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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Van Inwagen's impure relative identity trinitarianism is inadequate.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.The theory doesn't rule out polytheism, as it doesn't deny that there are non-identical divine beings.
      ?

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    • 2.The impure relative identity trinitarian owes us a plausible and orthodox metaphysical story about how non-identical beings may nonetheless be 'one God'.
      ?

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    • 3.Van Inwagen hasn't provided such a story, staying as he has in the realm of logic.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Relative identity theories require that 'x is the same F as y' be primitive, but Van Inwagen never specifies what F-kind unifies the Trinity.
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    • 2.Without a specified sortal, 'same God as' is semantically vacuous and cannot do the ontological work of grounding trinitarian unity.
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    • 3.Geach's original relative identity framework requires sortals drawn from natural kinds, not ad hoc theological predicates invented to avoid contradiction.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Impure relative identity permits numerical distinctness between persons while asserting co-divinity, which on Leibniz's Law entails the persons differ in some property.
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    • 2.If the persons differ in any property, then at least one person lacks a divine attribute the others possess, violating classical theism's divine simplicity doctrine.
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    • 3.A trinitarian metaphysics that is formally consistent but incompatible with divine simplicity fails the adequacy conditions set by the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creedal tradition.
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