CADRE Comments

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, starting Chapter 38, can be found here. ] [This entry concludes Chapter 38, "Inferring the Third Person of God".] A Third Person of God can thus be inferred as solving a special conceptual problem, that is sometimes (and I would say quite rightly) advanced against mere monotheism, on the grounds that God can be necessarily expected to interact personally with created persons (such as ourselves) and that God has characteristics which allow for the existence of a proceeding distinct Person of God Who exists (analogically) ‘within’ the overarching Self-begetting and Self-begotten independent reality of God (without being either the Self-begetting or Self-begotten Persons). But I hinted back in Section Three, when inferring the interpersonal unity of God (as God Self-begetting and God Self-begotten), that I could have gone on immediately at that point to inferring the existence of a Third Person of G...

In past months (though not for several weeks now ) I have been posting up chapters from a currently unpublished book of mine (composed back in late 99/early 2000) wherein I work out a progressing synthetic metaphysic, arriving at orthodox Christian belief; and I find I am at a paradoxical point. If I proceed to the end of the section of chapters, I would probably have to continue along with a whole other section of entries concerning redemption and the Incarnation. But while the material has some apologetic value, it doesn’t stand without all the previous argumentation I’ve done in the book--only some of which is reflected in this series of entries. Nor does the further, fifth section involve a historical analysis--a topic far beyond the scope of my work. Meanwhile, there are many other entries I want to be focusing on contributing, including a series building on the progression of points from my first section of chapters (and then eventually on to the second and third, arriving back a...

Introductory note from Jason Pratt: I am here appending in several parts some excerpts from an unpublished book of mine (not CoJ incidentally), originally composed late 99/early 2000, wherein I work out a progressive synthetic metaphysic. The topic of this Section of chapters is ethical grounding; and in the first several entries I analyzed crippling problems along the three general lines of ethical explanation, including general theism. Recently though, I returned to the argument I had already been developing for several hundred (currently unpublished) pages, and used those developed positions to begin solving the philosophical dilemmas I had covered in previous entries. Along the way, I ran into a potential problem last seen back in my (unpublished) Section Three; but slotting that problem into my developing argument allowed me (in my most recent entry ) to discover that I should believe that a 3rd Person of God exists. This entry continues chapter 33, "a necessary truth of God...