re a visit from the jehovah s witnesses in article kmr po cwru edu kmr po cwru edu keith m ryan writes in article suopanki apr stekt oulu fi suopanki stekt oulu fi heikki t suopanki writes god is eternal a b jesus is god c a therefore jesus is eternal c b this works both logically and mathematically god is of the set of things which are eternal jesus is a subset of god therefore jesus belongs to the set of things which are eternal the first premise and the conclusion are not properly translated as identity statements since the is in those statements is the is of predication rather than of identity instead they should be translated using a predicate letter using g to designate god and j to designate jesus and the predicate letter e for the property of being eternal the first premise is eg and the conclusion is ej the second premise appears to contain an is of identity in which case it can be properly symbolized as j g but your remark that jesus is a subset of god suggests that strict identity is not desired here if however the first premise means that all members making up the set god have the property of being eternal the same conclusion follows jim lippard lippard ccit arizona edu dept of philosophy lippard arizvms bitnet university of arizona tucson az
