As I pointed out in #127, we must constantly remind ourself that “proving the necessity of some abstract trinity” would not necessarily lead one to Jehovah any more than a quadrinity would. Our dependance on revelation is an essential part of the argument; and revelation cannot be a merely formal concept.

Nevertheless, heuristics such as you propose have an honorable place since Augustine, and can be helpful.

I just discovered this blog. I also noticed that I was mentioned in comment 15 by Ron D. I am currently doing a series on Van Tillian apologetics critiquing the claim that the method provides objective, certian proof for the existence of God. Ron says that my problem is essentially ethical and not logical. Does that mean my critique is logically valid but not ethically valid? If interested, my blog address is http://www.christianlogic.com/brianbosse/.

Sincerrly,

Brian

In 92 and 99 I urged John C (and Bill too if he is lurking) to admit that “type 1″ fristianity won’t work. It either forgets that revealing himself is a necessary part of the necessary God; or it is incoherent in claiming has revealed himself though not to anyone in particular. But revealing to someone is part of the phenomenology of revealing oneself.

But John C you won’t make this concession, so we need to explore why.

It seems as though you think TAG works by deducing a god apriori that would make experience intelligible, then going out there and finding, “look at that! The theology taught by the Bible matches this perfectly! Therefore, the Bible is true!” For in #109 you say

8) The transcendental argument is the same as yours: take those relevant portions which are necessary for knowledge, and add a quadrinity.

But TAG does not deduce a god apriori. Rather, it unpacks the thesis, “without the self-contained God Who has revealed himself, no logic or ethics.” We come in claiming to know this God, even his name, Jehovah. If God had not revealed himself to us, there would be no argument.

The claim is elaborated differently depending on the subject being “TAGGED.” Thus, we discover that Jehovah’s three-in-oneness is the “thing” that comes to bear in unpacking the thesis as it bears on predication: “without Jehovah (who is three-in-one), no predication.”

Note that once this is understood, it is not even necessary to oppose a hypothetical four-in-one god; you could equally well oppose a three-in-one god that was not Jehovah. Success at doing that would be just as fatal to us as success at some hypothetical four-in-one god. It is not the form we seek, but the concrete form.

This is why I asked (#86), “is it your point, that to determine that God has revealed himself one must resort to findings that are empirical and thus not transcendental?” Since you did not take the bait, I assume that is not your “problem.”

You have discussed variants of type-2 Fristianity (“missing the book of Jude”) and type-3 (“I know a guy who claims an alternate revelation”), but I’m still waiting to hear that you have given up on type-1. If nothing else, even if you end up showing that we have not shown uniqueness, it would be a contribution to the literature that would emerge from this thread if you would help clarify the exact “region of possibility” where it fails.

Your only attempt to preserve “type-1″ Fristianity is what you call “possible worlds.” We need to hear more about what you mean by that.

If you mean, “Jehovah is one possible god, but there are other possible gods as well,” then the answer is: if that were so, then we would know that Jehovah was not the living and true God, and thus no God at all. For, the living and true God must himself be the source of all possibility. To suppose that there is a “possible world” where Jupiter was god would imply that there is a manifold of possibility behind God himself, of which he is one contingent instance.

Thus, we can deconstruct the possible-world evasion transcendentally as well.

But perhaps that’s not what you meant.

Obviously part of the problem with my analogy comes in the classification of “persons.” While I am a dichotomy I am only one person whereas Trinitarians define God as 3 different persons.

How do we define “person”? Each person in the trinity shares the same goal and will, correct? What does it mean to have “three distinct” persons?

…I might start playing devils advocate myself.

I believe JC was playing Devils Advocate to a degree with establishing the PtI. At the same time he was saying that we don’t know what the PtI are concerning Trinity versus Quadrinity.

My Trichotomy example was meant to make a point concerning the Fristian objection. We are conceptualizing a quadrune god as something radically different than the Triune God and asserting that this destroys TAG. I’m merely asking that if adding a fourth aspect to God changes the identity of God so that those who believe in the triune God believe in a different God then shouldn’t adding a third aspect to man change the identity of man so that dichotomists believe in a different set of men than the trichotomists?

I agree with you on the whole “one cannot successfully introduce a quadrinity without defining it” deal, for the simple fact that Fristianity is said to be the same on every level except for the quadrinity. If I introduced Tristianity, and *asserted* that it was the exact same as Christianity except for the fact that it was possible for God to lie (even though He never did, thus His revelation remained the exact same), I think this framework would actually turn out to be *radically different* from the Christian worldview. For one thing passages like Hebrews 6:18 would need to explained or ignored, for another, how we understood morality, morality in relation to God, God’s holiness, God in relation to His own nature, and God in relation to logic would need to be re-defined. On the whole, I think this would turn out to be a very different Christianity.

As far as the trichotomy thing, there are trichotomist within Christendom so you wouldn’t need to introduce Bristianity. Unless you meant that man actually is a dichotomy and that in this particular possible world man was actually a trichotomy?

I don’t know that JC was saying that we don’t know what the PtI (preconditions to intelligibility)are but rather he was trying to make the point that the Trinity is *not* one of those preconditions. Plenty of presuppers have outlined essential aspects for PtI. Poythress and Van Til tried to make the Trinity one of these essential aspects. JC would argue, I believe, that they only showed that plurality in unity is necessary and that there is nothing significant about the number being 3 in particular. Thus the introduction of a quadrinity.

I have tried to argue along Butler’s line of thought (I think) that one cannot successfully introduce a quadrinity without defining it and how one defines it determines how the rest of the debate goes. JC believes it isn’t necessary to define the quadrinity beyound “has necessary PtI.”

I mentioned something early that I don’t think caught any attention, or wasn’t worth responding to but let me ask again. What if I posed another worldview called Bristian where man was a trichotomy rather than a dichotomy. Would this change the identity of man so that when I thought I knew myself as a dichotomy I really didn’t? Also, what makes the Trinity essential and the dichotomy inessential?

(Sorry if I misrepresented your view JC.)

John Calvin, you bring up some very interesting points, and the gist of your argument seems to be that the preconditions for intelligibility are either meet in some possible world or actually meet in this world when given a particular Fristian framework. In either case, there are two (or more) frameworks which provide the preconditions for intelligibility thus, the Christian framework is not the necessary but rather a sufficient condition for the intelligibility of all human experience. On this point, I would like to offer my thoughts:

1. As you yourself point out “we still must establish *what* those [the preconditions for intelligibly] are.” What follows from this, then, is that these preconditions as states of affairs, have not been individuated, and on these grounds both FS and FW seem fallacious to me. If we don’t know what particular states of affairs are necessary, then we cannot say which frameworks provide those preconditions, and which do not. All that really follows from this is that the preconditions need to be individuated (though (1) just why they *need* to be, and (2) just what would satisfy this criteria, I don’t think is made very clear). In any case to go on to say that the strong modal TAG has been refuted seems to be just as bold a claim as you’re making “the impossibility of the contrary” out to be.
2. I agree with those who are asking that the Fristian worldview be shown. You describe it as the same as ours, only it posits a quadrinity. I think the Fristian would need to show that this is logically possible, since his assertion here is that this is a possible world. There may be a possible world in which God exist as a quadrinity, but it is not clear that in this framework everything else would be the same as Christianity. This is precisely what needs to be shown.

Anyway, that’s just my 2 cents. As I said I haven’t read through all the comments, and I haven’t read all the way through Butler’s article yet either since I haven’t had the time.

God Bless!