The objection
Brower and Rea compare the divine persons with things consisting of the same material. Does this not make God a substance with three forms or three composite beings?
1. The model begins with a disputed question about ordinary things
A bronze statue can lose its shape while the bronze continues to exist. Are statue and material therefore two objects or in a particular sense one object? Brower and Rea develop from this the concept of numerical sameness without complete identity.[1]
The comparison is intended to show that our counting and identity statements can be more demanding than a quick equation suggests. It does not yet prove that God exists this way.
2. The authors do not mean divine matter
In the application, the one divine reality takes the place of shared material, personal peculiarities that of forms. The authors expressly distinguish this application from bodily matter and merely accidental attributes.[1]
One would therefore miss the proposal by criticizing it as the assertion of three bronze gods. The question is rather whether the structure used can even explain what it is meant to explain in an uncreated, noncomposite God.
3. The limit concerns composition and personhood
An object formed from constituents presupposes these constituents and their connection. Applied to God, this would threaten an explanation in which God depended on something more fundamental. The doctrine of God's simplicity is directed against such dependence.[2]
Moreover, a distinction between material and shape does not yet explain mutual knowledge and love. In John's Gospel, Father and Son are not merely two descriptions of a thing. A usable application must therefore explain real personal relationships without introducing three parts or three separate instances of God.
4. An analogy can open a possibility without proving the doctrine
The model's gain lies in questioning premature equations in counting. Its truth cannot follow, however, from being able to conceive an everyday object linguistically in several ways. The underlying philosophy of material, too, remains to be examined.
We therefore need no statue to believe John 1. God's revelation supplies the content; the analogy is measured against it. If it fails at decisive points, we lose an explanatory aid. We do not thereby lose the biblical reasons for the Son's deity and personal distinction.
5. What particular part–whole models additionally assert
“Composition as identity” is an additional metaphysical thesis: The whole is supposed to be identical with its parts together. This does not mean that every individual part is identical with every other. Anyone introducing such many-to-one identity must explain its own rules of inference; ordinary substitution of two identical individual objects does not settle the problem. For the Trinity, moreover, it remains to show how each person is wholly God. “Only the three together are God” is insufficient for this.
Likewise, the word “improper part” does not contain the solution within itself. In ordinary part–whole language, a thing is its own improper part. This does not yet yield three mutually different persons each of whom would be the whole. Anyone using different rules must disclose them and show that they yield neither three partial gods needing supplementation nor three independent divine beings. These objections concern particular models; they must not be indiscriminately attributed to Brower and Rea's constitution model.
Biblical texts in context
Sources and further study
- Jeffrey E. Brower and Michael C. Rea, Material Constitution and the TrinityFaith and Philosophy 22/1 (2005), pp. 57–76; especially pp. 68–69 on application to the divine persons.
- James E. Dolezal, God without PartsOn God's composition and dependence on presupposed constituents.