THE LOGICAL PROBLEM OF

THE TRINITY: A PERSISTENT

PROBLEM

JAKE BRANCATELLA
OUTLINE

• Historical introduction to the problem

• Contemporary representation of the problem
• Proposed solutions to the problem
• Objections to the solutions
BEGINNING OF THE PROBLEM

• Full-blown Trinitarianism begins in 4th century

• Key councils: Nicaea and Constantinople
• Key players: Athanasius (373), Cappadocian
fathers, Hilary (367), Augustine (430), etc.
SOURCE OF THE PROBLEM

• The doctrine of the Trinity itself

• Not a modern problem
• Not a critique initiated by Muslims or skeptics
• Represented in earliest Trinitarian sources
• Still exists and discussed in contemporary Christian
literature
 GREGORY OF NYSSA (395) “ON NOT THREE
GODS”
• Received a letter from Bishop Ablabius
• “In truth, the question you propound to us is no small one,
nor such that but small harm will follow if it meets with
insufficient treatment. For by the force of the question, we
are at first sight compelled to accept one or other of two
erroneous opinions, and either to say there are three Gods,
which is unlawful, or not to acknowledge the Godhead of
the Son and the Holy Spirit, which is impious and absurd.”
 GREGORY’S REACTION TO THE PROBLEM

• Gregory does not question Ablabius’ faith

• Encourages Ablabius for fighting against enemies of truth
• Appreciates Ablabius asking for help on this question
• Admits the question is not a small matter
• Says major harm will come without sufficient treatment of
question
• Forms a dilemma: Either there are three gods or the Trinity is
false
 GREGORY OUTLINES THE ARGUMENT

• “The argument which you state is something like this:— Peter,

James, and John, being in one human nature, are called three
men: and there is no absurdity in describing those who are united
in nature, if they are more than one, by the plural number of the
name derived from their nature. If, then, in the above case,
custom admits this, and no one forbids us to speak of those who
are two as two, or those who are more than two as three…
 GREGORY OUTLINES THE ARGUMENT
CONT.
• …how is it that in the case of our statements of
the mysteries of the Faith, though confessing the Three
Persons, and acknowledging no difference of nature between
them, we are in some sense at variance with our confession,
when we say that the Godhead of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Ghost is one, and yet forbid men to say there
are three Gods? The question is, as I said, very difficult to deal
with…”
 GREGORY’S STRUGGLE WITH THE
PROBLEM

• 3 individuals possess the same nature (Peter, James, and John)

• We normally count them as three men
• Seems like we are inconsistent in counting gods
• Forbid men to say there are three gods
• Admits that it is a very difficult question
• Gregory claims there is only one man
MODERN DISCUSSION ON THE PROBLEM

• Richard Cartwright, On the Logical Problem of the Trinity

• “It seems to have been left to Gregory of Nyssa, Basil's
younger brother, to notice that, thus understood,
consubstantiality of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit appears to license saying that there are three Gods.
Gregory himself rather desperately suggested that strictly
speaking there is only one man.”
THE LOGICAL PROBLEM OF THE TRINITY
• Cartwright’s Formulation
• P1 The Father is God
• P2 The Son is God
• P3 The Holy Spirit is God
• P4 The Father is not the Son
• P5 The Father is not the Holy Spirit
• P6 The Son is not the Holy Spirit
• P7 There is exactly one God
WHAT EXACTLY IS THE PROBLEM?

• Forms an inconsistent set

• The problem of tri-theism
• Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each God
• They are not the same as each other
• It follows that there are 3 gods, not one God
• P1 to P6 entails there are 3 gods
• P7 claims there is only only god
 MCCALL AND REA’S DESCRIPTION
• Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity (pg. 1)
• “What theologians sometimes refer to as the “threeness–
oneness problem of the Trinity,” and what philosophers call the
“logical problem of the Trinity” is well-known. It arises from the
conjunction of three central tenets of the doctrine: (T1) There
is exactly one God. (T2) Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not
identical. (T3) Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are consubstantial.
The logical problem is that the conjunction of T1–T3 appears to
be flatly inconsistent.”
CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN SCHOLARSHIP

• Christian philosophers and theologians treat the LPT as

a problem that requires a solution
• Scripture and tradition used to limit possible solutions
• Arianism and modalism considered formal heresies
• Interaction between different views
 TAXONOMY OF POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

• Beau Branson, The Logical Problem of the Trinity

• “So, if the orthodox Trinitarian wants to give an answer to
the LPT that is both (a) non-heretical and (b) a solution to
the LPT, it must fall into either: (a) the Equivocation Family,
which equivocates on “is god” between P7 and P1 through
P3, or (b) the NCIC Family, which counts by a relation other
than classical identity.”
 DALE TUGGY ON BRANSON’S TAXONOMY

• “He (Branson) argues that all possible non-heretical solutions to

that problem either equivocate on the predicate “is God”
(roughly: what are called “social” theories, discussed in sections
2.2–7) or insist that divine Persons must be counted by some
relation other than “absolute” or “classical” identity (i.e. relative
identity theories as discussed in section 2.1).” (SEP Trinity Entry)
• This means all non-heretical “solutions” to the LPT fall into either
a type of social trinitarianism or a type of relative identity
trinitarianism
SOCIAL TRINITARIANISM

• Equivocate on “is God” between P1-P3 and P7

• P1-P3 “is of predication” employed
• Example: Jake is happy
• Application: The Father is divine
• P7 God=The Trinity
PROBLEMS WITH SOCIAL TRINITARIANISM

• 1 God in one sense

• 3 gods in another sense
• Definition of person: self-conscious agent (distinct mind and
will)
• William Lane Craig, “The most pressing task of contemporary
Social Trinitarians is to find some more convincing answer to
why, on their view, there are not three Gods.”
 RICHARD SWINBURNE’S TRI-THEISM

• Could There Be More Than One God?

• “Traditionally, the first God is called "Father," the second "Son"
(or "Word"), the third "Spirit." "Father" seems a name
appropriate to the original source. Both "Son" and "Word"
suggest a second or third God. Biblical tradition apportions
both these names to Christ, and if the second person of the
Trinity became incarnate, they are then appropriate names for
that second person. Likewise, the name of "Spirit" for the third
God derives from his traditional role in sanctification.”
 LEFTOW’S ANTI SOCIAL TRINITARIANISM

• Leftow strongly condemns ST as polytheism

• “But it is not plausible that one can make Greek paganism a belief
in ‘not many gods, but one’ by adding to it the claims that the
gods are omnipotent and necessary. So on the functional-
monotheist account, the reason the Persons are one God and the
Olympians are not is that the Persons are far more alike than Zeus
and his brood, far more cooperative, and linked by procession.
But it is hardly plausible that Greek paganism would have been a
form of monotheism had Zeus & Co. been more alike, better
behaved, and linked by the right causal relations.”
WILLIAM LANE CRAIG ON SWINBURNE

• “As for the unity of will among the three divine persons,
there is no reason at all to see this as constitutive of a
collective substance, for three separate Gods who were
each omnipotent and morally perfect would similarly act
cooperatively, if Swinburne’s argument against the
possibility of dissension is correct. Thus, there is no salient
difference between Functional Monotheism and
polytheism.”
CRAIG’S TRINITY MONOTHEISM

• Each person is divine

• The persons are parts of God
• The persons are not instances of the divine nature
• Only “The Trinity” is an instance of the divine nature
• The one God is “The Trinity”
CRAIG’S TRINITY ANALOGY

• “Perhaps we can get a start at this question by means of

an analogy...In Greco-Roman mythology there is said to
stand guarding the gates of Hades a three-headed dog
named Cerberus... Although the Church Fathers rejected
analogies like Cerberus, once we give up divine simplicity
Cerberus does seem to represent what Augustine called
an image of the Trinity among creatures.”
 PROBLEMS FOR CRAIG’S MODEL

• Partialism
• Tri-theism looms (3 dogs with an overlapping body/conjoined
twins)
• Craig’s substance dualism entails each person is a substance (tri-
theism)
• Craig’s God is not a personal agent
• Historical concerns
• Leftow’s Dilemma
 DANIEL HOWARD-SNYDER ON CRAIG’S
MODEL
• Craig’s view is not Biblical
• “…there can be no “lending” of a property [i.e., a whole “getting”
a property from one of its parts] unless the borrower is
antecedently the sort of thing that can have it….[Therefore,]
Unless God is antecedently the sort of thing that can act
intentionally—that is, unless God is a person—God cannot
borrow the property of creating the heavens and the earth from
the Son….
DANIEL HOWARD-SNYDER ON CRAIG’S
MODEL CONT.

• …All other [statements involving] acts attributed to

God [in the Bible] will likewise turn out to be, strictly
and literally, false…If God is not a person or agent, then
God does not know anything, cannot act, cannot
choose, cannot be morally good, cannot be worthy of
worship.”
LEFTOW’S DILEMMA
 CRAIG’S PLANTINGIAN ARIANISM

• Craig opts for there being two ways to be divine

• Trinity is God by exemplifying the divine nature
• Persons are divine by being parts of God
• Persons have a degraded status
• Tradition assumes the persons fully possessed the divine nature
RELATIVE IDENTITY TRINITARIANISM

• P1-P3 utilize “the is of identity”

• Superman is Clark Kent
• All persons are identical to God
• The 3 persons are not identical to each other
• Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the same God
• Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are different persons
• Two types of RIT (Pure and Impure)
 PURE RELATIVE IDENTITY TRINITARIANISM
• Claims that absolute/classical identity is either false or unintelligible
• The relation everything has to itself and nothing else
• “The view of identity just put forward (henceforth “the classical view”)
characterizes it as the equivalence relation which everything has to itself and to
nothing else and which satisfies Leibniz’s Law.” (SEP)
• The indiscernibility of identicals/Leibniz’s Law: For any x and y, if x is identical to
y, then x and y have all the same properties
• We cannot ask if Paul and Saul are identical
• We can only discuss if two things are the same sort/type of thing
• Are Paul and Saul the same human, same person, same apostle, same animal?
 PROBLEMS FOR PURE (RIT) THEORIES

• Rejection of classical logic/identity

• Eschews singular terms (proper names, the 42nd president
of the US (Bill Clinton), this yellow table, etc.
• Linguistic solution, not necessarily a metaphysical account
• Ad-hoc and no utility outside of Christian theology
• Seems to conflict with background assumptions of other
Trinitarian doctrines (divine processions)
 PETER VAN INWAGEN ON RIT

• “A philosopher who denies the existence of classical, absolute

identity may find materials in the procedure I have outlined for an
explanation of the fact that most philosophers and logicians have
assumed that there is such a relation as classical identity....as far
as I am able to tell, relative identity logic has no utility outside of
Christian theology.”
PETER VAN INWAGEN ON RIT

• “Even in this limited area of investigation, I have left the

mystery of the Holy Trinity untouched. It is one thing to
suggest that “is the same being as” does not dominate “is the
same person as”. It is another thing to explain how this could
be. I have no explanation of this fact (if it is a fact); nor do I
think that we could hope to discover one in this life, in which
we see only disordered reflections in a mirror. One day,
perhaps, we shall see face to face and know as we are
known.”
 IMPURE RELATIVE IDENTITY TRINITARIANISM
• Persons are not strictly identical with God
• Persons are not identical with each other
• Numerical sameness without identity
• The persons count as 1 God even though they are not identical
• Material constitution account (Rea and Brower)
• Branson’s unity of action account
• Scott Williams’ Indexical account
• All models count by a relation other than classical identity
 REA AND BROWER’S MATERIAL
CONSTITUTION MODEL
• Uses lump and statue analogy to motivate theory
• Analogy fails as God is not made up of “stuff” analogous to matter
• The problem of indexicals
• Indexical-a linguistic expression whose reference can change based
on the context. Examples of indexicals include I, he, she, here,
that, etc.
• The Father cannot know, “I am the Son”
• How can 3 persons be numerically the same spiritual object?
BRANSON’S UNITY OF ACTION MODEL

• All persons perform the same type and token actions

• Numerically one will in the Trinity
• Term “God” refers to a specific type of activity
• Count the persons as 1 God because there is only one act they
perform
• Count by division instead of identity
PROBLEMS WITH BRANSON’S MODEL

• The Father wills the Son and Spirit to exist

• Problem of indexicals
• The Son alone becomes incarnate
• Persons cannot perform all of the same token actions
• There cannot be one will or set of cognitive powers
• Persons and attributes counted by identity and not
division
 GREGORY OF NYSSA ON ETERNAL
GENERATION
• Against Eunomius Book 3
• “The immediate conjunction (of Father and Son) does not exclude
the willing of the Father as if He had a Son without choice by some
necessity of his nature. But neither does the willing separate the
Son from the Father, coming in between them as a kind of interval.
So, we neither reject from our doctrine the willing of the Begetter
in reference to the Son as if it were forced out, as it were, by the
conjunction of the Son’s unity with the Father, nor do we in any
way break that inseparable connection when we regard willing as
involved in the generation.”
 LEFTOW ON THE DIVINE PROCESSIONS

• “Again, orthodoxy has it that the Father begets the Son. In

Williams’ proposal, not just the Father but the Son does the
begetting---and so the Son brings himself to be. Further,
presumably the Father begets the Son intentionally. So, the
Father intends to beget the Son, and so in Williams’ proposal, the
Son intends this too---causally before he exists. Williams can
avoid this and like impossibilities only by denying the trinitarian
processions. So, his view is either impossible or (again)
theologically unacceptable.”
 WILLIAMS AND HASKER ON INDEXICALS
• Scott Williams, “The divine persons are aware of different
propositions if they use a mental token with the indexical “I” in it.”
• William Hasker, “The persons are able to grasp and to assert
propositions containing indexicals. But here’s the rub: To be aware
of a proposition is precisely to perform a mental act. And we have
been told that in this instance the persons are aware of different
propositions, which must surely mean that they are performing
different mental acts. What could be clearer than that? And if this
is so, it cannot be the case that the persons have between them
only one set of divine mental powers, and one set of divine mental
acts.”
 PROBLEMS FOR IMPURE RIT THEORIES
• Rely on extremely controversial metaphysical theories
• We count by identity in ordinary life
• If we count by identity, then there would be 3 gods
• Inconsistent counting methods
• Persons and attributes are counted by identity
• Physical objects counted by division
• Immaterial objects counted by identity (persons, attributes, “gods”, etc.)
• Seems contrived
• “Today we count F’s by (1) logical subjects that are (2) discernible from (or
at least, not identical to) one another, and “are F.” That is, if X and Y differ
 IS THE TRINITY A MYSTERY?
• What is meant by the term mystery?
• Dale Tuggy identifies 5 uses of the term mystery in the literature
• 1 A truth formerly unknown, and perhaps undiscoverable by unaided
human reason, but which has now been revealed by God and is
known to some
• 2 Something we don’t completely understand
• 3 Some fact we can’t explain, or can’t fully or adequately explain
• 4 An unintelligible doctrine, the meaning of which can’t be grasped
• 5 A truth which one should believe even though it seems, even after
careful reflection, to be impossible and/or contradictory and thus
 NEGATIVE MYSTERIANISM
• Negative mysterians claim that the Trinity is a mystery in the sense
that it is an unintelligible doctrine, the meaning of which can’t be
grasped. Fourth meaning from previous slide.
• Dale Tuggy on negative mysterianism, “Opponents of this sort of
mysterianism object to it as misdirection, special pleading, neglect
of common sense, or even deliberate obfuscation. They emphasize
that trinitarian theories are human constructs, and a desideratum
of any theory is clarity. We literally can’t believe what is expressed
in trinitarian language, if we don’t grasp the meaning of it, and to
the extent that we don’t understand a doctrine, it can’t guide our
other theological beliefs, our actions, or our worship.”
 POSITIVE MYSTERIANISM
• Positive mysterians claim that the Trinity is a mystery in the
sense that it is a truth which one should believe even though it
seems, even after careful reflection, to be impossible and/or
contradictory and thus false. Fifth meaning from previous slide
• God’s incomprehensibility
• Analogical predication
• James N Anderson
PROBLEMS FOR POSITIVE MYSTERIANISM

• Not a solution to the LPT

• Requires sophisticated epistemological considerations
• How do we identify an actual contradiction?
• Difficult to apply this theory consistently
• Why would God leave us without a solution?
JC BEALL’S CONTRADICTORY THEOLOGY

• Trinity and incarnation are true contradictions

• Ahistorical
• Rejects classical logic
• Difficult to apply this theory consistently
NO ORTHODOX SOLUTION TO THE LPT
• James N Anderson
• “As the debate stands today, no writer from the first century
to the twenty-first century has offered an explication of the
doctrine of the Trinity that is both clearly orthodox and free
from apparent contradiction. It seems that the careful
theologian inevitably faces a dilemma: that of embracing
either paradox or heterodoxy.”
• Logical problem OR Heresy
 SUMMARY

• Genesis of the LPT

• Not a problem initially raised by skeptics
• Modern formulation of problem
• Arianism and Modalism deemed heretical
• Solutions to LPT: Social Trinitarianism or Relative Identity
• All “solutions” have problems
• Mysterianism does not solve the problem
• Beall’s contradictory theology concedes the problem
• Resources: The Muslim Metaphysician YouTube Channel and 2 Courses on
Sapience Institute Learning Platform