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Social Trinitarianism and the tripartite God

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 September 2018

DANIEL SPENCER
DANIEL SPENCER*
Affiliation:
St Mary's College, The School of Divinity, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9JU, UK
*
e-mail: dhs2@st-andrews.ac.uk
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Abstract

In this article, I consider the most prominent contemporary attempts to reconcile Social Trinitarianism (ST) with monotheism, arguing that within ST, only mereological (part/whole) accounts can ultimately preserve monotheism. A corollary of this is that every other condition (or set of conditions) adduced in defense of a monotheistic ST really entails tritheism, that is, until a part/whole condition is deployed. Such models, I contend, fail necessarily insofar as they attempt to solve a puzzle that is wholly quantitative in nature with purely qualitative considerations. I conclude by remarking that the Social Trinity model propounded by William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland succeeds where the others fail, though this model is itself by no means impervious to weighty objections.

Type
Articles from the 2018 Postgraduate Essay Prize
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , June 2019 , pp. 189 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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