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It looks like we got us a scholar here boys: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=XlSBdGkAAAAJ&hl=en
How can we expect to compete with that?
Progressive Disenchantment Atonement
- Thread starter MWinther
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How can we expect to compete with that?
Ah! The source of his copy/paste jobs!It looks like we got us a scholar here boys: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=XlSBdGkAAAAJ&hl=en
How can we expect to compete with that?
I read the article “Turtles all the way down” : The Unity of the Trinity as Eternal Regress in the Godhead".It looks like we got us a scholar here boys: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=XlSBdGkAAAAJ&hl=en
How can we expect to compete with that?
I wanted to read something he's written to get a feel for what sort of thinker he is, or whether he is one at all. I chose this one because it's a relatively recent writing and because I deal with the issues of infinite regress and plurality in God in the book I'm writing so I thought there might accidentally be some material I could glean from the article.
In short, the article tries to answer the question: How can Father, Son, and Spirit be three distinct persons without creating a “fourth” thing that unites them?
His answer is basically that unity doesn’t come from a separate substance. It comes from relationships. The paper argues that the Trinity’s unity is best explained as an infinite relational process rather than a shared substance or a separate “fourth thing.” In plain terms, God is one because the three persons are eternally relating in love, not because they share some extra underlying essence.
That answer, so far as it goes, isn't false, but his paper is unconvincing because he doesn't ever make an actual argument. He claims basically that, "infinite regress solves unity" but making the claim is pretty much all he does. He argues that relations require further relations and that, instead of being a problem, that infinite chain constitutes unity. The problem is that he never proves, or even tries to prove why an infinite regress should produce unity rather than instability, why that regress is metaphysically real rather than conceptual or why this applies to persons rather than abstract relations. He makes analogies like quarks forming a proton and sets that contain themselves but these analogies don't prove anything.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting that the articles is a total waste. He correctly identifies the “problem of the fourth” as a real philosophical tension and he avoids crude models that collapse into contradiction. Also, as I said, the relational ontology he proposes isn't false. It is definitely a serious direction and so the article isn't nonsense, it just isn't fully worked out.
An improvement would start by nailing down clear definitions for terms like unity, relation, being and person. From there he needs to establish why relations are required for unity, why relations necessarily generate a regress, why that regress is not destructive and why that regress constitutes unity rather than undermines it.
Instead, this article wants regress to be explanatory. Where the infinite regress actually grounds the thing in question. The problem is, you don’t get that just by saying it. Appealing to F. H. Bradley, who tried to “tame” the regress, doesn’t magically turn it into an explanation. At best, it merely reframes the problem. In other words, some philosophers argue that certain structures are not built step-by-step, not explained from outside, but are given as a whole. So the regress is not “traveled,” it’s just “there all at once.” The problem for this paper is that, even if that works in abstract logic (a point which I question and which the paper does not establish), it doesn’t automatically transfer to metaphysical reality, much less to personal beings.
Bottom line is that this article sounds like a solution because it uses sophisticated language but fails as an actual solution because it never explains the thing it claims to explain.
MWinther
Member
It seems you stopped reading halfway through the article. Bradley did in fact regard this regress as vicious. Gaskin, however, argues that it is harmless and even constitutive, because its regressive stages are not epistemically discrete moments that must be processed one after another by the understander, but are instead grasped all at once as a single epistemological package. If this is correct, then the unity‑of‑the‑Trinity problem is resolved.
It seems it is you who stops half way through reading things for I addressed that EXACT point in my post!
"Instead, this article wants regress to be explanatory. Where the infinite regress actually grounds the thing in question. The problem is, you don’t get that just by saying it. Appealing to F. H. Bradley, who tried to “tame” the regress, doesn’t magically turn it into an explanation. At best, it merely reframes the problem. In other words, some philosophers argue that certain structures are not built step-by-step, not explained from outside, but are given as a whole. So the regress is not “traveled,” it’s just “there all at once.” The problem for this paper is that, even if that works in abstract logic (a point which I question and which the paper does not establish), it doesn’t automatically transfer to metaphysical reality, much less to personal beings." - Post 163
In short, you reframe the issue and propose a solution. You then leave it to the reader to suppose the problem resolved by virtue of your having proposed it.
That isn't the way rational arguments work.
You say, “the stages are not processed one after another… but grasped all at once”
That is a claim about how the mind understands something, but the Trinity problem you are claiming to have resolved is about what actually exists.
Those are not the same thing!
Even if I can grasp an infinite structure “all at once,” that does not tell me that such a structure exists in reality, that it produces unity or that it grounds three persons as one being.
All you've accomplished is shifting the argument away from ontology to epistemology (i.e. from 'being' to 'understanding') which is a category error.
MWinther
Member
I state that I have presented a theory, and that it may be a hard pill for some to swallow. I do not claim to have solved the problem of Trinitarian unity. The article offers a theory, not a definitive proof (very few articles do). Your allegation that the article "fails" is therefore unfounded, especially since you have not disproven the theory. The article succeeds in what it sets out to do: to present a theoretical proposal, without any pompous claim to having resolved a notoriously difficult issue.
The triunity problem is a logical problem: how three can be one. If that logical tension is resolved, then the triunity problem, as a logical issue, is resolved. This does not amount to proving that the inner structure of the Godhead is in fact trinitarian; that belongs to the domain of Christian dogma. The paper simply offers a rejoinder to the familiar anti‑trinitarian claim that, as a matter of logic, three cannot be one.
That is a retreat.
First you said, “If this is correct, then the unity-of-the-Trinity problem is resolved.”
Now you say, “I do not claim to have solved the problem. I only presented a theory.”
Fine. Then Clete’s point stands. The article proposes a theory, but it does not establish that the theory actually explains Trinitarian unity.
Presenting a theory is not the same as successfully explaining the thing in question.
MWinther
Member
Yes, I stand by it. The sentence "If this is correct, then the unity‑of‑the‑Trinity problem is resolved" is not a boast; it is a conditional argument. I put forward a theory. If the theory stands, the problem collapses. That is how reasoning works.
To present a theory is not to claim omniscience. It is to say: Here is a coherent model; if you accept its premises, the conclusion follows. Anyone who reads that as a triumphalist claim of having "solved" the Trinity is simply misreading the grammar. The conditional is doing real work. It marks the argument as provisional, exploratory, and open to critique, while still asserting that the theory has genuine explanatory power.