Simple Trinitarianism and empty names

According to Simple Trinitarianism, God is mereologically simple, and the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not identified with any entities in our ontology. Thus the Simple Trinitarian is able to avoid conflating Persons or multiplying Gods, and does not have to identify the Persons with minor entit...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Kleinschmidt, Shieva (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Cambridge Univ. Press [2018]
In: Religious studies
Year: 2018, Volume: 54, Issue: 3, Pages: 325-335
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Trinity / Trinity / Attribution / Ontology
IxTheo Classification:AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism
NBA Dogmatics
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
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Summary:According to Simple Trinitarianism, God is mereologically simple, and the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not identified with any entities in our ontology. Thus the Simple Trinitarian is able to avoid conflating Persons or multiplying Gods, and does not have to identify the Persons with minor entities or entities partly disjoint from God. However, to maintain that Trinitarian sentences are nonetheless true, the Simple Trinitarian will need a non-standard semantics. I explore one option for this, involving taking ‘the Father', ‘the Son', and ‘the Holy Spirit' to be empty names. By adopting a positive, Free Logic, we can take these names to make semantic contributions and play roles in true sentences, while blocking problematic inferences.
ISSN:1469-901X
Contains:Enthalten in: Religious studies
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/S0034412518000288