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The argument from premises 1 and 2 to conclusion 3 cannot... — Carmelics

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The argument from premises 1 and 2 to conclusion 3 cannot be rejected on the grounds that the Father and the Son are merely two different modes of God.

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2 reasons for

1 reason against

Reasons For

2 perspectives

Reason for 1 of 2

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1.Modalism, condemned at the Council of Constantinople (381 CE), holds that Father, Son, and Spirit are merely successive masks of one divine person.
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2.Orthodox Trinitarian theology, from the Cappadocian Fathers onward, insists the three hypostases are genuinely distinct, not reducible to modes of appearance.
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3.Therefore, invoking modal identity to block the logical inference collapses orthodox Trinitarianism into the heresy of Sabellianism, which the tradition explicitly rejects.
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Reason for 2 of 2

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1.Richard Swinburne and other social Trinitarians argue each Person possesses distinct centers of consciousness, will, and intentional action irreducible to modes.
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2.If Father and Son have numerically distinct wills and cognitive states, as Swinburne's 'The Christian God' (1994) defends, they cannot be mere modes of a single substrate.
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3.An argument blocked only by denying distinct personhood thus fails on the very metaphysical grounds mainstream analytic Trinitarian theology already accepts.
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Reasons Against

1 perspective

Reason against

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1.The three Persons of the Trinity are three selves, not merely three modes of God.
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2.If the Father and the Son are distinct selves rather than modes, then the claim that each is a mode of God cannot be used to block the inference from 1 and 2 to 3.
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Related

An argument blocked only by denying distinct personhood thus fails on the very m...If Father and Son have numerically distinct wills and cognitive states, as Swinb...If the Father and the Son are distinct selves rather than modes, then the claim ...Modalism, condemned at the Council of Constantinople (381 CE), holds that Father...

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Orthodox Trinitarian theology, from the Cappadocian Fathers onward, insists the ...Richard Swinburne and other social Trinitarians argue each Person possesses dist...The three Persons of the Trinity are three selves, not merely three modes of God...Therefore, invoking modal identity to block the logical inference collapses orth...

Similar

If the Father and the Son are distinct selves rather than modes, then ...83%Therefore premises 1 and 2, which apparently treat Father and Son as s...78%Rather, the Father and Son are each modes of God, not independent selv...75%Swinburne's theory of the Trinity should be rejected or is seriously p...75%

Source

AI-extracted2/3 agreementValid

These theorists reject another response...

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These theorists reject another response to the above argument, which would be to reject it is invalid because 1 and 2 mean that each is a mode of God (see section 1), and while these claims are true, they don’t imply 3, since the Father and the Son are two different modes. Against this, the theories of this section assume that the three Persons of the Trinity are three selves (Rea 2009, 406. 419; van Inwagen 1995, 229–31).

Extraction notes

Validity: The passage states that the theories in question assume the three Persons are three selves (premise 1), and this assumption is precisely what grounds their rejection of the "modes" response, which aligns with the extracted argument's structure attacking the modal objection.

Confidence: Moderately confident. The text explicitly states that these theorists reject the modalist response and assume three selves, though the specific content of premises 1, 2, and 3 is not given in this passage.

Details

Type: claim
Perspectives: 3 (2 for, 1 against)
Edits: 1 edit