Discussion on Ockham

I've been contributing to a little conversation on Ockham's nominalism and belief in whether God could create a Picasso without Picasso.

http://usuphilosophy.com/2007/07/19/could-god-have-made-a-picasso/

Discussion on Material Constitution

There's been a lot of good discussion on Brower and Rea's theory of the trinity and material constitution over at trinities.org.

These are the relevant posts (with their comments):

Constitution Trinitarianism Part 1: Ned and Lumpy
Constitution Trinitarianism Part 2: Craig's Objections
Linkage: Constitution Trinitarianism Around the Web
Constitution Trinitarianism Part 3: The Meaning of "Is"
Constitution Trinitarianism Part 4: Pausing and Revisiting Some Issues
Guest Post: JT Paasch on Constitution Trinitarianism
Constitution Trinitarianism Part 5: Ambiguous God-Talk

Scotus against Henry's view that the divine essence is a substratum

[This is my promised rewrite of the last post on Scotus, Ord. 1.5.2un nn. 72-74.]

Recently, Jeffrey Brower and Michael Rea have used a model of material constitution to explain the trinity (I have written before on this). One of the most distinctive features of their proposal is that it construes the divine essence as the substratum of the divine persons rather than as the generic nature of the divine persons. Around 600 years before Brower and Rea, Henry of Ghent proposed a very similar theory. A number of subsequent theologians followed Henry on this particular issue, and Henry's position may have survived were it not for the sharp criticisms of Scotus and Ockham. In any case, in this post I'd like to discuss Henry's position, and an objection by Scotus which I find particularly interesting.


Aristotle on Change and Production

Last week the tomatoes in my garden were green, but this week, after a few days of good sun, they are red. How should we explain this? Should we say that last week I had green tomatoes, but this week those green tomatoes have been replaced (perhaps by tomato fairies) with entirely new red tomatoes? Aristotle would say that's absurd. The red tomatoes are the same tomatoes as the green tomatoes. All that's happened is that the tomatoes have lost the quality of being green and acquired the quality of being red.

According to Aristotle then, things change by acquiring and/or losing various qualities. The entity underlying those qualities (in this case, the tomatoes), which Aristotle calls the 'substratum' or 'subject', does not itself change. The substratum persists throughout the change (e.g., the tomatoes persist throughout the change from green to red), so what changes are the qualities the substratum has (e.g., the change is between the qualities being green and being red).

While this account seems quite straight forward when it comes to explaining how things like tomatoes change from green to red, it might not seem so obvious when we look at the change involved in production. When x produces y, aren't we talking about producing something rather than just changing a substratum's qualities? Aristotle insists that although production is a different kind of change than the mere qualitative change we find in ripening tomatoes, there is still, at least in the case of material production, a substratum involved.

For example, when a sculptor produces a bronze statue, the sculptor is still working with a substratum, namely a lump of bronze. The sculptor does not produce the bronze. Rather, the sculptor arranges the bronze into the shape of the statue, so here too the substratum, the bronze, undergoes a change in its qualities: before the sculptor sets to work, the bronze does not have the quality of being a statue, but by the act of production, the bronze acquires the quality of being a statue. (For Aristotle, qualities like being a statue or of a different kind than qualities like being red, but that doesn't concern me here.)

This highlights the central place of materiality in Aristotle's conception of production. Things are made from various kinds of material, and this means that when something produces a product, the product is produced from some material. If I can use the phrase 'made from' in a fairly imprecise way, walls are made from bricks, hands are made from flesh and blood, light is made from energy, and so forth. Thus, on this Aristotelian view of production, we can talk about things coming from various kinds of material, just as we do when we say a statue is produced from bronze.

Notice that talking about what something is produced from is not the same thing as talking about who or what something is produced by. In the example of a bronze statue, the statue is produced from bronze, but it is produced by a sculptor. We can put this in relational terms. The statue is related to the sculptor by the relation is produced by. That is, the statue is produced by x, where x is the producer. Likewise, the statue is related to the bronze (the material) by the relation is produced from y, where y is the material. Let me call the relation is produced by 'RP' (for the Relation to the Producer), and let me call the relation is produced from 'RM' (for the Relation to the Material).

The distinction between RP and RM is important, because it can help us avoid ambiguity when we talk about the source or origin of a product. If we ask, 'where did x come from?', we might be asking about the producer, or we might be asking about the material. Imagine a masonry site where one of the beefier masons goes by the nick name 'Bricks'. One can picture all sorts of silly situations caused by a failure to distinguish between bricks as a material and Bricks as a producer. For example, if the foreman were to give the pay clerk a note reading 'Bricks: £500', the clerk might take this to mean that he should purchase £500 worth of bricks, when in fact he was meant to pay Bricks £500.


Henry of Ghent

Henry of Ghent finds this material view of production very useful when it comes to explaining how the Father produces the Son. The reason is that Henry does not want to say that the Father conjures up the Son out of nothing. If the Son were produced like that, the Son would be an entirely new God, entirely different from the Father, and then there would be two Gods. Consequently, Henry wants to say the Father produces the Son from something already there. On the Aristotelian view of production, a production does involve something that's already there, namely the substratum. If I produce a wall from bricks, I do not produce the bricks, for the bricks already exist. Instead, I just shape the wall out of the bricks. The bricks persist throughout the entire process.

Transferring this over to the divine case is fairly straightforward. The Father's substance, the divine essence, plays the role of the material or the substratum, such that the Father produces the Son out of his own substance. In this way, the Son is related to the Father by RP (since the Son is produced by the Father), and the Son is related to the Father's substance, namely the divine essence, by RM (since the Son is produced from the Father's substance). Imagine if a lump of clay, magically endowed with the power to change its shape, were to arrange itself into the shape of a statue. This would be roughly like what Henry has in mind. The Father (the lump of clay) shapes the Son (the statue) out of his own substance.

Obviously, talking of 'shaping' the Son out of the Father's substance is a crude way of putting the matter. Henry does not mean to say the divine essence is literally the material stuff out of which the Son is made in exactly the same way that bricks and clay are the material stuff out of which walls and statues are made. Bricks and clay are arrangeable stuff, and we make walls by arranging bricks wall-wise just as we make statues by arranging clay statue-wise. The divine essence is not arrangeable stuff like this, so Henry is not literally saying the Father arranges the divine essence Son-wise.

All Henry means to say is that the Son is related to the divine essence by RM. That is, Henry just means to say the Son is from the Father's substance (which is the divine essence). Perhaps it is better to think about this in terms of instantiation. The material or substratum of a product is that which instantiates the product, not the other way around. Walls are instantiated by bricks and statues are instantiated by clay, not the other way around. Likewise, the Son is instantiated by the divine essence, not the other way around. Thus, Henry sometimes describes the divine essence less precisely as the 'quasi material' of production, and he sometimes describes it more precisely as the substratum of production.

In any case, this account gives Henry the conditions he wants: the Son is not conjured up out of nothing, since he is produced from the divine essence. Additionally, the divine essence persists throughout the whole process as the substratum, so the Father and Son both share the numerically same substratum. Consequently, we don't end up with two Gods, just as we don't end up with two clays when a lump of clay makes up a statue.

As was suggested above, Henry's account of the Son's production gives us a clear picture of how he understands RP and RM for the Son. The Son is related to the Father by RP, and he is related to the Father's substance, the divine essence, by RM. When I ask who or what the Son is produced by, the answer is 'the Father'. When I ask what the Son is produced from, the answer is 'the divine essence'.


Scotus's View

Henry's argument is clearly aiming to do justice to the traditional Nicene claim that the Son is produced from the Father's substance. Scotus rightly sees that what Henry wants to do is show how the Son can be produced from the Father's substance (and, by consequence, not from the Son's or Spirit's substance). Unfortunately, Scotus thinks Henry's position faces some serious difficulties. In fact, Scotus thinks that when it comes to the production of the Son, we should avoid talk of RM and material production altogether.

Scotus first shows that on Henry's view, we have to say the divine essence belongs more to the Father than to any other person. Otherwise, the Son will be produced from the substance of each divine person (rather than from the substance of the Father, as the traditional view has it). The idea is that if we take the divine essence to be equally the substratum or substance of each divine person, then we have no more reason to say the Son is produced from the Father's substance than from the Son's or Spirit's substance.

Let me try to explain this with an analogy. Imagine if a sculptor made a statue from a lump of gold jointly owned by Caesar and Cleopatra. If we asked what the statue was produced from, we could not legitimately say it was produced from Caesar's gold, because the gold is just as much Cleopatra's as it is Caesar's. Unless the gold in some way belongs more to Caesar than to Cleopatra, we really have to say the statue is produced from the gold of both Caesar and Cleopatra, since it is owned equally by each of them.

Of course, a gold lump belonging to Caesar and Cleopatra makes use of the notion of ownership, and this isn't the sort of thing occurring in the trinity. The divine persons do not 'own' the divine essence. Rather, the divine essence belongs to the divine persons in an ontological sense. So let's look at another example that gets us a little closer to what's happening in the trinity.

Consider a possible world where the only material stuff is clay. In such a world, lumps and statues can only be made out of clay, so in the case where a lump of clay is also a statue, the clay belongs just as equally to the clay as it belongs to the statue. In this scenario, we have no more reason to say the clay is the lump's clay than we would to say it is the statue's clay. The clay is just as much the lump's clay as it is the statue's clay. There is no sense in which we could say the statue comes from the lump's clay, because we could just as properly say the statue comes from its own clay. If we want to legitimately say the statue comes from the lump's clay (but not from the statue's clay), the clay would have to belong more to the lump than to the statue.

Similarly, if the divine essence is just as much the substance of the Father as it is the substance of the Son and Spirit, then there is no more reason to say the Son is produced from the Father's substance than to say the Son is produced from his own or the Spirit's substance. Unless there is some way in which the divine essence is more the substance of the Father than the substance of the Son or Spirit, we cannot say (as the traditional view has it) that the Son is produced from the Father's substance. Instead, we have to say the Son is produced equally from the substance of each divine person.

This is clearly incompatible with the traditional claim (which both Henry and Scotus accept) that the Son is produced from the Father's substance, not from the Son's or Spirit's substance. In order to avoid this problem, Henry needs to find some way of establishing that the the divine essence belongs more to the Father than it does to the other persons. Only then will it be legitimate to say the Son is produced from the Father's substance but not from the Son's and Spirit's substance.

One way to do this might be to appeal to some kind of quasi temporal priority: before the Son is produced, there is only the Father, so the Father is the sole exemplification of the divine essence until the production of the Son. This would ensure that the Son is produced only from the Father's substance and not from the Son's and Spirit's substance.

Unfortunately, this strategy is a non-starter because the Son is co-eternal with the Father. Consequently, at any 'moment' in which the divine essence is the substance of the Father, the divine essence will also be the substance of the Son. To call on our clay statue example yet again, imagine if some clay were eternally both a lump and a statue. Even if we say the clay is the producer of the statue, there is no 'moment' at which we could say the clay belongs to the lump but not to the statue.

Since quasi temporal priority won't work, Henry needs to establish some kind of ontological priority, some kind of priority which always holds. That is, Henry needs to find a way to say the divine essence is always more the Father's substance than the Son's and Spirit's substance. Only then will it be true that the Son is produced from the substance of the Father in a way in which it will not be true that the Son is produced from his own substance and the Spirit's substance.

The obvious way to do that would be to say the Father just is the divine essence. In other words, we could say the Father is entirely identical with the divine essence. On this view, the divine essence would always properly be the substance of the Father, not the substance of the Son. Then it would be true that the Son is produced from the Father's substance but never from his own substance, since the Son does not have 'his own substance', he only has the Father's substance.

But again, this strategy runs into difficulties. Recall the earlier example of a lump of clay which forms itself into the shape of a statue. The lump of clay is like the Father, and the statue is like the Son. Notice that the Son shares all the properties of the Father (the properties of the clay), but the Son has some properties which the Father does not (the properties of the statue). In the divine case, this is a problem, because one of the Father's properties is being unproduced, while one of the Son's properties is being produced. If the Son shares all the Father's properties, then the Son would have the properties being unproduced and being produced, and that's impossible.

Henry would not, then, want to say the divine essence is entirely identical to the Father, because then the Son would share all the Father's properties. Instead, we need to distinguish the divine essence from the Father in some way so as to allow the Father to have some properties (or at least one property) of his own which no other divine person shares. At the same time, if we also want to avoid the conclusion that the Son is produced from the substance of all three persons, we still need to find some way to say the divine essence belongs more to the Father than it does to the Son and Spirit.

The problem with such a strategy is that it seems to be a textbook case of subordinationism. If the divine essence belongs, however we want to define 'belongs' here, more to the Father than to the Son and Spirit, then the Father and Son possess the divine essence less than the Father does. It's hard to see how this wouldn't be subordinationism.

Consequetnly, Scotus thinks we should reject the first step Henry makes: we should reject the move to construe the divine essence as the substratum of the divine persons. For Scotus, the divine essence is not the substratum of the divine persons, it is more like the common form of the divine persons. Scotus's view is undoubtedly harder to understand or visualize, but Scotus believes that the arguments I've discussed here give him a solid reason to reject Henry's view that the divine essence is the substratum or substance of the three divine persons.

Scotus, Ord. 1.5.2un nn. 72-74

Here is a very brief and very rough summary of one of Scotus's arguments against Henry's view that the divine essence is the material term of generation. I hope to polish this up and explain it much better and more clearly, but for now I had to get my thoughts down before they disappeared from my brain forever.

Henry argues that in the Son, the whole Son is the primary term of generation, the personal property being a son is the secondary term of generation, and the divine essence is the material term of generation. Against this, Scotus offers the following argument (my loose translation):


[Ord. 1.5.2.un n. 72] Further, a second argument against the principle claim [of Henry that the divine essence is the material term of the Son's production]. It is necessary to assign some being to the [divine] essence as it is that from which the Son is generated, because to be the causal basis of some true entity, in whatever genus of causal basis, does not belong to anything except a real entity.

[n. 73] Therefore, I ask what sort of being belongs to the essence as it is 'that from which the Son is generated' (by an impression). Either it is (a) precisely being ad se, which is the being of the essence qua essence – and then the Son is from the essence qua essence, and in this way he is from the three persons – or (b) it belongs to it to be in some subsistent [person]. And then I ask: in which subsistent [person]? If it is (i) the ingenerate Father, then in this case the notion of 'the being from which something is produced' will include the notion of 'the being in which a form is induced', and since the notion 'the being in which' here includes 'to have that which is in it', by consequence [it will include the notion of] 'being formally by itself'. Thus, if the essence as it is in the Father is that from which the Son is generated (by an impression, according to Henry), it follows that that very essence as it is in the Father will be that in which the generated knowledge is imprinted, and then the essence as it is in the Father will formally be the Word (or, to put it another way, the essence will be in a state of knowing generated knowledge), which is incompatible [with Henry's view]. But if (ii) the essence as it is in some subsistent [person] other than the Father is that from which the Son is generated, then in as much as it is 'that from which', a term of generation will proceed from it in some way, and then there are two subsistent [persons] after the term of generation, which is inappropriate.

[n. 74] If you say the essence 'in as much as it is that from which the Son is generated' has no existence in the person, just as matter 'in as much as it is that from which a generated thing is generated' does not have being in some suppositum but rather only has being in potency to the generating suppositum, this strengthens nothing. The reason is that, as was said, it is necessary to attribute some real being to the causal basis of some entity, in whatever genus of causal basis. For this reason, although the being of the composite which matter possesses by participation in the composite does not belong to matter, some being properly belongs to matter which is naturally prior to the being the matter possesses as a part of a composite. And therefore here it is necessary to give to the essence 'in as much as it is that from which the Son is generated' some being, and that must be either the being of a suppositum or the being of the essence according to itself, so the argument stands.

This typically dense passage by Scotus is one of Scotus's best arguments against Henry's view that the divine essence is the material term of production.

Scotus begins with the claim (n. 72) that

(T1) A real product requires a real causal basis.

Talk of 'real' in this context means 'existing'. The idea is that if no cause exists, then no effect will exist. This much seems uncontroversial. Any product is a product only because it bears the relation 'is produced by x', where x is a producer. Thus, without a producer x, there cannot be the relation 'is produced by x'.

Scotus further adds that this applies to any genus of causal basis. That is,

(T2) For any kind of causal basis, (T1) applies.

This particular claim may be more controversial. Consider the statement 'the vacuum caused the marble and the feather to fall at the same speed'. Here the vacuum is the causal basis for the marble and the feather falling at the same speed, but everybody would agree that a vacuum is nothing at all. The vacuum is not some existing cause, it is rather just a condition. Thus, certain kinds of causal bases, for example certain kinds of conditions, fail (T2).

Scotus is undoubtedly thinking of a causal basis along Aristotelian lines, and thus the only kinds of causal bases he has in mind are efficient, final, formal, and material. And of course in this case the causal basis in question is the material cause. We can easily avoid the problem by replacing (T2) with:

(T2') For any material causal basis, (T1) applies.

Scotus then moves on to play out the implications of (T1) and (T2) for Henry's theory. Scotus is taking issue with Henry's claim that

(H1) The divine essence is the material causal basis for the production of the Son.

Henry is here explaining the sense of 'from' in the Nicene creed's statement that the Son is produced 'from the substance of the Father'. For Henry, when we say the Son is from the Father's substance, we mean the divine essence plays the role of matter in the Son's production, and thus the Son is 'from' the matter (divine essence) in the same way that a generated thing in the created realm is generated 'from' matter. For example, I can make a wall from bricks. In a similar way, Henry says the Father produces the Son from the divine essence. In Henry's technical vocabulary, the matter of a produced wall bears a relation 'being the material from which' to the producer, and this sort of relation obtains for the divine essence as it is in the Son.

Against this, Scotus applies (T1) and asks: what sort of existence does the causal basis have? In the case of divine production, we are dealing with the divine essence. There are only two kinds of existence for the divine essence: (a) existence ad se, or (b) existence in a suppositum. That is, we can talk about how the divine essence (a) exists on its own, or how it (b) exists in a particular person.

Scotus tackles (a) first. His argument rests on the claim that divine essence, qua essence, exists equally in all three persons, without any limitation to a particular person. Thus:

(T3) The divine essence qua essence is common to all three persons.

Recall that we are trying to identify x in the Son's relation 'is from material x'. If x is the divine essence qua essence, then the Son will bear the relation 'is from' to all three persons. And this leads to the circular consequence that the Son bears the relation 'is from material x' to part of himself.

So that's out. Scotus then moves on to (b), the claim that the divine essence is the divine essence as it exists in a particular person. He then asks: which person? Either it is (i) the Father, or (ii) some other person.

It can't be (ii), because then we'd have the Father, the produced Son, and some other person, which is incompatible with the claims of trinitarian dogma.

But what about (i)? To this, Scotus argues that if we accept (i), then we have to conclude that the Son is produced in the Father. Since the divine essence is the matter of the Father as much as it is the matter of the Son, then the divine essence as it is in the Father will both found the relation 'is from material x' and the relation 'inheres in material x'. In other words, the divine essence as it is in the Father will both elicit the Son's form and receive the Son's form. And Scotus points out that if something is both the material and the form, it is formally existent on its own.

This much itself doesn't seem problematic. For example, I can take a lump of clay and make a statue out of it. The statue is both the material from which the statue is made, and the material in which the statue's form is received. And imagine a lump of clay which had the power to form itself into different shapes. It could form itself into a statue, and the same state of affairs would apply without any external agents.

[Edit: Scotus's point must be that the Son is not formally existent on his own. That's what the Father is. The Son is produced, not formally self-existent.]

However, for Henry, the Father is the divine essence existing in a state of knowing nothing but the simple divine essence. The Father's intellect can then look back on itself, see what it is knowing, and then produce a concept of that. This concept is then imprinted on the divine essence, and so the divine essence in the state of knowing this produced knowledge is the Word (the Son). And here is where Henry gets into trouble. As Scotus points out, if the same divine essence is the subject of both simple knowledge and generated knowledge, then the divine essence will either be the Father or the Word. It can't be both.

Finally, Scotus raises a possible objection. In created things, we don't say that the matter of a product exists. It is simply in potency to the producer. Likewise, in the case of God, we don't say the divine essence exists (in the Son before the Son is produced), we simply say it is in potency to receive the form of the Son. But Scotus finds this objection insufficient. Even in the case of material beings, we still have to say that matter has some being before it comes to exist in a composite. Likewise, in the divine case, the divine essence has to exist in the Father before it comes to exist in the Son.

Dialogue on analogy

[ME] I hear Rome gets busy this time of year.
[YOU] Busy? What do you mean?
[ME] You know, all the hustle and bustle with the tourism season. People going here, people going there, all that stuff. Just like all the crazy hustle and bustle in Chicago over Thanksgiving weekend. People shopping, the sidewalks filled with exponentially more than normal.
[YOU] Ah, I see. What my crazy grandfather likes to call 'Hustley-Bustley'. That's trademarked, by the way.
[ME] You and your crazy grandfather. Always giving things weird labels.
[YOU] That's true. Sometimes he calls his wife 'Big Al'.
[ME] Let's go back to Hustley-Bustley.
[YOU] So you're saying that you think Rome is Hustley-Bustley, and you're thinking of Chicago's Hustley-Bustley when you say that.
[ME] Uh, yeah.
[YOU] But you've never been to Rome yourself, you've never seen it.
[ME] Well, yeah, but I've heard from friends who have visited.
[YOU] So?
[ME] So, I would imagine that Rome's Hustley-Bustley must be like Chicago's Hustley-Bustley.
[YOU] It might be, but it might not be.
[ME] Well, that's true, but I have faith that it is.
[YOU] There's no more reason to believe that it is than to believe that it's not.
[ME] But surely Rome is similar to Chicago in at least some way.
[YOU] Ah, but you've assumed there is something similar between Rome and Chicago. My point would be that you can't compare Chicago to Rome without some similarity between them. And in this case, you don't actually know what Rome is like, so you can't really tell me that you know they're similar.


[ME] Hmm. Can I retract my statement that there's something similar and still compare Chicago and Rome?
[YOU] I don't see any way to do that myself.
[ME] What do you mean?
[YOU] Are you sure you don't want to say there's something similar between Rome and Chicago?
[ME] Yes.
[YOU] Since we both obviously have in our heads similarities between Rome and Chicago and the whole point is to try to work this out without any similarity, let's use a more extreme example. Imagine that I told you they've found a city on one of Saturn's moons, and that we've named the city IHWDANT (short for 'I Hope We Discover Alien Ninjas There'). Everything there is totally different from our cities on earth. The inhabitants, if you can call them that, are different. The buildings, if you can call them that, are different. The whole system, if you can call it that, is different. In fact, it's nothing at all like the cities we know.
[ME] I hope we discover alien Ninjas there.
[YOU] Me too. Anyways, given the difference between Chicago and IHWDANT, would you ever dream of comparing Chicago's Hustley-Bustley and IHWDANT's Hustley-Bustley?
[ME] Why not?
[YOU] Well, on what basis would you make any comparisons?
[ME] I don't know. Let me think. Does it get busy there?
[YOU] What do you mean by 'busy'?
[ME] You know, just regular 'busy'. Lots happening out and about.
[YOU] Well, there's not really any 'out and about', at least not in any sense that we conceive of 'out and about', and there's not really any 'lots happening', or at least not in any sense that we conceive of it. The place is totally different that way.
[ME] Uh, okay, so let's try something else. Are there lots and lots of inhabitants? Maybe I could say that if there are lots and lots of inhabitants, then we could suppose that if they all did something at the same time, that would be like 'busy'.
[YOU] Again, there's not really any 'inhabitants' there, at least not in any sense that we conceive of 'inhabitants'. And further, there's not any number there, at least not in a way that we understand it, so we couldn't say 'lots and lots' in any conceivable way either.
[ME] Okay, I see where you're going with this. To anything which I suggest as a possible similarity between Chicago and IHWDANT, you'll just say that there's nothing in IHWDANT that is like that in any conceivable sense for us.
[YOU] Exactly.
[ME] So what's the point?
[YOU] The point is that Chicago and IHWDANT are so different that if you don't have any similarity to start with, then you have no conceivable way of comparing them.
[ME] How so?
[YOU] Since IHWDANT is so utterly different from Chicago, you don't really know what it means to say there is Hustley-Bustley in IHWDANT. All you really understand is the Chicago case. The meaning of Hustley-Bustley for IHWDANT is entirely mysterious. If IHWDANT is truly nothing at all like Chicago, then Hustley-Bustley means utterly different things for Chicago and IHWDANT.
[ME] So when I say Hustley-Bustley for IHWDANT, I have no idea what it means. I only understand what Hustley-Bustley means for Chicago.
[YOU] Right.
[ME] I guess I need a way to explain how I am to understand the meaning of Hustley-Bustley for IHWDANT.
[YOU] Of course, you could just say that Chicago and IHWDANT are not that different, or at least that there is some similarity between them on which you could base your comparisons. But it seems that you want to stick to the idea that Chicago and IHWDANT are totally different.


[ME] What if I just said that there is Hustley-Bustley in IHWDANT. I could grant that I don't really understand what it is for there to be Hustley-Bustley in IHWDANT, but I do understand what it is for there to be Hustley-Bustley in Chicago, and so I could say there is Hustley-Bustley in IHWDANT, and know that I'm definitely referring to something in IHWDANT, but I don't really understand at all what it is. If I can use a little terminology from Frege, I could say that there is reference, but not sense.
[YOU] Sure, you could say that.
[ME] But?
[YOU] But it would seem to me a strange thing to do.
[ME] Why?
[YOU] Well, in the first place, how would you know that Hustley-Bustley has reference for IHWDANT if you don't understand what it means for there to be Hustley-Bustley in IHWDANT?
[ME] I'm not sure I see why it's a problem.
[YOU] Well, it seems obvious that reference depends on the sense. Let me give you an example. I know that you own a baseball with Don Mattingly's signature on it, and I know that you're putting it up for sale. I also know that you are selling tickets to a fantastic New Year's Eve ball sponsored by the volunteer organization you work for. Given that, suppose I said to you, 'I'm interested in the ball'. What is the reference of 'the ball'?
[ME] That would depend on what you mean. If you mean the baseball, then 'the ball' would refer to my Don Mattingly baseball, but if you mean the New Year's Eve ball, then 'the ball' would refer to that.
[YOU] So the reference depends on the meaning, and meaning is just another word for the sense of the term.
[ME] Okay, I see the point. Reference depends on sense.


[YOU] So the question is: if you don't have the sense of Hustley-Bustley for IHWDANT, how would you know it has reference?
[ME] Suppose that IHWDANT sent us a tour guide.
[YOU] What do you mean?
[ME] Well, I presume that we don't understand the language of IHWDANT, since in IHWDANT, there's nothing like there is in Chicago which we understand.
[YOU] Correct.
[ME] But suppose they understand our language.
[YOU] How do you mean?
[ME] Although we don't understand anything about their world, suppose they understand ours. They would then understand everything, their world and ours, and we would just understand ours.
[YOU] Okay, sure.
[ME] So with their comprehensive knowledge, they put together a brilliant marketing team to prepare a tour guide and send it to us. They write the guide in our language, for us, and they use words like Hustley-Bustley, knowing that although we don't have any idea what Hustley-Bustley is in IHWDANT, we do know what Hustley-Bustley is in Chicago, so the word would have some identifiable meaning for us when we used it and thus it would be useful. Further, even though we don't know what Hustley-Bustley is in IHWDANT, they do, so the word Hustley-Bustley does actually refer to Hustley-Bustley in IHWDANT.
[YOU] Okay.
[ME] Wouldn't that give me reference without sense?
[YOU] Perhaps.
[ME] Wouldn't that establish my case?


[YOU] It depends on the truth of the story about the tour guide. Hustley-Bustley would only refer (without sense) to Hustley-Bustley in IHWDANT if IHWDANT actually prepares a tour guide and sends it to us as you have described. If somebody from Chicago just made up the tour guide and convinced us all that it came from IHWDANT, then Hustley-Bustley would certainly not refer (with or without sense) to Hustley-Bustley in IHWDANT.
[ME] Okay, but suppose the story is true.
[YOU] Well, you'd still have to believe it. Let's suppose that IHWDANT do in fact prepare and send the tour guide to us as you have described. Even still, I'd have to use the word Hustley-Bustley with reference to IHWDANT. After all, I could simply reject your story of the tour guide as pure fantasy about IHWDANT. In that case, I would conclude that Hustley-Bustley in IHWDANT doesn't exist at all. But that doesn't mean I would stop using Hustley-Bustley with reference to Chicago. And every time I, or anyone else for that matter, used Hustley-Bustley with reference to Chicago, Hustley-Bustley would have both sense and reference for the Chicago case.
[ME] But nobody is questioning whether Hustley-Bustley has reference (or sense) with respect to Chicago.
[YOU] We are asking about the reference of Hustley-Bustley with respect to IHWDANT. And that requires that somebody actually uses the term Hustley-Bustley with reference to IHWDANT. There can be no reference (even without sense) to IHWDANT if the term Hustley-Bustley is never used with respect to IHWDANT. And using Hustley-Bustley with respect to IHWDANT requires that I at least believe that I can use the word with respect to IHWDANT. Otherwise, it'd never occur to me to use the word of IHWDANT. So you still have to believe the story before you can even use Hustley-Bustley with respect to IHWDANT.


[ME] But we've granted that the story is true. Hustley-Bustley would then refer to IHWDANT even if nobody believes it.
[YOU] Not really. There might be something in IHWDANT to which the term Hustley-Bustley can refer. But that something is different from its name. I (or the authors of our tour guide) can give it the name Hustley-Bustley, but we could give it any name. We could call it 'widget' just as easily. The point is that even if there is this something, we still can't refer to it unless we use a name to refer to it. Unless someone uses a name, for example Hustley-Bustley, to refer to this something, we can't refer to it at all. So yes, supposing that the story is true, there is a something to which Hustley-Bustley can refer, but that doesn't mean that the particular term 'Hustley-Bustley' refers to it. Somebody has to use the term 'Hustley-Bustley' to refer to it, and that requires that someone believes they can use the term 'Hustley-Bustley' to refer to it.
[ME] I'm not sure I totally understand.
[YOU] It's true that there are cats in our world, right?
[ME] Right.
[YOU] Our word 'cat' refers to particular cats, right?
[ME] Right.
[YOU] Does the word 'plinklet' refer to cats?
[ME] Of course not.
[YOU] Would you grant that God knows all the possible words we could use to refer to cats?
[ME] Sure.
[YOU] So God knows that the word 'plinklet' could refer to cats.
[ME] Okay.
[YOU] But does that mean that 'plinklet' does refer to cats?
[ME] I guess not.
[YOU] Why not?
[ME] Because nobody uses it to refer to cats. It's a word that we could use to refer to cats, but we don't use it to refer to cats. We use the word 'cats' to refer to cats. In order for 'plinklet' to refer to cats, someone would have to actually use it to refer to cats.
[YOU] Right. So reference depends on actual use, not possible use.
[ME] We're distinguishing between possible reference and actual reference.
[YOU] Suppose my cat Felix hasn't given birth to Felix Jr. Would you say Felix Jr. exists?
[ME] Of course not. Felix Jr. could exist, but Felix Jr. doesn't exist now.
[YOU] Reference is the same way. There could be reference for Hustley-Bustley with respect to IHWDANT, but that's pretty much irrelevant. What matters is real, actual reference. What matters is the actual use of words.
[ME] Okay, I'll buy that.
[YOU] Coming back to the story then, do you agree that although there may be something in IHWDANT that Hustley-Bustley could refer to, the actual term 'Hustley-Bustley' doesn't refer to it until someone actually uses Hustley-Bustley to refer to that something?
[ME] Yes.
[YOU] And do you also agree that in order for someone to actually use Hustley-Bustley to refer to IHWDANT, they would have to actually believe the story about the tour guide?
[ME] Yes. If they didn't believe the story about the tour guide, it would never occur to them to use the term 'Hustley-Bustley' to refer to IHWDANT, and then 'Hustley-Bustley' wouldn't refer to Hustley-Bustley in IHWDANT.
[YOU] Right. So explaining the reference (without sense) of Hustley-Bustley to IHWDANT by appealing to your story about the tour guide requires first that the story is true, and second that someone believes it so as to put 'Hustley-Bustley' to use with respect to IHWDANT.
[ME] Agreed.


[YOU] Good. Now you've got your story of the tour guide which gives you the word 'Hustley-Bustley' to refer to the Hustley-Bustley in IHWDANT, but the reference depends on the fact that the story is true and that you believe it.
[ME] Fine. The story is true, and I believe it. Wouldn't I then have reference without sense?
[YOU] You sound like a Christian.
[ME] Is there any other reason why I shouldn't continue holding to my story about the tour guide?
[YOU] There is.
[ME] And what's that?
[YOU] You may believe that the story is true, but how do you know that it's true?
[ME] I don't have to know that it's true. I just have to believe that it's true. I thought we'd agreed on that much.
[YOU] Not exactly. You have reference (without sense) only if the story is true. Merely believing in something isn't enough to make it true. I can believe that Felix Jr. exists and walk around calling out 'Felix Jr.', but that doesn't mean the name 'Felix Jr.' refers to Felix Jr. On the contrary, the name 'Felix Jr.' doesn't refer to Felix Jr. because Felix Jr. doesn't exist.
[ME] Of course.
[YOU] We have reference only if the story is true, and there's nothing in your story to guarantee that it is in fact true. You just have to work on the belief that it is true.
[ME] Fair enough.
[YOU] So you're a fideist about this.
[ME] Sure.
[YOU] Okay, I should just point out that belief may be enough for you, but it may not be enough for others.
[ME] I'll accept that.


[YOU] And I will too. We're both in the fideist camp then. Even so, I'm still uncomfortable with reference and no sense.
[ME] How so?
[YOU] If you go around bandering Hustley-Bustley with respect to IHWDANT, you have no idea what you're talking about. Let's even suppose that we only use Hustley-Bustley with respect to IHWDANT in circles of people who believe the tour guide story. They all believe it, so they all believe that Hustley-Bustley has reference with respect to IHWDANT, but nobody here knows what you're talking about. We just know the word 'Hustley-Bustley', but we don't have any notion of what that's supposed to mean. Essentially, we end up talking about IHWDANT in a way that leaves us with no understand of IHWDANT at all.
[ME] I think I see your concern.
[YOU] Imagine that I build a new room in my house and fill it with various objects. Before you've seen it, I come to you and say, 'You should see my new room. It's incredible'. You say, 'Tell me about it. What sort of things did you put in it?' I tell you that my new room contains a gartnick, a qwinky, and poppeltop (I made these names up, you see, instead of using the objects' common names). You would naturally ask, 'what the hell is a gartnick, a qwinky, and whatever the last one you said was?'
[ME] Naturally.
[YOU] I would just tell you not to worry, because those words have reference to real objects in my new room.
[ME] Please never actually describe objects to me in this way.
[YOU] Now, it seems clear enough that you have a way of talking about the objects in my new room, because you have some names which have reference. Unfortunately, these names don't have any sense. You have no idea what it means for there to be a 'gartnick' in my new room.
[ME] Indeed, I have no idea.
[YOU] So what would you do with this information? Would you run off and tell your friends about the objects in my new room?
[ME] Only if I was a psycho.
[YOU] You can see that it just seems pointless to talk about something if our language has reference but not sense.
[ME] I do see that.
[YOU] On a practical level, what's the point of having reference but no sense if I want to talk about IHWDANT?
[ME] That doesn't seem to be a very productive way of talking about things. At the very least, I certainly wouldn't acquire much understanding of IHWDANT if my words for IHWDANT had reference but no sense.


[YOU] There's more.
[ME] Oh?
[YOU] Not only would you not understand what gartnick, qwinky, and poppeltop mean, you also wouldn't understand how to talk about those things in relation to each other. Could you meaningfully say that in the design of my new room, the gartnick helps to balance the feel of the qwinky?
[ME] Of course not. I don't know what the qwinky is like, so I wouldn't know how it needs to be balanced, and I don't know what a gartnick is, so I wouldn't know how it would balance the qwinky.
[YOU] Right. You wouldn't be able to talk about the garntick in relation to the qwinky or the poppeltop in any meaningful way. Likewise, you couldn't form any syllogisms from the terms gartnick or qwinky.
[ME] Why would I want to form a syllogism from things in your room?
[YOU] You wouldn't, but you might if this was just a big analogy for some other topic.
[ME] Okay, this is getting weird again. The irony is not lost on me, by the way.
[YOU] In any case, my point is, you couldn't meaningfully reason from gartnicks to qwinkys or talk about how they interrelate in any meaningful way if you had reference but no sense.
[ME] Of course, but I still don't see why I would want to.
[YOU] Never mind that. We agree that it seems counter intuitive to try and talk about something with reference but no sense. If I try to describe IHWDANT with terms like Hustley-Bustley which have reference but no sense, I end up with a pretty empty description. I might as well just talk about IHWDANT with words like 'gartnick' and 'qwinky'.

Randal Rauser, Is The Trinity a True Contradiction?

Randal Rauser, 'Is The Trinity a True Contradiction?'. Quodlibet Journal 4 (2002).

http://www.quodlibet.net/rauser-trinity.shtml.

Rauser compares the logical problem of the trinity to 'true contradictions', i.e., contradictions which are true. In classical logic, if you admit one contradiction, you have to admit all contradictions, so to avoid this, everybody believed that contradictions were false. In modern paraconsistent logic, you can localize contradictions so that those contradictions don't entail contradictions in the rest of the system. Consequently, some today can admit contradictions which are true.

Rauser then considers David Cunningham's book These Three Are One because Cunningham seems to claim all over that book that contradictory states of affairs are true. In the end, Rauser concludes that it is not helpful to countenance true contradictions in God. The reason is that God is a necessary being, and thus any true contradictions would ultimately be about God's nature, and it makes more sense to say God is, for example, 'good' only rather than that God is 'not-good' and 'good'.

Hylomorphism and the trinity

In what follows, I would like to examine the shortcomings of comparing the divine persons to hylomorphic compounds. According to traditional classical theism, the divine persons are said to be made up of the divine essence plus a personal property such as being a father or being a son. Throughout the history of trinitarian theology, this occasionally gets construed in terms of hylomorphic composition: the divine essence plays the role of 'matter' and a personal property that of 'form', so the divine persons can be seen as hylomorphic compounds made up of matter and form.

The claim that the divine persons can be seen as hylomorphic compounds shows up mostly recently in a paper by Jeffrey Brower and Michael Rea ('Material Constitution and the Trinity', Faith and Philosophy 22 (2005): 57-76; henceforth, B-R). When they bring hylomorphism into the picture, B-R are trying to solve a much bigger problem pertaining to the identity and distinction of the divine persons. Here I don't want to discuss B-R's larger project. Instead, I would only like to focus on the claim that the divine persons can be seen as hylomorphic compounds.

I will give two arguments against this claim. First, I will argue that hylomorphism does not map onto the divine persons because the constitutive relation between matter and form cannot apply to the trinity in a straightforward way, or at least not in a way that is obvious to me. Second, I will argue that hylomorphism cannot explain the divine persons because neither the divine essence nor a personal property can play the role of matter. Rather, both must play the role of form.

1. The constitutive relation between matter and form cannot apply to the trinity

A hylomorphic compound is any entity composed of matter and form. But that's not the end of the story. These two constituents also stand in relation to each other in some way. Hylomorphism not only brings along with it matter and form, it also brings certain relations between matter and form. There are, of course, many ways that matter and form are related. For example, we can talk about relations of identity and distinction between matter and form (as B-R do throughout their paper). But this is not the sort of relation that concerns me.

Here, I am interested in a constitutive relation. By 'constitutive relation', I mean the sort of relation which explains why matter and form constitute one thing. This relation needs to be a unity-making relation in some relatively strong sense. A hylomorphic compound is not, after all, just a heap or pile of matter and form. On the contrary, matter and form are supposed to combine in a hylomorphic compound to make up one thing. The constitutive relation explains why matter and form make up more than just a heap or pile. It explains the unity of matter and form in a hylomorphic compound.

This is relevant for the divine persons because we would not want to say the divine persons are heaps or piles of the divine essence and personal properties. There must be some unity-making relation which makes the divine essence and a personal property more than just a heap or pile, some unity-making relation which makes the divine essence and a personal property into a single person. My question, then, is this: what is this relation? What kind of constitutive relation can apply to matter and form but can also apply to the divine persons?

One common answer is to talk about this relation in terms of material organization or arrangement, and this is what B-R seem to do. They describe forms as 'complex organizational properties'. Presumably, this means that they take forms to be the sort of property (or bundle of properties) which organizes or arranges material parts in a particular way. For example, the form of a chair would organize slabs of wood into a chair, while the form of a table would organize slabs of wood into a table. The form is what explains why the material parts end up arranged as they are. For B-R, the relation of form to matter seems to be a relation of material organization or arrangement.

But how exactly would this apply to the trinity? According to B-R, the divine essence is immaterial (and presumably simple), so there aren't any material parts. If the personal properties are supposed to be 'forms' and the divine essence is supposed to be 'matter', what exactly would these 'forms' organize or arrange? It's hard to see how a relation of material organization could apply to an immaterial divine essence. The divine essence, in virtue of being immaterial or un-arrangeable, blocks the possibility of being related to form in this way.

As it stands then, B-R's claim that the divine persons can be seen as hylomorphic compounds fails. If B-R take 'forms' as organizational properties, the divine essence cannot play the role of matter because it is immaterial and thus cannot be organized or arranged. If B-R want to successfully see the divine persons as hylomorphic compounds, they must clarify what sort of constitutive relation applies to the divine essence and the personal properties. The relation of organization or arrangement is inapplicable to the trinity, so some other relation needs to be specified in a way that is consistent with B-R's other claims about the divine essence.

Perhaps we could look to the Aristotelian relation of act-potentiality. Perhaps it is clearer to talk about this in terms of acts and recipients. Forms are acts of some sort, and matter is the recipient of those acts. For example, if we press a signet ring into a lump of wax, the wax is the recipient of the act of imprinting the ring's shape. The wax is potential because it could take on some other shape, or no shape at all. Likewise, the ring's shape is actual because it is what actually makes the wax take on its shape. The relevant feature of this picture is that the form is what makes the wax become what it becomes, not the other way around. The form is the actual-maker, not the matter, since matter is only potential.

But again, how exactly would this apply to the trinity? If the divine essence is supposed to be 'matter' and a personal property is supposed to be 'form', then the divine essence would only be potential to the personal properties, which is to say it would only potentially be a father or a son. Yet according to B-R, the divine essence is not potentially a father or a son. It is a father or son in some necessary sense. Indeed, most would want to say the divine essence is actual, not potential. Besides, Aristotle's act-potentiality relations explain change, and that's not the sort of thing B-R want to explain in the trinity. So here too, the act-potentiality relation is inapplicable to the trinity as a constitutive relation.

What other options are there? To be sure, there are many kinds of constitutive relations, but I cannot seem to see any which don't run into the same sorts of problems. This doesn't mean there aren't any good candidates. I have, after all, only discussed two of the more obvious options (organizational and act-potentiality relations). My aim is simply to show that the standard constitutive relations of hylomorphic compounds don't map onto the divine persons in a straightforward way, at least not without some modifications. If we want to pursue hylomorphism as a model for the divine persons, we need to go further than B-R and explain exactly how 'matter' and 'form' are related so as to constitute a person. Otherwise, we're left with some 'matter' and some 'form' which are just supposed to be 'there' in a divine person.

Whatever we say about this, it has to be relevant to matter and form. By 'relevant', I mean it must have something to do with why one would call the divine essence 'matter' and a personal property 'form'. I have argued that the divine essence cannot be related to personal properties by organizational relations or act-potentiality relations, and so without any other candidates for a constitutive relation on the table, there seems to be no reason to call the divine essence and personal properties 'matter' and 'forms' at all. Hylomorphism can only apply to the divine persons if we establish a constitutive relation which is coherently applicable to the trinity, and it is not clear to me how this could be accomplished.

2. Neither the divine essence nor a personal property can play the role of matter

Another problematic feature of hylomorphism is that only the form explains what kind of thing the compound is. Matter can be arranged into numerous configurations. For example, the same slabs of wood can be configured into a chair or a table. In both cases, the form is what makes the hylomorphic compound into the kind of thing it is, not the matter. The form is the chair-making property or the table-making property, not the wood. The matter itself does little to explain what kind of thing the hylomorphic compound is. If I may put it in the following terms, the form is the thing-maker, not the matter.

The same goes for the divine persons. If we consider the divine essence as 'matter' and the personal properties as 'forms', then the personal properties are the thing-makers, not the divine essence. The personal properties will make the divine essence into the kind of thing it is. Consider the property being a father. Such a property would make some matter into a father, just as the property being a chair would make some matter into a chair. Thus, the property being a father would make the divine essence into a father. Considering the divine persons as hylomorphic compounds thus entails that the property being a father is the father-making property, the property being a son is the son-making property, and the property being a spirit is the spirit-making property. But there's more to the divine persons than being a mere father, a mere son, or a mere spirit.

The divine persons are also divine. Hylomorphism explains why the persons are father, son, and spirit, but how does it explain that the persons are divine? What is the divine-making property? If we take the divine essence as 'matter', it cannot play the role of a divine-making property, because matter is not a thing-maker. What we are left with, then, is simply a father (not a divine Father), a son (not a divine Son), and a spirit (not a divine Spirit). Relegating the divine essence to the role of 'matter' prevents the divine essence from being a divine-making property.

Perhaps we might say that matter does in fact contribute to the kind of thing a hylomorphic compound is. After all, if a chair is made out of wood, it is a wooden chair, and if it is made out of iron, it is an iron chair. Likewise, in the trinity, the 'matter' contributes to what kind of thing each divine person is. The Father is made out of the divine essence, so he is a divine Father, the Son is made out of the divine essence, so he is a divine Son, and the same goes for the Spirit. But this would be a mistake.

Consider the case of a clay statue of Goliath. It is true that a clay Goliath is clay because he is made of clay. Likewise, a bronze Goliath is bronze because he is made of bronze. But compare this with the human Goliath. It is not true that the human Goliath is human because he is made of human 'material'. If that were true, animals would count as humans too, because they are made up of the same kind of flesh and blood material. Thus, the matter cannot be a thing-making property. The human-making property for the human Goliath is not his matter, it is his human form. The same goes for clay and bronze statues. To say a statue is bronze is to say the bronze-making property is the form of the bronze, not the matter.

The problem with saying the divine essence plays the role of matter is that the divine essence cannot play the role of divine-maker. One might turn the model upside down and say the divine essence is the 'form' of the divine persons, while the personal properties are the 'matter' of the divine essence. But this won't do either. Although it does make the divine essence into a divine-maker, it relegates the personal properties to the role of matter, so they cannot be thing-makers. For example, if the property being a father plays the role of matter, it cannot be a father-making property, and the same goes for the property being a son or being a spirit. We would end up with three divine things, but not with a Father, Son, and Spirit.

Whatever model we use to explain the constitution of the divine persons, it needs to explain how both the divine essence can be a divine-making property and how a property such as being a father can be a father-making property. Hylomorphism cannot do this. Any model which employs hylomorphism to explain the divine persons faces the difficulty that the matter cannot play the role of thing-maker. When it comes to the trinity, perhaps it would be best to avoid hylomorphism altogether.