Reading…

Re the lag in getting “At Sword’s Point, Part 1: A Documentary History of the Utah War to 1858,” I don’t quite understand that one. How did you order it? I know that as of the third week in April several bookstores in Salt Lake City (Benchmark Books, Ken Sanders Rare Books, Bear Hollow Books) had copies and were were selling them. Also, by then several people I know had received copies from directly from the University of Oklahoma press.

Clark,
Re Amazon.com I’ll see if I can light a fire under them through the University of Oklahoma Press.

Here is a potential problem that I see with Ostler’s theology. I did not know where to post it, but thought that here is as good a place as any. If anyone thinks that someplace else would be better, please feel free to move it. To those that have read Ostler’s books, this argument should be self-explanatory. Essentially, the argument is that his concept of trust and the Godhead as a perichoretic relationship are inconsistent.

(1) If X trusts Y to do A then Y has the ability to do the contrary of A.
(2) Therefore, If X trusts Y to be honest with X then Y has the ability to deceive X.
(3) If Y has the ability to deceive X then X cannot know the intention(s) of Y.
(4) If X cannot know the intention(s) of Y then Y’s mind cannot be completely open to X.
(5) Therefore, if X trusts Y to be honest with X then Y’s mind cannot be completely open to X.
(6) The Father trusts the Son to be honest with him and vice versa.
(7) Therefore, the Son’s mind cannot be completely open to the Father and vice versa.
(8) If Blake’s LDS God exists then the Father and Son are in a perichoretic relationship.
(9) If the Father and the Son are in a perichoretic relationship then the Son’s mind is completely open to the Father and vice versa.
(10) Therefore, if Blake’s LDS God exists then the Son’s mind is completely open to the Father and vice versa.
(11) Therefore, Blake’s LDS God does not exist.

Quotes

“[T]rust essentially presupposes that the person who is trusted has the ability to refrain from doing as trusted” (Ostler _Problems of Theism_, 87).

“Trust is the essential act that we must engage in as the necessary starting point of every truly interpersonal relationship. Trust is essentially an act of commitment and openness to the other” (Oster _Problems of Theism_, 88).

“There are three in the Godhead who have shared the intimate relationship of indwelling love from all eternity” (Ostler _Of God and Gods_, 260).

“[T]o be in a relationship of indwelling unity entails that the divine persons are all omniscient in the sense that they know all that can be known. They know each other’s thoughts. There are no barriers between them because they are perfectly transparent and open to each other. They are fully conscious of each others mental states . . .” (Ostler _Of God and Gods_, 276).

Read “know” here as “could not be wrong that X is true and X is true,” not as “is justified in believing X and X is true.”

While I admit that we may “know” the intentions of others in the latter sense (i.e., fallibilism), we cannot “know” the intentions of others in the former (i.e., infallibilism), if we can trust them. Trust seems to imply “I could be wrong.” And I take it that when the Father and Son are in a perichoretic relationship, they know each others’ thoughts in an infallible way. Thus, it is impossible for them to trust each other.

So, perhaps, (3) should be restated as

(3*) If Y has the ability to deceive X then X cannot have infallible knowledge of the intention(s) of Y.

Good! But cannot the argument be ammended to meet this problem by merely inserting a time designator? Namely,

(1*) If X trusts Y to do A @ T1 then Y has the ability to do the contrary of A @ T1.
(2*) Therefore, If X trusts Y to be honest with X @ T1 then Y has the ability to deceive X @ T1.
(3**) If Y has the ability to deceive X @ T1 then X cannot have infallible knowledge of the intention(s) of Y @ T1.
(4*) If X cannot know the intention(s) of Y @ T1 then Y’s mind cannot be completely open to X @ T1.
(5*) Therefore, if X trusts Y to be honest with X @ T1 then Y’s mind cannot be completely open to X @ T1.
(6*) The Father trusts the Son to be honest with him @ all times and vice versa.
(7*) Therefore, the Son’s mind cannot be completely open to the Father @ all times and vice versa.
(8*) If Blake’s LDS God exists then the Father and Son are in a perichoretic relationship.
(9*) If the Father and the Son are in a perichoretic relationship then the Son’s mind is completely open to the Father @ all times and vice versa.
(10*) Therefore, if Blake’s LDS God exists then the Son’s mind is completely open to the Father @ all times and vice versa.
(11*) Therefore, Blake’s LDS God does not exist.

As Geoff and I mentioned over at NCT, (2) may be problematic as well, because the ability to deceive does not follow necessarily from the fact that there is trust between two individuals. An open future may require trust even if the Son’s intentions are known to the Father. So, (2) does not follow from (1).

BTW, Kofford books did an initial printing of 500 books. They sold out on the 1st day. However, before a second printing was ordered it was discovered that there were problems with the binding. Kofford books has found another bindery to do the book, but it won’t be out for about two weeks in the new binding.

Re: The Book Binding

Is there any way to receive a corrected binding? In my vanity, I was a bit disappointed with it and, whatever sin it is, I am a bit of a stickler when it comes to my books.

Re: The Argument

Blake states:

“No person has the ability to deceive a fully divine person as to a present fact or present intention. . . . a divine person knows immediately what the present intention of any being, fully divine or not, is at the present moment. The moment the intention changes, the divine person also knows that. So a divine person cannot be deceived.”

But, this is exactly my point. If a divine person cannot be deceived then it is impossible for any two divine persons to enter into a perichoretic relationship. This is because, as Blake has it (and this is important; for not all perichoretic theologians agree here), a perichoretic relationship (indeed, any interpersonal relationship) is founded on trust and, as I see it, trust entails a certain amount of ignorance with respect to the other’s intentions.

Blake even touches upon this concept when he states, “If I knew . . . that [my wife] would break her word . . . then I really don’t trust” (_Problems of Theism_, 88). This seems, to me, to be correct. I cannot trust my wife to keep her vow of fidelity if I know that she intends not to do so. I can only trust her word if I am ignorant of her intentions. And this seems to be, as I see it, a huge problem with Blake’s concept of the LDS Godhead. Moreover, as I am seeing now, it is also a problem when it comes to us entering into an interpersonal relationship with any divine person; for while we may be able to trust them, they could not trust us. Thus, on Blake’s view, we cannot have an interpersonal relationship with them, which seems to be problematic for his notion of deification, too. It seems to me that Blake’s theology is falling apart here.

But as Dennis Miller says, “Hey, that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.” But if so, I would like to be corrected.

Clark:

This is a completely new area of philosophy for me. Before Blake’s book I had never thought about the nature of trust. So, first, let me thank Blake for waking me from my slumber here. Second, because it is new to me, I am going to have a hard time articulating my views. But I will try my best here to explain what I am thinking.

It seems to me that you are confusing the following two statements:

(1) I trust my brother to pick me up.
(2) I trust that my brother will pick me up.

(1) is an interpersonal trust, i.e., trusting a person. (2) is trusting that a future event/action will occur. (2) is not interpersonal. It is impersonal. It is similar to trusting that your alarm clock will go off. But what is the difference b/t them?

First, as Annette Baier has noted, a necessary condition of interpersonal trust is the potential for betrayal. And you cannot be betrayed by events or actions. That is actions or events not taking place, though you expected them to, is not sufficient to produce betrayal. Thus, the mere fact that your brother does not show up to pick you up is not sufficient for betrayal; for your brother could have been in a car accident on the way to get you. In that case, you could be disappointed that your brother did not pick you up because you relied on that event. However, you were not betrayed by your brother. In order to be betrayed by your brother, your brother must intentionally not pick you up. Thus, when you trust your brother to pick you up, you are not trusting “that he’ll be there.” Rather, you are trusting that your brother is committed to being there or intends to be there.

Furthermore, another necessary condition of trust is the acceptance of some level of vulnerability. That is, the truster is accepting a certain amount of risk that the trustee may be not be fully committed or is being deceptive. If one has an infallible knowledge of another’s intentions then one is not vulnerable and, thus, does not trust. For example, suppose that you have the power to peer into another persons mind and discern their commitment and intention. Now imagine that you ask your brother to pick you up and choose to use your power on him. When you do, you discover (i.e., infallibly know) that he has a high level of commitment and intention to pick you up. Do you at that point trust your brother? No, you don’t. Because you refused to be vulnerable. The same can be said if you discover that he was not committed. Thus, it seems, to me, that Carolyn McLeod is right when she observes that trust happens before one monitors or when one out of respect refuses to monitor the commitment or intention of another. If one does not accept a certain amount of vulnerability with respect to the other’s commitment and intention then trust has not occurred. Thus, two people in a perichoretic relationship cannot trust one another because there is no vulnerability there.

John: as I see it, trust entails a certain amount of ignorance with respect to the other’s intentions.

I think your argument fails because of this assumption. If the future is open, and if the actors in the perichoretic relationship have libertarian free will, then they can only know their *current and past* intentions. The future does not exist to be know so they can not know the future intentions of one another. Therefore, they must trust each other to not change their intentions in the future.

Also, while they could betray each other (using their free will to do so), Blake is right that they could not deceive each other.

Clark: I believe that you are incorrect. What my view demands is that there is a region of the absolute future from all inertial perspectives in space-time — that is the absolute future in Minkowski space-time. That isn’t flat.

John: All I can do is endorse what Geoff has said. I don’t see why you say that (2) is impersonal. It seems to me to be as personal as (1) if you are presently in a relationship with your brother. Logically BTW, (1) and (2) are simply equivalent. If you trust your brother to pick you up, then being picked up by your brother remains to be done and is just as future tensed as (2).

The divine persons cannot deceive each other; but they could do other than what they are expected to do given present intentions because they can change their mind. Let me give a concrete example. At T1 the Father trusts the Son to atone at T2. It is possible that the Son will not atone — but the Son has an intention at T1 to atone at T2. The Father is certainly trusting of the Son because the Son may not do as he is trusted to do despite his intention at T1. However, the Son is also trustworthy. He is the most trustworthy being in the universe. Still, in the moments before the Son atones the universe hangs in the balance. The Son vindicates the Father’s trust at T2. He could have failed to atone at T2, but he didn’t. The Son could not have deceived the Father at T1 about his intention at T1 because his intentions (present tense) are know to the Father, but he could have failed to atone at T2 right up until he does so because he can change his mind at any time.

However, let me say that this kind of thought and exploration is the primary reason that I wrote. You have engaged in some careful analysis and asked important questions about trust and perichoresis or perfectly transparent indwelling. I say keep it up!

Clark, Blake, and Geoff:

Thanks for your comments. They have given me much to chew on. But, of course, I believe I have good objections to them all. Unfortunately, we are approaching the time of the week that becomes very busy for me. I hope to be able to respond to them sometime tomorrow. But if I don’t, I will definitely do so on Monday.

In the meantime, I would be interested to hear from you all whether you think trust is a belief or an emotion or, perhaps, both and why you believe one way or the other. Initially, I just assumed that trust is a type of belief. However, I just recently encountered some arguments (I’m not sure what I think of them) that trust has properties that are unique to emotions and, thus, is not identical or cannot be reduced to a belief, but may be necessarily accompanied by a belief.

And if it is an emotion, how would that affect Blake’s argument that the classical God cannot be trusted? And, generally, how would it affect the concept of perichoresis?

Thanks, again.