Kevin reponds to my second post on the Trinity with his, Of Wills, Words, and the Monarche. I'm extremely grateful for his reply, most especially for his work in delineating a harmonization between St. Gregory of Nyssa (on the monarche of the Father) and St. Athanasios (on the not involuntary generation of the Son). As I hope to show, this harmonization actually bolsters my account of the monarche of the Father in precisely the way Kevin thinks it doesn't. I'm also grateful for his post since it gives me a chance to more explicitly point out the connection between what I am taking to be the heresy of monergism and its effects on an orthodox Trinitarianism. Since the connection between the Trinitarian theology which underlies my critique of monergism depends upon that Trinitarian theology, I will first deal with Kevin's second and longer part of his post. Then I will deal with the first and shorter part on the connection.
Trinitarian Theology and the Causal Priority of the Father
Although the longest part of Kevin's post deals with the explicit Trinitarian theology underlying my attack on monergism, my reply to this part of Kevin's post will be more direct and more brief. Once again, Kevin reiterates that persons are not their natures. I accept his assertion, though I do not think he can substantiate such a claim based on his argument, as I noted in my previous post in this diablog. As will become clear in my response to his second part, Kevin has a reason for limiting personhood to nature, for it plays a direct role in his doctrine of monergism. But if Kevin is going to limit human personhood to nature's boundaries, he rightly recognizes that he will have to apply this to the Godhead as well, or he will have to make a special case for human personhood that does not apply to the Trinity. This, of course, will be difficult to do, for human personhood is explicitly derived, ontologically and dogmatically, from a proper understanding of the Trinitarian persons. Of course, Christology bridges this Trinitarian personhood and human personhood, so it is inescapable that what we say of God will have bearing on what we say of Christ and what we say of human persons. Similarly, what we say of human persons will have bearing on our Christology and Trinitarian theology. This is why monergism is troublesome: Not because it intends to maintain the fundamental and necessary work of God central to human salvation, and to keep human work properly centered in the divine salvific activity, with which synergists are in real, substantive and complete agreement, but, as has been shown already, because monergism develops an anthropology which is ultimately at odds with Christology and the doctrine of the Trinity.
Kevin's main contention on the relationship between personhood and nature, as I understand it, is that persons need to act according to their natures. Or, as he states his premise: “For any action that can be predicated of a person, a corresponding property can be predicated of his nature.” For metaphysical purposes, Kevin seems to agree that persons exceed their natures, but only from the standpoint that persons are not their natures. To be clear, he says again: “But if the point is necessary actions of the will, then the action predicated of a person corresponds to a property predicated of his nature.”
Kevin hits on a fundamental point when he writes:
The property of exceeding nature cannot reside within the nature itself. And if we allow that properties corresponding to personal action can reside in the person, then this begs the question of why we would need to posit a nature at all. Just say that a person is such and such a way and be done with the whole nature bit. Of course, then there woud be no nature to exceed, returning us to the original problem- do people will in a libertarian fashion or according to the various properties within their person?
This is, indeed, about a libertarian understanding of willing. For if not even God can will in a libertarian manner, then humans cannot, and, at least on the point of human willing, monergism has a substantial premise on which to construct an argument. On the other hand, if God can will in a libertarian sense, then it is possible, though it must be properly argued, that humans can so will as well. And if this be true, then monergism must build its foundation on something else.
Unfortunately, it's at this point in his reply that Kevin heads away from the fundamental point toward which his instincts had pointed him. He goes on to leave the distinctions of person and nature, to founder again in the waters of nature and willing.
I had written: “If we predicate God's unity on his nature, or his essence, we tend toward modalistic conceptions of the Persons (i. e., we enhypostatize attributes, such as 'Love,' which enhypostatization logically fails to give rise to a third Person)...”--to which Kevin replies:
I'm going to take Clifton's objection to be against placing the cause of the Son and Spirit in the nature of the Father as opposed to the will of the Father . . .
Kevin understandably comes to this errant conclusion since I made note that the generation of the Son from the Father was a self-sacrificial act of love, and in that, it was a free act not necessitated by nature. So, in point of fact, my objection had nothing whatsoever to do with placing the cause of the Trinity in the nature or the will of the Father, for, I thought I had been clear about this, the cause of the Trinitarian Persons is the Person of the Father. That is to say, the monarche is located in the Person who is the Father, and not in the natural essence per se of the Godhead. So when Kevin writes:
Begetting and spiration are not personal actions and are not effected by the exercise of the will.
I have to most strongly disagree with him. Even despite his exegesis of St. Athanasios, and his attempt to harmonize St. Gregory and St. Athanasios' accounts of the generation of the Son, where I substantively and substantially, agree with him, he cannot make this claim in light of patristic teaching.
In short, Kevin goes wrong precisely because though he distinguishes person and nature, he prioritizes nature over person. Again and again, in his exegesis of the two Church Fathers, and in his own explication of monergism, nature is ontologically prior to person. A person, even a Trinitarian Person, is constrained by nature. I do not think it a misinterpretation of Kevin to say that in Kevin's view, personhood is subsumed under nature. Kevin thinks I am mistaken in drawing this conclusion from his argument, but aside from his bare assertions that this is not what he meant, it is surely what his argument entails. Note his conclusion to his post (and to the patristic exegesis he has undertaken):
Basically, I believe that Clifton has misconstrued Gregory's intent. Gregory does speak of the Father begetting the Son and Emitting the Spirit, but no orthodox trinitarian, which, as should be obvious by now, includes those who say that this was according to nature, would deny this. As to the generation of the Son not being involuntary, Gregory's understanding of the will is in the sense of pleasure in what is, and is not in the sense of the effectual personal operation of the faculty of willing. The latter would have to be the case in order for his Oration to support the argument that the Father must beget the Son as a personal act else his freedom is in jeopardy. More important, however, is the way in which Clifton's conception of the monarche of the Father sits with the views of Athanasius, who will not allow that the idea of God willing to beget the Son can be separated from the Arian idea that there was a time when the Son was not.
Here Kevin explicitly ties eternal begetting (and procession) to nature. Note also that Kevin has had to define my understanding of the monarche of the Father as “the idea of God willing to beget the Son” and so construe my own view (which I hope to be an accurate view of St. Gregory and the other Cappadocians, and more generally, of the Orthodox Church) within the nature/will debate, instead of where I placed it: in the Personal ekstasis of the Father.
In other words, to put it more simply--and here Kevin will have to revisit St. Gregory and the Cappadocians--God the Father's existence precedes the divine essence. Instead of person being constrained by nature, here nature in the Godhead is constrained by Person. In other words, to turn Kevin's long exposition around: God's begetting of the Son and spiration of the Spirit was Personally natural. In other words, it wasn't “what” begot the Son, but Who. In terms of ontological priority: The Son was not begotten of the Father's nature, but of the Father's Person. (I, of course, do not mean to assert that the Son was begotten apart from the Father's nature--which is pure nonsense--only that the ontological priority of the Son's generation arises from the ekstasis of the Father and not from some property of the divine nature.) In that the Son was begotten of the Father's Person, he then shares fully in the Father's nature. To say it perhaps a bit too crudely: The essence of the Godhead comes to the Son via the Person of the Father, and not the Person of the Son coming by way of the essence of the Father. The essence of the Son does not cause the Father, nor does the essence of the Spirit, for both Son and Spirit are, insofar as they are, from the ontological priority of the Father. God's existence causally precedes his essence.
With Kevin I agree that we simply have the fact of the Trinitarian Persons, so in a certain sense to speak of a necessity of generation and spiration as attached to the Godhead is probably superfluous. But if there is a necessity of sorts, it is predicated not on God's nature qua God, but on the Person of the Father, for Whom, to be Father is to beget. It is precisely because of this theological fact that there is no God but the Trinitarian God, and why construals of God that do not bespeak his Persons are not mistaken-though-partially-true construals of God, but construals of false gods altogether.
Indeed, it is here that St. Gregory and St. Athansios harmonize. The begetting happens from the Father (for which see that all of St. Athanasios' argument has to do with the Persons of the Father and the Logos/Son, and not an argument about divine nature per se; that is to say, the Son is divine precisely because he share's the Father's nature) and not from the natural essence of the Godhead. But if this is so, then Kevin's bringing forth, as an advocate, of the filioque, sharply illustrates the differences between us.
I have already alluded to this, but there is, finally, that schism inducing word- filioque. The Western church was hasty to add it, as it is certainly no heresy not to agree. Nevertheless, I believe that adherence to the doctrine taught thereby is both correct and is more in line with the Scriptural teaching that the Son is the image of the Father. Those personal attributes defining the relationship between the Father and the Son excepted (begetting and being begotten), if the Son does not possess the personal attribute of spiration along with the Father, then the image is defective. While of considerably less consequence than the Arian implications of his argument, Clifton's attempt to locate the unity of the Godhead within the monarche of the Father is not going to go over very well with a Western audience. It requires a rejection of the filioque; otherwise, the Spirit is explained not according to unity, but according to duality. On the other hand, Clifton is perfectly free to maintain his Eastern perspective of procession while rethinking the monarche.
Perhaps Kevin is correct, but I rather suppose that since the late Pope, and with him the Catholic Church, as well as other Western churches, are actually quite willing to forego the creedal filioque, it may well be that a Western audience would find my espousal of St. Gregory's monarchical Trinitarianism quite congenial to their own interests. It's not as though the West is not unfamiliar with the Trinitarian problems the filioque has wrought.
And what are those problems? Precisely the circumscription of Person by nature. For if the filioque depends for its force upon the need to assert of the Son, to be of the same essence as the Father, a co-procession of the Spirit with the Father, then we are left with the Holy Spirit as a sort of, in St. Photios' words, “goat-stag,”a theologically impossible synthesis of the Father's uncaused causality and the Son's caused causality, with a compositeness pertaining to neither the Father or the Son. Indeed, the logic further demands that if it is necessary for the Son to share in the hypostatic procession of the Spirit by the Father to be of the same nature of the Father, then similarly it is necessary for the Spirit to share in the procession of yet another hypostasis by the Father. And it would be hard to see how this shared procession of a fourth hypostasis could similarly share the divine nature with the Son, for the procession of the fourth hypostasis would be quantitatively and qualitatively different from the dual procession of the Son and the Father. But the Spirit does not so share in a dual procession with the Father, so the ontologic of the filioque entails that the Spirit does not share the same essence with the Father and the Son.
So the filioque, understood in essential theological terms (as opposed to a justified economic understanding), exactly illustrates the problem with Kevin's circumscribing of the divine Persons with the divine nature. I suppose if a rethinking needs to be done, then it is Kevin's advocacy of the essentialist filioque.
How Monarchical Trinitarian Theology Empties Monergism of Its Argument
Now, Kevin's reasons for making personhood “coextensive” with nature are quite simple. If personhood does not exceed nature, then persons are limited to acting within the constraints of nature. This allows him, through logical entailments, to suspend human libertarian free will prior to regeneration. This is illustrated in the first part of Kevin's reply.
As far as I can tell , both Clifton and I are in agreement that what is true of one person in this regard, must be true of all persons- human, angelic, and divine. Therefore, if I say that we will according to our natures, then I must also grant that this is the case with the persons in the Trinity. On the other hand, if Clifton can show that, for at least one person of the Trinity, it is the case that the person exceeds its nature such that his will is not according to that nature, then the same possibility must be admitted of all persons. The force of the compatibilist argument is lost since it maintains the impossibility of exercising the will in any other way than according to one's nature. To this end, Clifton posits a model for divine unity that is based, not on the God's nature or the divine essence, but upon, what he has termed, "the monarche of the Father."
This is, indeed, a fair grasp of the issues. And this is precisely the connection between a proper Trinitarian construal of Personhood, a proper Christology, and thus a proper anthropology.
Recall that Clifton's claim is that person exceeds nature. This must be in such a way that the actions of a person are in no way bound by his nature; otherwise, this particular claim of monergism is not invalidated.
Here Kevin creates a false dilemma. It is not necessary to assert that the actions of a person are in no way bound by his nature, but rather only to say that they are not causally necessitated by nature. I agree with Kevin that to speak of a nature-less person is to speak of no one, for all persons have natures. But it does not follow that since all persons have natures their persons are ontologically subsequent to their natures. Indeed, that is the force of the monarchical Trinity: the nature of the Godhead is ontologically subsequent to the Person of the Father. It is the Person of the Father that determines what the nature of the Godhead is. And if it is the Father's Person who so determines divine nature, then it is not the properties that inhere in God's nature that circumscribe his choices and acts. That God is love, is true, but that God is love proceeds causally from the Personal reality of the Father who loves and not from a property inherent to his nature. Natures do not love; persons do. Indeed, natures do not act; persons do. And since the Father's Person causes God's nature, God's acts are, if you will, circumscribed by the Persons of the Trinity and not by his nature. If the Father created, the Son redeemed and the Spirit sanctified from the causal necessity of the divine nature, then not only could there be no real distinctions among the Personal Trinitarian acts, such distinctions would not only not be real but could only be nominal. In fact, there could be no distinction among properties either: creation, redemption and sanctification would all be essentially identical. But this is not only modalism it is necessary universalism. This is why there is a real distinction among the actions of the Trinity, though such distinctions are not essential. The Father creates, the Son Redeems, the Spirit sanctifies. But the Son and the Spirit share in creation, the Father and the Spirit share in the Son's redemptive work cosmologically and anthropologically, and the Father and the Son share in the sanctifying work of the Spirit as the nature of God is thrice-holy.
But if this is true of God, then it is must also be true of the Person of the Logos. Indeed, because the Son has two natures, and two wills, the only way that the union of those natures and wills comes about is through the mode of his existence as Person. Christ could act as a Person in such a way that his human will, without sin and without natural opposition to his divine will, could, in the Garden of Gethsemane, be turned from the natural object of its strongest inclination (survival and life) toward the natural object of the divine will: the redemption ordained from the foundation of the world. That is to say, Christ's human will was not turned against its nature so as to act contrary to it--which would entail a logical and essential opposition between human and divine natures--but rather was turned from one good to another good, both equally participatory in the many goods proceeding from the Godhead.
But if this is true of the Persons of the Trinity, and true of the Person of the Logos, then it is possible for it to be true of human persons as well. What this means, however, is that human nature, as created by God is good, and that human nature as created by God naturally wills the good that God is. The will wills according to its nature. And even if human nature is fallen, it cannot be the case that humans have a completely different nature than that with which they were created by God. There is first of all no Scriptural warrant for such an assertion, but it also means that God's sovereign will in the creation of human nature can be thwarted. So even fallen nature retains the natural capacity to will its natural object: God.
But wherein lies the failure of human persons to act in accordance with that will? It lies precisely in the personal mode of existence. In the Trinity and in Christ, Person, nature and will are fused in such a way that the personal mode of willing is certain of its object and always accomplishes the end it seeks. In human persons prior to the eschaton, the person, nature and will are not so fused. The personal exercise of the will is framed by a lack of certain discrimination about real and perceived goods and thus deliberation is necessary, and with it the capacity to err and to sin (though error and sin are not themselves necessary to such a mode of existence or the willing which accompanies such a mode). Adam sinned, not from a misuse of the natural will, but from a misuse of the personal mode of willing.
It should be clear then that persons do not act by the necessitation of their wills and the strongest inclinations at the moment of willing preceding the act, but rather act by the employment of the will according to their personal mode of existence. This is true of the Trinitarian persons, of the Christ, and of humans. In the Trinity and the Christ, the personal mode of existence is such that person, nature and will are fused in such a way that the willing which accompanies their personal mode of existence is, properly speaking, non-deliberative. The Trinitarian Persons have no need to discriminate among the good acts available to Them, since all such goods acts are Their own generation. Similarly, the Person of the Logos has deified the human nature and will in the union in his Person of God and man, and in so doing, fixed the two natures and wills such that there is no need to discriminate among the real goods, since all such goods are immediately known to him, the human nature and will participating hypostatically in the goods brought forth by the Trinity. But in human persons prior to the eschaton, the person, nature and will are not so fused, and the personal mode of willing is precisely the deliberative will necessitated by the pre-eschaton human mode of existence. It is the nature of the human will, even when fallen, to seek its true object in the Creator. But since the human person is not deified, its discrimination among goods is not fixed in prudential virtue, and in the personal mode of willing human deliberation is capable of directing the will away from its natural object toward an apparent good.
In short, it is not that the will directs the person to an act, but that the person, in the employment of the will from his mode of existence, directs the will toward an act. This is not to say that human acts are never determined by the strongest inclination of the will. After all, akratic acts are a reality of human existence prior to the eschaton. But it does not follow that since some, or even most, human acts are so constituted that all human acts must be so constituted.
In other words, humans are not so constituted that they must always naturally will sin, which would attribute sin to God and would be a blasphemy. Rather, humans can freely will the good--as they have been created to do--and can employ their wills according to their personal mode of existence in such a way that they can truly and really choose to do acts that are good. But then it does not follow that since humans can freely will some acts that are good, namely they can freely will to choose their own salvation, that they are able to accomplish what they will to choose. No human can accomplish his own salvation. Only God's grace can accomplish that salvation both in the willing and the choosing, and in the long ascetical pursuit of deification which God's grace must also accomplish, not only universally in Christ, but particularly in the person. And, indeed, no synergist would ever claim differently.
Posted by Clifton at April 12, 2005 10:29 AM | TrackBackI'm way behind in keeping up with this, but would someone, somewhere, please archive this? Or, say, submit it for publication, or something? This is some of the most careful theology I've read, and it's certainly some of the best done in the last ten years, and probably the best dialog between East and West in who knows how long.
Posted by: ryan at April 12, 2005 03:32 PMRyan:
Back on the main blog page immediately below this post is a post entitled, "Soteriology Diablog between Various Interblogolocutors." It has links to all the posts and responses between the various personages who've thrown their hat into the ring. Once the conversation winds down, I'll try to figure out how to keep a permanent link up on the main page.
On behalf of all the participants and commenters, Thanks for your kind words.
Posted by: Clifton D. Healy at April 12, 2005 03:39 PMClifton, I have to say well done. The subtleties of Trinitarian argument are often over my head and (to be honest) outside of my interest, but I find your argument powerful and compelling here. And I have been a Calvinist of a sort for a few years now, so that's saying something.
Posted by: JS Bangs at April 12, 2005 09:46 PMI'm very confused.
You quote Kevin's assertion that "Begetting and spiration are not personal actions and are not effected by the exercise of the will," and follow it by saying, "I have to most strongly disagree with him." So it seems you believe that Begetting and spiration are effected by the exercise of the divine will. But then you write,
"Note also that Kevin has had to define my understanding of the monarche of the Father as 'the idea of God willing to beget the Son' and so construe my own view ... within the nature/will debate, instead of where I placed it: in the Personal ekstasis of the Father."
Which sounds like you regard "the idea of God willing to beget the Son" as a misconstrual of your own view. ... so you don't believe that God wills to beget the son, but you do believe that that begetting is effected by God's will?
Is there some subtle distinction here that I'm not picking up on?
Posted by: chris at April 14, 2005 03:04 PMChris:
I disagree that begetting and spiration are not personal acts. According to monarchical Trinitarianism, they are fundamentally personal acts. I do happen to believe that God the Father eternally wills, in love, to beget the Son. But the cause of the begetting is the Person of the Father, not the Father's nature. Similarly, it would seem to follow--though I haven't thought deeply about this implication--that if the Person of the Father is the cause of the Son's begetting, then it is the Person of the Father, and thus the Father's mode of willing, that effects the begetting, and not the divine will per se. But in that the Trinitarian Personal modes of willling coinhere in the divine will one may say that the divine will does this as well--that is to say, the Father wills in his hypostatic mode to beget the Son and the Son wills in his hypostatic mode to be begotten of the Father, which modes of willing are the hypostatic modes of the divine will as such.
In any case the distinction is that between, on the one hand, the hypostasis of the Father and, on the other, the divine essence and will.
Posted by: Clifton D. Healy at April 14, 2005 03:24 PMSo when you wrote, "Must God so enhypostatize his nature? On Kevin's terms, he must do so. But this radically abridges God's freedom" you were not objecting to the idea that God the Father necessarily begets God the Son, but only to the idea that it is by nature that God the Father necessarily begets the Son? That would put you in line with Athenasius.
But now I'm confused in a different way. By definition, an agent lacks libertarian freedom with respect to a given act if that act is necessitated--regardless of where this necessity comes from. So if you have a libertarian account of freedom, then the father's begetting the Son is not a free act if it is necessitated by his person just as much as if it is necessitated by his nature.
So now I'm back to thinking you believe that the Father's begetting the Son is contingent, not necessary. In which case I don't see why you say you are in line with Athenasius.
Chris:
As hopefully can be seen from the context, my use of "necessity" here is greatly antenuated.
The necessity of generation and spiration here is not one that inheres in the nature (which would be Plotinian heresy), and if it inheres in the will it only does so from the fact of the freely willed generation and spiration; i.e., it is necessary because God freely wills it. As Kevin himself points out, it is an act that is not involuntary: the Father from eternity freely begets and spirates. That is to say, it is necessary because this is what God in freedom chooses to do. There is never an instance in which we can "get behind" the personal act to some other antecedent volitional event, essence or cause. Just as God's Person and nature are necessarily inseparable yet distinguishable, so his choice and his act are simultaneous and inseparable but wholly free. There is nothing in God's nature or external to God that necessitates his self-giving acts of generation and spiration such that he does not have libertarian freedom.
From the standpoint of revelation, we know that for God to be Father is for him to beget, but it is only a necessity from the standpoint that being eternally true it must necessarily be. It is theoretically possible to think that the hypostasis of the Father would not beget the Son, but then the revelation of that hypostasis would not be made known to us as Father. Since that revelation has been so made known, that is to say, since it is, it is necessary in that sense.
Posted by: Clifton D. Healy at April 15, 2005 09:08 AM".. it is necessary in that sense." In what sense? An attenuated sense; but this just tells me what you don't mean: you don't mean necessary in the ordinary sense (the opposite is impossible). But what do you mean? What is this attenuated sense of necessity?
You spoke of Kevin's "exegesis of St. Athanasios, and his attempt to harmonize St. Gregory and St. Athanasios' accounts of the generation of the Son, where I substantively and substantially, agree with him." The substance of Kevin's harmonization of Athenasios and Gregory was that God the Father necessarily (in the ordinary sense) begets the Son, and willingly consents to it as I willingly consent to my heart beating: so that the father does not beget the Son in the manner of a libertarian free act. This contradicts what you have been telling me, so why did you say you substantively and substantially, agree with him? Surely you disagree with Athenasius, or with Kevin's account of Athenasius, on this point? If you disagree with Kevin's account of Athenasius, could you explain why?
Posted by: chris at April 18, 2005 08:45 PMThat God the Father begets the Son is necessary in the sense that it is an eternal freely willed act of the Father.
My agreement with Kevin is that God indeed freely wills to beget the Son, and that the Son necessarily shares the essence/nature of the Father. I think he is right to intepret St. Athanasios in the way he does, and most of what he says of St. Gregory I agree with.
But as may not be clear, substantive and substantial agreement does not equal full agreement. Kevin attempts to harmonize nature and will by not talking about necessity or will in the ordinary way you allude to, for if he were, he could not harmonize them. But where he goes wrong is that he still harmonizes them in the nature of the Godhead. This is still, no matter how he gets around it, modalism.
Where I markedly differ with Kevin, and this is the point of our conversation, is that the only way to harmonize nature and will in the begetting of the Son and spirating of the Spirit is in the Person of the Father. And this is most clearly what St. Gregory taught.
Posted by: Clifton D. Healy at April 19, 2005 08:34 AM"necessary in the sense that it is an eternal freely willed act of the Father."
Do you mean that necessary (in the attenuated sense) means the same thing as "eternally freely willed act of the Father"? Is that a stipulative definition? Or are you saying that attenuated necessity is the kind of necessity that follows from being an eternally freely willed act of the Father? If the latter, I'm afraid I still don't know what you mean, for I don't know what kind of "necessity" you think follows from being an eternally freely willed act of the Father. "Freely willed" is usually oposed to necessity, if you have a libertarian account of freedom, as you do. From "eternal act of the Father," I can see how one might infer "necessary" in the ordinary sense, but you reject this. You think that "necessary" in the sense of "the opposite is impossible" does not follow from "eternally freely willed act of the Father". But, you say, something else does follow, something that you call attenuated necessity. But what is this?
As I understand Kevin, the substance (not a minor detail) of his account of Athenasius involves not only the claim that the Son "necessarily shares the essence/nature of the Father," but also the claim that the Son is necessarily begotten of the Father (in the sense that it is impossible that the Father not beget the Son), and it is this that you seem to reject. Surely you admit that Kevin's account of Athenasius includes the idea that it is impossible for the Father not to beget the Son? And that idea, whatever words we use to describe it, is no minor detail. (If you really don't see that as an important part of Kevin's account of Athenasius, then I guess we'll both have to wait for Kevin to interpret himself.)
At any rate, let me explain why I have a problem with your rejection of that idea. Whatever is true of God as such (not in reference to the Persons particularly) is equally true of each of the Persons. So, for instance, God is holy. Father, Son, and Spirit are equally God, and thus equally holy. God is eternal. And Father, Son and Spirit are equally eternal. However, we cannot infer from "God is begotten" that the Father and Spirit are begotten, because "begotten" refers particularly to the Person of the Son. Now, God exists necessarily, by which I mean: it is impossible that God not exist. This is true of God as such: to be God is to be without the possibility of not-being. Whatever is true of God as such is true of the Son. The Son is God, and God exists necessarily, so God the Son exists necessarily.
But you claim that it was (de re) possible that the Father not beget the Son. But if the Father had not begotten the Son, the Son would not have existed. So it follows that the Son might not have existed.
If you accept this conclusion, then you really are an Arian: no person who might not have existed can rightly be called God. But if you reject the conclusion, you must also reject the premise. That is, you must agree with me that it is impossible that the Father not beget the Son. In which case the Father's begetting the Son was not a libertarian free act.
So please tell me plainly, which is it? Was the Father's begetting the Son a libertarian free act, or was it impossible that the Father not beget the Son.
Chris:
The confusion here is that you and Kevin seem to be failing to distinguish Person and nature in the Godhead.
If one says that it is impossible for the Father not to beget the Son, whence this impossibility? Is it from the Personal act or is it from the essence/nature?
It's hard to see how it is that the nature or essence of God necessitates the generation of the Son/makes it impossible for the Son not to be generated. For if this is true, then the nature of God necessitates that the Father be unbegotten. But how can a single nature necessitate both unbegottenness and begottenness?
No, the necessity of the Son's generation derives from the eternal fact of the Personal act of the Father in begetting. This necessity is predicated upon this act being eternal. It is necessary because this is who the Father is and what the Father does. Its necessity is hypostatic, it does not arise from the nature considered in abstraction.
In fact, the nature cannot be considered in abstraction, nor can it be considered at all in itself. All that we know of the nature or essence of God, we know not by the experience of that nature in itself as God's essence, which is eternally inaccessible to us, but by the revelation of the Persons of God and the participation in God's energies.
This personal act of the Father's begetting of the Son is not, strictly speaking, voluntary, nor is it involuntary. Rather it is the mode of willing appropriate to God the Father which mode is associated with the hypostasis of the Father. There is only one will in the Godhead (as there is one nature that wills), but the mode of willing is appropriate to the hypostatically distinguishable Person (Father, Son or Holy Spirit). The Father wills as Father, the Son wills as Son, the Spirit wills as Spirit, and what each Person wills in his mode of willing is the single will of the Godhead.
So when the Father wills to beget the Son, it is not a different natural will than the Son's willing to be begotten, though it is a distinguishable mode of willing. But that mode of willing is unique to the Father as the Father's mode of willing. This is why it is not voluntary (for this would presume that the Father could will that the Son not be generated), but nor is it involuntary (for this would presume that the Father was constrained by the shared essence/nature of the Godhead to beget the Son, which is modalism, the nature of the Godhead manifesting itself in three masks).
So the necessity of the generation of the Son arises from the eternal fact of the Father's Personal begetting of the Son.
Hopefully, this makes clear what has till now remained unclear.
Does God have libertarian free will? Of course. But the liberty of God to will all that he wills is not a relation of opposition. That is to say, all that God wills is good. And there is no hindrance to God to will many goods. Thus any mode of willing of the Persons of God would be in accordance with his nature as good, but would not be necessitated toward one specific good over another, for all goods that God wills are equally good. In this sense, then, God has libertarian free will. He can will to create or not will to create.
Posted by: Clifton D. Healy at April 22, 2005 12:53 AMActually, both Kevin and I distinguish between Person and Nature in the Godhead, though we think about it in a different way than you do. But, unlike Kevin, I'm not engaging that issue. I'm only addressing the issue of necessity/possibility and will/freedom.
Now, I think we can all agree that God has libertarian freedom: which is to say, some of his acts are libertarian free. But not all of them. For instance, his act of existing is not libertarian free since he could not have done otherwise. I contend, further, that the Father's begetting the Son was not a libertarian free act, but was just as necessary as God's act of existing. But I make no claims (and ask no questions) about where this necessity comes from, whether the nature of God or the Person of the Father.
So the question is not "Does God have libertarian freedom?" Of course he does. The question is rather, "Was the act of begetting a libertarian free act?" I believe it was not, and I would like to know whether or not you agree with me. One way you could make things crystal clear would be to say something like "The act of begetting was not a libertarian free act because it is impossible that the Father not beget the Son." Or, if you think differently, you could say, "The Person we call God the Father, though he did in fact beget the Son, could have done otherwise." A plain answer to these direct questions would help me to understand you immensely more than the piling on of further apparent contradictions, as when you say the act was willed, but not voluntary; and was neither voluntary nor involuntary.
(I hope that doesn't sound petulant. I'm very grateful for your helping me out, and I hope you can be even more helpful if you know what sorts of things make me more confused, and what sorts of things most help me to understand.)
Posted by: chris at April 22, 2005 05:06 PMPart of the apparent "caginess" of my reply stems from the fact that both St. Athanasios and the Cappadocians are entirely correct, each addressing the heretical issues of their day. St. Athanasios had to emphasize the homoousias of the Son with the Father, and also reject the Arian attack. But the Cappadocians rightly saw that one could not separate out will from nature, and thus the emphasis on the personal monarche of the Father.
So, to answer your question: Yes, God the Father freely wills, in his mode of willing as Father, the generation of the Son and the spiration of the Holy Spirit. But whether this is libertarian freedom in the sense of "could have done otherwise" we simply have no way of knowing. The fact of the generation of the Son and the spiration of the Spirit are eternal facts which we can never get behind. All that we know is that this is the reality of God that has been revealed to us.
On the other hand, if we reason that God the Father could not have done otherwise, what consequences result from that? I cannot see but that God the Father's mode of willing becomes identified with his natural will shared by all the Persons of the Trinity. But if that be the case, we are back in the realm of modalism.
Posted by: Clifton D. Healy at April 24, 2005 08:08 AM"whether this is libertarian freedom in the sense of "could have done otherwise" we simply have no way of knowing"
But we do have a way of knowing: namely, by means of inference from something else we know.
We know,
1) It is not the case that the Son might not have existed.
2) Therefore it is not the case that the Son might not have been begotten
3) Therefore it is not the case that the Father might not have begotten the Son.
QED
"if we reason that God the Father could not have done otherwise, what consequences result from that? I cannot see but that God the Father's mode of willing becomes identified with his natural will shared by all the Persons of the Trinity. But if that be the case, we are back in the realm of modalism."
Does (3) have modalist consequences? It better not. If so, trinitarian orthodoxy would be impossible: rejecting Arianism would logically entail modalism, and rejecting modalism would logically entail Arianism. I've given what I think is a pretty tight argument for why rejecting Arianism entails (3). You suggest (step one) that (3) entails the identification of the Father's mode of willing with the natural divine will. Why? How do you get there? You further claim (step two) that identifying the Father's mode of willing with the natural divine will entails modalism. I don't see this one either, but I'll leave that for Kevin. At any rate, one or the other of these steps must be invalid if trinitarian orthodoxy is coherent.
Posted by: chris at April 30, 2005 07:45 PMChris:
Your syllogism fails from the very first premise:
"We know,
1) It is not the case that the Son might not have existed."
In fact, we know nothing of the sort. There is no way we could know anything of the sort, since we have no way of knowing how it is the God might otherwise be. All we can say is that we know that it is not the case that the Son has never existed. But that's a far different matter from positing a theoretical proposition about how God might otherwise have been had he not been the way he is now. Since your first premise fails, the entire syllogism fails.
There is, and must be to avoid modalism, a distinction between person and essence, natural will and personal mode of willing. It is a distinction without division or separation, to be sure, an ineffable distinction if you will, but a distinction nonetheless.
One thing that has to be remembered with regard to Arianism and the Athanasian defense against it: St. Athanasios' apologetic attacks Arianism one one point, the point, indeed, of I Nicea; namely the same essence of Father and Son. St. Athanasios rejects the generation of the Son from the Father's will, but two things need to be kept in mind: at the time of I Nicea, they had not yet had to make the distinctions that later heresies necessitated between the substantive existent (hypostasis, or what we today refer to as person) and the essence (ousia). These necessary distinctions arose out of Christological matters, but the Cappadocians rightly saw, in the heresies regarding the Holy Spirit, that these distinctions applied to the Trinitarian dogma as well. And, in fact, it was these latter forms of modalism that these distinctions were able to combat.
Here's why the mode of willing must be distinguished from the natural will, with a real, though ineffable distinction that is not division or separation. It is essentially the same reason for the necessity of the triune Persons as distinguished from the essence of God. For the essence and the natural (or essential) will are coextensive: one does not have a will apart from a nature nor a nature apart from a will. Thus to speak of the natural will of the Godhead is to speak in terms of the essence (or nature) of the Godhead. But just as it is true that the Persons share in the same divine nature, yet are still distinguishable Persons, from one another without division or separation from that divine nature, so, too, do the Persons will in a mode that is distinguishable from one another without division or separation from the divine will. For just as one does not have a nature apart from a will, so one is not a person apart from a mode of willing in which that natural will is operative. If there were no personal mode of willing, there would be no person, we would simply be natures with wills. And if we apply this to the Godhead, if the triune Persons do not have their distinct modes of willing, then they are not persons, but simply natures with wills. But since they are all the same nature with the same will, then they are also merely names or masks in which the divine nature and will manifest themselves.
So, if we speak of the personal mode of willing of the Father as being incapable of not begetting the Son, we are saying that his mode of willing is determined by his natural will such that he cannot but do what his natural will wills. But if this be the case, then there is no difference, except a nominal one, between the Father's natural will and his personal mode of willing. And if we eliminate the personal mode of willing we eliminate the person, and we have modalism.
Furthermore, since we agree that in his personal mode of willing as creator God the Father is free (as also would be God the Son and God the Holy Spirit in their respective modes of willing in creation) and not necessitated to will, we are admitting a real distinction between the personal mode of willing and the divine natural will.
Now, as I said, when we begin speaking about whether God actually has libertarian free will in the terms of begetting the Son and spirating the Spirit, I, like you, can not see this free will in the sense of "could not have done otherwise," since whatever modally logical possibilities there might be from that, the actual theological fact is that God did not do otherwise, and we just cannot know what it means for him to have been able to have done otherwise, for, I freely admit, we would be talking about another God.
But if his freedom was such as "did not do otherwise," it strikes me that it still must be free in a sense that does not accept "could not have done otherwise," for the reasons I've argued above. "Could not have done otherwise" when applied to the triune personal mode of willing necessitates those modes of willing in ways that I cannot but see are modalistic.
Posted by: Clifton D. Healy at April 30, 2005 08:53 PM(This will be my final comment)
The idea that the Son might not have existed is not a possibility that ought to be left open; it is a heresy that ought to be unequivocally rejected. I said it before and I'll say it again: No person who might not have existed can rightly be called God. To say that the Son might not have existed is Arian. You avoid being Arian only in the way the agnostic avoids being an atheist. By refusing to reject the Arian thesis you place yourself outside the pale of orthodoxy just as surely as agnosticism is outside the pale of theism.
Posted by: chris at May 2, 2005 08:24 PMChris:
You will have to really make the case for your, frankly, insulting comment. I have more than proven that I am not Arian.
Posted by: Clifton D. Healy at May 2, 2005 09:07 PMNo insult was intended.
Posted by: chris at May 7, 2005 07:28 PMPerhaps not. But your comment, given in light of all the substantive arguments I've made concering the orthodox Christological beliefs I hold, and given without any substantiation, is cheap. You have no proof for it, and it is an insulting way to end an otherwise helpful discussion.
Posted by: Clifton D. Healy at May 8, 2005 06:04 AM