On Monday at 4:30 p.m. in Hampden-Sydney’s Chairman’s Room of Settle Hall, double major in history and philosophy, Alex Abbott ‘17, will present his summer research project in the humanities. Abbott has been working to relate the idea of immaterialism and religious dogma from the incarnation of Christ to the re-inhabitance of bodies in an afterlife. He has also researched sources that trace ideas of the Holy Trinity across centuries.

The talk entitled “That’s the (Holy) Spirit: Preserving the Holy Trinity through immaterialism” will focus is on the nature of the term person and its use throughout history, especially as it applies to the concept of the Holy Trinity. Abbott will present his understanding of the concept of “personhood” that avoids the heresies of tri-theism (that the Trinity entails that there are in fact three gods and not one) and modalism (that the persons of the Godhead are just aspects or modes of the one divinity).

His hypothesis is that materialism has corrupted our understanding of the concept of person, which in turn has led to a clouding of the doctrine of the Trinity. The hope is to uncover an understanding of this core Christian mystery through philosophical reflection that makes the doctrine more accessible.

Abbott’s research was supervised by Dr. Marc Hight, Elliott Professor of Philosophy. He commented that, “Much ink has been spilled on the topic for nearly two millennia. The Trinity in particular has been the source of many unorthodoxies and heresies, no doubt in part because the doctrine is conceptually difficult.” On Abbott’s work, Hight said the goal was “to test the conceptual relations between the doctrine (in various formulations) and ontological views.”

This presentation is sponsored by the Philosophy Department and the Honors Council at Hampden-Sydney and is free and open to the public.