On the Relational Nature of the Trinity

My last two posts rest on a particular conception of the Trinity. I spent a small portion of my last post discussing it, now its time to discuss it at length. Most of the relational aspects I discuss will be in terms of Father/Son relation because it is easier to understand that Son/Spirit or Father/Spirit.

First, there is only one, unified God. Anything that is true of that one Essence (God) is true of the three Persons of the Trinity. Thus, the Father is fully God, the Son is fully God, and the Holy Spirit is fully God. They are not thirds that combine to form one God; They are all three wholly God and all three together still one whole God (not three gods). Whatever can be said of God (Good, Wise, Eternal, Infinite, Loving, Merciful, Just) can be said of all three Persons.

The most obvious name for the Trinity is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Intimately connected to these are the terms affirmed in the Creeds: Begettor, Begotten, Procession. Finally, there are the terms connected with act of Creation: Consciousness, Understanding (or Word), and Love.

The first thing to affirm of Trinitarian terms is the relational quality of the names. Father is not an essential quality that differentiates Him from the Son and the Spirit but a relational distinction. Fatherhood is not an absolute or essential state, it is reference based on another person. For example, there is nothing intrinsic to a man that makes him a father, it is his relation to another person (a child) that makes him a father. This is why the names Father and Son are used to describe the Trinity: There can be no essential difference in God. An essential difference would lead to two essentially different gods which is, of course, absurd and heretical.

This relation found in the names of the Persons are reflected in the acts common to them and the acts particular to them. Only Father is Begettor, only Son is Begotten. It is not proper to speak of Father as Begotten or Son as Begettor. Equally, only the Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son. Neither the Father nor the Son proceed. Again, because these are relational distinctions and not essential differences, those things common to God (the one Essence) are proper to all three.

The last set of terms can be confusing: Consciousness, Understanding (which is Word), and Love. How is it that the Father is termed Consciousness and the Son, Understanding, when the Son is conscious and the Father understands? Don't all three Love? While all three of the terms could be used for all three Persons of the Trinity, it is preferential to use certain names in certain cases (Creation, Atonement, etc...). Father is termed Consciousness as the absolute foundation upon which Creation rests. Understanding, then, is the speaking of that Consciousness, the Word through which all things are made. The reality of the Love between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit. These are ways, affirmed in the Creed, that we understand the act of the Trinity in Creation. The Father is not more of a Creator than the Son, the Son is not exclusively the "through which" of Creation, the Spirit is not the only Person who loves: all three acted in Creation, but we understand each as a particular Person through the acts attributed to each in Scripture. All three love, but it is specially spoken of the Spirit to help us understand better the distinction of the Trinity.

Again, anything common to the Essence of God is equally true of all three Persons. Those attributes or acts that are particular to the Father cannot be said of Son or Spirit. For example, Only the Son (Word) became incarnate, not the Spirit. Only the Son suffered death on the Cross, not the Father. If all things were true of all three members of the Trinity, they would not be distinct, which is equally as serious as claiming three separate gods.

Why a relational distinction? This keeps us from the belief in three essentially different gods (the Persons cannot be essentially different and still be one God). It also removes the claim that the three Persons are merely modes or manifestations of the one God (making the Father as well as the Son die on the cross and sit at His own right hand). Both are equally serious errors.

Finally, where do these ideas come from? These have their foundation in the earliest writings of the Church, which Augustine used to write De Trinitate. Later fathers like Boethius continued this theology in his own work On the Trinity. This theology finds its way into Anselm in the Monologian and culminates with Aquinas in the Summa Theologica (Part I, Questions 27-43).

Clarification

I've gotten some interesting responses to my last post, so I thought I should clarify/respond to some points.

First, I want to respond to a comment by a learned friend of mine. He said:

I think conservative folks would suggest that feminine imagery for God in the Bible is metaphorical or simile, whereas masculine language is not, the prime example being the Lord's prayer: "Our Father...hallowed be thy Name."

I fully agree that feminine language used to describe God is metaphorical, which is the point Pseudo-Dionysius makes in The Divine Names. Gendered language is a metaphor for God because He is non-physical; Gender is only proper to physical beings, as St. Aquinas says:

Among the accidents that are consequences of matter there is found a certain diversity. Some accidents follow from the order the matter has to a special form, as the masculine and the feminine in animals, the difference between which is reduced to the matter, as the Philosopher says in X Metaphysicae cap. 9 (1058b21-23). Hence, the form of the animal having been removed, these accidents do not remain except in some equivocal sense.
-Thomas Aquinas, Being and Essence, Chapter VI

By affirming both gender metaphors, we realize that neither is actual of the Transcendent God.

There is one exception that was mentioned: God as Father. In the Lord's Prayer, along with many other places, the name Father is not a metaphor. It is spoken as the name of God. I do not think that Father is a gender designation; I think it is a Trinitary relational statement.

The Trinity is properly spoken of as three Persons, One Essence. The three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct, but not essentially different. Boethius says in his work, On the Holy Trinity, that Paternal/Filial relation is just that, a predication of relation. The Father and the Son are not essentially different (that would be Tritheism, the belief in 3 Gods) but are distinct in relation to each other: The Father is so inasmuch as He is the Father of the Son; The Son is so inasmuch as He is the Son of the Father. The Father and Son by relation are distinct. To claim essential difference is to proclaim 3 Gods.

If the name Father (or Son) is a relational distinction and not an essential difference, the names are not absolute gender descriptors. The names are a way to make the relational distinction of the Trinity intelligible. Father and Son are the only proper way to speak of the Trinity relationally. As such, feminine language would have no place (or bearing) on Trinitary relational language; Mother/Daughter is not proper to the distinction of Father/Son. Feminine language should only be used as a metaphor for God, not to describe the particular relations of the Trinity.

Finally, I want to explicitly state what the use of gender metaphors is not. It is not pantheism. This is not a confusion of God and his creation, it is only an affirmation of created metaphors of God used in Scripture. It is also not affirming New Age/Pagan/Fertility Cult descriptions of God, god, or gods. This is purely a means of encouraging transcendence by affirming seemingly contradictory metaphors of God. Finally, this is not an attempt to recreate God in the philosopher's image. This is using the imagery from scripture (masculine/femanine) and the themes of scripture (transcendence) to help aid our knowledge of God.

Hopefully, this clarifies any questions over my earlier post.

God and Gender

When you mention God and Gender, most people have a strong reaction. The two most common positions are the most polarized: 1) God is masculine because the Bible says so. He is a man. or 2) God is not bound to misogynistic cultural norms. She is the Divine Feminine in us all. I would posit (through my good friend Pseudo-Dionysius) that there is an alternative to these two positions that is proper to who God is.

God is not a physical being. Whenever He is described in physical terms, it is an anthropomorphization, a way to describe God in human terms to make Him more intelligible to humans (see my last two posts on Dionysius). Human characteristics are not truly predicated of God; they are only true in a relational sense to humans, not in an absolute sense of who God is.

Gender is one of these characteristics. God is descried in terms of both genders, but it is not proper to say a spiritual being is gendered. That is not to say that God lacks gender, or that He does not act in ways we perceive as masculine and feminine, rather, God transcends gender.

Both man and woman are created in God's image and everything created is contained within God's infinite nature. God contains both genders, but is not "tied" to one because He is fully beyond gendering. God transcends the physical categories of male and female; in lacking neither, He is beyond both.

How does that effect how we talk about God? I think solely on the basis that God is affirmed in scripture with feminine language, it is good for humans to refer to Her as such. Further, it is proper to refer to Him in both genders as a way of reinforcing the truth that She is not bound by any gender. God is transcendent and any time we proclaim His brilliant darkness, Her trinitary unity, or His eloquent silence, we affirm that transcendent nature.

I think the road to transcendence is not in gender-neutering God; Neither is it is by gender exclusion. Transcendence is furthered when we properly attribute to God Her infinite nature through affirming the qualities that participate in His nature.

Thoughts on Anselm and Free Will

Some quick thoughts on my last post:

My friend Nathan made the point that the definition of freedom effects the entire concept and I think he is right. Anselm, in giving an account of freedom that relates to the good, positions humanity in its proper place. Freedom as a means of theosis makes much more sense than freedom as the occasion to sin. If one takes the latter definition, God is the ultimate un-free Being. Freedom is in God, a sentiment constantly echoed in Scripture.

Another note is that compulsion is not fitting of the human nature in regards to morality. Anselm takes for granted that freedom is a better state than compulsion and assumes that humans are different from animals in this way. He does so because life is unintelligible otherwise: Sin is literally meaningless and virtue is a non-thing. If there is no free will, all Law is brutish and we are no more than animals.

Anselm's On Free Will

In my last two post on Boethian Time and Vice and the Soul, I alluded to a certain view of the will, in particular, the freedom of the will and its relation to human nature. This is a rather important hinge in Boethius' thought, so I thought it important to discuss another view of will, namely Anselm's. As a quick note, this is not a Calvinism/Arminianism debate. Anselm's conception is fully prior to and beyond the scope of both polarized camps.

Outline: Humans have the capacity to sin, though they have the freedom not to sin. This freedom is given by God through the rational nature. This freedom cannot be coerced by temptation or God.

Anselm begins by defining freedom. Freedom is not the choice between good and evil. Sin confers no liberty and is directly opposed to freedom. Instead, freedom is the power not to sin. The capacity to sin, by which humanity fell, was not a result of freedom, rather it was the failure to exercise freedom. Because freedom is the power not to sin and no will can be coerced to sin (as will be shown later), the fall was willful and chosen. The will by its nature cannot be forced, though it may serve sin willfully. Freedom, then, is the power to chose rightly, to preserve rectitude of the will. Rectitude of the will is rightly willing for the sake that it is right, that is to say, for its own sake.

The will comes from the rational nature, intrinsic to all humans. It is improper to say that any person may judge between good and evil, yet be compelled to evil. By her human nature, by the type of being God created her to be, a human must be able to chose rightly if she has the capacity to judge rightly. Further, God cannot coerce a being to sin (as will be shown later). To disallow choice is to remove human nature and make any person an inanimate object.

At the fall, free will was not lost. The capacity for right choice remains, though it can not be used without grace. Even when sin entered the world and rectitude of will (the ability to will rightly) was abandoned, the rational nature, by which God gives free will, was not lost. The power to act rightly is retained, even when the occasion to act is not present.

This is easily demonstrated by the example of sight. A person has the capacity to see, regardless of whether the occasion is present. For example, a person is said to have the capacity to see, even when it is dark or the eyes are closed. The capacity(sight) is intact though the occasion(light, open eyes) is missing.

So far, it is clear what freedom is, that sin does not remove the power to will rightly and that rectitude of the will issues from the rational nature. But what of compulsion. The will may never be compelled because it is the power of the soul to act upon the judgments of the rational nature, that nature that separates humans from animals. The will cannot be compelled by temptation by the fact that it is free. While it may be difficult to will rightly and a person may fail to will rightly, it is not by an impotence of the will, but rather, the failure to use the strength intrinsic to the will. To fall to temptation is to fail to use the entire capacity of the will. Thus, the will cannot be coerced by temptation.

What about God? Can he remove rectitude of the will? We said rectitude of the will is willing rightly because it is right. By its very nature, the right is that which God wills. Nothing is right unless it is that which God wills. When we will rightly, we will what God wills. God cannot will someone not to will His will. That would be for God to will against Himself, which is absurd. Thus, God cannot will someone to sin or abandon rectitude of will.

The will is utterly free, although it is said to be a slave to sin when rectitude is lost. It is a slave because only God can restore abandoned rectitude; It is free because rectitude could only be willingly abandoned (abandoned by choice). By choice, a human may abandon rectitude, which may only be restored by grace, making him both slave and free. Again, the capacity for rectitude is intact though the opportunity is lacking.

Finally, human free will is entirely different from God's free will. Created free will (that of man) is conferred by God through the rational nature. God's free will is intrinsic in Himself and in no ways limited, by His own nature.

This is Anselm's concept of free will. For the sake of length, I will put my thoughts up in a couple days.

Vice and the Soul

Another issue Boethius writes on is the effects of vice on the soul. His discussion of vice centers on evil and the way it effects humans. Evil is the ultimate lack of power for Boethius. A human that chooses vice lacks the power to live a proper, virtuous life by the nature of his choice. Instead, she embraces the improper, powerless life of evil. Vice arises from an impotence to live rightly developed by habitual evil choices. A human that habitually commits vicious acts (those of sin or evil) becomes vicious by nature. According to Boethius, this effects the soul.

He says:

So it was by falling into wickedness that they[the vicious] also lost their human nature. Now, since only goodness can raise a man above the level of human kid, it follows that it is proper that wickedness thrusts down to a level below mankind those whom it has dethroned from the condition of being human. The result is that you cannot think of anyone as human whom you see transformed by wickedness. So what happens is that when a man abandons goodness and ceases to be human, being unable to rise to a divine condition, he sinks to the level of being an animal.
-Boethius The Consolation of Philosophy (Book IV, Chapter III)

The first point to note is that Boethius isn't making a judgment on human worth. Boethius uses a theory of Virtue/Vice that he borrows from Aristotle. Accordingly, a thing may not change in its essential properties. The essence, or definition of a human cannot change. The essence cannot change because the thing would cease to be, by its definition, itself. Wax, no matter how much it resembles an apple, will never actually become a piece of fruit because the two are essentially different. Intrinsic to humans is the rational nature. While a human may chose not to exercise the rational powers of the soul well, she will never lose her rational nature entirely.

It is important to note that physical, external acts effects the soul. The soul, by its nature, has a state that is proper to it, that of virtue (the state of choosing rightly because it is the right choice). It is the state in which any human ought to be. Any time a human sins, that evil effects the soul. Habitual evil acts (vice) lead to a lowering of the soul, a reduction of the nature. A human existing in a state improper to himself resembles an animal more than a human.

Without some kind of metaphysical restoration, the human becomes animalistic, denying the proper acts of the soul for those below its proper nature. Thus, Boethius captures the effects of sin on humanity. He clearly states the end result of vicious living on any being: a state demeaned and degraded, improper for humankind, that is self inflicted.

Boethius and Time

I just finished Reading The Consolation of Philosophy again. In it, Boethius is in a conversation with Philosophy, personified as a woman. The initial sections of the book follows Boethius' real life ordeal of false accusation and banishment and the nature of fortune. Book V deals with the difficulty of foreknowledge, human will, and time.

Boethius believes that human acts have some import, but what of Divine Foreknowledge? How can human acts have meaning, or the will have any efficacy, if God foreknows all things. Regardless of the cause/effect relationship between foreknowledge and will, the problem of total human compulsion arises. In a system where all things must happen because they are foreknown, there can be no reward or punishment. Hope and prayer become meaningless.

Nevertheless, Philosophy comes to Boethius' aid. He first insists that temporal events (things that happen in time) do not determine eternal Prescience: God's foreknowledge is not cause by human acts.

Integral to Boethius' theory is the truth that God's knowledge is utterly unlike our knowledge. Further, God's existence in and beyond time is completely dissimilar to our temporal state. God embraces and possesses, simultaneously, the entire extent of eternity. There is no past or future, only the simultaneous now of eternity. All time is the present for God because all time is contained within him, by nature of his infinity.

If this is true of God, that he transcends time and is not forced along a linear, human scale of time measurement, His "foreknowledge" is less about seeing the "future" and more about seeing the present, which for Him is all time. In the same way that a chariot race is not determined by the sight of the spectators, so our "future" acts are not determined by God's present knowledge. God knows all things in all "times" without unduly necessitating human act.

This conception is appealing for a couple reasons. First, it establishes a reverent view of God. He is not a human in the sky, He is a Being that knows, exists, and "experiences" time in a completely different way than any human can. This preserves his omniscience and omnipotence. Secondly, it gives legitimacy and meaning to human acts, keeping human nature at its proper place. It is neither exalted to omnipotence, nor degraded to animality; it views humans as they properly are: Physical rational beings with an effective will, stemming from the powers of the soul.