We live in a novel, not a computer simulation

Here's a great interview with James Anderson on the simulation hypothesis and the authorial analogy for the God-world relation. By the way, Parker Settecase's Parker's Pensées podcast is fun and interesting if you enjoy musing on philosophy, theology, and/or philosophical theology from a Reformed perspective. Not to say these are always the subjects under discussion in his podcast, but I think that's his inclination. Parker has had a number of fascinating guests as well as topics on his podcast. He seems like a good guy to grab a beer with too.

Answering some questions on the theological foundations of modern science

"Answering Some Questions on the Theological Foundations of Modern Science" (James Anderson).

Chris Bolt's book is based on his doctoral dissertation "The World in His Hands: A Christian Account of Scientific Law and Its Antithetical Competitors" which is currently available to download for free via SBTS.

The Theology of Jonathan Edwards review

Alastair Roberts reviews the book The Theology of Jonathan Edwards by Michael McClymond and Gerald McDermott:

There's also a transcript of the same video. Here's a brief excerpt:

I think there is a lot that can be done with a theology like Edwards’, that is creatively rooted within the tradition; that is rooted within the tradition but is moving out in ways that enable it to take on board insights from the natural sciences, insights from other contexts of the church, insights from empirical experience, and insights from foreign religions. And in these respects, there is something bracing and exciting about Edwards’ theology. He is not just a hidebound traditionalist, but nor is he someone who has abandoned all moorings and has no anchor left anymore, and is going off on the wild waves of the sea into who knows where. He is someone who has bearings and he is someone who has a clear anchor. And yet, he is someone who is able to explore areas that others cannot, because he has a different cast of theology.

Does Presuppositionalism Confuse Ontology and Epistemology?

"Does Presuppositionalism Confuse Ontology and Epistemology?" (James Anderson)

Do the bread and wine turn into the body and blood of Christ?

I recently read a high-level exchange about the metaphysics of transubstantiation. On one side was a Protestant philosophy prof. (Kyle Blanchette). I mention that because his argument is the stimulus for this post. I'm not trying to develop his argument. Perhaps the argument in this post is different from how he'd understand his own argument. That's not the purpose of my post. My objective isn't to reproduce his argument. It simply gave me an idea to think about and run with. But I wish to credit the stimulus. 

Transubstantiation is often challenged on philosophical grounds. Philosophy isn't for everyone, but this isn't just an academic issue. Transubstantiation is Catholic dogma. If a single Catholic dogma is false, that falsifies Catholicism at one stroke. 

According to Trent, by the consecration of the bread and of the wine, a conversion is made of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of His blood; which conversion is, by the holy Catholic Church, suitably and properly called Transubstantiation.

And the catechism says 1375 It is by the conversion of the bread and wine into Christ's body and blood that Christ becomes present in this sacrament. 

So the dogma of transubstantiation seems to require that the bread and wine turn into or change into the body and blood of Christ. The unconsecrated communion elements become the body and blood of Christ. That, however, raises the issue of what's required for one thing to become something else. 

Suppose on Monday I see a mouse. Suppose on Tuesday I see a Porsche. Suppose you tell me that the Porsche used to be the mouse. The mouse turned into a Porsche.

A problem with that claim is that, at the level of a mouse and a Porsche, they have nothing in common. They have some constitutive elements in common, like atoms and molecules, but in no respect is a mouse a Porsche. There's complete discontinuity at that higher level. A difference in kind, not degree. 

The Catholic position is actually more radical than my illustration. On the Catholic position, the two substances don't even share any constitutive elements in common (see below). 

Put another way, it's consistent that a Porsche was never a mouse. It was always a Porsche. It didn't originate as a mouse. Consistent for each to have separate origins. 

What really happened is that the mouse ceased to exist, and (let's say) a Porsche suddenly sprang into existence. The mouse didn't become a Porsche. Rather, the mouse existed, then it ceased to exist. The Porsche didn't exist, then a day later it came into being. There's succession but no continuity. No continuum between what was the case on Monday and what was the case on Tuesday. 

But this generates a contradiction between what transubstantiation claims and what it implies. The claim is that the bread and wine turn into the body and blood. But the implication of the dogma is that the body and blood replace the bread and wine. The bread and wine cease to exist. Something else takes their place. So there's no continuity between the two things. 

Given the claim, there's no reason a priest has to start with bread and wine to get the same result. Since the end-result replaces the bread and wine, you could, in principle, have the replacement directly, without the bread and wine as a starting-point, just as you don't to start with a mouse to produce a Porsche. There's no essential relationship between the bread and wine and the replacement. It isn't necessary for a Porsche to be the end-product of a mouse. Indeed, that would be very strange way to create a Porsche.

At this point a Catholic might object that they do share something in common: the secondary properties of bread and wine. The phenomenal/sensory properties of bread and wine.

But that won't do. According to the metaphysics of transubstantiation, those are accidental properties. But at the substantive level, the body and blood share nothing in common with the bread and wine. One substance didn't become or change into another substance. Rather, one substance replaces another substance, but it has the same accidental properties. So the fundamental dichotomy remains. 

Guillaume part deux

Did God change at the incarnation?

"You Asked: Did God Change at the Incarnation?" (James Anderson)

The healing of memories

"What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived"–the things God has prepared for those who love him (1 Cor 2:9).

Many human beings, including many Christians, suffer great emotional damage in this life. Emotional damage that's irreparable in this life. 

There are "ministries" that specialize in the "healing of memories," but what humans can do for each other in this regard is quite limited. We can't make someone forget horrific memories. 

Examples are endless, but to pick one at random, suppose an 8-year-old boy watches soldiers shoot his parents to death right before his eye. They do it deliberately to be cruel, and they keep him alive so that he will suffer from that horrific, unforgettable memory. 

For Christians, how can God repair the psychological damage in the world to come? Any proposal will be speculative, so we shouldn't be dogmatic. On the other hand, many things are possible in a Christian worldview which are impossible for atheism. 

1. Craig has proposed a divine memory-wipe solution:

https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/scholarly-writings/christian-particularism/talbotts-universalism-once-more/

The saints will simply forget about their lost loved ones. But I have two problems with that proposal:

i) I don't object in principle to the idea that God might cause us to forget certain painful memories. But to forget the existence of your mother or father or brother or sister is too disruptive to memory in general. Memories of individuals who've figured so centrally in our lives can't be erased without erasing our personal identity, by leaving huge gaps in memory, like lost amnesiacs in movies. 

ii) It also seems unethical to forget about your parents or siblings. Unless we had hellish parents or siblings, it's thankless to forget they were ever a part of our lives.

2. Another possibility is the implantation of false memories. Dark City is a science fiction example. That, however, puts eternal bliss on a foundation of illusion. 

3. A third option might be a do-over day. How many times have people exclaimed, "What I'd give to do go back to that day and do what I failed to do or take back I said or did!"

Suppose, in the intermediate state, the saints have do-over days. They wake up on a particular day in the past, which has always haunted them. But this time things go differently. They take a different fork in the road. 

And that new memory replaces the old memory. It's not a false, implanted memory. It's a genuine experience of a day in the intermediate state. It really happened to them. Taking the road not taken, the second time around. A second chance to seize a lost opportunity. 

It's not that they literally wake up in the past. Rather, it's about their remembered past. An opportunity to change the remembered past by having a better experience that takes the place of the traumatic memory. 

What if Stalin died at 5?

1. I'm going to revisit a vexed issue in pastoral theology. For purposes of this post, I'm using "infant" (or "baby") as shorthand for anyone below the age of reason.

At one level we don't have to have an answer to the question since there's no definitive revelation on the topic. To be sure, the Bible is not an encyclopedia. We don't get all our information from Scripture. But this is the kind of question that only divine revelation can really answer. 

2. This dilemma is that while we'd be justified in leaving this an open question, it's a very practical, unavoidable question. So it seems necessary to say something about it. To offer some possible answers to grieving parents (grandparents and siblings). 

3. Here's a more optimistic treatment:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2018/10/father-of-fatherless.html

4. However, for purposes of this post, I'd like to briefly discuss the possibility of infant damnation. That's the most controversial position.

I suspect much of what makes it inconceivable for many critics is a mental picture of what they think it means. Roasting babies in the fires of hell. Or subjecting babies to psychological torment. 

5. If there is, however, such a thing as infant damnation, that's not anything like the model I'm exploring. 

i) Suppose Stalin died at 5. Might be from an accident or childhood illness. Doesn't matter.

His soul passes into the intermediate state. He's in the same psychological condition after he died than before he died. The intermediate state is neutral in the sense that for him, it doesn't add anything to make his psychological condition worse. There's no external factors that torment his five-year-old mind. He's just in his own mind. The intermediate state might simulate a playground. Nothing unpleasant or painful. A natural enjoyable setting for a five-year-old. 

ii) There seem to be two logical possibilities for the intermediate state of babies. They are frozen at the psychological age at which they die. That never changes (at least during the intermediate state). Or else they psychologically mature in the intermediate state until they have adult minds. They run through the same stages as the living, but without physical bodies. 

iii) Let's go with the second option. Eventually, Stalin has an adult mind. But suppose his psychological makeup is evil. He's morally warped. So he turns out much the same way as if he hadn't died at 5, but lived to be 20. 

So the intermediate state of Stalin, as he passes through the phases of cognitive development, from infancy to adulthood, becomes increasingly dark and hellish. That's not because he's tormented by external conditions. Rather, for him, the intermediate state is a hellish projection of his own twisted imagination. 

iv) Of course, that revisits the nature/nurture debate. Perhaps my scenario is not entirely realistic. It depends on the presence or absence of common grace and saving grace. Absent grace, residual good will be extinguished and evil will take over. Absent divine intervention, the default condition of human beings is prone to evil. Left to run its course, that's how it develops. A bad childhood can accelerate and exacerbate it, but doesn't create it. Babies aren't a blank slate. 

Does God have desires?

This may seem like an odd question. For instance, does God desire the lost? Does God desire our obedience? 

The question is how the concept of divine desire relates to a timeless God. On the assumption that God is timeless, then we need to modify the concept of desire.

In the case of temporal agents, we begin with a desire or form a desire. Then there's a gap or interval between having the desire and having what we desire. A waiting period. Having a desire, we may take steps to achieve what we desire.

If, however, God is timeless, then there's a sense in which he has no desires because he was never in a state of unrealized desire. The object of his desire was always in his possession. It was always achieved.

In terms of world history, there may be a process by which that's achieved. But one the plane of God's existence, there is no interval between first having a desire (much less forming a desire) and then obtaining what he desired, later on. 

In another sense, there was never a time when he didn't have the desire in question. It's not like there was a point prior to his having a desire, then forming a desire, then taking actions to achieve the desired goal. 

The emotional problem of suffering

The Christian (Calvinist) philosopher and ethicist John Feinberg discusses the emotional problem of suffering. He offers his own experiences with suffering after his wife was diagnosed with Huntington's Disease as well as advice on how to help those suffering. The following excerpt is taken from his book The Many Faces of Evil (revised edition).

How Reason Leads to God's Existence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjAVIyEIsMc

Did Jesus die for little green men?

Now imagine the universe is teeming with other intelligent civilizations. What is a Christian believer supposed to say? Claiming that Christ died only for us, while the rest of the universe is screwed, would be incompatible with God’s love. If, however, earthly Jesus died for the whole universe, myriads of extraterrestrial sinners included, we would have to accept a geocentrism even more preposterous than the spatial variant. Neither is there a way out by suggesting that other intelligent species may not have been “fallen.” This proposal amounts to a negative human exceptionalism that is totally unbelievable, given that alien species are subject to the same general evolutionary mechanisms as we are. Natural selection favours “selfish” traits.

What about multiple incarnations? Here another difficulty of traditional Christian doctrine comes into play: Christ has two natures—he is “truly God and truly man.” But how are members of completely different biological species (“truly man” and “truly Klingon,” let’s say) supposed to stand in a relationship of personal identity? Even worse, if the number of sinful species in the universe exceeds a certain threshold, God would be forced to incarnate himself simultaneously. However, no single person who is an embodied being with a finite nature, i.e. a “truly” biological organism, can be more than one such being at the same time. If, on the other hand, the incarnations were not personally identical, many different persons with a divine nature would result—too many even for a Christian. Finally: May extraterrestrial sinners have been reconciled to God by means different from a divine incarnation? Perhaps, but even if the Christian believer concedes alternative means of salvation she is stuck with the highly implausible geocentric claim that the incarnation, i.e. one of the most remarkable events in the history of the cosmos, happens just 2000 years ago on our planet, although myriads of other inhabited planets were also available.

Therefore, I conclude, the traditional Christian believer can’t make theological sense of extraterrestrial intelligent life.

https://gizmodo.com/which-religion-is-friendliest-to-the-idea-of-aliens-1841241730

i) Unless and until we discover aliens, or they discover us, this is purely academic. Even if this might be a defeater for Christianity, it's a hypothetical defeater, not a demonstrable defeater. 

ii) Calvinists, who subscribe to limited atonement, reject an assumption of his argument.

iii) According to Scripture, many angels are fallen, but no provision was made for their redemption.

iv) There's no reason to think the fall of Adam would implicate inhumane species in original sin. Aliens are not Adam's posterity. Adam is not their federal head.

v) Assuming that aliens exist, there's no presumption that they are fallen. Hence, there's no presumption that aliens require an atonement even if they do exist.

vi) The doctrine of original sin isn't based on evolution. Indeed, theistic evolution typically denies a historic fall.

vii) There's no presumption that if aliens exist, they are the product of evolution rather than special creation. 

viii) The Incarnation is unique in reference to the Son becoming human. In principle, the Incarnation is repeatable in reference to the Son assuming the nature of other intelligent creatures. The uniqueness of the Incarnation doesn't preclude multiple incarnations in that respect because each incarnation would be a unique, unrepeatable union  between the Son and the nature of an intelligent species. 

ix) It's not contrary to personal identity for the Son to form a hypostatic union with more than one species. It would be the same timeless, spaceless Son at one end of the relation. Although there'd be more than one individual creature at the other end of the relation, that would just mean the Son qua Incarnate is not uniquely identical to any particular instance of incarnation, but identical to the ensemble. 

To take a comparison: suppose God created a multiverse. In that event, God is the Creator of each separate universe as well as the multiverse. His identity as Creator operates at more than one level. The Creator of the set as well as the subsets. 

x) In the nature of the case, Bible history zeros in on earth history and human history. It's silent on the question of alien life. It's silent on the question of a multiverse. It doesn't speak to those hypotheticals one way or the other. It doesn't address the world history of aliens on other planets, assuming they exist. For the record, I have no opinion about the existence of aliens in our universe.  

Did Jesus die for Klingons?

Christian Weidemann argues:

Every major religion on Earth could easily accommodate the discovery of (intelligent) alien life, with one exception: Christianity.

...Now imagine the universe is teeming with other intelligent civilizations. What is a Christian believer supposed to say? Claiming that Christ died only for us, while the rest of the universe is screwed, would be incompatible with God’s love. If, however, earthly Jesus died for the whole universe, myriads of extraterrestrial sinners included, we would have to accept a geocentrism even more preposterous than the spatial variant. Neither is there a way out by suggesting that other intelligent species may not have been “fallen.” This proposal amounts to a negative human exceptionalism that is totally unbelievable, given that alien species are subject to the same general evolutionary mechanisms as we are. Natural selection favours “selfish” traits.

What about multiple incarnations? Here another difficulty of traditional Christian doctrine comes into play: Christ has two natures—he is “truly God and truly man.” But how are members of completely different biological species (“truly man” and “truly Klingon,” let’s say) supposed to stand in a relationship of personal identity? Even worse, if the number of sinful species in the universe exceeds a certain threshold, God would be forced to incarnate himself simultaneously. However, no single person who is an embodied being with a finite nature, i.e. a “truly” biological organism, can be more than one such being at the same time. If, on the other hand, the incarnations were not personally identical, many different persons with a divine nature would result—too many even for a Christian. Finally: May extraterrestrial sinners have been reconciled to God by means different from a divine incarnation? Perhaps, but even if the Christian believer concedes alternative means of salvation she is stuck with the highly implausible geocentric claim that the incarnation, i.e. one of the most remarkable events in the history of the cosmos, happens just 2000 years ago on our planet, although myriads of other inhabited planets were also available.

Therefore, I conclude, the traditional Christian believer can’t make theological sense of extraterrestrial intelligent life.

(Source)

1. And this is from a lecturer in Protestant theology! With "friends" like these...

2. Why isn't it possible for Christ to have died "only" for humans? Suppose intelligent aliens exist, but suppose they likewise rebelled against God. So they're fallen too. In that case, why should God's "love" extend to rebels? What about God's justice? Is it "incompatible with God's love" if God doesn't rescue Satan and the fallen angels?

3. Is it "preposterous" if an "earthly Jesus" died for other extraterrestrials? What if other extraterrestrials in the universe are also human?

4. Weidemann assumes evolutionary mechanisms shape our morality, but that's highly contentious. He'd have to mount a case for this for a start.

Besides, just because an act is "selfish" doesn't necessarily mean it's sinful. It's selfish for me to walk on the beach alone when I could be having a conversation with a friend, but it's not necessarily sinful for me to do so.

In theory it's possible aliens could have evolutionarily "selfish traits". Such as caring more about themselves than other aliens. But that's not necessarily sinful. Just like it's possible humans might care more about other humans than other animals, but still care for other animals.

5. The multiple incarnations dilemma is an interesting one. Granted, I'm no philosopher or theologian, but I'll try to take a stab at this:

a. For one thing, why assume "God would be forced to incarnate himself simultaneously"? Why couldn't God incarnate himself sequentially?

b. What's more, even if the Son of God incarnated himself simultaneously, I don't see how this would be problematic if, as most traditional Christians believe, God is outside spacetime. Why couldn't a timeless God have multiple instances of himself at multiple points in the spacetime continuum? Take the fiction of C. S. Lewis. Lewis wrote about Aslan in Narnia as well as Maleldil in Perelandra. We know Lewis meant both to be the Son of God. I envision Narnia and Perelandra sort of (not quite) paralleling other worlds. (Indeed, consider whether God the Son could have become incarnate in parallel universes rather than other worlds within the same universe.)

c. I assume some form of Cartesian dualism is true. If so, then it's possible for humans to become disembodied. Our souls can be decoupled from our bodies (at death). We live on despite the death of our physical bodies. Meanwhile our corpses rot away; they become dust and ashes. At the same time, God promises his people new bodies in the world to come. As such, it's possible for our souls to inhabit more than one body. (As an aside, this likewise calls to mind scifi shows like Altered Carbon where people have their minds uploaded to a cloud, then downloaded to various bodies.)

Why couldn't something like this be true of the Son of God too? However an objection might be humans cannot possess more than one body at the same time. Perhaps a response could be that that's not necessarily the case for the Son of God. For one thing, he is omnipresent, unlike humans.

d. As far as the issue of identity, was the Son of God's pre-resurrection body identical to his post-resurrection body, given his pre-resurrection body died and deteriorated?

e. Weidemann floats the rejoinder that the salvation of extraterrestrials could have occurred with "alternative means of salvation" absent the incarnation (I agree). However, he immediately dismisses it because it means the Christian is "geocentric". However I don't see what's necessarily wrong with "geocentrism"? Why is it necessarily morally problematic for God to have saved Earthlings by having the incarnation (and crucifixion and resurrection)?

If anything, wouldn't the incarnation imply how far the moral rot in humans has spread that God the Son had to become flesh like us to save us rather than implying anything virtuous about humans? There's no room for pride in the criminal who had to have another pay for his crimes because he had no other options for restitution left to him.

The argument from beauty and the argument from numbers

Among other things, Pruss sketches two arguments for God's existence: the argument from beauty and the argument from math:

http://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/2020/01/wilde-lectures-now-online.html

The argument from logic

https://www.proginosko.com/2020/01/a-conversation-with-tom-jump/

Is the Trinity brute fact?

1. I suspect many Christians affirm and defend the Trinity because they're supposed to, but not because they find any intrinsic value in the doctrine. The Trinity is often presented as an impenetrable paradox. You have a pious duty to check that box, but it it wasn't a revealed truth, how many Christians would miss it, or even breathe a sign of relief that they no longer had to defend it. Is the Trinity a chore, a nuisance, and intellectual embarrassment? In this post I'll offer a few philosophical musings. 

2. In historical theology there are different models of the Trinity:

i) In Greek Orthodox theology, the Trinity is like a tree trunk with two branches. The Father is the trunk, while the Son and Spirit are offshoots. The Father directly causes the Son and Spirit to exist (albeit eternally and necessarily).

ii) In Latin theology, the Father causes the Son directly and the Spirit indirectly via the Son (the Filioque). So that's a linear conception. Greek Orthodox theologians complain that the Filioque destroys the unity of the Trinity by positing two causes for the Spirit rather than a unified cause for Son and Spirit alike. 

iii) Those are pre-Reformation paradigms. A more recent position repudiates the hierarchical model. Instead it posits that each person is autotheos or God in himself. In Latin and Greek Orthodoxy theology, by contrast, only the Father is autotheos. 

3. Proponents of the Nicene paradigm claim it protects the unity of the Godhead. The Son and Spirit share a common essence with the Father. However, that by itself doesn't have much explanatory value:

i) At best it amounts to generic unity rather than numerical unity. Human beings share a common nature, yet they are separate entities. 

ii) In addition, if the Father can generate at least one divine person, additional to himself, why is there any upper limit on how many he can generate? How does that select for a total of three persons rather than two or four or forty?

4. To contend that each person is autotheos doesn't mean the persons exist independent of each other. Just that one doesn't cause the other two. These don't represent three different points of origin. On this model, they have no causal origin. So they aren't separate in that regard. 

5. Is it a brute fact that God is three persons, no more and no less? It might be an epistemological brute fact. Perhaps the explanation for why there are just three persons is way over our heads. 

Even if that's the case, it doesn't imply that the Trinity is a metaphysical brute fact, in the sense that it's arbitrary. Rather, it's a brute fact in the qualified sense that nothing outside of God explains what God is like. Indeed, we could argue that God is not a brute fact:

i) The existence of a creature is arbitrary because creatures are contingent. A creature could exist or not exist. There could be one more creature or one less creature. In that respect, creatures have a brute factuality that God does not. God's nonexistence is impossible. Moreover, one thing must exist necessarily for anything else to exist. 

ii) Another angle is the perfection of God. God is the way he is because God is perfect, so anything different would be less perfect or imperfect. That's not arbitrary, but represents the culmination of an axiological principle.  

6. These (admittedly) sketchy explanations operate at a higher, more generic level. But do they explain why God is a trinity rather than a binity or quadrinity? Again, this may be out of reach of human reason, but it's worth exploring the question to see how far we can take it. 

7. In physics and ancient philosophy, there's a strong bias towards reductionism. Where the most fundamental component of reality is one. Monadic units. You get down to something ultimately simple and discrete. Absolute unicity is the philosophical ideal.

The Trinity challenges that prejudice. According to the Trinity, relations are more fundamental than units. According to the Trinity, ultimate reality already has structure. It's not organizing isolated units into structures. Rather, reality has structure at rock bottom. So one is not the most fundamental reality. Three is fundamental. 

8. Considered strictly as a number, 3 has some striking properties: 

3 is the only integer which is the sum of the preceding positive integers (1+2=3) and the only number which is the sum of the factorials of the preceding positive integers (1!+2!=3). It is also the first odd prime. A quantity taken to the power 3 is said to be cubed.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/3.html

To be sure, that's a pure number rather than a numbed object,  but it's still interesting to consider. 

9. A relation is conceptually richer than a unit. And a trinary relation is richer than a binary relation. A binary relation is more elementary. 

10. Thus far the analysis is rather abstract, but suppose we try to visualize it. A reflection is a relation. It takes at least two elements to generate a mirror-image. 

Consider three mirrors arranged in a triangle. They reflect each other. They contain each other.  You couldn't tell which is a reflection of which without a frame of reference. And the mirror images are self-enclosed within the triangle. Internal to that configuration. 

Compare that to arranging four mirrors in a square. In one respect that's more complex because it has an added element, a fourth element. Yet the reflection pattern is simpler because the mirrors stand at right angles to each other, so the reflections are only generated by mirrors directly facing each other. Even though there are four mirrors, they only generate paired reflections, wheres three mirrors capture all three, in a circular reflection. Three mirrors can reflect each other in a way that four mirrors can't. 

So the trinary relation is more ontologically parsimonious, yet more conceptually fecund. Which constitutes a more elegant pattern because it combines superior economy with superior complexity. Hence, there is a containment principle for why more is less and less is more. The binary relation is both ontologically and conceptually simpler. The trinary relation gives you more with less while the quaternarian relation gives you less with more. In that respect the trinary relation is more perfect than a fewer or greater number of constituents. 

How strange is the Trinity?

Is the Trinity an apparent contradiction? Let's take a comparison. It's natural for humans to reason counterfactually. Indeed, the ability to contemplate hypothetical scenarios is part of what makes human intelligence human.

That includes self-referential counterfactuals. I can say I'd turn out differently if I grew up on a ranch rather than the big city. Or if I grew up in France or Italy instead of the USA. Or if my mother or father died when I was ten. Or if I was an only child instead of having two brothers. Or if my brother committed suicide when we were teenagers. And so on and so forth.

Changing key variables in my past changes the kind of person I will be come. But that in turn raises questions of personal identity and numerical identity. Am I the same individual under these counterfactual scenarios? Do the same individual experience these alternate past scenarios? Is it one of me or two of me or three of me? Are these variations on what a given individual could be? Alternate versions of me? It doesn't seem reducible to yes or no. 

This, of course, is the stuff of science fiction. I travel through a wormhole and meet the other me in a parallel universe. Which is the real me? Are we one and the same individual? Are there two of us? 

On the one hand, as we spend more time together, we find out how much alike we are. How much we have in common. On the other hand, we also find out how unalike we are. 

It's not just a case of me taking one fork in the road, then taking the other fork in the road. For which fork in the road is taken changes the traveler. Not just the road traveled but what it does to the traveler. I'm the same when I begin at the fork in the road. But am I the same at the end of the journey if I go left rather than right? Do I come out the other end the same individual who went in, compared to taking the road not taken? 

My immediate point is that when you think about counterfactuals and parallel universe scenarios, the Trinity no longer seems so alien to reason. I'm not saying the Trinity is directly parallel to transworld identity. Rather, I'm saying they raise similar issues regarding the complexities of personal and numerical identity. 

Eternal sonship

1. I recently ran across the question of whether it's consistent to affirm the eternal sonship of Christ but disaffirm the eternal generation of Christ. To which I'd answer: yes!

2. Both sonship and generation are related metaphors, and so it might seem illogical to affirm one but disaffirm the other. But they're not identical metaphors. In addition, theological metaphors are analogies, and so the question is always how much to include in the analogy and what to exclude. What is the metaphor designed to illustrate? How far does the metaphor extend?

3. As I've discussed before, I think the significance of the sonship metaphor in reference to Christ is representational, in two related ways:

i) It's a way to indicate resemblance. Two things that could not be more alike but still be distinct. No one is more like a father than is son, or vice versa.

(Twin brothers might be a similar metaphor, but the father/son relation is far more dominant in the ancient world.) 

Which carries the implication that they are two of a kind. And, indeed, the NT often uses the sonship of Christ as a divine title.  The unique sonship of Christ implies the deity of Christ.

ii) If (i) is a metaphysical claim, that in turn has a practical aspect. Because they're so alike, there's a sense in which one can substitute for the other. A son can naturally act as his father's agent. Acting in on his behalf, in his place, with his authority. So (i) grounds (ii). Because the Son represents the Father ontologically, he's uniquely qualified to represent the Father in action. 

3. Turning to eternal generation, one asymmetry between eternal sonship and eternal generation is that the concept or metaphor of generation doesn't entail a son. Fathers beget daughters, too.  

Although generation is a male sexual metaphor in reference to the begetter, it is not a male sexual metaphor in reference to the begotten. Men father daughters as well as sons. And it would be inapt to say no one is more like a father than his daughter, pace the father/son relation. So that's one limitation of the metaphor or analogy. 

4. Unlike eternal sonship, eternal generation takes the metaphor a step further, as a theory of derivation. Eternal generation is a more radical and ambitious claim. In a sense, an attempt to explain the origin of the Trinity. On this view, the Father causes the Son and the Spirit to exist.

This is distinguished from creation in the usual sense inasmuch as they are eternally and necessarily caused to exist. Moreover, they share the Father's essence. 

Whether that's adequate to distinguish God from a creature is disputable. By that logic, the Father could be eternally and necessarily caused to exist by a super-deity who stands behind the Trinity, transmiting his essence to the Father. Indeed, the logic of the principle seems to extend backward with no stopping-point. 

Of course, some folk's ecclesiology commits them to creedal statements regarding eternal generation. I appreciate the fact that the Nicene paradigm squeezed out Arianism, but I regard eternal generation as a theological compromise or halfway house that degrades the deity of the Son and Spirit. In that respect I side with theologians like Alexander Röell, B. B. Warfield, Paul Helm, and John Frame who reject a hierarchical model of the Trinity. 

Timeless cause/effect relation

I was asked a question about a timeless God's creative relation to the world.

i) It's  not so much that God exists before time but  that he exists apart from or outside of time.

ii) There's an asymmetrical relation. The world has a first moment. So on the mundane side of things, there was something new. 

But from the divine side of things, it's a timeless relation because God is timeless, so there was never time when God was not the Creator. There was no shift in God from when God was the sole existent to God and the world. No change in God. It's a one-sided change.

Here's another potential way to model the issue. Causation normally involves both an interval and a medium. A stock objection to Cartesian dualism is that there's nothing to mediate the cause/effect relation, since mind and matter are categorically distinct substances. 

However, a counter to that objection is that if effects are necessarily mediated effects, then that generates an infinite regress. 

So it seems inevitable that effects bottom out with direction causation. Nothing mediates the transaction. 

If, however, we eliminate the medium, then don't we also eliminate the interval? But if there's no medium, then it's a timeless cause/effect. There's nothing in-between the cause and effect, either substantially or temporally.