Divine fission: A new way of moderating social trinitarianism

Religious Studies

Volumn 34, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 281-297

  Forrest, Peter ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEW ENGLAND   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950444336     PISSN: 00344125     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0034412598004442     Document Type: Article

References (14)

1. See Peter van Inwagen, 'And Yet They Are Not Three Gods but One God', in God, Knowledge and Mystery: Essays in Philosophical Theology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), pp. 222-259.
2. For a critique of this appeal to relative identity see T. W. Bartel, 'The Plight of the Relative Trinitarian', Religious Studies 24 (1988), 129-55.
3. Unless otherwise indicated all references to Swinburne are to: Richard Swinburne, The Christian God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).
4. See David Brown, 'Trinity, Personhood and Individuality', in Trinity, Incarnation and Atonement (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), pp. 21-47 for an account of the development of the concept of a person and the relevance of this to the doctrine of the Trinity.
5. All references to Clark are to Kelly James Clark, 'Trinity or Tritheism?', Religious Studies 32 (1996), 463-476.
6. Richard Swinburne, 'Thisness', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 73 (1995), 389-400. See p. 396.
7. Bartel, like me, rejects Swinburne's solution to the problem. His own solution which he considers cannot be guaranteed to succeed depends on Middle Knowledge. See T. W. Bartel, "Could There Be More Than One Almighty?', Religious Studies 29 (1993), 465-495.
8. See Robert M. Adams 'Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity', Journal of Philosophy 76 (1979), 5-26.
9. Max Black, 'The Identity of Indiscernibles', Mind, 61 (1952), 153-164.
10. Ian Hacking, 'The Identity of Indiscernibles', Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975), 249-256.
11. Adams, 'Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity', p. 17.
12. Here I am indebted to David Lewis' defence of the possibility of fission. See 'Survival and Identity' in A. O. Rorty (ed.) The Identities of Persons (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 17-40,
13. reprinted in David Lewis, Philosophical Papers, Vol. I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 55-73, with postscript (pp. 73-77). I take Lewis to be claiming that even we human beings are quasi-individuals.
14. For details of this correlation see Peter Forrest, 'Physical Necessity and the Passage of Time', in Peter J. Riggs (ed.), Natural Kinds, Laws of Nature and Scientific Methodology (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996), pp.