Real Christian Philosophy: The Ontological Significance of the Trinity

“The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything…for ‘In him we live and move and have our being.’”- Paul

“Man’s problem is to find unity in the midst of the plurality of things.” – Cornelius Van Til

Most Christians are familiar with the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity: God is three persons and one being. That is to say, there is one God, not three. And there are three persons, not three gods. As White summarizes in The Forgotten Trinity (Bethany House, 1998):

Within the one Being that is God, there exists eternally three coequal and coeternal persons, namely, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Theologians and thinkers have applied the significance of the Trinity in various ways. For example, the doctrine of the Trinity reveals that God was never alone. God has always existed in relationship with persons. It seems natural, then, that God created a world of relationships and for relationships, even (especially) a relationship between the creature and the Creator. Of course, this aspect has other implications, like that loneliness is not a good thing (Adam would definitely agree). Another example is the Trinitarian structure of redemption: God the Father plans redemption (election, foreordination, predestination, foreknowing, etc.), God the Son completes the plan of the Father (propitiation, atonement, etc.), and the Spirit applies its fruits (regeneration, justification, sanctification, etc.). The whole Trinity takes part in the act of saving sinners.

But one of the most overlooked aspects about the Trinity is the most obvious: the ontological aspect. The ontological significance of the Trinity may be defined as the following:

Singularity and plurality, unity and diversity, and universality and particularity, are equally ultimate in the Godhead, Who, as the Creator and Sustainer of all things, is the ontological foundation for all created reality; all things are dependent upon God for their very existence, and distinction itself in any form is impossible without the Triune God of Scripture.

This can be said about no other thing, being, or entity in the universe. God can accurately be called or described as being “one” and “three.” Is God one, or is God three? The answer is – to borrow from Athol Dickson’s Jewish lessons in The Gospel According to Moses – “yes and yes.”  Indeed, the most basic fundamental aspect of reality, number, does not apply to God – at least in the way it applies to creation. Everything that exists in creation can (and must be, at least to exist) be  numbered. But God, as bizarre as it appears to philosophers, actually transcends number, equally being three and one. (This is not to say God is three and one in the same sense, which would be a contradiction, but rather three and one in the same degree.)

This solves the age-old problem of “the one and the many.” How can there be particular facts while there are universal laws? Is one principle of life perfect while others are inferior – and if so, how can they relate to each other? As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains:

As anyone who has flown out of a cloud knows, the boundaries of a cloud are a lot less sharp up close than they can appear on the ground. Even when it seems clearly true that there is one, sharply bounded, cloud up there, really there are thousands of water droplets that are neither determinately part of the cloud, nor determinately outside it. Consider any object that consists of the core of the cloud, plus an arbitrary selection of these droplets. It will look like a cloud, and circumstances permitting rain like a cloud, and generally has as good a claim to be a cloud as any other object in that part of the sky. But we cannot say every such object is a cloud, else there would be millions of clouds where it seemed like there was one. And what holds for clouds holds for anything whose boundaries look less clear the closer you look at it. And that includes just about every kind of object we normally think about, including humans. Although this seems to be a merely technical puzzle, even a triviality, a surprising range of proposed solutions has emerged, many of them mutually inconsistent. It is not even settled whether a solution should come from metaphysics, or from philosophy of language, or from logic.

Comparative religion scholar Radhakrishnan takes an eastern angle on the issue:

The problem of the one and the many in metaphysics and theology is insoluble: The history of philosophy in India as well as in Europe has been one long illustration of the inability of the human mind to solve the mystery of the relation of God to the world. We have the universe of individuals which is not self-sufficient and in some sense rests on Brahman, but the exact nature of the relation between them is a mystery.

After giving a historical and social introduction to the problem, RJ Rushdoony in “Van Til and the One and Many Problem” (Jerusalem and Athens) says:

Thus, to affirm the one means that the social order falls into the abyss of meaninglessness, and to affirm the many means the same collapse into the anarchy of meaninglessness. It is not surprising that philosophy as a formal discipline has become gun-shy with respect to the problem of the one and the many and has abandoned any formal or direct consideration of it in recent years. The problem, however, will not disappear. Every social order embodies an answer or a philosophical solution to the question of the one and the many, as does every area of life. Which is more basic, more real, or prior, man or the state? In marriage, is the union more important than the man and the woman, or does the will of the individual prevail over the marital union and contract? Is the church the reality, or is it the reborn individual who is the more important entity? The areas of application can be multiplied at length. Suffice it to say, that while philosophy may shrink at answering the question, after centuries of sorry solutions, every society is an attempted answer to the problem of the one and the many…

to pursue the problem of the one logically in terms of the ultimacy of the one leads to monism, a course taken by much of Eastern philosophy. The end result has been disillusion; the one has been affirmed, but the triumph of the one has been the triumph of meaninglessness. As a result, Buddhism and other philosophies proclaimed the ultimacy of nothingness. But if the many be affirmed, the end result of such a philosophy is to proceed from dualism to total atomism and anarchy; again this course has been taken in Eastern thought.

What then is the Christian answer to this seemingly insurmountable problem?

The Christian Solution to Philosophy’s Greatest Puzzle

If we begin thus with the ontological trinity as our concrete universal, we frankly differ from every school of philosophy and from every school of science not merely in our conclusions, but in our starting-point and in our method as well.” – Cornelius Van Til

Launching himself directly from a solid theological foundation, Van Til boldly says this in his 1955 edition of The Defense of the Faith:

We contend that in God the one and the many are equally ultimate. Unity in God is no more fundamental than diversity, and diversity in God is no more fundamental than unity. The persons of the Trinity are mutually exhaustive of one another. The Son and the Spirit are ontologically on par with the Father. (48)

The particulars or facts of the universe do and must act in accordance with universals or laws. Thus there is order in the created universe. On the other hand, the laws may not and can never reduce the particulars to abstract particulars or reduce their individuality in any manner. The laws are but generalizations of God’s method of working with the particulars. God may at any time take one fact and set it into a new relationship to created law. (50)

So the answer to perhaps the most mind-boggling issue of ontology in the history of philosophy is rather easy for the Christian: God is Triune, where ontological singularity and plurality are equally ultimate (God is three just as much as He is One) and equal in being (Jesus is perfect and divine just as much as the Father and Spirit are perfect and divine). God’s creation, then, will reflect this basic feature; there will be singularity (universals, “laws”) and plurality (particulars, “facts”). And creation, in its unfallen state, will properly reflect the nature and character of God through unity and variety (animals with breath, lots of types of animals; plants, a variety of plants, etc.), although never being metaphysically or ontologically equal to it. This is especially true for God’s images, human beings; there is unity (human beings) and variety (male, female).

As Van Til elaborates in more eloquent language:

We are conscious of having as our foundation the metaphysical presupposition of Christianity as it is expressed in the creation doctrine. This means that in God as an absolutely self-conscious being, in God as an absolute personality, who exists as the triune God, we have the solution to the one and the many problem. The persons of the Trinity are mutually exhaustive. This means that there is no remnant of unconsciousness of potentiality in the being of God. Thus there cannot be anything unknown to God that springs from his own nature. Then too there was nothing existing beyond this God before the creation of the universe. Hence the time-space world cannot be a source of independent particularity. The space-time universe cannot even be a universe of exclusive particularity. It is brought forth by the creative act of God, and this means in accordance with the plan of the universal God. Hence, there must be in this world universals as well as particulars. Moreover they can never exist in independence of each other. They must be equally ultimate which means in this case that they are both derivative. Now if this is the case, God cannot be confronted by an absolute particularlity that springs from the space-time universe any more than he can be confronted by an absolute particularity that should spring from a potential aspect of his own being. Hence in God the one and the many are equally ultimate which in this case means absolutely ultimate. (Jerusalem and Athens, 343).

Indeed, “Van Til is perhaps the first theologian to explicitly relate the doctrine of the Trinity to the Greek philosophical problem of the one and the many,” as Ralph Smith observes (Van Til’s Insights on the Trinity, 5-7). John Frame points out the apologetic significance of this in Cornelius Van Til:

Van Til suggests an indirect method in which the believer accepts the unbeliever’s position for argument’s sake in order to show that no intelligible thought is possible on the presuppositions of un­belief. He proves that thesis by showing that the only genuine alternatives to Chris­tianity are (1) systems of logic which seek to unify reality, but cannot account for everything in the real world; and (2) the view that attributes everything to pure chance, which destroys the possibility of any unity or rational explanation. Van Til observes that unbelief necessarily drives people in one of these two directions, or to an unstable compromise between them. By contrast, the unique doctrine of the Trinity (God and therefore the world are equally one and many) keeps Christians from the dilemma of having to choose (1) or (2). Van Til uses many ingenious examples from the history of philosophy and theology to but­tress this point.

As such, Muslims cannot appeal to the Transcendental Argument for God’s existence. To be truly coherent, the foundation for all things including science, epistemology, created reality and everything humans can experience must be a Trinitarian God, not a God that is only one person. The problem of the one and the many remains just as a big of problem for Muslims as it is for the earliest philosophers. Indeed, Islam cannot account for the existence of either laws or facts of any kind because it does not have a Creator that (ontologically) holds particulars and universals in a workable balance. Van Til knew that TAG required a Trinitarian God, and for that reason constantly referred to God not as “God” in his more philosophical writings, but as “the ontological Trinity.” So, to put it succinctly, only Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant adherents can legitimately appeal to the Transcendental Argument for God’s Existence.

The classic philosophers, like Muslims, were in just as much trouble. For those who reject a Trinitarian God,  there is no other option but reductionism, at least if they are to be consistent. Reductionism reduces reality down to one (monism) or two (dualism) ultimate principles, causes, or aspects of creation. Alas, even the brightest of thinkers will constantly get entangled in holding up “the one” at the expense of denying “the many,” or vice versa. With God absent, one or two aspects of creation inevitably fill the vacuum and become the starting point and measure of virtually everything else. But the philosopher, if he is not Christian, can never point to the final source and solution: the Trinity. (340-342)

Somehow it always comes back to God. Perhaps this should always be the case with a truly “Christian philosophy”:

The starting-point of every motive in religion is God and not Man…God alone is here the goal, the point of departure and the point of arrival. – Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism

Although completely unintentional, Aristotle documented what happens when the ontological aspect of the Trinity is ignored in his famous work Metaphysics. He briefly gives a history of this problem of first-principles and the nature of reality.  Since the very earliest times, philosophers tried to find the basic principle or cause of reality, “principles of all things. That of which all things consist, the first from which they come to be, the last into which they are resolved…this they say is the element and this the principle of things.” He outlines each thinker and their ultimate principles/causes of reality, none of which are ultimately satisfactory or rationally stable (hence the rapid evolution of philosophy):

1. Thales – water.
2. Anaximenes and Diogenes – air.
3. Hippasus and Heraclitus – fire.
4. Empedocles – earth, air, fire, water.
5. Anaxagoras – infinite principles.
6. Leucippus and Democritus – full and empty (being and non-being).
7. Pythagoreans – numbers.
8. Plato – Forms and the One.

As Van Til adds in A Survey of Christian Epistemology:

Aristotle…admitted that, as far as he could see, the relation of individual and species, or the relation of the fact to law, remained a mystery. And since the day of Aristotle there has not been any advance made on this score, because modern philosophy has continued to build upon the same assumption that Greek philosophy built upon, namely, that all things are at bottom one and return to one. If there is to be any relation between the one and the many, it must be, according to all non-theistic thought, a relation of identity, and if identity is seen to lead to the destruction of knowledge, the diversity that is introduced is thought of as being ultimate. In other words, according to all non-theistic thinking, the facts and the laws that are supposed to bind the facts together into unity are first thought of as existing independently of one another and are afterward patched together. It is taken for granted that the temporal is the ultimate source of diversity. Accordingly, Reality is said to be essentially synthetic. The real starting point is then an ultimate plurality. And an ultimate plurality without an equally ultimate unity will forever remain a plurality.

John Frame also said:

The Trinity…means that God’s creation can be both one and many. Secular philosophy moves from the extremes of monism (the world is really one; plurality is an illusion [Neoplatonism, Spinoza, Hegel] and pluralism (the world is radically disunited; unity is an illusion [Democritus, Epicurus, Leibniz]. Secular philosophy moves from one extreme to the other, becase it does not have the resources to define a position between the two extremes. (Apologetics to the Glory of God, 49)

The Neo-Calvinist Roy Clouser, who has actually taken it to task to create a non-reductionist Christian metaphysic, more thoroughly documents the problems of reductionistic philosophies in The Myth of Religious Neutrality. But, instead of pointing to the Trinity and developing a truly Christian philosophy, Clouser points to the modal sphere and “law idea” philosophy of his mentor Herman Dooyeweerd as the answer. Clouser’s own version of this is called The Framework of Laws Theory.

This failure to recognize the ontological significance of the Trinity, of course, is perhaps the greatest divergence in philosophical thought between the Reformed thinkers Cornelius Van Til and Herman Dooyeweerd. Clouser picked up where Dooyeweerd left off and needed modification, just as Bahnsen picked up where Van Til left off and needed modification. Unfortunately, Bahnsen died before he got a chance to fully develop the ontological significance of the Trinity. For that reason, presuppositionalist Christians often fail to respond to critics who say “Muslims can use the TAG argument for God’s existence just as much as Christians can.”

In fact, Sproul made this exact objection against Bahnsen in their debate at RTS in 1977:

Sproul: “But how do I know your presupposition is true. Where does your certainty come from? That’s what I keep trying to ask.”

Bahnsen: “From the impossibility of the contrary.”
Sproul: “How is the contrary impossible?”
Bahnsen:
1. Rationalism – Everything that‟s true must be coherent.
2. Empiricism – Anything that’s true must meet standard of sense experience.
3. Other views combine these.
If someone denies the Bible as the word of God, he cannot be a rationalist.
Empiricism undermines their own presupposition, too.
“As Anthony Flew said what good is it to add one leaky bucket to another leaky bucket?” (51:13, mp3 2)
“You can’t have logic, you can’t have sense experience without something that goes beyond them; a transcendental foundation.”
Sproul: “That’s not the impossibility of the contrary.”
Bahnsen: “It is.”
Sproul: “What you have done is shown us that without God we got leaky buckets. But what you haven’t shown me is why we can’t be in one big leaky bucket.” (51:55, mp3 2)
Audience Question…
Sproul: I think defense of Scripture from Warfield/Princeton was the best the world has ever seen. “I’d like to know the difference between how a presuppositionalist defends Scripture as the Word of God and how a Muslim defends the Qu’ran.” (53:52, mp3 2) (The Portable Presuppositionalist, 304-305, emphasis mine)

Sproul’s half-serious response to Bahnsen’s question about leaky buckets, of course, showed the collapse of classical apologetics. But on the other hand, Bahnsen never fully articulated in a philosophical sense the answer to Sproul’s question about the Qu’ran. Presuppositionalists usually point to the fact that Islam is internally inconsistent and so isn’t a valid candidate for the Transcendental Argument. But, to many, that seems to indicate (and Frame would encourage it) a concession towards the primacy of classical apologetics prior to the implementation of TAG. This concession, however, wouldn’t validate the classical system, or validate even a positive assertion of the Bible’s authority and God’s existence, nor would it validate the presuppositionalist a priori assumption that Christ is Lord over all things. It only makes room for negative apologetics prior (chronologically/practically in confrontation) to a transcendental argument.

The Transcendental Argument can be stated without reference to a Triune God, as Van Til himself stated:

We cannot prove the existence of beams underneath a floor if by proof we mean that they must be ascertainable in the way that we can see the chairs and tables of the room. But the very idea of a floor as the support of tables and chairs requires the idea of beams that are underneath. But there would be no floor if no beams were underneath. Thus there is absolutely certain proof for the existence of God and the truth of Christian theism. Even non-Christians presuppose its truth while they verbally reject it. They need to presuppose the truth of Christian theism in order to account for their own accomplishments.

This isn’t to suggest that we “set aside” the Trinity until later, but rather that a simple statement of TAG does not immediately require – at least for the skeptic – a recognition of the Triune nature of the Creator. In cases where skeptics of TAG (whether saved like Sproul or not like Stein, Tabash, and Barker) throw in the “what about Islam?” question, a more thorough articulation about the ontological significance of the Trinity may be necessary. Indeed, only the Trinity, not a generic Creator, is the foundation for created, knowable, and sustained reality.

A Summary of the Ontological Significance of the Trinity in Relation to the One and Many Problem

From Jerusalem in Athens (P&R, 1980), a summary by RJ Rushdoony (direct quotes from pages 342-348):

1. First, a clear-cut distinction between created being and the uncreated being of God. Creationism is fundamental…
2. Second…ultimacy belongs, not to the created order, but to God, to the ontological Trinity. Van Til, in commenting on modern dialecticism, observes, ‘All non-biblical thought is dialectical. Dialectical thought expresses itself in the form of a religious dualism. There are assumed to be two ultimate principles, the one of temporal plurality, and with it of evil, and the other of eternal being which is a form and is good.’ Monism and dualism represent the collapse of a dialectic. But, whether in a dialectical philosophy, or in a monism and dualism, the ultimate principle is a part of the one continuous chain of being.
3. Third…ascribing all ultimacy to the triune God, must therefore seek the answer to the one and the many problem in God…the metaphysical implications of the creation doctrine are that the ultimacy of the one and the many is to be found only and exclusively in God, and that therefore the one and the many can never exist independently of one another in essential conflict with one another, in that both are derivative.
4. Fourth, that, since the answer to the one and the many problem is found in God, Van Til points out that the doctrine of the ontological Trinity brings to an end the necessity for any tension between the two.
5. Fifth…the entire created one and many is entirely under God and his law.
6. Sixth…a world totally under God, a world in which the created one and the many is absolutely determined and governed by the eternal one and many, is a world with purpose and meaning. History is rescued from meaninglessness. Instead of being a collection of brute facts without meaning, of abstract particulars and abstract universals, history has purpose and direction.