Saturday, September 29, 2007
Plato and the Trinity
So I've been reading about Plato's Forms and though I do not quite understand them fully (or even somewhat) I did have an idea that I thought might be fun to play with. Could the Trinity be explained in terms of Plato's forms? That is, can God be described as one Essence in three Forms? I'm not sure if the definition of Forms and Essences lends itself to this idea...so if anyone with a more through knowledge of Plato would like to explain why this doesn't work (because I have not heard anyone say that before...and it would seem that an idea like this would have been thought of already...so i have my doubts about how well this works). But if nothing else, this can at least kick off a discussion on the Trinity. :)
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18 comments:
not being an expert on either Plato or the Trinity, I can't say for sure...but that does sound very similar to the way I always hear it described, except it's "One Essence, Three Persons".
Hello Karyn!
(Brief introduction: I'm a sophomore in Boethius group, and I stumbled across your little blog while running through the group folders. I hope you don't mind... !)
Anyways...
To my knowledge, Plato's Forms are not much dissimilar to essences. There is a single form for everything - whether that be a chair, a bird, or a carrot - that serves as the blueprint from which a thing is built in the "world of Becoming". So... a large number of a particular kind of thing can pattern their existences off of one form.
The difference between Form and Essence, I think, is that forms exist for a class of things generally, while essences exist for instances of things. Thus, while for Plato a toucan and a parakeet come from the same "form of bird", for Aristotle (father of essence) any particular toucan and any particular parakeet may have its own essence. Essence, then, might be thought of as the individual "thisness" of any particular thing.
(Aside: Don't get me wrong, though - sometimes it is appropriate and useful to talk about a whole class of essences generally, such as the essence of the Human, but I don't want to go into that right now.)
With those things in mind, it probably isn't best to think of the Persons of the Trinity as forms, since they are singular instances. In a proper framework, however, there is a particular essence from which these three persons derive - as Sam said. It is more possible, and has been suggested by others smarter than I, that forms exist as ideas in the mind of God, from which individual essences are patterned. I don't really know what that looks like, though...
I hope this was a bit helpful.
- Zakk
hey Zakk, no I don't mind at all. I'm glad you're here. Thanks for your explanation of forms and essences. That made a lot of sense.
So from the example of the toucan and the parakeet. Is it possible that God could be one Form with three Essences? Perhaps I'm still not understanding this correctly. But if I understand what Zakk is saying, the Form of God (general class of things) could be found in three Essences (the individual things).
I guess another possibility is that God is above classification and therefore above Forms and Essences. If Forms and Essences are His creation (thoughts in the mind of God, as Zakk said) then how could the Creator be described in therms of the creation.
Also, how have you guys heard the Trinity explained - barring the water example which is effective but a bit overdone in my opinion :)
Hmmm... I think I must have explained this badly.
(By the way - I don't really like the "forms in the mind of God" idea. It seems more problematic than helpful, and is usually held onto by people that want to baptize Plato...)
"... the Form of God (general class of things) could be found in three Essences (the individual things)."
There are two inherent problems with this statement.
First, it is probably better to think of essence as an idea that attempted to correct Plato's forms, since Aristotle says he is doing as much near the beginning of his Nicomachean Ethics. Thus, they are not meant to have any compatibility. Basically, my objection amounts to this:
Both essence and form could be called "formal causes" (don't get confused by the name!). A formal cause is the thing from which something derives its shape/character. For example, a blueprint might be considered the formal cause of a house.
A Form stands as the formal cause to many different instances of things, whereas, for Aristotle, every individual thing has, possessed of itself, its own formal cause, which is its essence.
Thus, God's nature could not be described as a form, since a form cannot properly be called part of thing. If the Persons of God derived from a single Form, they would be three separate beings rather than the Trinity.
This leads to my second point: Persons of God are not separate from the the essence of God. In order to avoid too much discussion of what a "person" is, I will merely ask you to accept my definition of person as "a relational agent, proceeding from a thing's essence, by which actions can be made in accordance with that thing's system of beliefs and desires (character)". The common denominator of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is that they, somehow, all proceed from the same essence, although each resides in a separate person.
As to how that may best be illustrated, I cannot say. I think the water analogy is, as are most analogies to the Trinity, highly misleading. (Remember - none of the Persons of God ceases acting/existing while another is present!) If you really want to know how the Trinity works, schedule office hours with Dr. Sanders and ask him.
Okay, I see what you're saying now. Thanks for taking the time to explain it. :D And yes, I was thinking of talking to Dr. Sanders at some point after Mid-Rags.
Hello,
I know that Plato distinguished between form and essence ..
but can you please explain it to me more? please I know this's an old post but I couldnt understand clearly .. :)
Hi! I'm glad that you are reading, even this far down my blog :)
I wrote this post about a year ago, before I really understood this concept...not that I really do even now. So I still don't really know how exactly to distinguish between forms and essences, but I'll give it a shot.
The Form is derived mainly from Plato and is the universal idea from which individual things comes from. For instance, all chairs have the same basic form - so therefore here must be a "Form" of a chair to which all chairs conform. Or, to be a bit more philosophical and less concrete, there is the form of Good [with a big G]. So all good things [small g] must share the basic concept of whatever this Good is.
Another distinguishing factor within forms is the difference between the realm of being and becoming. We currently live in the realm of becoming. We are constantly changing and morphing until eventually we will reach a state of perfection and jump into the realm of Being. In Being, there is no change, only those things that are eternally. It is in this realm that the Forms exist. Here the Form of a chair is always constant. In the realm of becoming, I could burn a wooden chair and change it's form. [hopefully that wasn't waaaay to confusing...i know i can't really explain this well].
As for essences, I think that Zakk did a much better job of explaining them than I ever could in his second response, so if you read that, I think it would be much more helpful than anything I could write. ;)
I'm so glad you asked, please lets keep talking if you'd like!
~Karyn
Thank you !
I got another Q ..
how do u think a dialogue between Plato and Aristotle concerningthe modern phenomenon of branded objects such as GUCCI or COACH or Burburry..etc. would be like?
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Il semble que vous soyez un expert dans ce domaine, vos remarques sont tres interessantes, merci.
- Daniel
The Trinity can be sufficiently explained by Plato's 'Three Hypostases', no need to refer to the ideal forms.
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