Unity of Action in a Latin Social Model of the Trinity

Faith and Philosophy 34 (3):321-346 (2017)
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Abstract

I develop a Latin Social model of the Trinity that is an extension of my previous article on indexicals and the Trinity. I focus on the theological desideratum of the necessity of the divine persons’ unity of action. After giving my account of this, I compare it with Swinburne’s and Hasker’s social models and Leftow’s non-social model. I argue that their accounts of the divine persons’ unity of action are theologically unsatisfactory and that this unsatisfactoriness derives from a modern conception of personhood according to which distinct and incommunicable intellectual acts and volitional acts are necessary conditions for one’s being a person. I argue that the Latin Social model is preferable to the modern-personhood models because it is simpler in explanatory economy with regard to securing the necessity of the divine persons’ unity of action.

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Scott M. Williams
University of North Carolina, Asheville

Citations of this work

Trinity.Dale Tuggy - 2010 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Absolute Identity and the Trinity.Chris Tweedt - 2023 - Religious Studies 59 (1):34-54.
Philosophy and Christian theology.Michael Murray - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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References found in this work

.R. G. Swinburne - 1989 - Cambridge University Press.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.John Locke - 1979 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 169 (2):221-222.
The Coherence of Theism (revised edition).Richard Swinburne - 1977 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.

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