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Simple Trinitarianism and empty names

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2018

SHIEVA KLEINSCHMIDT
SHIEVA KLEINSCHMIDT*
Affiliation:
University of Southern California, 3709 Trousdale Pkwy, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA
*
e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

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.

Type
Original Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 54 , Special Issue 3: Metaphysics of the Trinity: New Directions , September 2018 , pp. 325 - 335
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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