Unitarian solipsism

Recently I did another post on Dale Tuggy:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-lonely-god.html

He attempted to respond: 

http://trinities.org/blog/hays-on-attempts-to-argue-from-theism-to-trinity/

He's like a barfly who's too bleary-eyed to make his punches land on the target.   

At Triablogue apologist Steve Hays has posted on my critiques of purely philosophical arguments from theism to the Trinity. It is worth saying at the outset that most trinitarians don’t put any stock in such arguments. By far most have never so much as heard of them. 

Well, I don't know about that. For instance, Bruce Metzger deploys those arguments in his classic 1953 article on "The Jehovah's Witnesses and Jesus Christ: A Biblical and Theological Appraisal" (Theology Today). And even though Metzger was a preeminent scholar, he wasn't a philosopher or original thinker, so he got those arguments from reading someone else. Hence, I doubt these arguments are as esoteric as Dale imagines. 

And among trinitarians with some philosophical education, enough to understand how such arguments are supposed to work, the wiser among them see how tenuous they are.

Yet he admits that Swinburne and Davis mount arguments like this. He's saying they lack wisdom? Davis teaches at Claremont, where Dale studied. Seems likely that Dale was a student of Davis. Does he think Davis is a hack? 

A very proper and reasonable skepticsm kicks in. In my view, which is also the view of many trinitarian philosophers and theologians, we should think that whether any Trinity theory is viable should depend on whether or not it best explains scripture, and not on any argument like this.

Dale talks out of both sides of his mouth. He explicitly attacks the Trinity on philosophical grounds, alleging that it violates the indiscernibility of identicals. He preemptively disallows Biblical testimony to the Trinity on philosophical grounds. 

B. Let’s reframe the issue. Instead of considering a priori arguments for Trinitarianism, suppose we consider a priori undercutters for unitarianism. These don’t propose to directly prove the Trinity. Rather, if successful, they provide indirect support for the Trinity by undermining unitarianism.

A sensible move, given the failure of philosophical Trinity arguments. We failed to get a touchtown. So, let’s re-describe the situation; actually, we were trying to merely gain five yards. But wait… did we even do that?

This is the second example of Tuggy's well-poisoning tactics. Twice in a row as he introduces the issue. 

It's not as if I'm retreating from my original position. I can't fail to hit a target I was never aiming for in the first place. I didn't fall short since that was never my goalpost. 

In addition, it's standard procedure that when philosophers have a choice between a more ambitious and a less ambitious claim to opt for the less ambitious claim. That's less demanding. That has a lower burden of proof. First-rate philosophers like Alvin Plantinga and Peter van Inwagen routinely do that. It's a perfectly legitimate move. 

Hays does nothing new here; philosophers like Davis realize that there are two stages to this argument strategy

But didn't he just say "And among trinitarians with some philosophical education, enough to understand how such arguments are supposed to work, the wiser among them see how tenuous they are"? So which is it? 

Stage 1: Show how it is impossible for there to be a unipersonal god. In other words, any god must be multi-personal. (Sometimes this is expressed clumsily, that there can’t be “a unitarian god.”)

Stage 2: Show how it is impossible for there to more or less than three divine persons. In other words, any god must not only be multi-personal, but must also be exactly tripersonal. Can’t be only two, or more than three.

Hays wishes to focus on Stage 1. This is sensible, as Stage 2 is evidently harder to argue, and is pointless unless Stage 1 works. What Steve is less clear about, though, is what must be done. The way you show the (metaphysical, absolute) impossibility of a situation is to show how it implies a contradiction, or at least how it implies something else which clearly seems impossible. Or short of this, you show how the opposite of that situation seems necessary (i.e. impossible that it not be).

Thus, for Stage 1, you must derive a contradiction (or some evident impossibility) from the concept of unipersonal god, a god who is a single, great self.

My argument didn't aim that high. Try again. 

I think by “undercutter” he means what some epistemologists would call a “rebutting defeater.” But the point is clear enough: it’d sure be neat if it could be shown that a unipersonal god is impossible. Then if Stage 2 fails, who cares. We just fall back on our brilliant, overwhelming arguments from the Bible to the Trinity. (What could go wrong… right?)

Dale keeps laboring to repackage my argument into something I didn't argue for.

But it’s all for nothing unless some impossibility can be shown. Hays takes a few stabs at it, but his efforts are wholly unconvincing.

Since when are philosophical objections "all for nothing unless some impossibility can be shown"? That's a highly artificial standard of comparison. In reality, philosophers have to set the bar lower for most of their arguments. There's nothing exceptional about my approach. 

He gestures at a couple of different types of arguments here. But he seems to settle on a rather obvious category error. He puts “love” in the category of relation, like bigger-than or same-size as, and then says that since “God is love,” then God must be a relation, and so have objects “between” which God exists.

Is it a category error to say love is a relation? Take paradigm-cases of love. Marital love. Parental love. Sibling love. Romantic love. Friendship. "The Father loves the Son" (Jn 3:35). In each case, love is a relation between the lover and the beloved. Between two or more persons. Subject and object. There's nothing the least bit idiosyncratic about the claim that love is a relation. 

It’s obviously impossible, though, for God to be a relation or a property or an event, etc. A god is by definition a being, an entity that can stand in relations, have properties, undergo events. Relations, if there are such things, don’t love, create, know, or respond – but God does. On the face of it, it is wildly unlikely that John means to make such an assertion anyway, but Hays just wants to run with this out of context, weirdly interpreted sentence. Got to get that prize!

Here Dale goes off on a tangent, imputing to me something I didn't say or imply, then attacking his own projection. Dale seems to be imputing to me the following argument:

i) God is love (1 Jn 4:8)

ii) Love is a relation

iii) Ergo, God is a relation

But he can't quote me using that argument. I say "God is love" because that's a standard Biblical formulation, but I don't think there's anything significant about the fact that John uses the noun form rather than the adjective form. When he says "God is love," I think that's synonymous with "God is loving". The noun form is a synonym for an adjectival construction. 

Now, it may be that John intends something deeper. That God is the ultimate source or exemplar of love. Be that as it may, I take "God is love" to mean love is a divine attribute. 

And I didn't even quote 1 John. That's Dale's assumption. Although the particular verbal formulation is Johannine, the general idea that love is a divine characteristic is widely attested throughout the Bible. My argument didn't depend on the Johannine formulation. 

So, no, I didn't say or imply that God is a relation. As such, Dale's reply doesn't even connect with my actual argument. It's funny how Dale gets carried away with his own imagination. 

Likewise, I didn't say or imply that God is a property. Where does Dale even come up with this stuff? He's pulling invisible rabbits out of his invisible hat. 

I regard love as a divine attribute. That doesn't make God reducible to a single property. I don't subscribe to Thomistic simplicity. And I doubt Dale does either. 

I think his point would be better put like this. Love is an action or attitude of a self. And it is one which takes an object, real or imaginary. Love is always directed at something. But of course, that something can be the lover himself! If we want to represent love as a relation, it can be a reflexive relation. These are all clear conceptual truths.

But as I pointed out, self-love isn't the same kind of love as love for another. If a man loved himself so much that he scorned marriage and children, would that be love–or egotism? 

Dale might object that that's too anthropomorphic, but other problems aside (which I noted in the OP), human love is supposed to exemplify divine love. Human love is the ecotype of God's archetypal love. Yet the virtue of human love is scarcely reducible to self-love. That would be defective. Indeed, that would be a vice rather than a virtue. 

So then, I agree that “God is love.” At most, this means that God is essentially, paradigmatically, and maximally loving. Let’s grant all that, leaving aside sober exegesis for the sake of argument. But this doesn’t imply that he must always actually love another, any more than his being merciful entails that he’s having mercy on another.

What about never loving another? Would he still be loving? 

2. Dale might respond that God does have something to love. God loves his creatures.

No, Dale wouldn’t do that, as that’d be missing the point. Most of us want to deny that God has to create anything at all. So a trinitarian should not want to say that God is always and necessarily loving because he always and necessarily has a cosmos featuring suitable objects of love. In fact, good philosophers like Davis build this into a premise of their argument – see the paper of mine linked above, and the references there.

Which plays into my argument. To be loving, God must have something to love, but creation will not suffice. 

That, however, raises another issue. If creatures are all God has to love, then there’s a lack of parity between the lover and the beloved. A unitarian god relates to humans the way a boy related to his pet lizard.

Well, that’s a wild non sequitur! For the Jew or Christian, a “unitarian god” relates to humans like Yahweh in the OT relates to Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, and Isaiah, and how the Father of the NT relates to Jesus, Paul, and John. Hard to see how Hays thinks it follows that the heavenly Father of Jesus’s teaching must instead be like a third grader with a gecko!

Is Dale really that dim? The metaphysical distance between God and man is infinitely greater than the metaphysical distance between one creature (a boy) and another creature (his pet lizard). That's the point of the comparison. Is that too subtle for Dale to grasp? 

Christians are rightly critical of couples who choose to have pets as an alternative to kids. If love is an essential divine attribute, can that be satisfied by a contingent and inferior corollary?

Here, Hays gestures at the idea that the best kind of love is love of another which is at least roughly an equal, so that the friendship is more like that between lovers than that between Mom and kid, or kid and dog. That’s plausible… but, so what?

What he’s not grasping is that “love” as a divine attribute need not be an action; it is plausibly a character trait, just as with God’s being merciful, or his being forgiving, kind, or generous.

Does Dale just lack reading comprehension? I addressed that distinction in the OP. Why does he repeat objections that I already dealt with, as if nothing was said by way of reply? 

3. Dale might respond that self-love is adequate.

If so, one problem with that response is that it’s equivocal. To be loving in the sense of self-love isn’t the same kind of love as loving another.

I do think that of necessity God exists and loves himself, yes. How could he not? That he loves himself seems to be entailed by his own value and his own perfect rationality and knowledge. But Hays, again, realizes that any sort of trinitarian argument will require that any divine person must, by his essence, be actually loving a peer. That, though, has not been shown. It’s merely on the would-be Trinity prover’s wish-list.

Dale oversimplifies the argument. There are two aspects of love under consideration: love as love for another, and parity between the subject and the object of love. He's collapsing these two into one, but both require consideration. 

Why does a unitarian God even have a capacity to love another if divine love is an essential attribute while the other is a contingent creature? If loving another, in the sense of creatures, is unnecessary for God to be loving, then why would God have an essential potentiality for something inessential to his being and well-being? Shouldn't a unitarian God be complete without having a capacity to love someone other than himself? 

We could pursue this general line of argument in additional directions, but let’s save that for a related argument:

When all else fails, change the subject!

A demagogical comment. I didn't change the subject because my argument failed but because love and personhood are different ways of broaching a related issue. 

E. The nature of personhood

1. Does the very idea of a person necessitate interpersonal relationships? Is personhood intrinsically relational?

Obviously not. See the post with the Robinson Crusoe image above. This is recent, groundless and wildly implausible speculation.

Once again, does Dale lack reading comprehension? I already addressed that objection in reference to his related illustration about damnation as everlasting solitary confinement. Why does Dale find it so hard to keep track of the argument? 

2. One of Dale’s counterarguments is that love is a character trait, not an action. An agent can possess that disposition or virtue even if he never has a chance to actually manifest that virtue.

Let’s put this more carefully. “Love” can mean either of those two things. But what seems required by perfect being theology, because it says that God is morally perfect, is the character trait. There is no hold, seemingly, that the action of loving can get on perfect being reasoning. At least, this has only ever been asserted; it has never been shown that an absolutely perfect being must be loving another.

But that wasn't my argument. I didn't say that to be morally perfect, God must be loving. That wasn't a premise of my argument. I happen to think that's true, but that's a different argument. Rather, my argument, at that stage of the argument, was based on the nature of love as a relation. Why does Dale find it so hard to follow the actual argument? 

But there are problems with that counterargument:

i) Although love is a disposition or character trait, personhood is not. Rather, personhood is the basis for dispositions or character traits, which inhere in personhood. So that’s more fundamental.

In the context of the point about love, this is just retreating to an even less plausible argument – arguing that mere divine personhood necessitates interpersonal relationship/friendship with another.

No, that's not what I'm arguing at this stage of the argument. Rather, I'm pointing out that dispositions or character traits are properties of persons. So it's inadequate for Dale to terminate with love as a character trait, for that's not where the explanation ends. There's something more ultimate than character traits, and that's the personal property-bearer of personal properties like love. 

ii) Perhaps even more to the point, why would God have an intrinsic capacity for something merely contingent? For something that God can do without?

Because God is essentially absolutely perfect, and this entails the ability to enter into I-Thou relationships. That seems like a pretty good answer, right?

Is Dale speaking for himself or attempting to speak for me? Once again, my argument wasn't predicated on perfect being theology. Rather, it involved a distinction between necessity and contingency. 

If Dale is speaking for himself, why would God's essential perfection entail the ability to enter into I-Thou relationships? On the one hand, he denies that God has to make creatures to provide I-Thou relationships. On the other hand, he regards divine self-love as sufficient. So where is there room in God's essential nature for this intrinsic capacity?  

Humans can have an unrealized potential for interpersonal relationships, but that’s because humans are essentially social beings. Why would a unipersonal God have that innate capacity in the first place, if his ability to socialize is inessential to who or what he is? In unitarianism, the existence of other persons is a contingent fact.

See previous answer. The god, so to speak, of perfect being theology is a self, a being with the greatest sorts of knowledge, power to intentionally act, and to choose. That is why a “unipersonal God” (in other words, a god) have the innate capacity for interpersonal relationships.

From a unitarian perspective, why would God be less than "essentially absolutely perfect" if he didn't have an innate capacity for interpersonal relationships? Would God be incomplete if he lacked that capacity? But why would he be incomplete if he lacked a capacity for something that's unnecessary to his being and well-being? If the unitarian God is complete without interpersonal relationships, and if self-love is sufficient, why is it necessary for him to have that capacity in the first place? Isn't that superfluous rather than essential?  

3. Dale has leveled another counterargument:

The same point can be made with a simpler, more chilling story. Some have speculated that those who are sent to Hell are neither literally burned nor actively tormented, but are simply cast into permanent, utter isolation. Imagine this happening to you; you are judged for your deeds, and then find your self in an empty, dark place. You call out, “Hello? Is anyone there?” Days, weeks, months pass, and your sanity hangs by a thread, for you are deprived of any degree of attention, as far as you can tell, from anyone. (If God is aware of you, you have no hint of this – he has seemingly abandoned you.) You are devoid of any sort of friendship or communion. But, you are as much a self as you ever were – not a thriving one, to be sure, but a self nonetheless.

Nice point, me! Yes, this seems possible. And so, it seems false that any self is essentially relational, in interpersonal relationship to other selves. But Hays thinks he’s got me here:

But ironically, his counterargument is self-defeating:

i) Let’s play along with the notion of solitary confinement. In this case, unitarian solipsism.

Suppose you put a person in a windowless cell. No companions. No movies. All he had was his own mind to entertain him.

And suppose this person was immortal. Remember that Dale regards God as everlasting rather than timeless. For him, God has no beginning or ending. So God experiences the (psychological) passage of time.

Suppose, after a century, or millennium, or million years, or billion years, or trillion years, you open the door and let the inmate leave solitary confinement. What will his mental condition be like? To judge by a human standard of comparison, he’d be catatonic or stark raving mad.

So it’s not just a question of whether a unitarian deity can initially be a person, but whether the psychological integrity of personhood requires companionship, in whose absence it will deteriorate.

This point is irrelevant; a red herring. Of course, a human person would fail to flourish in long solitary confinement, in total social isolation. But, so what? It is coherent to suppose that there should be a person/self not subject to that limitation, without that absolute need. And indeed, this is what we should think about God, that he’s self-sufficient, and not at all in need of company – neither for his sanity nor for his existence.

Whether the unitarian God is self-sufficient is not a given. That's the very question at issue. What's the basis for presuming that a unitarian God who experiences the (physiological) passage of time is immune to loneliness? 

4. Perhaps Dale would say that’s too anthropomorphic. That illicitly extrapolates from human nature to the divine nature.

Duh.

What is he doing here? Is he arguing that divine sanity requires divine company? If so, that’s a stretch! Why, Steve, should we think that a divine person must be a social animal, a type of being which requires the company of its own kind in order to thrive?

Our understanding of God requires us to analogize from human experience. That's our frame of reference. Moreover, humans aren't just any kind of creature. Along with angels, humans are the highest creatures we're know of. Both humans and angels are interpersonal beings. Indeed, that's characteristic of more intelligent species. Is God less than we are? 

If so, there are problems with that rejoinder:

i) Dale is an open theist, so he already has a far more anthropomorphic view of the deity than classical theism.

ii) What are the limitations of an argument by analogy from man to God? God and man are different in two ways: some things are true of God that can’t be true of man while some things are true of man that can’t be true of God. For the extrapolation to be vitiated by disanalogy, Dale needs to show that one of those two things limitations applies in reference to the argument at hand.

Now we’re just getting off track. He’s trying to go on the attack here, but what does this have to do with showing that there can’t be a single divine person?

Dale can't be sincere. It has to do with the argument from analogy: similarities between human love and divine love, human personhood and divine personhood. That's hardly off-track. 

ii) Dale constantly impugns Incarnational, Trinitarian theism for taking refuge in mystery or paradox, but if unitarianism posits a God for which there’s no analogy in human experience, then unitarianism is apophatic, which is an appeal to mystery. An ineffable, inscrutable God.

This is so upside down that it’s mind-boggling. 

I realize it's upsetting to Dale when the tables are turned on him. 

We all experience ourselves, and other selves...

And we all experience love as a relation. We all experience personhood as interpersonal. 

…and unitarian theology says that God too is a self, though a much greater one. So, God is somewhat like things with which even all atheists are familiar. Beings with two natures? Zilcho in ordinary experience – nothing like that. Beings which are multipersonal? Ditto. Both ideas notoriously obscure, unfortunately. And, fortunately, both are unneeded for understanding the Bible, which was entirely written before such theories saw the light of day.

That's disingenuous. We don't experience the combinations (beings with two natures, beings which are multipersonal), but we experience the components. 

As far as that goes, we have "zilcho" experience of a divine nature, yet Dale doesn't repudiate the existence of a being with a divine nature due to lack of firsthand experience on our part. 

Is the “God for which there’s no analogy in human experience” one which doesn’t get lonely, which is not a social animal? If that’s what he means, we do have relevant experience for a being like that: non-social animals! These would be any kind of animal, real or imagined, which is able to flourish without interaction with any other members of its own kind, or even with any other conscious being. Perhaps some biology major out there can suggest an actual, uncontroversial example of such an animal.

Non-social animals can "flourish" in the sense of survive and reproduce. Finding food. Biological subsistence. That's hardly analogous to the psychological wellbeing of rational agents. 

A being that’s said to be essentially personal or unipersonal without being essentially interpersonal is opaque to human understanding. That doesn’t correspond to our grasp of what it means to be a person.

Nonsense. Hays has given us no reason to think that being in relationship with another is part of “what it means to be a person.” He seems to be merely asserting this, or to be making a wholly unconvincing argument from analogy: God is like humans, humans need others to thrive, therefore God needs others to thrive.

Once again, Dale is an open theist. He believes there's far more analogy between God and man than a classical theist. 

When the unitarian makes God that remote to human understanding, that inapprehensible, then what does his concept of God amount to? What’s the difference between God and no God?

LOL!

God, according to unitarian Christian theology, is… well, all that the Bible explicitly or clearly implicitly says! Nothing in there about essential interpersonal relationships. It’s hilarious to suggest that somehow the unitarian must lose all grip on the concept of God. Ever read the Bible? Each and every “god” mentioned therein is assumed to be “unipersonal,” as seen in the incessant use of singular verbs (etc.) and singular personal pronouns – including the one true God himself, aka the Father. (John 17:3)

He resorts to his oft-debunked unitarian spooftexting. Been there, done that.