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Absolute identity and the Trinity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Chris Tweedt Open the ORCID record for Chris Tweedt [Opens in a new window]
Chris Tweedt*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy & Religion, Christopher Newport University, Newport News, VA 23606, USA
*
email: chris.tweedt@cnu.edu
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Abstract

Trinitarians are charged with at least two contradictions. First, the Father is God and the Son is God, so it seems to follow that the Father is the Son. Trinitarians affirm the premises but deny the conclusion, which seems contradictory. Second, the Father is a God, the Son is a God, and the Holy Spirit is a God, but the Father is not the Son, the Father is not the Holy Spirit, and the Son is not the Holy Spirit. This argument seems to entail that there are three Gods. Again, Trinitarians affirm the premises but deny the conclusion. In this article, I present a novel Trinitarian solution to these alleged contradictions. The solution allows one to maintain that the premises in the above arguments are absolute identity statements, forestalls the need to develop a new way of counting (e.g. by sortals or numerical sameness), and is compatible with divine simplicity.

Keywords

TrinityIdentitySubstitutivityDivine SimplicityRelative IdentitySocial TrinitarianismNumerical Sameness Without IdentityChristian DoctrineSpinozaAquinas
Type
Original Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 59 , Issue 1 , March 2023 , pp. 34 - 54
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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