If one starts with absolute simplicity, then the only way to develop trinitarianism is to view the divine Persons as relations of the simple divine essence (e) to itself. We might, for example, think of the Father, Son, and Spirit in terms of the three relations entailed by identity. Thus, the Father is a monadic reflexive relation (e=e), the Son is a dyadic symmetric relation (if a=e then e=a), and the Spirit is a triadic transitive relation (if a=e and b=a, then b=e).<\/p>\n
There is obviously a kind of sequence here. The reflective relation is a simple proposition. The symmetric relation is complex proposition expressed by an if\u2013then and two subordinate clauses. The transitive relation is another complex if\u2013then proposition, but this time with a compound antecedent clause.<\/p>\n
Against this line of thought it seems obvious that relations aren’t persons. Moreover, there’s no clear ontological difference between this sort of “trinitarianism” and a modalism that takes the hypostatic distinctions to be merely conceptual.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If one starts with absolute simplicity, then the only way to develop trinitarianism is to view the divine Persons as relations of the simple divine essence (e) to itself. We might, for example, think of the Father, Son, and Spirit in terms of the three relations entailed by identity. Thus, the Father is a monadic\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[200,209],"tags":[201,212],"class_list":["post-1455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-divine-simplicity","category-trinity","tag-divine-simplicity","tag-trinity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1455"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1531,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1455\/revisions\/1531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}