Hey dude, that’s fine. You really don’t have to keep posting on this thread if you don’t want to. I’d rather you say “I don’t know” or “I might have to think about it more” than say things you’re not sure about. Plus, by all means, enjoy your national holiday. Patriotism is a virtue.Yes, you’re right; I see I made a few mistakes in what I said. I’m no philosopher, and as we’re celebrating the national holiday in my country today I’m not entirely focused on this discussion. I’ll try to reaffirm my basic position.
How can you affirm, as you did earlier, that the person(s) just is God but derives it from his entity? What I’m pointing out is very straightforward, and no mental gymnastics or use of other terms is relevant. It’s that if intellect and will are what constitute personhood (which the entirety of the Catholic tradition affirms), then by definition of God’s Divine Essence being identical to his Intellect and Will (which the entirety of the Catholic tradition also affirms) his personhood, or his person, is identical to his Divine Essence. Meaning that there could not be a plurality in persons because that would entail a plurality in Divine Essences, which is impossible.What I mean by that is that I think the Entity is God, and the Personhood derives its existence from that and it is that Entity. To put it vulgarly, the Personhood is the personification of Gods Essence.
That’s like saying “which came first, the Hen or the Mother Chicken?” The person is the rational nature. So your dichotomy of which one came first doesn’t work. They are the same thing Intellect and Will is personhood. To have multiple personhoods or persons is to have multiple intellects and wills.Which comes first, the person or the rational nature?
“It is, further, impossible for an intellectual substance to have any kind of matter.” This is literally what Aquinas says. He spends this section refuting the idea that angels have matter.Summa Theologiae > First Part > Question 50 The substance of the angels absolutely considered
Article 2. Whether an angel is composed of matter and form?
??? Really???The second sentence is not from Aquinas who did not adopt universal hylomorphism
I’m not really into existential thomism, to be honest. So I’m sorry but I haven’t read any Etienne Gilson.The reference for “The unique contribution of Saint Thomas Aquinas was separation of the two notions of form and act.” is : Etienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers , 2nd Edition (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1952), 174.
Distinctions that are internal to the substance? You mean like substance and accident? Yeah I agree. But that is still a metaphysical distinction. That cannot exist in God.Real distinction is not the same as real difference. Saint Thomas Aquinas uses Aristotle’s idea of relation . It does not import composition. Relation doe not need to denote a property allaying different substances, but can refer to distinctions that are internal to a substance.
No no no no read what I said again. I didn’t just appeal to Feser. I specifically went against the definition of formal distinction here:Ed Feser saying it’s so doesn’t an incoherence make (although I am, admittedly, a fan of his). He’s just towing the Thomistic line here, but I can’t blame him. I tow a lot of Thomistic lines too… It is very likely that an insistence on a “real” distinction between the divine Persons lends itself to such troublesome issues as the ones you’ve enumerated here.
It doesn’t really make sense to say that they differ in definition but not in reality. A definition always refers to essences in reality, so to say that there is no distinction in reality but there is a distinction in definition seems to be incoherent.
I disagree. If a person is what has an intellectual nature, or rather, is an intellectual nature, then it makes sense to me that this could exist without the need for relations to others, like God’s intellect and will in unity existing without the need for other intellects and other wills. You’re talking about personhood amongst humans which is quite different.So far, so good. But, if we think deeply about being a human, we arrive quite naturally at the conclusion that every one exists as a person in relation to others. As John Donne accurately put it, “no man is an island.”
I’m not. I’m being serious. I spent hours now thinking about the replies to my post and writing responses. I really do want to see one justify a multiplicity in persons, or, a real distinction between the Trinity, while still maintaining Divine Simplicity.I must here ask: If your mind and heart are closed (or simply resistant), what is your purpose here? One could reasonably suspect that you are trolling, sea lioning, clickbaiting or just killing time during the quarantine.
And I don’t think their ways of overcoming this problem work. It isn’t any use to appeal to an intellectual tradition on its own because almost every religion has years and years of intellectual traditions.Billions of Christians over 2,000 years - the greatest thinkers, spiritual leaders, prophets, sages, theologians, philosophers, Doctors of the Church, great Saints - indeed all - have either not suffered your current difficulty, or have overcome it via faith and reason. They did not use faith alone. Neither did they rely on rational through alone.
Actually, with the right understanding, some of those can be coherent.Original Sin, Hell, the Trinity, Purgatory, Necessity of Baptism, Transubstantiation…and on and on. None make sense. You’ve pointed out the Trinity. You are just scratching the surface.
And, to be honest, they’re right, which is why I’m leaving Catholicism altogether. Catholicism is like a conjunction of claims. If just one of the claims in the conjunction is false then the whole conjunction is false, even if the other claims in it are true. I can’t continue to be a Catholic while I hold some of the central dogmas to be false.Some people will say if you don’t believe in all the tenants of Catholicism, you aren’t a Catholic. Perhaps even a heretic. Others will say you are a ‘cafeteria Catholic’ or a ‘cultural Catholic’. I’m fine either way. I’m more concerned about learning the truth.
I do agree that it is the teaching of the Church, which is why I’m leaving the Church altogether.Your logic: Since some Catholics see nothing wrong with same-sex marriage, then the teaching on same-sex marriage in not Universal.
Wrong - the teaching is the teaching of the Church whether or not there is complete consensus. Same story with the Trinity in your argument.
Why is the trinity necessary to explain creation? I don’t understand what your argument is if it’s an argument at all. If all you’re saying is that God is Love then I agree, but that the way we predicate God with “love” is very different to how we’d use the word “love” in common discourse. It is an analogous use So, it’s completely logical to say that in God there is something analogous to the one who wills/knows, the subject of the willing/knowing, and the act of willing/knowing in God without them being really distinct.In my understanding, it explains to me why God created. If God is simple as you suggest, with no real distinction in Persons, if He is closer to the God of Islam, then I simply cannot understand (perhaps this is a product of my own stupidity) why He created to begin with. For God is perfect, lacking nothing at all, and had nothing to achieve or perfect in creating. But like Romano Guardini says in his work The Lord , love does these things. We believe God is Love, that He freely chose to give Himself to us, in our very act of participating in some measure in His being (which extends to all of creation in varying degrees). God’s inner nature of Love among His three Persons, His being eternally in love with Himself, that He is Love, this explains to me why I exist–for love does these things. Sometimes I find myself doubting whether I have reconciled what you are struggling with, for it is a great and difficult subject and I am little and simple. But then I keep coming back to why am I here, why was I made at all. And when I look at Aristotle and Plato, I see them unable to explain how the Prime Mover or the God of the Forms makes contact with creation, to say nothing as to why. Maybe you have a reason why a God who lives in isolation, who therefore cannot be said to be Love, creates. But any one I have seen is more a problem to the truth of Divine Simplicity than the Trinity–the Trinity reconciles, for me, Divine Simplicity and creation.
If a dog loses a leg, he is no less a dog. A dead dog is still a dog.If you lose your arm due to a car accident are you any less of a person?
So then that needs to be reflected in your definition.Being a person, the quality of personhood is far different. So your analogy fails.
It is not the “materialistic aspect” that makes the “can-be-many” assertion incoherent. It is incoherent because you are literally asserting “one person can be many persons” or “one dog can be many dogs.”Personhood is separate from the materialistic aspect of having a body.
Per St. Thomas Aquinas version on Aristotelian thought, essence is the same as nature and substance and the teaching his that God’s nature is exactly who God is with nothing added to the substance of God. Living creatures have a substance which is the primary mode of being and accidents which are the secondary modes of being, but God is only a substance.…
Distinctions that are internal to the substance? You mean like substance and accident? Yeah I agree. But that is still a metaphysical distinction. That cannot exist in God.
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1030.htmReply to Objection 3: The supreme unity and simplicity of God exclude every kind of plurality of absolute things, but not plurality of relations. Because relations are predicated relatively, and thus the relations do not import composition in that of which they are predicated, as Boethius teaches in the same book.
you clearly didn’t understand what I just said, because a dog isn’t a person haha. Seems like you are avoiding what I said again. Once again, the quality of being a dog is not the same as the quality of being a person, those are two different things. It would be accurate to liken being a dog to being a human. But being human (homo-sapien) is not the same as being a person. The quality of being a person can be bigger than just humanity.If a dog loses a leg, he is no less a dog. A dead dog is still a dog.
A person is any being with the potential for rational thought. There is nothing about this definition that is contradictory to anything I have said.So then that needs to be reflected in your definition.
once again, you are putting words in my mouth. I never said “one person can be many persons,” I said: one being can be multiple persons.It is not the “materialistic aspect” that makes the “can-be-many” assertion incoherent. It is incoherent because you are literally asserting “one person can be many persons” or “one dog can be many dogs.”
My problem with his response is that a “real distinction”, or, a distinction in reality, entails an absolute or an ontological distinction precisely because reality and being are synonymous.Reply to Objection 3: The supreme unity and simplicity of God exclude every kind of plurality of absolute things, but not plurality of relations. Because relations are predicated relatively, and thus the relations do not import composition in that of which they are predicated, as Boethius teaches in the same book.
So what? The computer program is wrong. I don’t guarantee that every programming code is written correctly or will give you the correct answer. What I do guarantee is that 1 + 1 = 2 in the base 10 decimal system.If I put them as real numbers into a programming code, computer will tell you this isn’t true.