[♪♪♪] [♪♪♪] ROBERT LAWRENCE KUHN:<i> I yearn
to know deep reality.</i> <i> I've focused on cosmology
and consciousness,</i> <i> but I take seriously
the potential existence of God</i> <i> or something like God,
if there be such a being.</i> [♪♪♪] <i> My approach has been
generally analytical.</i> <i> Philosophy of religion style,</i> <i> examining the nature,
essence, and traits, of God,</i> <i> if there be a God.</i> <i> I've generally not considered
sectarian doctrines,</i> <i> the specific God claims
of diverse religions.</i> <i> But in my avoidance,
have I limited my scope?</i> [♪♪♪] <i> In the West, Christianity
is so common</i> <i> that our ears have become
dull to its astonishing,</i> <i> some would say,
preposterous claims.</i> [♪♪♪] <i> Is God triune?</i> <i> A Trinity?</i> <i> Is one God three persons?</i> <i> How could one be three?</i> <i> Or three be one?</i> <i> The notion, to be charitable,
does not strike me as obvious.</i> <i> Perhaps not even coherent.</i> [indistinct conversation] <i> Yet, very smart thinkers,
philosophers hold this belief.</i> <i> What arguments do they pose?</i> <i> One need not be a Christian
or even a theist</i> <i> to appreciate clever moves
of logic and linguistics</i> <i> in humanity's search
for deep reality.</i> [♪♪♪] <i> What's the Trinity?</i> <i> I'm Robert Lawrence Kuhn</i> <i> and Closer To Truth
is my philosophical inquiry.</i> [♪♪♪] <i> The Trinity, how could one
God be three persons?</i> <i> I can't allow the numbing
repetition of the term Trinity</i> <i> to obscure
its disruptive assertion.</i> <i> What's to be learned from
its strivings for coherence?</i> <i> Should I immerse myself</i> <i> in the world
of philosophical theology,</i> <i> feel what it's like to think
like a Christian philosopher?</i> [♪♪♪] <i> I visit one of the world's
leading centers</i> <i> for philosophical
and analytical theology.</i> <i> Scotland, St. Andrews
University, the Logos Institute.</i> <i> I begin with a leader
in metaphysics</i> <i> and philosophy of religion,</i> <i>a past president of the Society
of Christian Philosophers,</i> <i> Notre Dame philosopher,
Peter van Inwagen.</i> Peter, in the Christian
claim of God gets you immediately
to a Trinity which, if I'm sitting back and thinking
about the structure of reality, seems pretty bizarre, but what are these three things
that compose one God? I promise you, I will answer that question. But I want to begin with a -- - I'm impressed by that.
- Assuming that there is a God, why did he bother
to make a world? That is why
did he bother to create anything besides himself. Now, Jews and Muslims,
and I have a very good answer. So, that love could
exist between persons. So, that there could be
persons who love each other. And there could be persons who cooperate to do
things for each other. All these good,
interpersonal relationships could not exist if there
were only one person, the divine person in the world. But, of course, that does
imply that there are goods that are not inherent
in God's nature. The Christian doctrine says that all goods are
inherent in God's nature. Not only, is there one
person who loves another, even if there is no creation. Then there would even be
two persons cooperating to do something
or a third person, all these goods exist,
full and perfect and complete, inside God so that
everything that happens, and all the goods
of interpersonal relations that happen
in the created world, are a kind of copy of these. This leaves Christians without
any answer to the question, why would God bother
to create anything? It's a mystery. But it does leave
Christians in possession of the doctrine that
all goods are actually to be found
in the divine nature. KUHN: Without God
having to create, yeah. Because you can't both
have an explanation of why God would create and also have everything
inside that goodness for the total reality,
goodness of reality would need insight
of God's nature. And Christians end up
having the one, and the Jews and the Muslims,
have the other. But how is this possible? That is the Muslims,
in particular, Jews might be
more polite on this, but both believe that
the Christians are tri-theists. They believe in three Gods and the Christians insist
that they believe in one God, but that's not
very believable, is it? How could there be
three persons in one God? Because each of them
is a divine person. Each of them is God. One may, around this mystery,
is to think that there might be no such thing as just counting, but rather counting by,
if the Christian, I mean, how many Gods are there? One way for the Christians
to answer was well, there isn't
any unique answer to that question, what do
you want me to count them by? You use the word God,
so maybe you want me to count
them by Gods, that is by divine beings. Oh, in that case, there's one. But do you want me to
count them by persons? Uh, oh well,
there are three, then. And if you think
that's contradictory, that's because you think there's such a thing
as absolute counting. If you really believe
that there are these three centers
of consciousness, the three persons in God, why do you care if somebody calls it monotheism or
tritheism, why do you care? We, Christians,
are children of the Jews. They are our parents. We believe in their God. It is their God who has become,
we believe, incarnate in Jesus Christ and his triune
nature revealed to us later. There can't be
anything more stark than the insistence
of the Hebrew Bible that there is one God. It is extremely important
to us that there is one God. But, we find it in our
tradition revealed to us, that there are three. [♪♪♪] KUHN:<i> Peter posits that for God
to have within God's own self</i> <i>intrinsically all perfections,
including love,</i> <i> God must consist
of three persons</i> <i> because love
is a social contract</i> <i> requiring interrelationships.</i> <i> Such reasoning is derived</i> <i> from what's called
perfect being theology.</i> <i> Analyzing God's traits as
nothing greater can be imagined.</i> <i> But why should God,
if there is a God,</i> <i> conform to human notions
of strict perfect beingness?</i> <i> Moreover, does
Peter's explanation</i> <i> hold with only a particular
kind of Trinity,</i> <i> a so-called social Trinity,</i> <i> where the three persons
that compose the Trinity</i> <i> have separate centers
of consciousness</i> <i> with independent
wills and intents?</i> <i> But are there other
kinds of Trinities?</i> [♪♪♪] <i> I meet a professor
of systematic theology,</i> <i>a pioneer of analytic theology,</i> <i> a fellow at St. Andrews,
Oliver Crisp.</i> CRISP: At the heart
of the doctrine, is the idea that God
is one in essence, but three in person. That is as a Father,
and a Son, and a spirit, and these three are distinct, though they share somehow
in one divine essence. One model says, well, in a way, these three are something
like relations, subsistent relations is the term
that Saint Thomas Aquinas uses. So, the Father and the Son
and the Holy Spirit are one, and can only be differentiated
in virtue of the fact that they bear these
relations to one another, being begotten of the Father, being spirated by the Father
and the Son, perhaps. And being ingenerate, or not
being generated by anybody, that's the Father. So, just the relations
distinguish the persons. Well, another option, is to say, that what you've got
is a much more robust sense of distinctness. You've got Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit, and they're persons
in this sense, that they have each a center
of will and consciousness and so they can make
decisions together. And then, they're one
in the sense that, let's say, three human beings are instances
of the one thing humankind. That's sometimes called
a social view of the Trinity. The first one
is sometimes called a Latin view of the Trinity or a psychological
view of the Trinity. Emphasizes the oneness,
and this second view emphasizes
the distinctness or Threeness. But the worry is that you
so emphasize the Threeness that it's not sufficient
to retain monotheism which is what you want
to have if you want to remain part of the Judea
Christian tradition. And some Christian theologians
are happy to bite that bullet, but that seems to me,
to my way of thinking, to be too greater cost. So, it's not clear to me
that the different families of views out there of trying
to understand the Trinity ultimately work. My own view is what
I would think of as a kind of a Trinitarian
mysterianism. In other words, it is a mystery,
I acknowledge it's a mystery, I confess the doctrine
at the heart of it, how do we make sense
of that? I'm not exactly sure. I don't have a clear idea and I'm not sure that
anybody has a clear idea. What about the idea that these
three things are sort of different faces of
the same thing? CRISP: Now that is what's
known as a Trinitarian heresy or mistaken view that the church
has distanced itself from. Which is called modalism. And modalism is the view that
you've got basically a one God who wears three different masks
on three different occasions. You might think
it's a difference between, you know, Batman
and Bruce Wayne. They're both the same entity but one wears a mask
and one doesn't. But you're talking
about the same individual. But the, the problem
with that is it's insufficient, it's insufficient
in the sense that you don't have a robust
sense of persons. What you just have
is one entity. So, that's not Trinitarian. KUHN: If the reality
is there are three Gods, I don't care if there's
a monotheism or not, that's what it is, it is. But what bothers me is some of
the internal or contradictions because if it's God, it has to be either
everlasting or atemporal. But, in that case, how can
you have a Father and Son? Begotten is sort of part
of a kind of a temporal process which indicates,
if you're begotten, what were you before
you were begotten? I think what
we're dealing with here is what's sometimes
called anthropomorphism, that is a sense in which
we're trying to project beyond ourselves onto God,
language that we have that we use in another
human context. And I think what Christian
theologians have sought to do is do the best they can with
the limitations that we have. [♪♪♪] KUHN:<i> Oliver describes a Latin
or a psychological Trinity,</i> <i> defined in terms of relations,</i> <i> which starts with God
being one, God's oneness,</i> <i> in contrast with
a social Trinity</i> <i> which starts with God being
three, God's Threeness.</i> [♪♪♪] <i>Personally, if forced to choose,</i> <i> I'd go with Oliver's own
Trinity mysterianism.</i> <i> I relish the linguistic
gymnastics</i> <i> because they portray
the mighty maneuvers,</i> <i> we humans undertake to support
our theological beliefs.</i> <i> I bet there be more kinds
of Trinities out there.</i> [♪♪♪] <i> I meet the Director
of the Center for Philosophy</i> <i> of Religion at Notre Dame,</i> <i>a pioneer in analytic theology,</i> <i> Michael Rea.</i> <i> Can analytic theology
justify a Trinity?</i> REA: Here's the analogy I like. Suppose I take a piece of clay
and I make a statue of Gumby. And then I ask you, what's the relationship between
Gumby and the piece of clay? And you might say well
they're the same thing. But I say, now look that piece
of clay existed before Gumby, something can't exist
before itself, right? So, they're different. Are they two different things? Yeah, if I'm going to sell it,
I can sell you Gumby and then charge you extra
for the piece of clay? No. The solution I like says well, here's the relationship between
Gumby and the piece of the clay. They are the same
but not identical. They're one in number
but not one in being. Where you have two things
sharing the same matter, you count one material
object, right? My, you know,
my fist and my hand, right. There's one object here but the fist goes away
when I open my hand. The hand doesn't go away. So, in some sense,
they're two separate things. This relationship
is all over the place. So, Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, I want to say the shared matter
is the divine nature. Their relationship
is analogous to the fist and the hand
or Gumby and the piece of clay. The fact that they are
centers of consciousness, I think that's a fair term. I haven't wandered into
a heresy by saying that, have I? Depends a little on who you ask, but I think that's fine. So, if they're each
centers of consciousness, it sounds like that
undermines the argument that they have
the same nature but when each one becomes
a center of consciousness, then -- and then the claim
is that they're all the same stuff, I think
that's problematic. I don't think the divine nature
is literally stuff, right. So, there's, there's that. I do want to affirm that there is different
consciousness there. The tradition says that Father,
Son, and the Holy Spirit, share a will and they
share an agency. But I think if they're going
to be distinct persons, it has to be the case that
the Father thinks things like I am the Father
and not the Son, right. The Son thinks things like
I am the Son and not the Father. So, the view I'm offering says
hey, if sameness isn't identity, just as you get
the same material object when you have two things
that share the same matter, so too you get the same God
when you have two divine beings
that share a divine nature. And then, if you say well,
but how could those beings have different centers
of consciousness? I think I'm within my rights
to say, I don't know, but I also don't see
an argument for the conclusion
that they can't. Do you have a name
for this theory? It's ended up being called
Constitution Trinitarianism. Material constitution is the
relationship between two things that share all of their material
parts in common. [♪♪♪] KUHN:<i> Michael's Constitutional
Trinity stresses</i> <i> common essence
as the core unifier.</i> <i> Frankly, after all
the parsing and nuance</i> <i> which I admire and enjoy,</i> <i> I'm left with the simple sense
that the three whatevers</i> <i> still struggle to be
counted as monotheism.</i> <i>For all I know, the Trinity may
indeed be ultimate reality,</i> <i> but to me, what can I say?</i> <i> The Trinity just doesn't
square with one God.</i> <i> So, something would
have to give,</i> <i> either loosen one's
grip on one God.</i> <i> Or weaken one's hold
on the Trinity.</i> <i> Neither is nice
for traditional Christians.</i> <i>Are there other ways for a kind
of Trinity to be really one God?</i> <i> I ask the former professor
of the philosophy</i> <i> of the Christian religion
at Oxford, now at Rutgers,</i> <i> Brian Leftow.</i> One way you can start
to get an entrance to it would be from one
of the prime Trinitarian texts, the beginning
of the Gospel of John. We read, in the beginning,
was the word, and the word was with God
and the word was God. Now there are two
different thoughts there. The word was with God, that means the word and God
are two different things. I am with you. We would not say that I am
with myself ordinarily. On the other hand,
the word was God, well that's claim of identity. And so, it's as if the word was
God with God, God repeated, God a second time over. Now, one way I like
to make sense of that would be in terms
of time travel. To the extent that time
travel does make sense. Imagine that I were to leave
the room right now, travel back in time
a few minutes, and then enter and stand
here and sort of ask myself a question and answer myself. You'd then have Leftow
with Leftow, Leftow twice over. So, one way I think
about the Trinity is, it's as if God had a life which involved something
like time travel. Now, notice what's going
on when I travel in time. There's one substance, there's
me in two different places. There's two of something, there's two episodes
of my life going on at once, because there's
the earlier episode when I'm still here
and I haven't time traveled. And there's the later episode
when I've time traveled and I've come back in
and here I am bothering myself. [chuckles] So, if time travel is imaginable
and conceivable. Then it's imaginable
that one person live a life in which, at every time, more than one episode
of that life is going on. That, I think, is one
way of understanding what the Trinity would be. It's God has this really
odd sort of life, in which he's always living
three episodes of it at once. Why it would be that way? Well, that's one place in which
the doctrine is mysterious. So, my understanding is that
the traditional Christian view is that there
are really three persons or sometimes centers of activity in the one concept of God. But the three persons
are really distinct. When I talk to myself, there are two really
distinct entities that are talking to each other. I mean, my later self might ask
my earlier self a question that my earlier self
didn't know was coming because my later self
might have thought it up while he was getting into and
out of the time machine. So, there's two, definitely
two distinct centers of consciousness going on here. What's nice about my version of it is that
it secures monotheism for the view pretty clearly. I mean, there's just
the one God who is being repeated
over and over again. If you start from three
separate things and try and sort of build one
God out of that, you wind up with a very weak
sense of monotheism and that's now how the doctrine
is supposed to work. I wouldn't suspect
that God was this way if I weren't a Christian
and didn't accept it on a revealed ground. I'm willing to accept that there
are sources of information that unaided reason
wouldn't have access to. [♪♪♪] KUHN:<i> Brian's Trinity,</i> <i> more than other Trinities
is strong on monotheism.</i> <i> Good for one God.</i> <i> As a logical
consequence, however,</i> <i> Brian's Trinity must be
and is weak on three persons.</i> [♪♪♪] <i> Brian defends his views
as Latin Trinitarianism,</i> <i> in that the three
expressions of God</i> <i> are different centers
of consciousness,</i> <i> even though they all come from
the timeline of the one God.</i> [♪♪♪] <i> If Brian's Trinity reflects
three faces, as it were,</i> <i> of the same one God,
why stop at three?</i> <i> Isn't God supposed
to be infinite?</i> <i> I appreciate the adroit
time travel innovation.</i> [♪♪♪] <i>But what nomenclature gyrations?</i> <i> Novice that I am,
I cannot much distinguish</i> <i>this tripartite time travel God</i> <i> from the long-labeled heresy</i> <i> where the three persons
of the Trinity</i> <i> are really one divine person</i> <i> playing three different roles.</i> [♪♪♪] <i> My head swirls
with competing Trinities.</i> <i> A notion of reality
that even if true,</i> <i> part of me would still seem
an odd way for reality to be.</i> <i> I'm wondering now how to make
the best case for the Trinity?</i> <i> I ask the Emeritus philosopher
of the Christian religion</i> <i> at Oxford, Richard Swinburne.</i> The doctrine
of the Trinity claims that there are three
divine persons but the other two derived
from the Father. The doctrine says
they derive necessarily, that is to say, it is not
a voluntary act of the Father's to produce the Son
and the Spirit. It follows from his essence
that he will do so. If we see something as
the obviously best act to do, and we have no temptation to
do anything else, we'll do it. So, for God too, if he sees something
as the best thing to do, he, not being subject
to temptations in any way, will inevitably do it. The sort of God to which
arguments lead, is a God who is omnipotent, omniscient,
and is perfectly free, that is to say, he's free
from inclinations to do things other than what he sees
as a reason for doing them, in virtue of their goodness. Now, if God, the Father
were a solitary God, if he were the only God, there would be something
rather wrong, wouldn't there? People have said surely
a perfectly good God will be a perfectly loving
and a perfectly generous God, but how could that be
if he existed all by himself? And surely, perfect goodness,
perfect generosity, perfect lovingness, would want
to create some other being with whom to share
everything he has and was. And therefore, God's perfect
goodness requires him to share. And hence, the need for
a second person of the Trinity, given the traditional
name of the Son. Now two can be a bit selfish. It was Richard of Saint Victor
in the 12th Century, I think,
who first saw this point. He said that
if you really love anyone, you will want to find
someone for them to love, other than yourself, and to be
loved by other than yourself. Otherwise your love is selfish. You, you want it
for your own sake. And therefore, the love of the Father
for the Son would inevitably bring about
a third member of the Trinity because this would mean that
each member of the Trinity would have someone else
to love and be loved by other than, other than
the third member of the Trinity. That is to say, three is the minimum number
necessary for unselfish love. And therefore, I think,
this is, to my mind, a strong perioral argument
for the doctrine of the Trinity. There are three divine persons and the three divine persons
follow from the one person. But why only three,
is the objection? Why stop there?
And the answer is this. Three is the minimum number
necessary for unselfish love. But if there is three, then that demand for unselfish
love would be satisfied. Now God cannot create
the best of all possible worlds. Any world he creates would
be less good than some world he could create
because more is better. So, if you were to say well, wouldn't it be better if there
was a fourth divine person or a fifth divine person? The answer is well, of course,
it, it -- maybe it would but then there would be
no reason to stop anywhere. But, in that case, God's perfect goodness would
be satisfied by his creating only three because it's not logically
possible to do the best. But it is logically possible
to do the best kind of act and the best kind
of act would be to create three divine persons. And any fourth person
would, therefore, be only a, a created
by a voluntary act and someone created
by a voluntary act would not be God because it wouldn't be
a necessary being. So, three is not
merely the minimum, but the maximum
number for divinity. [♪♪♪] KUHN:<i> The Christian claim
that God is triune,</i> <i>the one god of Hebrew monotheism
is the Christian Trinity</i> <i> challenges
Christian philosophers.</i> <i> First, through faith,
they accept the Trinity.</i> <i> Then, with logic and argument,
they seek to explain,</i> <i> or at least, to make
plausible how one God</i> <i> can be three persons.</i> <i> Not too much three persons,
which would undercut one God,</i> <i> not too much one God, which
would undercut three persons.</i> <i> The social Trinity privileges
the three persons.</i> <i> The Latin or psychological
Trinity privileges the one God.</i> [indistinct conversation] <i>Constitutional Trinity explains
how three divine persons</i> <i> are numerically the same
without being identical.</i> [♪♪♪] <i> Trinitarian mysterianism,</i> <i> who knows how it works?
I guess that's the fallback.</i> [♪♪♪] <i> I'm taken
by Swinburne's argument</i> <i> for the necessary existence
of three divine persons</i> <i> and of only three,
not because I think it's true,</i> <i>but because it is a masterpiece
of philosophical rigor.</i> <i> Yet, if three fits some higher
order good or principle,</i> <i> a kind of abstract object,</i> <i> then wouldn't that
good or principle</i> <i> be more fundamental than God?</i> <i> The Trinity indeed
has challenges.</i> <i> I relish them all,</i> <i>for getting... Closer To Truth.</i> [♪♪♪] [♪♪♪] MALE VOICEOVER:<i>
For complete interviews</i> <i> and further information,
please visit closertotruth.com</i> [♪♪♪]
