cuss the mat­ter on ratio­nal grounds.

Locat­ing Our Topic

Nat­u­ral­ly, no insight is free from pre­sup­po­si­tions, and so I will need to state the posi­tion from which my analy­sis is going to depart. The ter­mi­nus of nat­ur­al the­ol­o­gy is usu­al­ly a meta­phys­i­cal pos­tu­la­tion, some first cause’, intel­li­gent design­er’, law giv­er’, or the like. The the­ist, of course, argues that this being is God. Accord­ing to Swin­burne, to state that God exists is to state that there is :

A per­son with­out a body (i.e. a spir­it), present every­where, the cre­ator and sus­tain­er of the uni­verse, a free agent, able to do every­thing (i.e. omnipo­tent), know­ing all things, per­fect­ly good, a source of moral oblig­a­tion, immutable, eter­nal, a nec­es­sary being, holy, and wor­thy of wor­ship.“Swin­burne, The Coher­ence of The­ism, p. 1

This is a def­i­n­i­tion of God that Jew­ish-Islam­ic the­ism can eas­i­ly accept with­out any major dif­fi­cul­ties, for this is the com­mon under­stand­ing of God in West­ern the­ism. As far as divine ontol­ogy goes, it is a monothe­is­tic def­i­n­i­tion : there is only one God, the Cre­ator and Sus­tain­er of the uni­verse who exists. Under­stood thus, there is noth­ing obvi­ous­ly inco­her­ent about pos­tu­lat­ing such a being. I will fur­ther assume that there are no a pri­ori rea­sons for con­sid­er­ing the exis­tence of such a being (tak­ing Swin­burne’s def­i­n­i­tion) as impos­si­ble, due to some log­i­cal con­tra­dic­tion or the like (a defence of such a con­tention will be the task for anoth­er day).

Now the ques­tions I wish to explore are these : When Swin­burne’s def­i­n­i­tion of God is unpacked, and fur­ther expli­cat­ed with­in ortho­dox Chris­t­ian the­ism, is it still coher­ent ? Are there any a pri­ori rea­sons for con­sid­er­ing it to be inco­her­ent, and thus impos­si­ble ? If so, what impli­ca­tions are there for ortho­dox Chris­t­ian particulars ?

Stat­ing Trini­tar­i­an Ontology

Accord­ing to ortho­dox Chris­tian­i­ty, although there exists a God as under­stood by Swin­burne, He is tri-per­son­al. In oth­er words, God is three dis­tinct per­sons (The Father, Son and Holy Spir­it) in one sub­stance, and yet He is still one being. To under­stand this, we can do no bet­ter than turn to the Athanasian Creed, where we find the fol­low­ing exis­ten­tial statements :

[T]he Catholic Faith is this, that we wor­ship one God in Trin­i­ty and Trin­i­ty in Uni­ty. Nei­ther con­found­ing the Per­sons, nor divid­ing the Sub­stance. For there is one Per­son of the Father, anoth­er of the Son, and anoth­er of the Holy Ghost. But the God­head of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is all One, the Glo­ry Equal, the Majesty Co-Eter­nal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost … So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not Three Gods, but One God … there is One Father, not Three Fathers ; one Son, not Three Sons ; One Holy Ghost, not Three Holy Ghosts … He there­fore that will be saved, must thus think of the Trin­i­ty.“The Athanasian Creed, avail­able online. I have sum­ma­rized the idea behind the doc­trine of the Trin­i­ty, although it is sug­gest­ed the read­er scru­ti­nize the entire text. 

Try­ing to make sense of the creed can be dif­fi­cult, and there­fore we can fol­low philoso­pher Richard CartwrightRichard Cartwright, On the Log­i­cal Prob­lem of the Trin­i­ty’, in Philo­soph­i­cal Essays (MIT Press : 1987), p. 188. by stat­ing the sev­en basic propo­si­tions of the creed, the belief in which is essen­tial for sal­va­tion, for the pur­pos­es of analysis.

    1. The Father is God.
    2. The Son is God.
    3. The Holy Spir­it is God.
    4. The Father is not the Son.
    5. The Father is not the Holy Spirit.
    6. The Son is not the Holy Spirit.
    7. There is exact­ly one God.

From this point onwards, when I refer to the Chris­t­ian under­stand­ing of God, it is in ref­er­ence to the Athanasian Creed that my argu­ments are to be understood.

Can A Tri-Per­son­al Deity Exist ?

Answer­ing this ques­tion is very much an onto­log­i­cal explo­ration. We need to dis­tin­guish between a pri­ori and a pos­te­ri­ori answers to the ques­tion of exis­tence. By a pri­ori answers, I am refer­ring to answers which speak of con­cep­tu­al pos­si­bil­i­ties or impos­si­bil­i­ties. For exam­ple, there is a con­cep­tu­al pos­si­bil­i­ty that there exists in the world a uni­corn. There is noth­ing in the def­i­n­i­tion of a uni­corn which would imme­di­ate­ly ren­der its exis­tence impos­si­ble. On the oth­er hand, it is con­cep­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble that there exists in the world a mar­ried bach­e­lor, since the notion of a mar­ried bach­e­lor is inco­her­ent. We know imme­di­ate­ly a pri­ori that such a being could not exist, ever.

By a pos­te­ri­ori answers, I am refer­ring to propo­si­tions which we know the truth or fal­si­ty of through expe­ri­ence. Thus, although the exis­tence of a uni­corn is con­cep­tu­al­ly pos­si­ble, most peo­ple do not believe that uni­corns exist because of the lack of expe­ri­ence they have had, or lack of evi­dence. How­ev­er, one would always be open to the evi­dence, since uni­corns could exist. But it would be absurd to seek evi­dence for the exis­tence of mar­ried bach­e­lors, since it is con­cep­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble for such beings to exist.

Here, I am con­cerned with the def­i­n­i­tion of the Trin­i­ty, propo­si­tions (1)-(7) stat­ed above. If any two of these propo­si­tions are con­tra­dic­to­ry, then it would be con­cep­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble for God, in so far as He is under­stood in ortho­dox Chris­t­ian the­ism, to exist. And there­fore, assess­ing the a pos­te­ri­ori evi­dence for or against the doc­trine of the Trin­i­ty (as is often the case with the Bib­li­cal data) would be as mean­ing­less as enter­tain­ing a mar­ried bach­e­lor’s request for divorce.

Let the Father be des­ig­nat­ed by x, the Son by y, and the Holy Spir­it by z. God, as defined by Swin­burne, can be des­ig­nat­ed by G. As Cartwright notes, one way to inter­pret the creed is to take the verb is’ and under­stand it to mean is iden­ti­cal with’Cartwright, Trin­i­ty, p. 191, there­fore, x = G, y = G, and z = G. But if this is true, then it log­i­cal­ly fol­lows (accord­ing to Leib­niz’s prin­ci­ple of iden­ti­ty, which states : if x is the same object as y then x has exact­ly the same prop­er­ties that y has) that x = y, x = z, and y = z. How­ev­er, the creed will not allow this : (4)-(6). The Father, Son and Holy Sprit are dif­fer­ent and dis­tinct from each other.

Anoth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty is to con­strue G as a gen­er­al termIbid., p. 192 to avoid the log­i­cal incon­sis­ten­cy. Thus, x is a G, y is a G and z is a G. But sure­ly this would con­tra­dict (7), for we are sug­gest­ing the exis­tence of three Gods, or tri-the­ism. Cartwright presents the fol­low­ing syl­lo­gism : every Divine Per­son is a God ; there are at least three Divine Per­sons ; there­fore, there at least three Gods”.Ibid., p. 196 The sec­ond premise is sup­port­ed the prin­ci­ple : if every A is a B then there can­not be few­er B’s than A’s. Cartwright cites the fol­low­ing anal­o­gy. If every cat is an ani­mal, there can­not be few­er ani­mals than cats.

It seems we have a dilem­ma : if x, y and z are iden­ti­cal with G, then we sim­ply have one per­son, or three names for one per­son. The hereti­cal posi­tion of modal­ism comes to mind, where the eter­nal coex­is­tence of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spir­it is denied. But if x, y and z are a G (i.e. belong to a gen­era), then one has three divine per­sons, which of course is anoth­er hereti­cal posi­tion : tri-the­ism. In the first instance, the con­tra­dic­tion can be removed by alter­ing propo­si­tions (4)-(6). In the sec­ond, by alter­ing (7). But tak­en alto­geth­er, (1)-(7) por­tray an incon­sis­tent set. It fol­lows ipso fac­to that the Chris­t­ian God, as He is depict­ed in the Creed, can­not pos­si­bly exist.

Impli­ca­tions For Chris­t­ian Particularism

Ortho­dox Chris­t­ian ontol­ogy, as depict­ed in the Athanasian Creed, forms the basis for a num­ber of Chris­t­ian par­tic­u­lars. And these par­tic­u­lars are con­tin­gent upon the truth of the Chris­t­ian ontol­ogy of God. The impli­ca­tions of onto­log­i­cal inco­her­ence of the Trin­i­ty are that cer­tain doc­tri­nal par­tic­u­lars sim­ply can­not be true. For exam­ple, the divin­i­ty of Jesus (the sec­ond per­son of the Trin­i­ty took on human form), the incar­na­tion (which involves the sec­ond per­son in the Trin­i­ty being com­plete­ly God and man simul­ta­ne­ous­ly), etc. There seems to be an a pri­ori block­ade that pre­vents these doc­tri­nal par­tic­u­lars from even get­ting off the ground.

Con­clu­sions

To con­clude, the doc­trine of the Trin­i­ty as pre­sent­ed in the Athanasian Creed depicts an onto­log­i­cal­ly inco­her­ent mod­el of God. To dis­solve the con­tra­dic­tions which arise from ana­lyz­ing the Creed, one can either reject the plu­ral­i­ty of per­sons and hold that there exists a sin­gle per­son with dif­fer­ent names or modes. 

Alter­na­tive­ly, one can embrace tri-the­ism. As long as one is com­mit­ted to nei­ther con­found­ing the per­sons, nor divid­ing the sub­stance, as the Creed would have us do, one is hold­ing beliefs about God which are log­i­cal­ly incon­sis­tent. And if one is to remain con­sis­tent with the philo­soph­i­cal treat­ment of the­ism in con­tem­po­rary phi­los­o­phy by the likes of Swin­burne and Craig, it fol­lows that the doc­trine of the Trin­i­ty, and its rela­tion to Chris­t­ian monothe­ism’ — being pro­found­ly irra­tional — should be abandoned. Is The Trinitarian Ontology Coherent? 1

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20 responses to “Is The Trini­tar­i­an Ontol­ogy Coherent ?”

  1. shery Avatar
    shery

    A few com­ments : One thing I’d like to add, based on my cur­rent read­ing in the new book Who Wrote the Gospels?” by Ran­del Helms, on the dif­fer­ences between Mar­can and Matthean the­olo­gies, is : Why did Jesus’ fam­i­ly, on hear­ing of Jesus’ com­mis­sion, go out to lay hold on him : for they said, He is beside him­self” (Mark 3:21), even though Mary knew her son was on a divine mis­sion, from the annun­ci­a­tion and from Joseph’s dream ?

    As a the­ist, how­ev­er, I do find one item par­tic­u­lar­ly poor : If God exists, is it unrea­son­able to sup­pose that there would be at least one irrefutable proof of his exis­tence. One could just as eas­i­ly jus­ti­fy solip­sism to one­self (who else is there?) by say­ing that if oth­er peo­ple real­ly exist­ed (as first-per­son, feel­ing beings rather than as automa­ton’s or fig­ments of my imag­i­na­tion), then there would be at least one irrefutable proof of their exis­tence. Per­haps James is more con­cerned with the Bib­li­cal God, but one need not be a Chris­t­ian to believe in God (not the bib­li­cal imitation).

    On a sim­i­lar ques­tion, while I find the doc­trine of the trin­i­ty ridicu­lous, I don’t think it could not pos­si­bly be true (just that there is no rea­son to think it true). A bet­ter refu­ta­tion of the trin­i­ty would be twofold : 1. Even if the Bible claimed it to be true, that would­n’t make it so. 2. The Bible does­n’t even claim it. i.e., in the syn­op­tic Gospels Jesus is the son of God, not God, so we have dis­agree­ment among the evan­ge­lists over this per­son being part of the god­head, and there is noth­ing in ref­er­ences to the holy spir­it” that indi­cates this is a per­son cova­lent with God. The Holy Spir­it could be just anoth­er angel, like Gabriel, or maybe anoth­er name for the whole heav­en­ly host of all angels, or who knows what ? BTW, I don’t find the con­cept impos­si­ble, because God is indeed beyond com­pre­hen­sion (that’s a rea­son why no pos­si­ble Bible could ever allow us to com­pre­hend God), and an anal­o­gy would be that if we tried to explain three-dimen­sion­al space to a per­son living,somehow, in a one-dimen­sion­al uni­verse, would result in the same bewil­der­ment we feel at the oth­er type of trin­i­ty. Space ? Dimen­sion ? what’s the dif­fer­ence he would say. But I repeat, I see no need for the hypoth­e­sis of a trinity.

  2. meedge Avatar
    meedge

    Read that first part of that arti­cle till it got to about here :

    But it would be absurd to seek evi­dence for the exis­tence of mar­ried bach­e­lors, since it is con­cep­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble for such beings to exist.”

    And then I stopped. Why you might ask ?

    Let me ask you a ques­tion ? Do you expect to be able to log­i­cal­ly under­stand God and quan­ti­fy him math­e­mat­i­cal­ly ? This is (as you would say) an infi­nite being. God exists out­side of the phys­i­cal laws and restric­tions of the space in which you inhab­it. All of your log­ic is tied to this phys­i­cal uni­verse, but it would­n’t restrict God because he isn’t con­tained by it. Maybe the prop­er­ties of this space allow a mar­ried bach­e­lor. How do you know ?

    Now, lets ask this question :
    Okay, if God cre­at­ed the uni­verse — who cre­at­ed God?”

    Does this ques­tion make sense ? No ? Well, its cer­tain­ly not a very good one because it assumes that time and causal­i­ty exist in the same way in the space God inhab­its to that in our uni­verse. Causal­i­ty maybe did­n’t exist before the cre­ation of the uni­verse, and maybe did­n’t exist in the dif­fer­ent prop­er­ties of the space in which God inhab­its, or maybe its com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. Maybe an event hap­pens first, and then the thing that caused it hap­pened after­wards. We JUST DON’T KNOW.

    And this is where we get into problems.…For exam­ple here
    Let the Father be des­ig­nat­ed by x, the Son by y, and the Holy Spir­it by z. God, as defined by Swin­burne, can be des­ig­nat­ed by G. As Cartwright notes, one way to inter­pret the creed is to take the verb is’ and under­stand it to mean is iden­ti­cal with’8, there­fore, x = G, y = G, and z = G. But if this is true, then it log­i­cal­ly fol­lows (accord­ing to Leibniz’s prin­ci­ple of iden­ti­ty, which states : if x is the same object as y then x has exact­ly the same prop­er­ties that y has) that x = y, x = z, and y = z. How­ev­er, the creed will not allow this : (4)-(6). The Father, Son and Holy Sprit are dif­fer­ent and dis­tinct from each other.”

    You are eval­u­at­ing some­thing using the mathematics/​physics of this space that exists in anoth­er space with almost cer­tain­ly a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent set of mathematics/​physics gov­ern­ing it and expect­ing to get a sen­si­ble answer ? Its whole pos­si­ble that in this space the Creed WILL fol­low this. Do you think that you should be able to quan­ti­fy what God is ? It does­n’t make sense to assume that the log­ic of your world also restricts God.

    Ulti­mate­ly, using log­ic tied to the math­e­mat­ic space that we know holds true in this uni­verse and apply­ing it to any­thing which is not who­ley con­tained BY this math­e­mat­i­cal space is utter­ly point­less. We can real­ly reli­ably infer any­thing about any­thing that is not con­tained whole­ly and restrict­ed who­ley by the nature of the space in which we inhab­it. The maths is bro­ken. This is why it will nev­er be pos­si­ble to be able to look back _​beyond_​the sin­gu­lar­i­ty at the incep­tion of the big bang, because all physics breaks down and we have no means to do it.

  3. Denis Giron Avatar
    Denis Giron

    Some quick comments…

    First, kudos” to MENJ for mir­ror­ing Imran Aijaz’ arti­cle. Many of his extreme­ly well writ­ten pieces were appar­ent­ly lost as his site under­went revi­sion some time ago, and that is an unfor­tu­nate loss indeed, since Imran is one of the most bril­lian Mus­lims on the net.

    Regard­ing George’s post from Feb­ru­ary 15th, one por­tion which I wish to view in iso­la­tion (i.e. unre­lat­ed to the rest of the stuff he wrote) is the following :

    the equa­tion is not G = x, G = z, G = y, but G = (x + y + z), which is to my mind per­fect­ly coherent.”

    I think this scratch­es the sur­face of a prop­er response to Imran’s argu­ment. I agree with Imran that it is a con­tra­dic­tion to claim that each Per­son is iden­ti­cal to the God­head yet not iden­ti­cal to one anoth­er. I also agree with Imran that it would be a con­tra­dic­tion to claim that each per­son is a god yet there is only one god. But there is anoth­er solution…

    The response to Imran is inspired by William Lane Craig’s approach to the doc­trine of the Trin­i­ty (cf. his book, Philo­soph­i­cal Foun­da­tions for a Chris­t­ian World­view”). It holds that the three Per­sons are not by them­selves deities, but rather divine beings which are each a prop­er part of a sin­gle Deity. When it is said that Jesus is God,” the cop­u­la of such a propo­si­tion is inter­pre­tat­ed as one of pred­i­ca­tion rather than iden­ti­ty (i.e. the state­ment is that Jesus is divine, but not The God [of Abra­ham]). Inter­est­ing­ly enough, this posi­tion has sup­port in the Greek text of John 1:1. Regard­less, putting Bib­li­cal sup­port (or lack there­of) aside for a moment, I would like to offer a log­i­cal­ly coher­ent ver­sion of the Trin­i­ty, put forth in the lan­guage of for­mal log­ic, and then explained.

    But first let me describe some of the sym­bols I weill employ :

    G’x will rep­re­sent that x is a mem­ber of the class of things which are God” in a sense of pred­i­ca­tion (i.e. divine or in pos­ses­sion of some of the attrib­ut­es of deity) and proper
    parts of the Godhead.

    The sim­i­lar look­ing con­struc­tion Gx (the dif­fer­ence between this and the above might be vocal­ized G‑prime-of‑x and G‑of‑x, respec­tive­ly) will state some­thing dif­fer­ent, name­ly that x is a deity.

    I will use the con­stants f, j, h, and ixGx to rep­re­sent the Father, Jesus, the Holy Ghost and the God­head, respec­tive­ly (with regard to ixGx, this is tak­en from Bri­an Left­ow’s employ­ment of Rus­sel­l’s def­i­nite descrip­tion oper­a­tor, but if any­one objects, they can sim­ply replace ixGx with g).

    x –> y will rep­re­sent if x, then y”

    ~ will rep­re­sent nega­tion (e.g. ~x means not‑x)

    = will be used to rep­re­sent identity

    & will be used as the con­junc­tive connective

    x y will rep­re­sent the bicon­di­tion­al (i.e. both if x then y as well as if y then x)

    x.P.y will rep­re­sent the rela­tion func­tion such that x is a prop­er part of y

    {x,y,z} will rep­re­sent the set/​class con­tain­ing x, y and z

    x.U.y will rep­re­sent x and y being unit­ed with­in the God­head in some way

    (x) will rep­re­sent the uni­ver­sal quan­ti­fi­er (i.e. for all x)

    (Ex) will rep­re­sent the exis­ten­tial quan­ti­fi­er (i.e. for some x, or there is at least one x such that)

    With that, the doc­trine might be writ­ten as follows :

    1. (x)(Gx (x = ixGx))
    2. ~(Ex)(Gx & ~(x = ixGx))
    3. (x)(G’x –> x.P.ixGx)
    4. (x)(y)((x.P.ixGx & y.P.ixGx) –> x.U.y)
    5. G’f
    6. G’j
    7. G’h
    8. ~Gf
    9. ~Gj
    10. ~Gh
    11. (~(f = j) & ~(f = h)) & ~(j = h)
    12. {f,j,h} = ixGx

    ELUCIDATION : The first propo­si­tion notes that any­thing which is iden­ti­cal to the God­head is a deity, and the sec­ond propo­si­tion notes that there does not exist any being which is a deity and not iden­ti­cal to the God­head. In oth­er words, the first two propo­si­tions are state­ments of Monothe­ism (there is only one deity, and that is the God­head). The third propo­si­tion notes that any being which is God in a sense of pred­i­ca­tion (i.e. divine or in the pos­ses­sion of some of the attrib­ut­es of deity) is a prop­er part of the God­head (and it log­i­cal­ly fol­lows by deny­ing th con­se­quent that those beings which are not prop­er parts of the God­head are not God” in a sense of pred­i­ca­tion). The fourth propo­si­tion states that any two (or more) beings who are prop­er parts of the God­head are unit­ed with­in the God­head. I make no attempt to explain *how* they are unit­ed ; rather I am sim­ply assert­ing that they are unit­ed in some way. The fifth, sixth and sev­enth propo­si­tions note that the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spir­it are each God in a sense of pred­i­ca­tion. The eighth, ninth, and tenth propo­si­tions specif­i­cal­ly deny that any of these per­sons are deities by them­selves, nor is any of them (by virtue of the first propo­si­tion) iden­ti­cal to the God­head. The eleventh propo­si­tion notes that none of the three per­sons are iden­ti­cal to one anoth­er. The twelfth propo­si­tion notes that the God­head is iden­ti­cal to the com­bined set of the three per­sons in toto. Note how­ev­er that this is for these con­stants specif­i­cal­ly — no hard and fast rule was stat­ed where an object is nec­es­sar­i­ly iden­ti­cal to the col­lec­tion of its mem­ber parts. The point is that an object *can* be iden­ti­cal with the col­lec­tion of its prop­er parts in toto, and in this case it is. This doc­trine is log­i­cal­ly coher­ent (i.e. there is noth­ing self con­tra­dic­to­ry about it).

  4. Sunny Avatar
    Sunny

    George, why restrict your god to 3 per­sons, why not 4, 5, 6. If what you say is true then god is so pow­er­ful that he can be one and have bil­lion per­sons at the same time (eg, Fater, Moth­er, Son, Daugh­ter, Spir­it, Grand-son, Grand-daughter, …)