Is there any sense whatsoever in which "The Father is the Son" is true?

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Sara Uckelman seems to think so. Most of the paper is far too technical for me, but in her conclusion she writes:

Sara L. Uckelman said:
"The expository syllogism

Hoc essencia divina est pater.
Filius est essencia divina.
Igitur, pater est filius.

is valid and sound if the statements are all taken to be essential predications. The paralogism arises when we interpret the conclusion as making a personal or formal predication."
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Unless I’m terribly mistaken, the Latin syllogism translates as:

The divine essence is the Father.
The Son is the divine essence.
Therefore, the Father is the Son.

She says this is valid and sound as long as each statement is interpreted as being essentially predicated. I guess it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If she’s correct, then “the Father is the Son” is not necessarily false, and I assume neither is any other sentence with a combination of divine persons being each other, “The Son is the Father,” for example, or “The Holy Spirit is the Father.”

Here is a scutum fidei updated with what I believe is Uckelman’s conclusion on the subject:

http://s11.postimg.org/682s0ym5f/uckelmanshield.jpg
 
Seems to me that she simply removes the distinction between the Persons of the Trinity. And that is not correct. The Persons are distinct from one another. All three wholly possess the one divine nature.

I am human. But I can’t say that ‘humanity is me.’ That confuses nature with person.
 
The Trinity is a mystery of faith, and for a person to try to rationalize it or prove it is a pointless exercise.

This syllogism is like saying:

Person X is human.

Person Y is human.

Therefore, person X is person Y.
 
Her reasoning doesn’t make sense to me, unless you completely change the definition of the word “is” as we understand it. Which to me is pretty pointless, and will only confuse people.

The Father cannot be called the Son, because He is not. He is the Father. The Son cannot be called the Father, because He is not. He is the Son.

It seems she is confusing nature with personhood, or wants to equate them. But they are not interchangeable. Nature describes WHAT someone or something is. Person describes WHO they are.

The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three distinct Persons, none of them are each other. But they all perfectly possess the One Divine Nature. And so are all God.
 
Her reasoning is deeply flawed:
  1. Both premises are false. Essence and person are not synonymous, but she’s treating them like they are.
  2. It’s not even a structurally valid syllogism, because syllogisms are of universals, but her three terms are all particulars. A syllogism is NOT the same as the “transitive property” in math.
Read Saint Thomas’s “De Ente et Essentiae,” (On Being and Essence) for more on the distinction between being and essence, a distinction which Sarah Uckelman denies.
 
This is the correct diagram of defining the Trinity:

img812.imageshack.us/img812/4732/524a.png

One analogy is that of Thought/Word/Action. The thought begets the word and together they produce the act. In Scripture it was the Word who took flesh and dwelt among us whom we know as Jesus Christ.
 
Yeah, I’d be careful about that. The “non ests” are as important as the “ests” when it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity. The Father and the Son are not identical. There may be a limited sense of “is” in which you can say that, but it seems it would cause more confusion than enlightenment.

Usagi
 
All of your comments were largely what I suspected about the paper as well. I would mention one highly tangential thing, though.
cjkaupke said:
  1. It’s not even a structurally valid syllogism, because syllogisms are of universals, but her three terms are all particulars. A syllogism is NOT the same as the “transitive property” in math.
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I don’t believe whether terms are universal or particular is erroneous, but whether the premises are universal or particular. A syllogism with only particular premises will commit some sort of distribution error, but a syllogism with only particular terms need not. For example, this valid syllogism (AAA-1) has particular terms, but universal premises:

Jim is my mechanic.
My mechanic is the mechanic on Jones Road.
Hence, Jim is the mechanic on Jones Road.

Whereas this invalid syllogism (III-1) has universal terms, but particular premises. It commits the error of the undistributed middle term:

Some lions are tame.
Some tame things are horses.
Hence, some lions are horses.
 
I don’t see how you can have “universal terms.” In the premise “All A is B,” the terms are simply A and B, and the universality applies to the premise (that is, how the terms relate to each other), not to each term itself.

To say “All A is B” is universal, but to say “This A is B” is particular. Your example of a mechanic is not actually a syllogism; it’s more an example of the “transitive property” in math. It is true that if A = B and B = C, then, A = C, but it is not technically a syllogism.

Aristotle saw syllogisms as productive of scientific knowledge, (according to the classical, not the modern, use of the term scientific, from the verb “scire,” “to know,”), which is to say, knowledge of universals.
 
cjkaupke said:
I don’t see how you can have “universal terms.” In the premise “All A is B,” the terms are simply A and B, and the universality applies to the premise (that is, how the terms relate to each other), not to each term itself.

To say “All A is B” is universal, but to say “This A is B” is particular. Your example of a mechanic is not actually a syllogism; it’s more an example of the “transitive property” in math. It is true that if A = B and B = C, then, A = C, but it is not technically a syllogism.

Aristotle saw syllogisms as productive of scientific knowledge, (according to the classical, not the modern, use of the term scientific, from the verb “scire,” “to know,”), which is to say, knowledge of universals.
Click to expand...
Ah, I think see now. I thought you were distinguishing between, say “the Father” and “the Son” being particular, when the more proper terms to use are classes of things, like “cows” or “Greeks,” which I thought were universal, but they’re better described as categorical.

I think I should mention that although you may be correct that the mechanic example is not technically a syllogism, conclusions still come out validly when non-categorical terms are plugged into valid syllogism forms, for example, EAE-2:

Jim is not my mechanic.
The mechanic on Jones Road is my mechanic.
Hence, the mechanic on Jones Road is not Jim.

or AEE-4

Jim is my mechanic.
My mechanic is not the mechanic on Jones Road.
Hence, the mechanic on Jones Road is not Jim.

As far as I can tell, if non-categorical terms are plugged into a valid syllogism, the argument doesn’t change from valid to invalid, it changes from syllogistic to non-syllogistic. I haven’t plugged the three mechanic terms I’ve been using into all 24 valid syllogisms, but I have a feeling that the introduction of non-categorical terms has no bearing on the validity of the argument form of the other 22 either.
 
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