I put the question to Manny K. Black, brother of Max Black, but all I got was a yawn for my trouble. The title question surfaced in the context of a discussion of mereological models of the Trinity. Each of the three Persons is God. But we saw that the 'is' cannot be read as the 'is' of identity on pain of contradiction. So it was construed as the 'is' of predication. Accordingly, 'The Father (Son, etc.) is God' was taken to express that the Father (Son, etc.) is divine. But that has the unwelcome consequence that there are three Gods unless it can be shown that something can be F without being an F. At this point the cat strolls into the picture. Could something be feline without being a feline? The skeleton of a cat, though not a cat, is a proper part of a cat. And similarly for other cat parts. As a proper part of a cat the skeleton of a cat is feline. And it is supposed to be feline in the same sense of 'feline' as the cat itself is feline.
Now if the proper parts of a cat can be feline in the very same sense in which the cat is feline, without themselves being cats, then we have an analogy that renders intelligible the claim that the Persons of the Trinity are divine without being Gods. The picture is this: God or the Godhead or the Trinity is a whole the proper parts of which are exactly the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Persons are distinct among themselves, but each is divine in virtue of being a proper part of God. There is one God in three divine Persons. The mereological model allows us to avoid tritheism and to affirm that God is one and three without contradiction.
I have already expressed my doubt whether the mereological model can accommodate the divine unity. But now I raise a different question. Is 'feline' being used univocally -- in the very same sense -- when applied to a cat and when applied to a proper part of a cat such as a cat's skeleton?
This is not obvious. It appears to be being used analogically. We can exclude equivocity of the sort illustrated by the equivocity of 'bank' as between 'money bank' and 'river bank.' Clearly, we are not simply equivocating when we apply 'feline' to both cat and skeleton. But can we exclude analogicity?
To cop an example from Aristotle, consider 'healthy.' The cat is healthy. Is its food healthy? In one sense 'no' since it is not even alive. In another sense 'yes' insofar as 'healthy' food conduces to health in the cat. Similarly with the cat's urine, blood, exercise, and coat. Urine cannot be healthy in exactly the same sense in which the cat is healthy, but it is healthy in an analogical sense inasmuch as its indicates health in the animal.
Since a skeleton is called feline only by reference to an animal whose skeleton it is, I suggest 'feline' in application to a cat skeleton is being used analogically. If this is right,then the Persons are divine in only an analogical sense, a result that does not comport well with orthodoxy.
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