An Introduction to Divine Simplicity (w/ Fr. Gregory Pine)

well hey everyone what is up welcome or welcome back to my channel my name is austin this is gospel simplicity a place where we're passionate about the beautiful simplicity and transformative power of the gospel hey if you're new or if you haven't already and you're enjoying these videos i'd encourage you to hit subscribe to become a part of this community and if you really want to stay up to date be sure to hit that notification bell as well so you don't miss a video well i'm excited you're here today today you're in for a really fun interview with someone who's super bright but super down to earth and just fun to talk with you might have seen this stuff elsewhere but today i'm interviewing father gregory pine a dominican priest and a doctoral student and we're talking about the topic of divine simplicity now it can be a difficult topic and i get that and so i tried as much as i could while we were going to ask clarifying questions hopefully that you can kind of get your hands around this and one of my favorite things about this is the way that he relates these this seemingly abstract concept to tangible things about how this shows god's intimacy and allow and we can put it in a worshipful context i hope that's really helpful for you i know it was helpful for me so we'll get to that in just a second but real quick i want to say thank you to my patrons subscribers and merch buyers who make this channel possible especially to my patrons who give monthly to this channel thank you so much for your support because of your support not only this channel continue to be sustainable allows it to grow into exciting and new things so if you want to support the show you can do so by going to patreon.com gospel simplicity or you can use the link in the description down below i also want to thank our sponsor for today kindred kindred is a ministry that exists to help people reclaim sacred time with god in their daily lives and i do this by creating these beautiful bibles that will help you read more slowly more contemplatively you know lectio divina and these these classic ways of reading i think will help you get a lot out of your bible study so if you want to check them out you can do so by going to kindredapostle.com and be sure to use the promo code gospel 10 for 10 off your order today with all that being said here is the interview well here we go father gregory pine is a doctoral candidate in dogmatic theology at the university of freberg in switzerland he served previously as assistant director of campus outreach for the domestic institute born and raised near philadelphia pennsylvania he attended the franciscan university of steubenville and entered the order of preachers upon graduating he was ordained a priest in 2016 and holds an stl from the dominican house of studies he's the co-author of marian consecration with aquinas from tan books and has published articles and nova et vetera the tomist and angelicom he is also a regular contributor to the pipe casts pints with aquinas and godsplaining father gregory pine thank you so much for being here today hey thanks so much for having me delighted to be well it's a pleasure i came across uh your work from matt fratt's channel and have really enjoyed uh what you're doing over there in the live streams now weekly i'll be sure to link to stuff like that but uh really enjoyed those in fact i think that's how we came in touch was from watching one of those live streams that is indeed yeah you wrote in like the live stream question box would you come on gospel simplicity and i was like yes slash say more yeah you know i i had looked into it i was like i don't know his email and i thought about just texting that but i was like you know i'm watching the stream i may as well you know put the put the pressure of all these people watching and you know strong hiring meant it coming on the channel so exactly yeah they can all see it and if you say no you're a bad person uh nothing like a little good social pressure to uh get you to say well now that you're here though uh so thank thanks so much for being here and uh just before we jump into a bit i'd love to hear a little bit about you how did you end up as a dominican and most of my audience will know what that means but there might be some that think like does that mean he hails from the dominican republic or what is a dominican and how did you end up as one sure yeah so i am catholic i was raised catholic and i um let's see so i was in college and um i went to a lecture sorry at this point my story is very uncompelling they're like so far he stammered and then said um and i'm not getting what a dominican is uh so my freshman year of college i heard a lecture about saint thomas aquinas whom people may or will have heard of so saint thomas aquinas was a dominican as well and the lecture described how saint thomas um kind of sums up certain or encapsulated encapsulates the nature of love and i was very taken with that so i started reading about saint thomas aquinas and when i did i encountered this form of life so it's um i'm catholic it's catholic uh and then within the catholic church there are um priests who are associated with a particular place so you'd call them diocesan priests is often how we refer to them or what you would hear called like the secular clergy and then there are priests and brothers and sisters who would be associated with religious orders so it's not as much bound to a particular place as it is this kind of way of living the gospel so a dominican friar is um one who is consecrated to this particular form of life and the kind of emphasis or flair is on study of sacred truth and preaching and teaching so that's you know like we we refer to them as charisms uh which word obviously can mean a variety of things uh but we we talk about it as like what what graces did god give to this particular saint who founded this particular order um and then how are we as a result called to live uh in light of that um so yeah the dominican order was founded by saint dominic in 1216 uh saint dominic died in 1221 so we're celebrating 800 years of his death which is kind of yeah it's that's kind of cool uh yeah so i'm a dominican that's a long and circuitous answer no that's great and it sounds characteristically dominican to call and answer circuitous um so we'll go with that but thank you so much for being here and today we're going to be talking a bit about divine simplicity which i'll be honest i'll put my cards on the table a bit uh growing up as an evangelical i i mean i think i first heard about it in a systematic theology class once i started a theology degree but divine simplicity is not something i grew up thinking like hey this is this really important thing and i want to know more about it but as i've gotten into these conversations i i've seen it come up and i've tried to do some reading on it to learn more but i would i'm really excited to kind of hear your perspective and just get to learn more about divine simplicity and invite others into that today so could we start by saying uh just defining what is divine simplicity sure so simplicity is used in these conversations to mean that god is not composed or that god is not made up of parts well there you have it so what would it mean for god to have parts as as someone i mean so if divine simplicity is god doesn't have parts when we're thinking about god um what what is this trying to safeguard why what yeah what are they getting at here with god doesn't have parts were people going around arguing god does have parts and we needed to correct them or what what is what does that even mean for god to have a part sure yeah um so uh people take this question on in different ways i am a nerd and i love saint thomas aquinas so when presented with an opportunity to take a question on as st thomas aquinas has or had taken a question on i typically go in that direction so i'm just going to give one way of approaching the question so this is not the only way obviously but the way that st thomas does it is he kind of goes through and lists all the different ways in which a thing can be composed um and st thomas thinks like a 13th century uh scholastic theologian so he's going to borrow some of the main categories from like plato and aristotle and cicero and then you know some of the fathers of the church and some of his contemporaries so he asked like he starts by asking whether god has or is a body so that would one that would be one way in which a thing is composed uh namely of body and soul uh and then he he goes through other options which are a little more obstructs and i don't think that um yeah they're necessarily the most exciting or sexy of saint thomas's writings to plod through uh but he talks about whether god is composed of uh like nature and supposit right um which is a different way in which something can subsist so those yeah okay we'll leave those aside i guess the the coolest one or one of the coolest of the articles in the question that he dedicates in the summit theology choose divine simplicity is whether god is composed of essence and existence so that's kind of like i guess it's where the conversation comes to its culmination it's where the conversation becomes most engaging for contemporary readers i think because there's a kind of long-standing debate among readers of saint thomas aquinas as to how important this distinction really is there's some people that say like it's everything and then there are other people who say like it really doesn't matter that much i tend to be somewhere in between but a little bit more towards the former it is super important and so st thomas is trying to prove basically that god's very nature is to be right so god's very nature is beingness as it were which is a somewhat improper and confusing way to speak uh but once you get in the habit of saying it enough it sounds right it's like the opposite of when you say a word so many times that it sounds wrong it's just like you just keep saying it and then you'll and you'll feel good about it um so effectively for like what it means to be god uh is just to be-ness all right so so another way of saying it is god exhausts all that there is of being so there's no being that falls outside of the bounds of god i mean whenever you describe these things you're going to have to appeal to uh metaphors or images or similes of some sort all of which have limitations but it helps you shine some light on the mystery so um yes seeing as god's nature is to be there is no being that's foreign from him okay um and the real kind of like concern i suppose with this particular question is um if god were not to be then there would have to be some reason for which he is to be because if it weren't of his very nature to be then you'd have to account for the fact that he is and once you get into the business of accounting for the fact then you're talking about causality then you're talking about potentiality then you're talking about limitations of some sort and then you end up with something that isn't god or looks a lot different than the god who is described in scriptural revelation and the church's tradition so i think that's like that's kind of the heart of the matter for for st thomas interesting and so for a point of clarity here and because i've i feel like i haven't said it enough times where it's starting to make sense i've heard people saying like god is to be to be and i'm like that you you said it like it made sense but it didn't make sense right that wasn't you um but when you say that there is no i don't want to misquote you here so you can fix it there's no being outside of god is that what is that what you said there so when i first hear that which i don't think is what uh saint thomas aquinas is getting at but it sounds like kind of pantheism panentheism of god is just kind of splattered throughout the universe and everything is god um which maybe if like i've got some more new age-leaning people listening they might be like yes that that's that sounds great maybe i'll read aquinas now i don't get the sense that he's kidding at but could you maybe make a distinction there or help me through that yeah sure so st thomas actually asks about that in the question dedicated to divine simplicity because he's reading saint augustine who is concerned about some of his contemporaries who basically treat god like the world soul um saint thomas also contends in that particular article with a contemporary of his named david of danant uh and david of danant said that god was like prime matter like the kind of primal stuff that constitutes all that is and saint thomas doesn't really have any patience for that he's like no this is crazy talk um so when i say that there's no being that falls outside of the bounds of god what i'm saying is that everything that is participates in god's being so maybe you've come across the book by father robert sokolowski it's called the god of faith and reason but in one of the opening chapters of that book he talks about what he calls the christian distinction and effectively it amounts to this that god plus creation is not greater than god so god you know is eternal uh so from all eternity the father begets the son and father and son breathe forth the holy spirit um but uh there's no addition as it were to like the cumulative total of being when god decides to create because everything that is is just a limited participation in the very divine life or divine nature as it were so here you know like when saint thomas talks about this he borrows heavily from saint augustine who has this treatise um i think it's like on 83 questions is the name of it it's a real cool catchy title in which saint augustine describes the divine ideas now mind you there's like a big um pagan backdrop to this question so it comes up in plato it comes up in aristotle it comes up in the subsequent neoplatonic tradition like in proclass and pseudodioenesis and the author of the liberta causes um but but st thomas's big source is saint augustine and this is where you get this notion of the divine ideas so god knows himself right so god god doesn't draw knowledge from anything without so god's very nature is to be right and his very nature is furthermore to to live says uh the neoplatonic tradition and furthermore it is to understand you have this what they call like uh three never mind it doesn't matter but um so essay viva ray at intellegerae so so god is to be to live and to understand so god is his very act of understanding he's actually the object of his understanding as it were too so god knows all things in knowing himself and effectively god in knowing himself knows all of the ways in which his divine being can be shared in by creatures so like he knows all of the limited ways in which his divine being can be participated and to some of those things you know god conjoins his will and that is what is um so god knows them and he knows them with a kind of creative causality and those are the things that we encounter you know when kind of toddling here and there and everywhere so when we look at things in the world we're not looking at like additions to god as it were we're not looking like okay there was there was x amount of being before god created and now god created y and so now there's x plus y amount of being it's like no these things basically all have their being on loan from god uh they all have their being as god's gift because god is to be and everything else has to be from god so that i think is the basic idea okay and to bring it back to that very succinct first definition when we say that they share in it we're not saying that they have like a part of god's existence because god doesn't have parts and so it's a sharing in it but it's not a god kind of mattered throughout the universe yes so saint thomas will use the language of participation which in latin party copper it just means part-time copyright just means like to have a part but not in the like base or crass material way as you just described so it's to have in a partial or particular way what exists otherwise in a universal or total way as it were um the helpful mnemonic that i use to remember the definition for participation is putt-putt putt-putt golf baby so p-p-u-t uh what what exists in partial or particular ways uh you know in our experience of things ultimately draws its being from what exists universally or totally in its um principle instantiation so god's very nature is to be and we all are limited expressions of to be so it's not that we have a part of god it's just that being is contracted is the language that saint thomas uses according to our particular essence so god is just to be whole entire and unfettered to be but we kind of bottled to be as it were into the limited essence of a rational animal of a human person and as a result of which we only give expression to to be in this one limited way so yeah i think i think the like the language of contracted while somewhat unhelpfully obscure again it's it's also you know makes makes sense if you look at it long enough just keep saying it no i think i see where you're getting at there and that is helpful and i like the mnemonic as well i think many people will will walk away remembering the putt-putt uh mnemonic and so whereas god does not have essence and existence he is pure to be we and that we participate in his to be we would have that distinction we would have essence and existence and we have causality then or there there is a cause for us which would be a problem if we had that for god that's is that putting all those pieces together right so god's um so i guess yeah god's very god has an essence right so so god's essence is godhead deity and um but but god's essence is his existence so there's no distinction between the two there's no division between the two there's no composition of the two so god's essence is his existence and then we are you know our essences to be a rational animal and we each have a particular act of existence a particular like if you think about our essence is what we are you know like humanity being the essence of man and woman um existence is kind of like what lights that up in a particular instance right so so existence lights you up in a particular way it lights me up in a particular way it lights you know listener number 13 up in a particular way um so so existence isn't something that's like added to the essence like um you know some things could be added to me in the sense that like so it's not an abbey like um quality or quantity right so i'm like six feet three or six feet four um or i am you know what would be a quality of me i am oh gosh raspy voiced all right so those would be like two instances of things that get added to the substance of a rational animal existence isn't like that it's not like oh yeah i had this like you know i had this humanity essence over here and then i added existence to it and now it got like you know kind of different so it's like humanity but with a little twist it's like no it it's it was it's what brings that humanity forward it's what what expresses that humanity and its fullness in you know like in a real and subsisting way so what we're saying is that god's very nature is that right to be fully expressed um to be whole and entire uh to be to be bbb um [Laughter] sure that's pelucid no that's helpful and i i you know i appreciate you uh putting up with all the clarifying questions that hopefully no no it's great not only helped me but help people listening on kind of get get a hold of how these different terms work together um not everyone listening might read st thomas aquinas in their free time some of them do but uh so hopefully this is helpful because i know these topics can be a little abstract and difficult um which is why i think you know you talk to the beginning for some people this is really important and for some do these things matter and i think um you know i had someone come on and we talked about essence energy's distinction and i'm a lot of people enjoyed it and a lot of people like this is just way too over my head and so trying to make sure i'm uh massaging the conversation in a uh in a meaningful way for everyone listening one question i do want to ask because it comes up a lot is i hear this uh distinction between i believe in divine simplicity but not absolute divine simplicity and there seems to be this emphasis put on that qualifier of absolute so is this a meaningful distinction what are people getting at here and then for my catholic audience are they bound to a certain choice of those two right um the answer to both those questions is i don't know um so i don't um i don't actually know the conversations about divine simplicity too well um and so as to what people uh mean by divine simplicity versus absolute divine simplicity i suspect that you know everyone has their hang-ups with divine simplicity and some of those hang-ups you know i'm not i'm so hang-up sounds like a freighted term like i'm about to attack those people as effectively like weak um or just unwilling to pull the trigger on their divine attributes and blah blah no um you might have hang-ups for any number of reasons it might be bound up with your understanding of the incarnation it might be bound up with your understanding of the trinity it might be bound up with your understanding of salvation and how it's communicated and stuff like that and if you can't see another way to save the phenomena except by compromising on divine simplicity i could see how that would be that would be a move um so i suspect that the distinction between divine simplicity and absolute divine simplicity is probably related to that how that plays out i don't know but as for the catholic position it is defined for catholics that god is simple uh but i don't know that the language of that is uh so carefully crafted as to rule out um you know kind of like orthodox rival traditions on the matter um that's not to say like you know you got all kinds of wiggle room so say whatever the heck you want it is to say though that i think there's still room within the catholic tradition for like a deepening of the understanding of divine simplicity um and for arguing through some of these controverted points um so yeah i mean within the catholic church uh tomism right to the philosophy and theology of saint thomas aquinas is often put forward as a as a good way to think according to the mind of the church but it's never really been you know kind of canonized as it were as the official teaching of the catholic church so um i think in in my case it's the type of thing where like when i follow the discourse i'm like yeah this is very convincing and because i have been convinced of much of what saint thomas teaches and because it's so closely interlocking i find myself convinced on a variety of points um but but others who aren't of the same kind of theological ilk uh maybe they're more fans of blessed john don scotus or maybe they're more fans of contemporary 20th century theologians like the nouvelle theologians things like that they just might want to kind of get off the bus before it ever really gets rolling down divine simplicity street with st thomas aquinas so um yeah i guess that's uh that's more about how conversations take place in the catholic tradition today than it is about to find simplicity but there you have it i think that's helpful though and i so what i hear you saying is as a catholic you you're bound to divine simplicity but you're not bound to a tomistic understanding or to be atomist itself and is that fair in itself there yep that's a good characterization yeah and i think if people want to learn more about this to plug a channel you're frequently on i believe i think it was a fellow dominican uh father peter totalbin is that his last name uh was just on with matt fred talking about palomism and tomism and whether they can be reconciled so i can link to that if people are interested in that um i watched that and it reminded me of how unintelligent i actually am don't sell yourself short no um it was it was a great episode um but i i can imagine some people listening to this right now and uh so they're they're hearing all of this and they're trying to work through divine simplicity and maybe they're having a similar experience to me thinking like some of this is a little difficult um for those that feel like like this is just a lot of philosophy and it's not really connected to scripture like they don't necessarily see scripture talking like this and they're wondering why this is so important how would you respond to kind of that um line of questioning of like is this just philosophy completely divorced from scripture is this you know the scholastics with too much time on their hands yeah so i would say um one no i think that it's important but i didn't really think that it was important until i studied it um and so i think that there might be a temptation on the part of me and like other practitioners of this type of thought to talk what people call inside baseball although i've never really understood what that means um but like you begin to speak in a certain theological idiom and then you forget a little bit what your audience's sensitivities are right so so one critique that's often leveled against tomism is that it's too much of a system right and as a result of which it can actually be detrimental to like the liberty of thought required for christian worship so it kind of like it can quench the spirit as it were but i think that for me uh i can see i can certainly see how that criticism would be leveled against it um but also like i don't know having read some of the some of the things that st thomas has written a handful of times i have a greater sympathy and sensitivity for the kind of what would one call it uh like worshipful or doxological movement of some of this thought so like for instance yes his organization is very much indebted to aristotle so in the beginning of the summa theologiae question two is uh so the first part question two is about whether god exists so in a in an aristotelian science you proceed through um you know like these kind of three methodological questions when you are establishing the basis for a science so science is knowledge through causes and so in order to get to that knowledge you have to first prove that a thing is and then you prove what it is and then you show you know like whether it is as it were and then you kind of make demonstrations that it must be such um so he has these four questions they're taken up in the latin tradition and they're they're posed as onset whether it is quidsit what it is ultrams it like whether it is or how it is or basically you're kind of linking up the subject matter with its properties and then proctor quid or uh yeah proper code you're making demonstrations so you're showing from the top down that this thing is as we have described it so saint thomas actually i mean he organizes his theological treatise according to this so question two is is onset whether god is and then question three begins could sit like what god is and there i think that that that should make a lot of um people mildly uncomfortable it's like what you think you can say like you can sum up what god is but st thomas is equally sensitive to that so he begins that question by saying we can't say what god is right because we can only really have knowledge of god through his effects right so what he does in salvation history and we reason back from those effects to god we can never make strict demonstrations because we can never have the type of knowledge of god that we can have of other things like i can say that the definition of man is a rational animal but i can't define god god is beyond or above or entirely transcending my mind you know the compass of my mind and so he says we we can't so much say what god is quit sit but we can say how god is not all right so quo moto non sit so maybe some listeners are are uh aware of the distinction between like positive and negative theology sometimes described as cataphatic and apophatic theology right so there's a real humility that informs what what saint thomas is doing so he's doing cat excuse me apophatic theology so he's he's kind of removing things from god so those first um whatever it would be nine questions that follow the demonstration of god's existence are all about removing limitations from god right so divine simplicity is to say that god is not composed and then he moves from there to perfection to goodness to infinity to like eternity and immutability and omnipresence and unity and what he's saying with each is he's he's removing something so with simplicity god is not composed with perfection god is not limited right with um infinity god is not circumscribed or bound uh with omnipresence god is not excluded uh with eternity uh god enjoys whole and simultaneous possession of endless life so god is not time bound right with unity um god is not divided right god is not disparate so so all of these claims are very very modest uh they're very very humble claims uh what he's trying to do is just kind of keep at arm's length the types of um like limitations which would obstruct us from knowing god and worshiping god uh and and so doing he kind of like hones in on the mystery but doesn't in any way seek to exhaust it or explain it away um so i think that there you see again like a kind of worshipful or doxological movement uh that informs it and also st thomas is going to go ahead and apply this teaching um in a like a kind of more properly theological setting in a variety of ways that become super important i mean we could talk about that later but like this is huge for understanding the trinity for instance it's huge for understanding the incarnation it's huge for understanding how god interacts with the world it's huge for understanding you know like blah blah dot dot dot um but it ends up being super super important uh because if you get god's god's nature wrong right or if you introduce into god's nature certain limitations of our human mode of understanding then you're just going to have big big big problems down the road thanks i think framing this uh under kind of like a doxological or worshipful category there is really helpful and i think personally for me before ever reading aquinas which wasn't until a historical theology class last semester it was easy to kind of almost project like a post-enlightenment rationalist to like is just kind of thinking about god absent of actually caring about god just because of the way he writes and the things that you might hear about him but then i think putting that in those categories just makes this a lot more accessible and makes it feel especially to people that have what i think is often a good inclination of hey when theology gets too far from life it can be unhelpful um i i think it's just helpful to to see that in st thomas aquinas and see that this isn't just um him having too much time on his hands that this is this is meaningful and you mentioned earlier and i so and you started to get back to this again um that for you you know you're somewhere on the spectrum between uh this is like the most important thing and this doesn't really matter but more towards this is really important and so for my catholic listeners again like this well one it's important because if they want to be a catholic in good standing they have to they have to give a cent to this is that the proper language ascent um yeah okay but on top of that it's you know i would like to think that it's not just arbitrarily so why is this important and you started to say this is going to affect other things and we'll get to that a little bit or if you want to go there now but why does this matter well hey everyone we will get right back to the interview but first i wanted to thank another sponsor today and that is faithful counseling i am so excited to be partnering with faithful counseling they are an organization that exists to help you get the help that you need you know one of the first youtube videos i ever made was titled you can have jesus and a therapist too today so many people are struggling with their mental health and the last thing we need to do is create a stigma around it that keeps people from getting the help they need and i want to do my part to help you all reach out and find the resources that can be helpful for you i think faithful counseling could be one of those things faithful counseling is a group of christian counselors and no matter where you are in the christian tradition they have counselors from across the spectrum of denominations and if that's important to you 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faithfulcounseling.com gospel simplicity also i want to let you know that this is not a crisis line if you are currently experiencing suicidal thoughts or ideation please reach out to a crisis line you can find one at www.crisistextline.org you do not want to go through this alone and please reach out if you are experiencing those things well once again i hope that if this is something that would be helpful for you that you will check that out you can find the link in my description i want to do my part as i said to end the stigma i hope that you will as well let's help people get the help they need to be on the path towards healing and hope so go to faithfulcounseling.com gospel simplicity sure yeah maybe we could just take a a couple examples or an example or two uh one thing that i help a little one thing that i think it's helpful for explaining and and maybe we should start here because it's the closest to our experience is the relation of god to creation um so you have some interaction problems when it comes to like okay how is god related to the world but like not changed by it for instance uh or you can really raise the uh what would you call it like raise the stakes and talk about it in terms of like the incarnation the hypostatic union how is the lord jesus christ related to a human nature without the godhead being thereby changed as it were okay because the problem with god changing is that um conceived in a certain way it seems to suggest that god was less than or could become better or was greater than and could become less because change seems to signify and the way that st thomas describes it some realization of a potency that formerly was not realized okay so like we think about it in terms of change of place like i am in switzerland but i am potentially in germany okay so like all i would have to do would just be to purchase a train ticket get on a train four hours later i could be in germany but the fact that i'm not presently in germany is in a certain sense a limitation to my being all right so we would say like you're not limited you're doing great you're like you're just killing it in that one little place that you're at uh but no i mean because of the fact that i am embodied right i can only ever be in one place right so in the sense that like my body is present to that place i mean i can think fondly of you know newtown pennsylvania from which i hail or i can talk to somebody on the phone but in the strict sense i can only really be in one place so that's a limitation that's that's a way in which my nature limits being and as a result of which that is a way in which i am in potency all right so like we don't have to worry too terribly much about the language of potency and act because that's a longer conversation but there's some part of my being that is remains to be realized and by virtue of the fact that it remains to be realized it signifies a limitation okay now we don't want to have any limitations in god all right uh why is that because we're just making him too out to be this like um kind of pagan philosophical behemoth and we just want to attribute to him everything imaginable that's good no no because i mean like effectively this this is super important for us when it comes to soteriology because like how does merit work right okay so like jesus is of you know an unsurpassable charity and obedience and he suffers and dies for love of us but like why does that matter you know like how can one man merit for another because it seems like the reward would only be due to him so when st thomas explains this he says it's by virtue of the divine power which can apply the merits of one man to that of another right it can apply the merits of the incarnate son of god to his brothers and sisters who have been incorporated into his body over which he reigns gloriously his head all right now if god though is not capable of wielding as it were or cannot exercise an infinite divine power then we've got problems all right so so we need for god to be like very much so terriologically in charge and if we start chopping up the divine being and some like kind of submitting it to certain limitations then you know it's things kind of get scary as it were i mean like not to say that one should draw back from something because it's fearful to think about but just simply to say that like like i mean i mean are we saved at the end of the day or can we hope to be saved at the end of the day if god is somehow limited right so if god is equally in need of orientation or actualization or salvation then he can't give what he doesn't have right that's not to attribute sin to god but to attribute limitation of a certain sort so um yes so to bring it back then to the interaction between god and creation right god by virtue of the fact that he is undivided by virtue of the fact that he is not composed is thereby able to interact with creation in a way that's far more intimate in a way that's far more involved than might otherwise be be the case so when you think about like art the way that descartes describes the interaction between mind and body basically descartes thinks of both mind and body as things right so you've got thinking things and you've got non-thinking things but once you begin to conceive of mind and body both as on equal footing as things then you have a real interaction problem and then you end up with strange you know like considerations uh vis-a-vis the pineal gland like all right there has to be this particular pace at which they interface and things just get super wonky super quickly by virtue of the fact that god is simple right immaterially so then saint augustine goes on to describe how god is able to be more intimate to things than they are to themselves because god is present to them as giving them being as giving them agency and as a result of which all things are are transparent to god's gaze right so god is thereby able to be most intimate to creation you have this kind of paradoxical idea where because he is most transcendent there he is thereby he is able to act most imminently but you lose that you lose that if you lose uh your kind of handhold on divine simplicity because once god is composed then you have to account for that composition in god's world interaction uh and if once you're doing that then then things get super slippery super quickly thank you i i think it's very refreshing and i hope people find it refreshing that the terms being associated with divine simplicity so far not the only ones of course but we've had intimate and doxological and worshipful which if you were playing a word association game with me prior to this about divine simplicity i don't think any of those would have come up and so i at least for me that's that's really helpful that you know we can see these connections and i think that's really interesting to think about how god would interface with creation and all the problems that creates like you and i think the mind and body one is an interesting way of kind of getting at that hopefully that will uh will make sense for people listening you mentioned this earlier and i think this is a place that i could see people thinking about it's something that came to my mind when i first heard about this idea of divine simplicity you mentioned the idea of the trinity so how does divine simplicity relate to the trinity now none of us orthodox christians want to say that the you know three persons of the trinity are parts of god like they're each one third god but it might at least at first glance sound difficult to say god is absolutely simple and he's father son and spirit how do these ideas work together sure yeah um yeah maybe i i think maybe the best setting for that is just to give like a um just a short thumbnail sketch of what st thomas teaches about the trinity the philosophical concepts that he relies upon and how those help to explain the biblical revelation and then just to kind of show how define simplicity is operative in that so st thomas relies heavily on the language of the gospel of john right so this idea of ek por oasis like a kind of proceeding forth from which is enshrined in the creed right so we speak of uh those processions of you know god's begetting the son the father's begetting the son and then you know like uh the holy spirit's proceeding forth from father and son if one accepts a filioque or just father if one does not um and st thomas uh is especially indebted to saint augustine's reception of this teaching so saint augustine has this long treatise on the trinity one of the the only really long treatises on the trinity in the latin west and um so boethius has one and i want to say like hillary if poitier has one uh but saint augustine's is certainly the the most ample um and it's the most uh speculative and in chapters 13 14 and 15 uh he's going through a variety of options for analogies that he thinks might be suitable for explaining the most blessed trinity and he rules some out because he's made a little bit nervous by them and one of them is actually a familial image for the most blessed trinity so he says the trinity will be like father son and child but he says i i'm i'm uncomfortable with that because the child is apart from father and mother right so he's he's worried about describing it with what he calls uh transient actions right so actions that pass from the agent to some effect he says we we really should explain it more in terms of imminent actions so actions which in proceeding stay within the agent because that that most adequately reflects or most closely reflects what transpires eternally in the life of the most blessed trinity so he he uses this analogy of word and love so he describes how god basically in thinking himself has a thought that's so rich that's so fruitful that's so feckened that it actually proceeds forth from him interpersonally so god in thinking himself thinks of himself so powerfully so potently in a way that you know like we can kind of come to appreciate by analogy when you have a thought that's so strong you know it can like raise your heart rate or cause you to sweat or you know make you think fondly of another person we'll think of god thinking himself and the thinking about that in a wholly immaterial way which again is the thought of being itself right and he says that that proceeds forth from him as a kind of conceptus as a kind of concept as it were what we would say in more scriptural language you know like the logo so the word so god speaks forth this word but that god and the word kind of rush in as it were or um regard each other with a mutual love such that together they would breathe forth the holy spirit um so he uses this because it's based off uh the um the intellectual activity of thought and love right so to know and to love being things that can transpire within an intellectual agent even in our own experience our own limited experience and he says now if we purify this of creature of limitation um and and then we would try to seek for some super eminent expression of it in the most blessed trinity then we begin to approach something of the mystery now in this what we have is effectively you know three divine persons each of whom subsists in the divine nature right but as related to each other by virtue of the fact that they have different origins right so not origins and time but like as it were origins in the most blessed trinity so the father is unbegotten the son is from the father and the holy spirit is from the father and the son so there's some distinction by way of origin and saint thomas says in light of that distinction there arises relations so the father relates to the son after the manner of paternity the son relates to the father after the manner of sonship the father and son relate to the holy spirit the holy spirit relates to the father and the son and he says truth be told you know when you get right down to it the persons of the most blessed trinity just are those relations so the father is subsisting paternity the father is godhead begetting the son the son is godhead begotten by the father or being begotten by the father and the holy spirit is godhead being breathed forth from the father and the son so each is god but god as related to the other persons by virtue of their distinct origins okay now i guess you know to kind of bring it back to divine simplicity this is all contingent upon as it were or this is all indebted to uh the unity of the divine nature right so it's it's it's especially important that the divine nature itself not be divided because if it is divided then you would like you mentioned at the beginning you'd have to really account for potential heresies that could crop up like modalism right or like partialism which would be the biggest threat um so if there are parts of the divine nature to be allotted then you have to account for the fact that each of the divine persons has all of that part as it were or has that part equally and then you begin to introduce a kind of divine calculus which has never been present in the scriptural or the patristic or the medieval tradition right um because then it becomes yeah it it just becomes uh very complicated not to say that the like the doctrine the most blessed trinity is not complicated but it becomes very involved in a way that seems just very counter-intuitive to our scriptural and patristic sensibilities um so basically um by by having divine simplicity in place it permits you to have a greater sense for a greater appreciation for a greater grasp on the divine unity so that that divine unity can act as a strong strong pull at one end of your thinking so as to you know counterbalance by its monotheistic force the introduction of division as it were not real division but distinction within the most blessed trinity by virtue of the processions and the relations which arise so that you can have this strong strong pull of not try theism but trinity or triunity all right and that you can not vacillate between but hold both as it were strongly strongly strongly but i think that this unity piece this monotheistic piece is you know very much related to uh or very much bound up with the simplicity piece because once you introduce division here uh my fear is that things begin to kind of break up yeah i think that's helpful you know not exactly the word but would you say the strong strong pool or like almost the glue there that keeps you from getting to kind of partialism there and again the more i think people can connect one doctrine to another and see how they relate to one another the more theology starts to make sense rather than trying to have a bunch of silos where they're trying to keep track of how all of these things work but when you see how they begin working together hopefully i think it'll be easier for people to see why these things matter and even what what they're getting at in relation to other things well one uh one final question area i wanted to ask with divine simplicity and thank you so much for this this has been absolutely great and i hope people enjoy it but but one other area when we start talking about and again this could just be my lack of familiarity and uh the terminology but when we start talking about god as you know pure actuality or it got us to be to be um and it gets a little fuzzy to me how this relates to attributes of god and so you know growing up in church when you wanted to feel really smart you learned like one of those you know five dollar words like omnipotent or omniscient and you felt really really smart and you were going to impress your sunday school teacher um but how does that work when we say that you know god is just you're not i was just but god is pure being can we properly talk about attributes of something that is pure being how how do those things work together yeah um that's a great question so like um with respect to some of these uh ones that i described at the top of the show so divine unity or eternity or omnipresence or infinity or you know things along those lines uh what we're effectively saying is god is not this that or the other thing so god is not limited in one way shape or form so it's kind of it's kind of easy to see how those could be um what would one say reconciled with uh god's nature as saint thomas says ipsum essay pair says subsistence so very to be so ipsum means like you know the the very the very thing so very to be subsisting through itself so when we when we take these divine attributes which are just removing things from god it's like okay what we're doing there is not qualifying the sense in which god is to be but giving names as it were or um uh giving uh a kind of description uh for the manner in which god is um now it becomes harder when we attribute what we would call like positive names right so like life or love or justice things like that um and when st thomas moves on to those questions in the summit theologia he does it only after a little interlude where he describes um the limitations of our knowledge basically and then the way in which we name god and when he when he talks about the way in which we name god he cites this uh this passage from pseudo-dionysius who's like a fifth sixth century syriac monk he was writing under the pen name of dionysius the ariopa guy who was uh you know one of paul's converts there uh from whatever it was ax gosh 15 you know better than i do um and um and in that passage uh pseudo dionysius talks about the threefold way by which we name god or by which we approach god and he says we follow the threefold way of first causality then remotion and then finally eminence all right so you'll sometimes hear them referred to by their latin names so the via causalitatis the via remotziones or nagatzionus and then the via eminencia and what what he says it's it's kind of like a a therapy as it were or like a theory uh so so you make this movement when it comes to divine naming so you say first okay we can name god uh by virtue of the effect that we perceive in creation okay um so for instance if i see a good thing in the world i know that the effect in some way resembles its cause it's like an old aristotelian dictum um that everything that that acts makes something like unto itself so if it if it is this way we we can some way attribute its goodness to god all right so so we would say that god is good but also we know that the good that we encounter here is limited all right so uh we don't want to attribute that limitation to it nor do we want to attribute the limitations that come with our our manner of speaking all right so so whenever we say okay there's a there's a particular thing here that i'm naming a particular attribute um and on the one hand there's the thing signify but on the other hand there's our way of signifying it so when i say like you know you are good i'm composing you with goodness but by speaking that way like you subject to the sentence are you know the copula good an attribute right it seems to already signify that there's a kind of division as it were between you and the goodness all right because i'm attributing it to you in time and with this kind of unwieldy language so we want to remove all of that from our attribution of goodness to god all right so he would say god is the cause of this goodness so we somehow like it um but god is not limited in the way that this goodness is limited nor is he limited in the way that our speech would seem to signify all right so we want to remove those limitations from god so that's the via negationiser via remote sionis but then the third and final move is to say that god is this thing is like this thing as it were but in a way that um far surpasses it in a way that um transcends it uh kind of like more than our own imagination can even conceive of all right so god is good but but good in a way that you know is is the prime expression of goodness really uh but in a way uh by comparison to which this goodness is but a pale shadow right so each of us has an earthly father and we look at that father and we see in him certain attributes that commend him as a father but you know like god his father in a way that really gives meaning to this limited example of fatherhood that transcends it and surpasses it but it's also the very standard against which this limited fatherhood is um is even judged so when it comes to uh divine attributes again we have one the sense that god has given us this creation so as to know him right so we're able to reason upon it and reason back to him because of you know like the kind of language that's used in romans 1 20 that they're all so much testimony the visible things that we see to the invisible god but then there's again this kind of movement of um agnosticism so we don't want to go and make a conceptual idol uh just because the creation is a is a revelation of the goodness of god and it's ordered to his glory that might we might return to him uh in praise by by surveying the many good things that he have made he has made for our contemplation we don't want to make of these things the godhead as it were so we need to be we need to set aside the limitations lest they um creep into our notion of god but ultimately we affirm that it is that's far beyond the compass of our minds you know the kind of last the last movement there with respect to divine attributes um is simply to say that we don't even know we don't know right like donald rumsfeld there are the unknown unknowns but we know just enough right um so i think about this in terms of like prayer uh we have the sensibility that it's good to assume certain gestures how do we know that well in a certain sense because it's been revealed to us right but also because we have access to it right so in the catholic tradition obviously uh our worship is uh very much like alter-centered is very much eucharist centered right how do we know like say you're in a period of eucharistic adoration how do we know that we should face the eucharist rather than facing the left wall of the church or the right wall of the church right we can we can know these things with some modicum of certainty because god is revealed but also because we're capable of knowing all right so so we don't want to be so agnostic or um so self-effacing as to say like well really we can't know anything it's in it's in god's interest you know as it were that we can know some things so that he can make us happy right unto the praise of his glory because there's no real other way by which to account for the fact that god created us um except that we be happy unto the praise of his glory so i don't think that i actually directly answered your question uh but i found myself following a variety of blind alleys and i ended where i did no i think that does answer it and so for clarity we can make positive statements so like when the author of first john says god is love he we we can say that we can say that with him but we don't want to limit god to our conceptions of love or say that you know that as uh like it is a a one to one god is our conception of love so there there's the sensibility of saying well it's it's not precisely that um but we don't want to go so far as saying but we can't make positive statements it's that is accurate we it's a um it's a fair thing to say as long as we don't take that too too far of an end is that fair that was a not good characterization of the question i was trying to ask but i don't know it's good yeah i think that there's this kind of gentle blend of cataphatic and apophatic and the way that we speak about god and i think part of the reason that we have the courage to say positive things about god is because god tells us to right right so no one can say jesus is lord except by the holy spirit well i mean how do you know that jesus is lord because he's revealed it okay well how can we know what he's revealed because he's given us minds with which to receive that revelation and as a result of which we can we can hold fast to it and so i think that when it comes to divine naming we're engaged in a similar enterprise like you said like a lot of these words they sound abstract they sound deeply indebted to hellenistic philosophy you know some would accuse them of kind of corrupting the purity of biblical revelation but but our minds are made for inquiry god has written into our natures the tendency whereby we are to glorify him and part of that means right that we are to think and reason upon his revelation it's like the word trinity for instance it's not in the bible but i think most christians would agree that that is a uh a legitimate way by which to give expression to the mystery i think it's like first introduced in the late you know apostolic period or post-apostolic period with maybe tertullian you know like the idea of trinitas right but that's that's incredibly helpful for organizing our thought our speech and our worship and that's effectively what we're doing in this kind of exercise awesome well thank you for all of this this has been a pleasure i really enjoyed having you on glad this worked out thank you for your time i just want to leave it with you to let you if there's any final thoughts you want to share and also just where people can find you and your work uh because i i know many might be interested in that totes yeah final thoughts um yep jesus is lord that's the final thought um things that you can find on the internet uh yes so i contribute to pints with aquinas we have a weekly live show i do a weekly live stream at 3 p.m eastern standard time and uh yeah you can just drop your questions in if you join that live stream in like the first 10 15 minutes i usually get to your question afterwards no promises but probably not because i'm slow and i talk too long and then godsplaining is a podcast from uh five dominicans uh five of us friends and it's like a kind of miscellany of catholic and christian topics so it might be like faith it might be literature it might be um you know like covid it might be a variety of things some of which are kind of contemporary some of which are perennial but the idea is basically that you can find god in all of the details of your life so contemporary age yep but uh you know with a contemplative disposition so you can think about it as uh as something along those lines i think it's fun i enjoy it so um yeah check those out on any podcast app or on youtube i think that's it awesome well i will leave links in the description for those for people to check out thank you once again and thanks to everyone watching this sometime in the future i do not take your time lightly i really appreciate that and i'll close as always by saying until next time be on the lookout for more videos and most importantly go out and love god and love others because truly above all else that will change the world [Music] you

Channel: Gospel Simplicity

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Keywords: Gregory Pine, Fr Pine, Godsplaining, Divine Simplicity, Divine Simplicity East vs West, Aquinas vs Palamas, Absolute Divine Simplicity, Defending Divine Simplicity, Why does divine simplicity matter, does divine simplicity matter, catholic divine simplicity, dogma of divine simplicity, divine simplicity bible, divine simplicity aquinas, summa theologiae divine simplicity, palamism vs thomism, best catholic priests, austin suggs, gospel simplicity, catholic vs orthodox

Id: dxpf66WSL6s

Length: 63min 18sec (3798 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 21 2021