De Trinitate: The Statue/Lump Analogy and the 'Is' of Composition

Thanks to Bill Clinton, it is now widely appreciated that much rides on what the meaning of ‘is’ is. Time was, when only philosophers were aware of this. In our Trinitarian explorations with the help of our Jewish atheist friend Peter we have discussed the ‘is’ of identity and the ‘is’ of predication. We saw that ‘The Father is God’ could be construed as

1. The Father is identical to God

or as

2. The Father is divine.

Both construals left us with logical trouble. If each of the Persons is identical to God, and there is exactly one God, then (given the transitivity and symmetry of identity) there is exactly one Person. On the other hand, if each of the Persons is divine, where ‘is’ functions as copula, then tri-theism is the upshot. Either way, we end up contradicting a central Trinitarian tenet.

But there is also the ‘is’ of composition as when we say, ‘This countertop is marble,’ or in my house, ‘This countertop is faux marble.’ ‘Is’ here is elliptical for ‘is composed of.’ Compare: ‘That jacket is leather,’ and ‘This beverage is whisky.’ To say that a jacket is leather is not to say that it is identical to leather – otherwise it would be an extremely large jacket – or that it has leather as a property: leather is not a property. A jacket is leather by being made out of leather.

Suppose you have a statue S made out for some lump L of material, whether marble, bronze, clay, or whatever. How is S related to L? It seems clear that L can exist without S existing. Thus one could melt the bronze down, or re-shape the clay. In either case, the statue would cease to exist, while the quantity of matter would continue to exist. It follows that S is not identical to L. They are not identical because something is true of L that is not true of S: it is true of L that it can exist without S existing, but it is not true of S that it can exist without S existing.   I am assuming the following principle, one that seems utterly beyond reproach:

(InId)  If x = y, whatever is true of x is true of y, and vice versa.

(This is a rough formulation of the Indiscenibility of Identicals.  A more careful formulation would block  such apparent counterexamples  as:  Maynard G. Krebs believes that the morning star is a planet but does not believe that the evening star is a planet.)

Returning to the statue and the lump, although S is not identical to L, S is not wholly distinct, or wholly diverse, from L either. This is because S cannot exist unless L exists. This suggests the following analogy: The Father is to God as the statue is to the lump of matter out of which it is sculpted. And the same goes for the other Persons. Schematically, P is to G as S to L. The Persons are like hylomorphic compounds where the hyle in question is the divine substance. Thus the Persons are not each identical to God, which would have the consequence that they are identical to one another. Nor are the persons instances of divinity which would entail tri-theism. It is rather than the persons are composed of God as of a common material substance. Thus we avoid a unitarianism in which there is no room for distinctness of Persons, and we avoid tri-theism. So far, so good.

Something like this approach is advocated by Jeffrey Brower and Michael Rea, here.

But does the statue/lump analogy avoid the problems we faced with the water analogy? Aren’t the two analogies so closely analogous that they share the same problems? Liquid, solid, and gaseous are states of water. Similarly, a statue is a state of a lump of matter. Modalism is not avoided. If the Persons are like states, then they are not sufficiently independent. But a statue is even worse off than a state of water. Water can be in one of its states whether or not we exist. But a hunk of matter cannot be a statue unless beings like us are on the scene to interpret it as a statue. Thus my little ceramic bust of Beethoven represents Beethoven only because we take it as representing the great composer. In a world without minds, it would not represent anything. The Persons of the Trinity, however, are in no way dependent on us for their being Persons of the Trinity.

It might be counterargued that water is not to its states as lump to statue. Water must be in one of its three states, but a lump of bronze need not be in any statue-state. That is indeed a point of disanalogy between the two analogies. But notice that God and the Persons are necessarily related: God cannot exist without the Persons. A lump of bronze can exist without being a statue. In this respect, the water analogy is better: water must be in one its three states just as God must be composed of the three Persons.

Besides the threat of modalism, there is also the fact that God is not a substance in the sense in which clay and water are substances. Thus God is not a stuff or hyle, but a substance in the sense of a hypostasis or hypokeimenon. And it does no good to say that God is an immaterial or nonphysical stuff since what must be accommodated is the divine unity. The ground of divine unity cannot be matter whether physical or nonphysical. We saw that one and the same quantity of H₂0 cannot be simultaneously and throughout liquid, solid, and gaseous. Similarly, one and the same quantity of bronze cannot be simultaneously and throughout three different statues. Connected with this is how God could be a hylomorphic compound, or any sort of compound, given the divine simplicity which rules out all composition in God.

In sum, the statue/lump analogy is not better than the water/state analogy. Neither explains how we can secure both unity of the divine nature and distinctness of Persons.

Comments

[Steven]

I have a minor quibble.

"(This is a rough formulation of the Indiscenibility of Identicals. A more careful formulation would block such apparent counterexamples as: Maynard G. Krebs believes that the morning star is a planet but does not believe that the evening star is a planet.)"

This is not a counterexample to the principle.

I think we have to pay close attention to the referents of the words "morning star" and "evening star".

If by "morning star" and "evening star", we mean some thing out in the world, then if one half of the sentence is true, then the other is false. If it is true that Maynard G. Krebs believes that the morning star is a planet, that is, if he believes that *that thing over there* is a planet, then it is false that he doesn't believe that the evening star is a planet, that is, that *that same thing over there* is a planet.

If by "morning star" and "evening star", we mean just his concepts that he labels "morning star" and "evening star" (or anything else that it could refer to which is not a concrete object in the world), then it just follows that his concept of "morning star" (or anything else that it could refer to which is not a concrete object in the world) is not identical to his concept of "evening star" (or anything else that it could refer to which is not a concrete object in the world), which is not problematic at all.

[Vlastimil Vohánka]

Bill,

Have you read the critique of the analogy by Bill Craig?
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5219&printer_friendly=1

[Bill Vallicella]

Hi Vlastimil,

Hope you are doing well. Yes, I read the Craig critique, but after writing the above.

[Bill Vallicella]

Steven,

It is fact of astronomy that the MS = the ES = the planet Venus. Maynard, lazy as he is, doesn't know this. But he has two beliefs: he believes that the MS is a planet and he believes that ES is not a planet. Corresponding to those two beliefs there are two intentional properties: the property P1 of being believed by Maynard to be a planet, and the property P2 of being believed by Maynard to be a non-planet.

So one could offer this counterexample to InId: the MS and ES differ property-wise, and so are not identical because one has P1 and the other doesn't. So the formulation of IdIn must exclude intentional properties, and possibly some other weird 'properties.'

[Steven]

I understand that; in my first comment I said we should pay attention to the referents of the terms. I would say in that case, where Maynard has two beliefs about MS and ES, Maynard actually is not using the term "evening star" correctly, and is believing something (namely, that *it, whatever it is* is not a planet) about something else other than the object in the world.