Relative Identity and the Doctrine of the Trinity

Abstract

Persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) but only one God. The philosophical problem raised by this doctrine is well known. On the one hand, the doctrine seems clearly to imply that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are numerically distinct. How else could they be three Persons rather than one? On the other hand, it seems to imply that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are identical. If each Person is divine, how else could there be exactly one God? But Father, Son, and Holy Spirit cannot be both distinct and identical. Thus, the doctrine appears to be incoherent. In the contemporary literature, there are two main strategies for solving the problem: the Relative Identity (RI) strategy, and the Social Trinitarian (ST) strategy. Both of these strategies solve the problem by affirming the