Swinburne's tritheism

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion

Volumn 42, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 175-184

  Feser, Edward C ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 53249119434     PISSN: 00207047     EISSN: 15728684     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1003015616503     Document Type: Review

References (33)

1. Richard Swinburne, The Christian God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).
2. See Richard Cartwright, 'On the logical problem of the Trinity', in his Philosophical Essays (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987);
3. S.T. Davis, Logic and the Nature of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983);
4. E. Feser, 'Has Trinitarianism been shown to be coherent?', Faith and Philosophy 14 (1997);
5. John Macnamara, Marie La Palme Reyes, and Gonzalo E. Reyes, 'Logic and the Trinity', Faith and Philosophy 11 (1994);
6. A.P. Martinich, 'Identity and Trinity', The Journal of Religion 58 (1979);
7. Peter van Inwagen, 'And yet They are not Three Gods but One God', in T.V. Morris (ed.), Philosophy and the Christian Faith (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988).
8. Swinburne, The Christian God, p. 191.
9. Swinburne, The Christian God, p. 171.
10. Swinburne, The Christian God, pp. 118-119.
11. Swinburne, The Christian God, pp. 118-119.
12. Swinburne, The Christian God, p. 119. It should be noted that Swinburne's explication of these notions is much more complex than my summary of his views might indicate, and he works a number of other details into his definitions, such as the possibility of causes which are themselves uncaused and have no beginnings but which later go out of existence. But these details have no bearing on the arguments that follow, so I have omitted them.
13. Swinburne, The Christian God, p. 173.
14. Swinburne, The Christian God, pp. 177-178.
15. Swinburne, The Christian God, p. 178.
16. Swinburne, The Christian God, p. 179.
17. Swinburne, The Christian God, p. 179.
18. Swinburne, The Christian God, p. 179.
19. An anonymous referee has objected that 'whereas Swinburne specifies the essential properties of divine individuals that he takes to require the existence of just three', my suggestion that there may, for all Swinburne has said, exist three thousand divine individuals 'gives no hint as to what divine properties would require each of the 3000 divine individuals to permit the existence of the others. Therefore the suggestion lacks cogency'. I'm not sure I understand the objection. If the claim is that Swinburne has already shown why there couldn't be three thousand divine individuals, then it misses the point. For my point is just that the most Swinburne has shown is that if we 'start' with a single divine individual, then we can't get any farther than two more. What he hasn't shown is why we can't just 'start' with, say, three thousand of them in the first place. If the objection is rather that there are no divine properties that would require each of the imagined three thousand divine individuals to permit all of the others to continue to exist (while there are divine properties that would ensure the continued existence of three and only three), my response is that Swinburne has already told us which property would require this: perfect goodness. For though if there just were, to 'start' with, three thousand divine individuals, perfect goodness would not require the bringing into existence of a three thousand and first, it surely would require that each of the three thousand that already exist permit each of the others to continue to exist (just as, on Swinburne's scenario, perfect goodness requires that the second and third divine individuals permit the continued existence of the first, etc.).
20. See Swinburne's The Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979).
21. Swinburne, The Christian God, p. 173.
22. This solution may, however, open Swinburne's account up to a theological objection. For if it is even possible that there exists a divine individual or individuals outside the collective of three divine individuals which Swinburne identifies with the Trinity, this would arguably detract from God's uniqueness (and thus from his greatness).
23. An anonymous referee has objected that the analogies appealed to here and in what follows 'would seem to depend on specific features of human social life that would not carry over to divine beings'. But the analogies I appeal to are of just the same sort that Swinburne appeals to. So if we reject the former, we must reject the latter as well, in which case Swinburne's argument cannot even get off the ground. But if we accept Swinburne's analogies, my point is that he has given us no reason not to accept the ones I have appealed to as well, with all of their unwelcome implications. Of course, it might be argued that Trinitarianism itself supports the use of some analogies (e.g. that of a marriage that produces a single child) but not others (e.g. that of a marriage producing many children) when speaking of divine beings; but to appeal to Trinitarianism to get around my objection would simply be question-begging.
24. Swinburne, The Christian God, pp. 171-176.
25. C. Anthony Anderson has suggested to me that the objection under consideration here isn't really a serious one in the first place, so that Swinburne's response to it is not only unsatisfactory, but unnecessary. For to suggest that an omnipotent individual's actions might be frustrated, he says, is like suggesting that an omnipotent individual may create a stone that is too heavy for him to lift. Most philosophers and theologians would hold that the correct response to the latter suggestion ('the paradox of the stone') is just to argue that there could not be such a stone, for the description of such a stone ('a stone which an omnipotent being could not lift') is simply incoherent; and since omnipotence does not involve the ability to bring about the logically impossible, even an omnipotent individual could not create such a stone. (See Thomas V. Morris, Our Idea of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991), pp. 73-76 for discussion of this issue.)
26. Similarly, Anderson says, there simply could not be a (logically possible) action an omnipotent individual is frustrated in performing. So the suggestion that two omnipotent individuals might frustrate one another's actions is incoherent.It seems to me, though, that the two cases are not quite analogous. The paradox of the stone is intended to be a reductio ad absurdum of the notion of omnipotence, and the argument can be stated in the form of a dilemma: 'Suppose there is an omnipotent being. Can he create a stone that is too heavy for him to lift? If he can, there is something he cannot do, namely lift the stone in question, so that he is not omnipotent. If he can't, then there is something he cannot do, namely create the stone, so that he is not omnipotent. Either way, he is not omnipotent. So there could not be an omnipotent being'. The problem with this argument, as we have seen, is that it depends on the idea that omnipotence involves the ability to do the logically impossible. But there is no analogous problem with a reductio argument against the possibility of more than one omnipotent individual, which can be stated as follows: 'Suppose there are two omnipotent individuals A and B. Now (using Swinburne's example, The Christian God, p. 172) suppose A desires to send Abraham to Iraq at time t and that B desires to send Abraham to Iran at time t. Since A is omnipotent, he can bring it about that Abraham is in Iraq at t; and since B is omnipotent, he can bring it about that Abraham is in Iran at t. It follows, then, that Abraham can be in both Iraq and Iran at time t. But this is impossible. So there cannot be two omnipotent individuals'. This argument, unlike that concerning the paradox of the stone, does not depend on the idea that an omnipotent being can do the logically impossible. So, contrary to Anderson, there seems no reason to doubt that it constitutes a genuine difficulty for Swinburne's position, one which, as we have seen, he fails adequately to deal with.
27. Swinburne, The Christian God, p. 180.
28. Swinburne, The Christian God, p. 180.
29. Swinburne, The Christian God, p. 180.
30. Swinburne, The Christian God, pp. 181-182.
31. Quoted, along with much of the rest of the creed, by Swinburne in The Christian God, p. 186.
32. Swinburne, The Christian God, p. 181.
33. I thank C. Anthony Anderson, J. William Forgie, and an anonymous referee for comments on earlier versions of this paper.