Brian Leftow has long insisted that a proper trinitarianism must be anti-social (Leftow, Reference Leftow, McCall and Rea2009); he now maintains that it must also be unconstitutional (Leftow, Reference Leftow2018). He is a formidable disputant – incisive, tenacious, and unusually inventive. Nevertheless, I have so far managed to resist his arguments, and I shall attempt to persuade readers that they can and should do the same. In his most recent salvo (Leftow, Reference Leftow2021), he undertakes to (1) mount objections to my account of the Trinity in terms of constitution; (2) argue that the constitution relation itself is of no use for the doctrine of the Trinity; (3) reiterate and defend objections he previously made to my view, to which I have offered replies; and (4) expound Leftow's own trinitarian views, and defend them against objections. I shall reply on most of these topics, though not in that order.
I will begin, however, by pointing out that my overall Social view of the Trinity does not stand or fall with my use of constitution. I have embraced William Craig's description of the Trinity as the divine soul with three sets of rational faculties; this description does not presuppose or entail anything about constitution. I employ constitution (in a version derived from Lynn Rudder Baker) to give what I hope will be a more illuminating understanding of the relationship between the divine Persons and the divine nature: I propose that the divine soul (= the divine nature) constitutes each of the three Persons. But even if constitution cannot, in fact, make such a contribution, the basic description can still remain in place. One would then wish for a better account to replace the one given in terms of constitution, but the lack of this would not undermine the rest of what I have said concerning the Trinity.
A further, related point. Since I am not insisting that all philosophers and theologians must understand the Trinity in terms of constitution, I am under no obligation to prove that everyone is forced to accept constitution as the only, or even the best, way of dealing with the problems for which it is invoked. All I need is that constitution is an intelligible, and sensible, concept which can be pressed into service in explicating the doctrine of the Trinity. The obligation falls, rather, on my opponents and critics (such as Leftow) to show that the notion of constitution is either fatally flawed or, if not that, then clearly unsuitable to be applied to the Trinity in the way I want to do.
Leftow against constitution
Perhaps the best place to begin will be with Leftow's general assault on the notion of constitution. If the constitution relation itself is of no use, there will be little point in trying to defend, or to emend, particular trinitarian formulations stated in terms of constitution. Leftow does not attack the constitution relation directly, by showing it to be incoherent; rather, he proposes allegedly preferable deflationary accounts of the situations which constitution is supposed to illuminate. He then asserts that, in the light of his alternative accounts, constitution can be of no help in the doctrine of the Trinity.
His main example is the relation between Athena, a statue, and Hunk, the lump of clay of which Athena is made. Here is what he says:
Athena is an artefact. Artefacts are mind-dependent. They are what they are due entirely to their makers’ actions and intentions. If a sculptor scrapes a line in a rock, meaning to make a sculpture (titled ‘Marked Rock’), that makes it a sculpture. It is one simply because the sculptor meant it to be. . . .
As I see it, the sculptor shaped Hunk. This produced a shaped hunk of clay. The shaped hunk is a statue because it falls under the statue convention: Athena's coming to exist depends on a convention. Athena's persistence also involves convention. As long as there is a hunk in the right place whose shape is close enough to Athena's original shape, our concepts say that Athena persists – and the standards for ‘close enough’ are up to us. That's it.
This account defines artefacts in terms of hunks and conventions. It does not eliminate them, but treats them as non-fundamental. On this account, statues exist, but I deflate what it is for them to exist: for a statue to exist is just for a hunk to satisfy a convention. A statue's existence-condition thus includes there being a convention. A hunk's does not. Thus, their existence-conditions differ; thus, they are not identical. For Athena and Hunk to have different temporal properties is just for Hunk to exist when a convention does not apply or for a convention not to apply to Hunk or anything that results from Hunk by changes of part. For them to have different modal properties is just for a convention's application-conditions to differ from a hunk's persistence conditions. . . . What matters to me is just that artefacts are mind-dependent and at best ontologically lightweight. Since nothing in the Trinity has this character, nothing in this account is useful for thinking about the Trinity. (540)Footnote 1
Leftow overestimates both the superiority of his own account of Hunk and Athena, and the negative implications of the example for constitution trinitarianism. What is counter-intuitive about this and similar cases are ‘intuitions that two or more material things are in exactly the same place at once and intuitions that there is really only one thing there’ (539). Leftow's interpretation acknowledges this conflict of intuitions. Common sense, I submit, initially supposes that Athena and Hulk are identical. But when we apply strict, Leibnizian identity to the situation, we find (for familiar reasons) that they cannot be identical, so we must account for the ‘two things’ in some other way. So far, Leftow agrees. But, he says, Athena is ‘ontologically lightweight’ because ‘for a statue to exist is just for a hunk to satisfy a convention’. Leftow is mistaken about this: satisfying such a convention is neither sufficient nor necessary for a statue's existence. If he thinks it is sufficient, I invite him actually to produce a Marked Rock ‘sculpture’, and then attempt to convince a random selection of fellow-citizens that it is a work of art! But neither is it necessary: some works of art originated in cultures that did not possess our concepts of artists or works of art (think of palaeolithic cave paintings), or that rejected those concepts in certain applications (a monk charged with caring for the ikons at a Mount Athos monastery insisted, ‘We have no art’). My own suggestion is that a work of art must be a product of aesthetic skill and must be capable of sustaining aesthetic contemplation. Neither of these is conventional, though they are admittedly vague and will occasion much disagreement in application.
Leftow might insist that works of art, even if not infected by convention, still are mind-dependent in that they came into existence only due to the intentions of their creators. Quite so, but why is this a problem? One would rather expect that created things would depend for existence upon their creators, and that an uncreated being would not so depend. Why is this supposed to rule out the application of constitution to the Trinity? The upshot, then, is this: both Leftow and the constitutionalist recognize that there are two distinct objects, Athena and Hunk. Leftow thinks Athena is ‘ontologically lightweight’, but the constitutionalist does not agree. It is hard to see how this situation is supposed to put constitution out of business.
Leftow has a good deal more to say about constitution in general, but it is unclear how this discussion is supposed to show that constitution is not viable as a way of conceiving the relationship between the trinitarian Persons and the divine nature. The closest Leftow comes to providing such relevance comes in the final paragraph of his critique of constitution. He states:
If constitution never links mind-independent objects elsewhere in reality, the case for thinking it does so in the Trinity is weak. Further, if my rival story is true, it's necessarily true. For it is hard to see how it could be contingent that statues are conventional objects . . . (543).
This might be pertinent if it were true, but it is not. Constitution does link mind-independent objects: quantities of water and ice cubes are an example. As I have shown, statues are not inherently or necessarily conventional objects, though we do have conventions with regard to them. (The palaeolithic individual who first crafted a crude fertility figure was not following or establishing a convention.) Convincing objections should not rest in this way on false assertions.
Still, I have always recognized that some philosophers will not embrace constitution, and those of them who are trinitarians will need to find some other account of the relationship between the PersonsFootnote 2 and the divine Nature. For reasons I have tried to make clear in previous writings, I do not think Leftow has succeeded in producing a better account of this relationship.
Criticisms of my view
In considering Leftow's specific objections to my own use of constitution, my task is complicated by the fact that he reiterates, and further develops, criticisms he had made formerly and to which I had given answers in my previous article in this series (Hasker, Reference Hasker2021). After consideration, I have decided not to continue these lines of argument; I believe these topics will tend to repetition and will in the end prove inconclusive. Leftow is considerably exercised by the danger that someone pursuing my line of thought may come to venerate (though not to worship) the divine soul, separately from, and in competition with, the worship or veneration owed to the Trinity and to the Persons severally. (He cites Eckhart and Ruysbroeck as cautionary examples.) I have to say, however, that I do not find myself greatly aroused by this danger, so I will leave it to the readers to consider whether this is a problem that causes them distress. (Eckhart and Ruysbroeck arrived at their views without benefit of constitution, and the constitutionalist I know best has no inclination to follow them.)
Leftow does, however, offer two new criticisms of my deployment of constitution, and these require a reply. He provides a correct summary of my most recent definition of the constitution relation:
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x constitutes y at time t just in case x is of primary kind F, y is of primary kind G, and at t
1. x and y have all parts in common,
2. x is in ‘G-favourable circumstances’,
3. necessarily, if x of primary kind F is in G-favourable circumstances, an object of primary kind G shares all its parts with x; and
4. ‘causal activity is required . . . for there to be (such a) G . . . the form of activity depending on the natures of F and G’ (Hasker (Reference Hasker2021), 528).
He proposes a counterexample to (4):
[A]s it includes (4), Hasker's definition falls to counter-example. Consider Hasker's own case, some water constituting an ice cube. Imagine a universe ending at the spatiotemporal boundaries of some water, which is always below freezing. The water always constitutes an ice cube. Some physical activity always goes into this: molecular motion which keeps the water's mean molecular kinetic energy below n keeps the water frozen. But for the mean molecular kinetic energy to be below n is for there not to be more molecular motion. That is, it seems that what makes constitution happen here is an absence of activity, not activity. Suppose further that (counter to actual natural law, but as is metaphysically possible) the water were always at absolute zero, and that that entailed that its molecules did not even vibrate and its electrons just sat there, motionless. There would then be no activity at all, yet we'd still have ice. It would be more profoundly frozen than is actually physically possible, but it would be ice by any criterion – solid water below a certain temperature. (536)
The counterexample fails. F and G in the definition of constitution must be ‘primary kinds’, and (following Baker) a thing's primary kind answers the question, ‘What most fundamentally is x?’ For F and G to be different primary kinds, something which is G must have causal powers lacked by things that are merely F (Hasker (Reference Hasker2013), 240). In Leftow's all-ice universe there presumably would not be such novel causal powers, and thus no constitution. In a more normal situation, the novel powers of ice cubes all seem to involve making or keeping something cold, so the constituting water must be assumed to be initially liquid, and constitution must involve that water's being chilled below the freezing point – obviously, a ‘causal activity’ as called for by (4).
Leftow is also critical of my premise (1). His criticisms centre on the notion of improper parthood, which is invoked when constitution is applied to the Trinity. In view of this, I need to say a little bit about the way this notion became an element in my exposition of the Trinity. Baker's account of constitution begins by specifying that constituting and constituted objects are spatially coincident. Spatial coincidence did not, however, seem a useful criterion for entities that are omnipresent. At least, so it seemed to me at the time when I was formulating my definition, but I am now inclined to think this was a mistake. Arguably, in a theistic universe nothing non-divine can be omnipresent in the relevant sense. If so, then the requirement of spatial coincidence can stand: the divine nature and the divine Persons coincide spatially in that they are all omnipresent, and nothing else is ‘spatially coincident’ with them. If so, the definition of constitution can be stated without reference to parthood. (More on this later.)
Even if this is correct, it is still worthwhile to explore the implications of the definition as given. Now, it is widely agreed (including by Baker) that constituting and constituted objects share all the same parts; thus my (1). But the divine soul, as well as each of the divine Persons, are all simple entities, thus lacking ‘ordinary’ parts – that is, ‘proper parts’. So I said that they share their one, simple, ‘improper part’. And even if (as I now think) parthood is not needed in the definition of constitution, it is still affirmed that a simple entity, the divine nature, constitutes each of three other simple entities, the trinitarian Persons.
Let us consider, then, whether it is possible for one simple entity to constitute another. I see no reason to think this is impossible. Suppose there is a quantity of material that is simple, in that it is not assembled from parts and cannot be divided into parts. (No matter how sharp the knife, that last thread of material connecting the two nearly separated parts will always prove impossible to sever.) Its weight and volume are exactly equal to those of Hunk, so we will call it Simple Hunk, or S-Hunk. Now, suppose S-Hunk to be shaped into the exact shape of Athena – now, S-Athena. There will be the same reasons why S-Hunk is distinct from S-Athena, as there are for distinguishing Hunk from Athena in the first place: they will differ in their temporal and modal properties. But how do we avoid identifying the two, since each has only the one, simple, ‘improper part’? Well, for a constitution theorist it is already given that objects are not necessarily identical with the sum of their parts; otherwise constitution would collapse into identity. That means that S-Hunk can be distinct from S-Athena, even though they share the simple entity which is the sole, improper, part of each of them. A question remains: what is the relation between a simple entity and its sole, improper part? I think it is plausible that this relation is disjunctive: a simple object is either identical with its sole part, or is constituted by another simple object, which is the sole, improper part of the first object. S-Hunk is no doubt identical with S-Hunk's sole part, which is, once again, S-Hunk. S-Hunk is, however, distinct from S-Athena, a constituted entity which has S-Hunk as its sole part. But S-Hunk cannot both constitute S-Athena and be identical with S-Athena. The two relations are mutually exclusive: identity is reflexive, whereas the constitution relation is irreflexive.Footnote 3 In view of this, improper parthood will be non-reflexive. For similar reasons, improper parthood will be non-symmetrical: identity is symmetrical, constitution is asymmetrical. But improper parthood will be transitive, since both identity and constitution are transitive. So far there is not an apparent problem.
Leftow, however, thinks that there cannot be a relation such as I take improper parthood to be. It is possible that he is right about this; I am unsure how to appraise some of his arguments, and will not discuss them here. If he is right (or even if he isn't), I can simply drop improper parthood in my definition of constitution with and replace (1) with
(1*) x and y are spatially coincident at t (see Hasker (Reference Hasker2013), 241).
But in what sense are the divine persons and the divine nature ‘spatially coincident’? Since God is omnipresent, both the persons and the nature are present at every point in space. At a minimum, omnipresence involves both complete awareness of everything that exists and occurs at any point in space, and the capacity to act at any point in space. (It is controversial whether God is present in space in God's essence, but that need not be decided here.)Footnote 4 Furthermore, God is present everywhere in space without a part of God being present at each point in space, another fact which distinguishes divine omnipresence from the universal presence of space-time itself. Thus, the persons and the divine nature are present everywhere in space, in a way in which even space-time itself is not, and (1*) can be substituted for (1) without damage. So objections to improper parts, even if successful, do not invalidate my use of constitution in explaining the Trinity.
Leftow on the Trinity
Leftow devotes considerable space to expounding his own trinitarian proposal; I include here only a brief summary of the most important points. There is a single divine person, namely God, with ‘person’ being used here in its ordinary sense of ‘a self-conscious morally responsible agent capable of social interaction’ (549). This one person, however, leads his life in three distinct personal life-strands, performing in each strand cognitive, affective, and volitional mental acts. These life-strands are exhaustive (God performs no acts outside of the life-strands) and mutually exclusive (no act is part of more than one life-strand). God as Father performs the acts in the Father-life-strand, God as Son performs the acts in the Son-life-strand, and God as Holy Spirit performs the acts in the Spirit-life-strand. God, then, is designated as ‘Father’ when performing acts in the Father-life-strand, and correspondingly for the Son and the Holy Spirit. Since the three life-strands are necessarily, and eternally, distinct, the distinction of Father, Son, and Spirit is also necessary and eternal. However, there is only one divine person, namely God, performing the acts in all three strands. This situation can be described as follows:
[I]t would be misleading for the Father to say, ‘I am the Son, who died on the cross.’ This would naturally be taken to imply that the Father is God living the Son life-strand, the life-strand which included crucifixion, and this of course is not true. But the Father can truthfully say, ‘I am the person who, while living the Son life-strand, suffered and died on the cross.’ The Father and the Son are indeed the same identical individual, although that person is designated severally ‘Father’ or ‘Son’ according to [the different life-strands within which he is speaking and actingFootnote 5]. (Hasker (Reference Hasker2021), 529–530)
Despite obvious differences, there is here an overlap with the trinitarian views of William Craig and myself. All these views share, for instance, what I have termed the Trinitarian Possibility Postulate:
It is possible for a single concrete divine nature – a single trope of deity – to support simultaneously three distinct lives, the lives belonging to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. (Hasker (Reference Hasker2013), 228)Footnote 6
The crucial difference, of course, lies in the question, where in this picture do we find personhood in the proper sense, as defined above. For Craig and me, it is Father, Son, and Spirit who are persons; for Leftow, there is only one person, God, living all three lives.
In my judgement, Leftow's view and the Craig–Hasker view both get passing marks in terms of logical possibility: neither seems to entail anything contradictory. Each of them, to be sure, requires some difficult metaphysical suppositions, but no one should expect the doctrine of the Trinity to be easy, once one goes to unpack the details. The crucial difference, I maintain, lies in their agreement or otherwise with the scriptures of the New Testament, the source (as all concur) of the doctrine of the Trinity. To this we now turn.
Trinitarian models and Scripture
As the church fathers wrote about the Trinity, they all made one crucial – indeed, all-important – assumption, namely that the words and deeds of Jesus are the words and deeds of the eternal Son of God (see Hasker (Reference Hasker2013), 68–74). Given this assumption, the entire text of the four Gospels is opened up as data for trinitarian reflection. This assumption forced the fathers to make an exegetical distinction: ‘unity’ texts such as ‘I and the Father are one’ (John 10:30) reveal the Son's eternal divine status, whereas ‘subordinationist’ texts such as ‘The Father is greater than I’ (John 14:28) express Christ's status viewed in terms of his self-humbling in the incarnation. But all of these utterances were attributed, not to any merely human person, but to the eternal Word, the divine Logos.
In previous discussions I have focused on the words of desolation from the Cross: ‘My God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Mark 15:34). Regrettably, Leftow now characterizes my appeal to this text as my trying to rap his knuckles with a Bible! (550). I must protest that I have better things to do with a Bible than to rap anyone's knuckles with one, and I hope Leftow does as well. In particular, I look to the Bible as the authoritative source of the data that, when properly interpreted, guides us in formulating the doctrine of the Trinity. Without doubt the debate about the interpretation of this data elicits strong reactions from both of us, but I would hope this could leave undisturbed the civility of our discussion, as well as the mutual respect we both have for each other.
With regard to this text I pointed out that, in the light of Leftow's view, Jesus should have said, ‘Why have I-as-Father forsaken myself-as-Son?’ Leftow's response to this in his most recent reply is both striking and also, I would suggest, a bit bizarre. Previously, Leftow had written, ‘It should not seem odd to us that someone would feel that he had forsaken himself if he was not aware that it was he himself who (he felt) was doing the forsaking’ (Leftow (Reference Leftow2012), 322). Here Leftow appears to concede that Jesus ‘was not aware that it was he himself who (he felt) was doing the forsaking’ – that is, that Jesus was not thinking of himself in terms of the trinitarian model proposed by Leftow. Now, it is not especially radical for Leftow to suggest that Jesus, at some time in his life, might not have been fully aware of the nature of his relationship with the Father. (We hardly want to suppose that the baby in the manger was thinking to himself, ‘I am the eternal divine Logos, the creator of all things.’) But this utterance from the Cross comes at the very end of Jesus’ earthly life, and therefore at the very end of whatever process of development may have occurred in his self-awareness as the incarnate Son. And this, as I pointed out, creates a situation that is distinctly unfavourable for Leftow. On Leftow's own account, we have a disagreement between Jesus, at the very end of his pre-crucifixion life, and Leftow. This disagreement, furthermore, concerns the nature of Jesus’ relationship with the Father! Given such a choice, I imagine there are few who would opt in favour of Leftow.
This sets the scene for the new response in Leftow's most recent defence:
[I]n claiming that Jesus’ pre-mortem view was distinct from mine, Hasker claims quite astonishing insight into Jesus’ mind, and in particular, knowledge that Jesus at that point clearly distinguished persons from Persons (as I used those terms aboveFootnote 7), and thought of the Father as a distinct person, not a distinct Person. . . . I feel some incredulity at Hasker's apparent thought that He had such niceties in mind while dying in torment (550).
Of course I entirely deny possessing any ‘astonishing insight into Jesus’ mind’, but I hope I have some insight into the plain meaning of the biblical text – an insight shared at this point, so far as I can determine, with the whole history of Christian exegesis of this passage. So far from my attributing to Jesus a clear distinction between persons and Persons, there is not a shred of evidence that Jesus had any inkling of the concept of a trinitarian Person as Leftow defines it. (Nor, for that matter, did anyone else have such an inkling before Leftow began publishing on this subject.) If, then, Jesus did not possess Leftow's concept of a divine Person, it is impossible to offer such a concept as a possible interpretation of Jesus’ words, as Leftow wants to do. I'm afraid that Leftow, in order to avoid theological disaster (the disagreement between his own view and that of Jesus), has left himself confronting an unclimbable mountain of historical and exegetical implausibility: he is assuming that his own conception of the trinitarian Persons, devised in the quite recent past, was a live option for Jesus nearly 2,000 years ago!
It should be kept in mind, finally, that the ‘forsaken’ text is not unique. Throughout the Gospels, we see Jesus speaking and relating to the Father as to another person. We Social trinitarians think Jesus was absolutely unconfused at this point: he thought of the Father as a person distinct from himself, which is exactly what the Father was, and is.
