Michael Rea

Christian philosophers and theologians have long been concerned with the question of how to reconcile their belief in three fully divine Persons with their commitment to monotheism. The most popular strategy for doing this—the Social Trinitarian strategy—argues that, though the divine Persons are in no sense the same God, monotheism is secured by certain relations that obtain among them. It is argued that if the Social Trinitarian understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity is correct, then Christianity is not interestingly different from the polytheistic Amun-Re theology of Egypt’s New Kingdom period. Thus, Social Trinitarianism should be classified as a version of polytheism rather than monotheism.

The question raised by this volume is “How successful is naturalism?” The question presupposes that we already know what naturalism is and what counts as success. But, as anyone familiar with the literature on naturalism knows, both suppositions are suspect. To answer the question, then, we must first say what we mean in this context by both ‘naturalism’ and ‘success’. I’ll start with ‘success’. I will then argue that, by the standard of measurement that I shall identify here, naturalism is an utter failure.

Metaphysics: The Basics is a concise and engaging introduction to the philosophical study of the world and universe in which we live. Concerned with questions about reality, existence, time, identity and change, metaphysics has long fascinated people but to the uninitiated some of the issues and problems can appear very complex. In this lively and lucid book, Michael Rea examines and explains key questions in the study of metaphysics such as: • Can two things be in the same place at the same time? • Do creatures of fiction exist? • Are human beings free? • Is time travel possible? • Is there just one world or many worlds? With a glossary of key terms and suggestions for further reading, the book considers key philosophical arguments around Metaphysics, making this an ideal starting point for anyone seeking a full introduction to the debates both within and about metaphysics.

In this paper I provide a metaphysical account of the incarnation that starts from substantive assumptions about the nature of natures and about the metaphysics of the Trinity and develops in light of these a story about the relations among the elements involved in the incarnation. Central to the view I will describe are two features of Aristotle's metaphysics, though I do not claim that my own development of these ideas is anything of which Aristotle himself would have approved: (i) a hylomorphic understanding of material objects; (ii) a doctrine of numerical sameness without identity; and (iii) the view that the nature of a thing can appropriately be identified with its form. These ideas, along with other important aspects of the metaphysical framework with which I shall be working, are laid out in the first five sections below, followed in the sixth section by a brief sketch of the account of the Trinity that Jeff Brower and I have presented in detail elsewhere. In the final section, I present my account of the incarnation.

Co-location is compatible with the doctrine of microphysical supervenience. Microphysical supervenience involves intrinsic qualitative properties that supervene on microphysical structures. Two different objects, such as Socrates and the lump of tissue of which he is constituted, can be co-located objects that supervene on different sets of properties. Some of the properties are shared, but others, such as the human-determining properties or the lump-determining properties, supervene only on one object or the other. Therefore, properties at the same location can be arranged so as to constitute more than one object at the same time.