In recent analytic literature on the Trinity we have seen a variety of "social" models of the Trinity. By contrast there are few "non-social" models. One prominent "non-social" view is Brian Leftow's "Latin Trinity." I argue that the name of Leftow's model is not sufficiently descriptive in light of diverse models within Latin speaking theology. Next, I develop a new "non-social" model that is inspired by Richard of St. Victor's description of a person in conjunction with my appropriating insights about indexicals from David Kaplan and John Perry. I point out that the copula in tokens of statements like, "I am the Father," is an ambiguous term and when used by a certain divine person a different proposition is affirmed. Central to this model is the claim that the copula bears the "is of identity" and the "is of numerical sameness without identity." Further, I show that Leftow's model employs two concepts of "person," a Lockean one and a Boethian one, and mine employs Richard of St. Victor's. I describe Leftow's model as a "hard non-social" model and mine as a "soft non-social" model that is nearer to some social models. I conclude that Leftow's model is not the lone candidate among "non-social" models and that the variety of "non-social" models has yet to be exhausted. 2. Nomenclature, "Latin Trinitarianism," and a Scholastic Tale In his influential article, "Anti Social Trinitarianism," Brian Leftow (1999) distinguishes between ST and LT. ST claims that each divine person is either a distinct and discrete instance of deity or that each person has numerically distinct mental powers. Each disjunct provides a sufficient condition for the persons' having an "I-you," psychological experience. LT, as Leftow (2004a; 2007) presents it, starts with the claim that (i) God is numerically one and only one divine substance (put otherwise, one and only one instance of deity), and then (ii) LT tries to explain the way in which there are three divine persons each of whom is God. 1 I take Leftow to be suggesting that these two conditions are necessary and jointly sufficient for a model to count as a version of LT. In a footnote Leftow (2004a) adds that some partisans of LT advocate a strong account of divine simplicity (e.g., Thomas Aquinas) and others advocate a weaker account of divine simplicity (e.g., Duns Scotus). 2 However, there are two things problematic with the name "Latin Trinitarianism." The first has to do with whether there were non-Latin-speaking theologians whose model of the Trinity satisfy the conditions for "Latin Trinitarianism." Recently, Richard Cross (2010) has shown that there are examples 5. Conclusion: Non-Social 'Latin Trinitarianisms' Near the end of Leftow's criticisms of three kinds of ST in "Anti Social Trinitarianism," he invites us to reconsider what 'LT' has, or could have, going for it. A theological strength of 'LT' is that it is unambiguously monotheist, or at least much more unambiguously monotheist as compared to ST. What remain to be seen are the various models available to 'LT' sympathize...
By surveying the history of Christian theology of the Trinity and Incarnation from Origen of Alexandria to William of Ockham, this chapter shows that Boethius’s addition of rationality to the definition of persona is a significant moment in the history of personhood. Among Greek and Syriac philosophical theologians, rationality was not included in theorizing about what made each divine individual or hypostasis (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) distinct from the others. The evidence surveyed suggests that rationality is included in the definition of a persona only in Latin authors after Boethius. Nevertheless, rationality did no substantive work in Boethius’s or later Latin authors’ theorizing about the Trinity or Incarnation with regard to personhood. Richard of St. Victor replaced Boethius’s “individual substance” with “incommunicable existence” in order to give a fully general definition of persona. This change was widely accepted by later philosophers (e.g., John Locke) and theologians.
The ability of a population to shift from one adaptive peak to another was examined for a two-locus model with different degrees of assortative mating, selection, and linkage. As expected, if the proportion of the population that mates assortatively increases, so does its ability to shift to a new peak. Assortative mating affects this process by allowing the mean fitness of a population to increase monotonically as it passes through intermediate gene frequencies on the way to a new, higher, homozygotic peak. Similarly, if the height of the new peak increases or selection against intermediates becomes less severe, the population becomes more likely to shift to a new peak. Close linkage also helps the shift to a new adaptive peak and acts similarly to assortative mating, but it is not necessary for such a shift as was previously thought. When a population shifts to a new peak, the number of generations required is significantly less than that needed to return to the original peak when that happens. The short period of time required may be an explanation for rapid changes in the geological record. Under extremely high degrees of assortative mating, the shift takes longer, presumably because of the difficulty of breaking up less favored allelic combinations.
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