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    The three Persons of the Trinity are not merely three way... — Carmelics
    Home/Trinity
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    The three Persons of the Trinity are not merely three ways we can think of God, or three ways God may appear to us.

    Trinity
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • These objects result from God's essential self-understanding.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Sabellian modalism, condemned at Nicaea, nonetheless preserves divine simplicity more consistently than any trinitarianism admitting real personal distinctions.
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    • 2.If God is absolutely simple, any real distinctions among Persons must collapse into modes of presentation rather than ontological plurality.
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    • 3.The Council's rejection of Sabellianism was politically contingent, not a decisive philosophical refutation of modal interpretations.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Schleiermacher argues that trinitarian distinctions are secondary reflections on religious experience, not ontological claims about God's inner life.
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    • 2.If doctrinal language is grounded in phenomenological encounter, the Persons may be irreducibly epistemic categories without loss of theological coherence.
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    Trinity

    Related

    If God is absolutely simple, any real distinctions among Persons must collapse i...If doctrinal language is grounded in phenomenological encounter, the Persons may...Sabellian modalism, condemned at Nicaea, nonetheless preserves divine simplicity...Schleiermacher argues that trinitarian distinctions are secondary reflections on...
    +2 moreShow less
    The Council's rejection of Sabellianism was politically contingent, not a decisi...These objects result from God's essential self-understanding.

    Similar

    The three Persons of the Trinity are three selves, not merely three mo...85%There is a necessary unity of the three Persons.77%If the three Persons are absolutely non-identical, it is hard to see w...76%A three-self theory of the Trinity like Swinburne's is false.73%

    Source

    AI-extracted2/3 agreementValid
    SEP: trinity
    Koons
    View source passageHide passage
    Following Aquinas, Koons says that God (a.k.a. the divine nature) understands all things through himself; God is essentially omniscient and essentially self-understanding. Thus, the divine nature implies the existence of three relational qua-objects, which are the Persons of the Trinity. These are not merely three ways we can think of God, or three ways God may appear to us, but rather these objects result from God’s essential self-understanding (345). Each of these four things–God (the divine nature), the Father, the Son, and the Spirit–has the divine nature as its one metaphysical component,...
    Extraction notes

    Validity: The passage explicitly contrasts the claim that the Persons are "not merely three ways we can think of God, or three ways God may appear to us" with the reason that "these objects result from God's essential self-understanding," presenting the latter as the ground for the former.

    Confidence: Explicit reasoning in the text.

    Details

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