Furthermore, the three persons cannot perform a single action if one or more persons are, by definition of their personhood, inferior in authority to another person. As soon as you insert gradations of authority within the immanent Trinity, gradations that are person-defining and therefore essential for the Trinity to be a Trinity, you forfeit one will in God. You forfeit the Trinity's one, simple essence. Our God is simply Trinity ... no more. (Matthe Barrett, Simply Trinity, 229)
What does actions have to do with being? In Aristotelian metaphysics, the final cause of an object is part of the determiner of the object, alongside the other three causes (material, formal, efficient). A being acts towards its final cause, therefore being determines actions. However, that is a philosophical position that is simply not true. In the modern scientific world, what a thing is is independent of its purpose, and its purpose is independent of what it does. For the second, the clearest example of this is the human person, whose purpose or final cause is to be the image of God representing Him in front of creation, yet humans routinely rebel against God. Actions therefore have absolutely no link to the purpose of a thing. For the former, as being a modern scientific person and in rejection of Aristotle, the purpose of a thing is not part of the being of a thing. The Statue of Liberty is used as an American national monument, but if taken away and placed in a remote jungle, it could be used as an idol to be worshipped. Purpose is ascribed by the one who utilizes the object. What a thing's purpose is is determined by its owner or user or creator, depending on the object and its environment.
What does this have to do with one's doctrine of God? We see in the paragraph above an extremely condensed argument by Matthew Barrett. Unfortunately, Barrett does not make his argument plain, so we have to explicate them. Why does Barrett believe his argument to be foolproof, and why does he condense it? Perhaps the exposure of Aristotle is not a good thing to have?
What then is Barrett's argument? The first sentence links the idea that an inferiority in authority means that the three persons cannot perform a single action. What is that the case is not stated, since one can think of any group of ranked individuals who can perform a single action. Likewise, the second sentence states that gradations that are "persons-defining" would forfeit the one will in God. Again, why that is the case is not shown. Without an idea of the philosophy behind such statements, such statements are just mere assertions that make no sense whatsoever. What needs to be added are the Aristotelian philsophical principles so that the arguments can start to make sense.
The first sentence can be explicated as follows:
P1: If one or more persons are inferior in authority to another person, then their lower rank would correlate with a different final cause than the other person.
P2: A different final cause would mean a different action.
C1: Therefore, the three persons cannot perform a single action.
We note here that this "different action" may not be an altogether different action. It just needs to be not the exact same action. Once it is written down this way, we see here the smuggling of Aristotelian philosophy in order to create this argument, and therefore we can reject this argument in the same light.
The second sentence can be explicated as follows:
P3: Gradations that are person-defining are essential for the Trinity to be a Trinity.
P4: Gradations of authority within the immanent Trinity are gradations that are person-defining.
IC1: Gradations of authority within the immanent Trinity are essential for the Trinity to be a Trinity.
P5: Inserting gradations that are essential for the Trinity to be a Trinity would result in multiple wills in God.
C2: Insering gradations of authority within the immanent Trinity would result in multiple wills in God.
There are major problems with this second argument. For premise 3, it is true that gradations that are person-defining are essential for the Trinity to be a Trinity. However, the premise is only true if the word "essential" here is synonymous with "necessary," and not with "pertaining to the essence of a thing." This is because in classical theism, the taxis or order of the Trinity are a type of gradation that is person-defining and yet does not deal with the essence of the Trinity. Now, this is important because in intermediate conclusion 1, the fallacy of amphiboly is committed here. Whereas premise 3 is true only if the word "essential" is taken as "necessary," the word "necessary" in intermediate conclusion 1 has shifted to pertaining to the nature of a thing. This is the definition of "essential" in premise 5, which when combined with intermediate conclusion 1, creates conclusion 2. The whole argument is invalid as it runs on equivocating on the word "essential."
The premises themselves are problematic. First, premise 4 assumes EFS teaches gradations of authority within the immanent Trinity, which is a false statement no mattter how many times it is repeated. Premise 5 is basically a form of argument 1, and therefore false. The number of wills in God is a separate question altogether from gradations in the Trinity or the lack thereof. Thus, Barrett's second statement shows an invalid and unsound argument, with premises smuggled in from Aristotelian philosophy and not Scripture.
Barrett uses these arguments to claim that there is a danger of tritheism within EFS. That is however false, since EFS does not even teach mutiple wills in God. The reason why Barrett accuses EFS as tending to tritheism is because EFS as interpreted within Aristotelian metaphysics would lead to tritheism, but EFS does not follow Aristotle at all. Barrett's assertions and accusations therefore should be rejected as mere assertions based upon a faulty metaphysics. EFS does not "forfeit" the one will in God, because EFS rejects Aristotelian metaphysics altogether. Since Aristotle's writings are not Scripture, and neither is Thomas' Summa Theologica part of the biblical canon, we can safely reject them while holding on to the biblical relevation concerning who God truly is.
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