The Doctrine of Divine Simplicity with Dr. James Dolezal

well thanks again for your warm welcome really do appreciate it let me just so I'm budgeting my time correctly here what what is our time frame okay 6:30 is okay so Kuna has to happen before 6:30 all right 6:15 and then 15 minutes to clear up all okay I'm about I intend to create some confusion but hopefully in the direction of Orthodoxy if I can if that's possible good I want to begin with a text of Scripture will refer back to some texts as we take up this doctrine of divine simplicity and I'm also I'm thankful to see a few my victims here that is to say former students of mine who have sat under my my teaching in the past and I'm encouraged by their continued interest in these things the Apostle Paul says in Romans 11:36 these most memorable words for from him and through him and to him are all things to him be the glory forever amen we come to the doctrine of divine simplicity it may sound like a rather odd doctrine what is this doctrine what is it intended to do is it that important maybe just a couple of words of how I found my own way into this doctrine and my way into this doctrine wasn't I'm simply mean how it is that this doctrine was put on my radar and sort of elevated in my thought I will confess at the outset that it does sound perhaps a bit odd to our modern ears to say that God is simple and in fact that might almost sound insulting as if it were to say simplistic or something like that and certainly we don't mean anything insulting by this in fact quite the opposite we intend to say something about the about the unsurpassable 'ti of god's greatness simplicity is in fact contrary to what you might be thinking at this very moment one in which the church has done this in the past part of my own interests in the doctrine was stirred up when I began to see repeated references to it in both Protestant literature but also medieval literature and an ancient church literature and it turns out that if we if we do a little searching that this doctrine of divine simplicity is really a Christian commonplace historically that is to say up until let us say the middle of the 18th century this is something that how can I say it is bread and butter orthodoxy everybody everywhere thought that this was true and that's hardly an exaggeration Eastern Orthodoxy medieval Roman Catholicism all branches of Protestantism reformed Lutheran and Arminian all of them held that God was simple and confessed that God was simple when it comes to our family of reformed confessions we find this statement in the little clause in chapter 2 section 1 if you're looking at the second London confession or at the Westminster Confession or if you're looking at article 1 of the thirty-nine articles of the Church of England which is actually where the Presbyterians and the Baptist's oh and the saveloy declaration sorry to leave out the Congregationalists um everywhere the 17th century Baptists and Congregationalists and Presbyterians getting this little phrase that God is without body parts or passions well in terms of the immediate antecedent to that they're all getting it from the thirty-nine articles of the Church of England from 1563 now where did they get that little expression probably they got it from the first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer where did Thomas Cranmer decide to say that God is without parts it was just simply part of the medieval inherit heritage that he had received and passed on in other words the Protestant Reformation wasn't about the total explosion and demolition of everything that had ever gone before it there were certain things that certainly were not going to be traded away the death and the resurrection of Christ was something that long predates the Protestant Reformation the tri-unity of God long predates the Freda the Protestant Reformation the self-sufficiency of God as we call it the hacia T of God the eternality of God but also the doctrines like the impossibility of God and the simplicity of God these were also parts of that sort of broad Christian inheritance that our Protestant forebears very wisely preserved intact and even ensconced in their declarations and confessions of the faith so there it was in all of the confessions Presbyterians and Baptists and Congregationalists and Anglicans and you could find it also in the Lutheran literature as well and then in all of the medieval Fathers that went before them and the earlier Fathers like a Gustin and others that went before them and so I guess it began to sort of settle on me that this is this is the big deal in the popular mindset of historic Christianity I mean all the way up to someone like John Gill right a Baptist pastor writing in the 18th century when John Gill writes in divine simplicity it could just as well have been Thomas Aquinas writing on divine simplicity from 500 years earlier it sounds virtually the same so what is this doctrine what are we saying and why and I want to start sort of from a political standpoint why does it sound initially wrong to our ears to say that God is simple and I submit a couple of reasons why it might sound especially odd for us to call God's simple perhaps one of the reasons is that we think and when we think in terms of power and productivity it seems to us that things that are complex and multi-part are more uniquely capable of performing great and powerful operations than simple things you might think for instance of the difference in terms of a mode of transportation a Boeing 747 on the one side which has about 6 million parts give or take a few and a unicycle on the other side both our means of transportation but one of them is clearly more powerful and effective at doing the job than the other one and I don't have to tell you which one it is it's the one with more parts ok jet engines and and power to thrust and to hold together hundreds of people sitting relatively comfortably in seats with climate control you know in other words this ability to produce an outcome moving people in this case is more within the power of the multi part thing than it is of the simpler thing like a unicycle for instance and it's easy for us to think that in that respect if doing great things is more within the power of multi-part things as opposed to simpler objects that creating which seems to require the most power ever okay to make a world out of nothing would require that God be extremely complex in other words that he have very many parts I mean if it takes six million parts to cause a Boeing 747 to exercise its unique power how much more how many more parts would be necessary for God to exercise and exponentially even greater power than that and so we think to ourselves more parts equal more power and I don't want to say that's all wrong it isn't all wrong if what we're comparing is one composite thing to another composite thing between one composite and another composite to say that one with more parts is more powerful than one with fewer parts is I'm not gonna argue that that's sound absolutely sounds correct and true I think because it is correct and true but what would be wrong this now to the Christian might the Christian conviction what would be wrong with saying that that's how it is with God that God must be multi parted in order to do such great and amazing feats that he in fact does and the reason this is wrong is very simple no pun intended and it's just simply this that things that are composed of parts depend upon their parts to be as they are in other words there's a dependency relationship between composite wholes like a unicycle in its parts or a Boeing 747 in its parts and the things out of which they are composed if I can put it like that a Boeing 747 depends upon lots of nuts and bolts and screws and whatever it is that makes that combustion to happen with jet fuel and etc in other words lots of things not a Boeing 747 are required for a Boeing 747 to be and to operate but nothing that is not God do you go watch this is required for God to be and to operate in other words everything composed of parts is reducible to basic units of being more fundamental than itself everything composed of parts depends upon the parts of which it is composed that if you don't if you don't know that's not very common it's not a difficult statement but if you don't grasp that basic conviction then the tradition the Christian traditions denial that God has parts will be lost on you and it will just sound like some supreme insult for apps in recent theology by recent theology I don't mean theology in the last 10 years but I mean by recent the last 250 years in theology that's still recent in recent theology we find an increasing scarcity of the doctrine of simplicity in other words the Christian tradition doesn't decide the middle of the 18th century to necessarily attack and bury the doctrine of simplicity as much as it it starts to lose sight of what the doctrine of simplicity is supposed to do and in fact what we start to see in the 8th late 18th century certainly in the 19th century is that when people start to talk about parts increasingly they begin to think about parts in terms of material bits and I certainly help mean I'll confess for a long for the longest time I think I read that little expression that God is without body parts or passions as if it were saying that God is without body parts and passions now the passions thing was kind of weird to me and took some years to sort of unpack what that meant and full disclosure I wrote I wrote a paper when I was in seminary explaining why the denial of passions was in fact wrong and that it was well-meaning and well-intentioned but they were overthinking it and missing the point that God really was passionate I'll leave that aside for this evening the body parts thing that sounded a little more straightforward God isn't that body parts well sure he doesn't have body parts because God is a spirit does not have a body like men if you've done your children's catechism you know goddess of God is a spirit does not have a body like men so of course he doesn't have body parts but if you look at the confessions and go all the way back to the 13 articles and even to Cranmer's language I mean he does put a comma between body in parts he seems to be saying something more when we deny parts of God than simply that he doesn't have physical bits okay of course that's true and by the way that is a part of the doctrine of simplicity the God is not composed of material bits or even of matter and form but when they say that God has no parts they're saying something much broader and I'll try to unpack in a few minutes a little bit of what they what it is that they were denying when they said that God has parts in recent theology though this has become increasingly either relegated to the denial that God has a body and therefore body parts or to no mention at all or or even worse some have perceived that maybe this is at odds with the Trinity okay God is three persons those three persons are not the same person the father is not the Son and spirit the son is not the father spirit spirits not the father and son therefore there must be three parts of God my former students will remember that I harp on this in class that you have to stop saying there are three parts of God the Father son in the Holy Spirit they're not parts they're persons and there are lots of reasons not to call them part so that will become clear actually in just a moment why whatever that is the Trinity it's not a three-part thing that produces a whole okay we'll have to think about that in a different way Louis Birkhoff writing in the 1930s says in recent works on theology the simplicity of God is seldom mentioned many theologians positively deny it either because it is regarded as purely metaphysical abstraction or because in their estimation it conflicts with the doctrine of the Trinity these are just some of the reasons why evangelicals in the early 20th century we're just not talking about the doctrine much anymore Fred she'd who's a Catholic layman but a remarkable theologian in his own right giving a lecture at the Catholic School of Theology summer of 1930 at Cambridge University said this he said a study of what is happening in two theology in its higher reaches would almost certainly take as its starting point the attribute of simplicity and show that every current heresy begins by being wrong on that end quote which just sounds like a fabulous overstatement if the doctrine of simplicity is something you've never heard of you're you're thinking yourself wait a minute the problem with everything in theology today is this doctrine I've never heard of that just doesn't sound right no I mean that it's just you can't this that just a and I have I've become convinced that sheets concern his alarm in 1930 may be more relevant today than ever that he was actually on to something that in fact a lot of what troubles us especially with regard to errors regarding God is either a denial of or a failure to appreciate divine simplicity and I'll I'll put myself in that errors that I think I made not willfully or high-handedly and not such as to sort of disenfranchise me from true religion but error is nonetheless that were indeed problematic we're hours that I made I think because the doctrine of simplicity was a relative unknown alright my goals here tonight first of all they are too many and too lofty to attain but here's the here's here they are in the perfect world first to set forth the basic claims and the implications of the doctrine of simplicity basically what are we saying why are we saying it what does it mean and I'm going to try to make that we could unpack that for days and days but I just want to be sort of quicken to the point about it secondly to identify some of the main biblical and Theological arguments in support of it in other words you're thinking I don't first Corinthians 10 you know listen my dear Corinthians do not dispute about this doctrine of simplicity in other know that text doesn't exist all right where where does the Bible support this notion or how does the we'll support this notion that God is simple in addition to that and I'll just be selective I want to let you sort of listen in to some of the voices of Christian past who have spoken to this doctrine and I want to give a kind of broad stretch from the early church to the high medieval period and you might think of yourself what about the Protestants the Protestants basically reproduce that almost exactly adding some biblical arguments to it that may have been lacking but basically upholding the exact same doctrine so we'll kind of listen in and try to hear a little bit from you know the eighty math Anisha San Agustin and Anselm and Aquinas and sort of hear hear their voices what they say I'll make the argument and if you get the book you can see where I document some of this the basically the same arguments are picked up in the Protestant tradition whether it's Thomas Cranmer for the Anglicans or whether it's William Perkins or John Owen or Stephen Charnock or even George Swannack you'll find the same doctrine sort of recurring in their writings if we accomplish that introduction to the doctrine a brief survey of biblical and Theological foundations listen to the past and if we have twenty or twenty minutes or so I want to raise a few of the modern objections to the doctrine and the ones that are made by people still living those kinds of objections and just and just briefly sort of state why I think the doctrine of simplicity does not actually fall to those critiques so a few things let's just get first down into this the basic claims and into implications of divine simplicity what does it mean when we say that God is simple very very simply the chief claim is that God is not composed of parts that is the that is the core claim it's an in this sense it's a negative doctrine meaning we're saying something God is not now this is it's built upon what God is but it's a negative claim we're saying that God is not composed of parts the reason for this is that whatever is composed of parts depends upon those parts to be as it is there's a dependency relation and everything composed of parts if I could define a pun how you're thinking okay parts parts sigh what does he mean by a part it's this is this is the best job I can do and I'm sure someone can do it better of breaking it down a part is anything in a subject that is less than the whole and without which the subject would be really different than it is okay a part is less than a whole that is to say whatever the being of the whole is it is greater than the part if it were not greater than the part or if the part we're equal to the whole the part would just be the whole in which case it wouldn't be a part in all part whole relations there is there is a sort of lesser greater than relationship in addition to this all composite things need their parts in order to exist as they do parts give be parts make things to be in a certain way so I'll just take a an object composed of parts with which you're all familiar and that's your automobile it's met it's built up out of various parts for tires a driveshaft a steering column fuel injectors a fuel pump a fan and now I'm gonna stop right there and I'll show my incompetence when it comes to vehicle parts but when it comes to your car none of those things is your car you're driving your Toyota Camry those four tires are not your Toyota Camry that steering wheel is not your Toyota Camry that air compressor that gives you a nice climate in the cab is not your Toyota Camry the axles that turn the wheels are not your Toyota Camry your Toyota Camry is the sum total of these parts none of these parts is itself a car you can drive but the car you can drive depends upon those parts in order to be and to function as it does it's being and its operation depends I mean this way your tires not your car but your car would certainly be worse off without them so we get the idea so that a whole thing that is composed of parts I'm using a material example cuz its easiest depends upon those part for something if I can put it this way parts give being or actuality not the totality of actuality because your car is more than your parts but they give something and if you took away a part or if a part were to be deprived of a thing a thing would lose some actuality and perhaps even power or operation to just that extent if I took the steering wheel out of your car and left everything else intact the abit the power the ability of your car to operate as well as it does currently would be taken out things depend upon parts parts give being but parts are not equal to the being of holes I know this is this sounds like it's a lot but it's really very straightforward you lived it every day you know you know what I'm talking about why then do we say that this is not true of God because God does not depend upon something more basic or fundamental then himself as God God doesn't depend on something more primitive or basic than godness in order to be God moreover things that are composed of parts are not just dependent upon their parts but they're also dependent on whatever supplies unity to those parts so back to your Toyota Camry you get the idea that your car and all of its operations depends upon the parts that are in it but there's also another dependency your car depends also upon whatever put the parts together that is to say if we can put this way whatever funds the unity of the parts because your part your Toyota Camry is not sitting on how many parts are in a Toyota Camry thousands I'm sure are not sitting each individually there in your garage okay rather they are integrated we say that is to say they are put together in such a way as to comprise a whole okay but you know that's not how it started right I mean I take it that some in some factory somewhere somebody's like work in the air compressors and then someone else is making tires and someone else is making drive shafts and and axles and fuel pumps and someone else is working the fans and all of these things in a certain sense are prior to the whole the Toyota Camry was put together out of parts to put it very simply okay things composed of parts require compose a power of composition that is to say something to actually put it together somebody you know somebody in Detroit Michigan is you know power screwing bumpers onto the back of cars and tires and in other words things composed of parts are dependent in a two-fold way they depend upon their parts as such they also depend on whatever supplies unity to them okay and for these reasons the Christian tradition denies that God is composed of parts or rather says he is without parts because otherwise God would be doubly dependent in order for it for his being on the parts on whatever put them together a composer because God cannot depend on what is not God in order to be God this is a fundamental biblical conviction in fact when I ask people you know if I bring up the doctrine of simplicity they kind of think oh that sounds odd but really this is the core the core of the doctrine is this basic biblical convinced basic Christian conviction and it's this that nothing that is not God makes God be God are we I think we can I not sound you think that sounds it's not as complicated as I'm making it sound um it's actually very straightforward nothing that is not God makes God be God that is the heart of divine simplicity divine simplicity is basically just an elaboration of that Christian conviction it's a way of carrying out that conviction that God is absolutely irreducible in his being when I say irreducible I don't mean that he's um unimpressive or um powerful what I mean is you can't get down underneath him you can't find some thing in being that is more fundamental than God Himself God when you get down underneath all the being what's down there so to speak what's what's holding it all together what funds the actuality of everything it's God Himself what funds God's actuality nothing in other words God's actuality is not derived his being is not derived his being does not come from another but the being of composite entities does it comes from whatever funds the unity it comes from the parts that are comprised together into unity so if God does not depend on what is not God in order to be God then it seems to follow negatively that we should say God is without parts that's really if you want to get down to it that's the heart of this doctrine and I would argue if you've never even heard of the doctrine of simplicity or heard the expression God is without parts but you believe in your heart that nothing that is not God makes God be God you're you're already into the Orthodox inner sanctum okay your art you're already at the heart of what this is about this is just a way of ensuring that as we go along in our theology we don't give away that conviction and I think this is the danger is that we can all have that conviction but making sure that we don't say things theological II that start to compromise that conviction is a little bit more of a difficult project divine simplicity is really a way of guarding that basic Christian conviction of God's fundamentality and irreducibility of being now a number of implications follow from this immediately when we say that God is not composed of parts and this is where that that I hope you're with me this far this is where I'm gonna just I'm gonna strain you a little bit in terms of the kinds of parts were denying when we say God is not composed of parts the early church theologians and the medieval theologians and the Protestant Puritan theologians all had quite a textured notion of what parts of what kinds of parts could be composed to make an entity and it's not what you're thinking we could start very basically say God's not composed of physical parts a bit of this matter and a bit of that matter and put them together and you got a little bigger unit of matter than you had before okay we can say of course it denies that it also means that he's not composed of form and matter this is gonna sound a little strange to you doesn't that isn't that just matter of matter um it's just a little stay with me if you will form is that which supplies what miss to a thing in other words a form when you think form you think a shape of matter but don't stop thinking that right now for the moment a form is actually what makes matter the kind of matter that it is for instance so if I'll just in this room in this room there are a whole bunch of physical bodies sitting in chairs and if I were to ask and by the way the chair is also our physical bodies of a different kind by the way the reason you can sit on the chair but no one can sit on you you ready for this is because you're not the same kind of body it is in other words we already accept that not every body not not I mean everybody I mean every every pause body is the same sort of body we have this is a body it's a physical object distended in space you are a body that chair is a body your backpack is a body a tree is a body in other words but these are not all the same kind of body what makes hunks of matter different kinds of hunks of matter this is I'm saying is basically as I can form is what does it that is to say not merely shape and configuration but rather that which supplies kind or if I can put it this way your essence if you will in other words the essence of your hunk of mat that makes your hunk of matter the kind of hunk of matter it is namely a human hunk of matter is the essence of humanity the thing that makes you know your dog Rovers hunk of matter a dog hunk of matter is the form Kain inity and for your cat you know what it is its Kanan it's 'fl initi and your horse has got equanimity and your cows got bow vanity and what you get when you get out into the into the into you know out of the flat fauna and into the floral I don't know trees I think it's like something like our Borah tea or something like this in other words there's something that makes matter to be a certain kind okay but what makes matter to be a certain kind is not itself just more matter it's it's an immaterial principle that determines matter to be of a certain sort well God is not composed of that way either I mean of course because he's not Material so we can think about material composition this way a bit of matter like my elbow and my shoulder and my knees and you know throw it all together we can also think of material composition this way whatever it is that makes my kind of matter the kind of matter that it is that's form and matter God's not composed that way either in addition to this there are several other ways in which things can be imposed of units of being more basic than the whole most fundamentally now I'm just going to cut right down to the bone on this most fundamentally the distinction that characterizes every creature is the distinction between existence and essence existence in essence what you are and that you are are not true of you in virtue of the same thing you might think you're so it's he getting at all right if I take Josh and I say what is Josh I'm asking a question about the kind of thing Josh is what is Josh I'm asking a question about his essence what kind of thing is he and you say to me Josh exists would you have answered my question I mean I could say that about Josh's chair and Josh's t-shirt and Josh's phone and Josh's car and Josh's bed you have done nothing to help me understand his essence by saying that he exists you've answered an essence question with an existence answer ok the reason is because the essence and the existence are in fact distinct in Josh now if I put the question the other way around I said does Josh exist and you being a good Aristotelian said josh is a rational animal that's not the same thing as telling me whether there are any oh I'm getting out in other words if I mean let's just take an extinct thing like a dodo bird I don't know what the essence of technical name is for the essence of a dodo bird but if I said do dodo birds exist and you and you proceeded to give me a sort of textbook answer to what the essence of a dodo bird is you would not have answered my question I'm not asking what is it I'm asking is it this distinction makes sense in us what we are and that we are are not true of us in virtue of the same thing to put it very simply you do not exist because you are human it is not being human that makes you be rather being is something given to your humanity being is something that is joined to your humanity your humanity is made to be it is not the of humans to be rather to be is something that we receive in addition to our essence our essence is not the same as the existence by which we are it is rather that which receives existence and is made to be this is true of every material object but this is also true of even immaterial creatures like angels and hypothetically disembodied human souls in other words it's not just that a thing is material that it depends for its existence it's that a thing is finite and created that it depends for its existence it's a thing whose essence is not existence itself that makes it composite if I can if you're roughly in the ballpark on that then you're really at the most fundamental level of composition and everything not God that is to say everything not God from a grain of sand up to Michael the Archangel is composed in this way of existence and essence of a principle of what Ness and a principle of isness okay when we say that God is not composed of parts most fundamentally we mean this that God is not composed of what Ness divinity and isness rather when it comes to God if I say if I say what is God and you answer me in the Greek words um ha own which is how the Septuagint translates Exodus 14 ha own he is you have strangely answered my question okay if I say what is God and you say he is I am or he is you have answered the question because in God to be and to be God are not the same thing or I'm sorry are the same thing in every creature and everything not God they are not the same thing so in this most fundamental sense God is the very existence by which God exists God does not have existence in the sense of something possessed in addition to being God rather God is the existence by which he is simplicity is this argument that which makes God be is not something in addition to his godness but that which makes you be is something in addition to your humanity in addition to this um that this also means that all of God's attributes are identical with this essence a creatures attributes are at least many of them are not identical with its essence a man or a woman might be good or wise or loving or not and still be humans this makes sense so I can say if I take Friday Greymon and I say and I say a Raymond is wise I'm predicating something of Raymond wisdom in this case and I'm saying it's true of Raymond now is wisdom true of Raymond in virtue of his essence his humanity is it being human that makes Raymond wise and the answer is no it's not because Raymond could be a fool does a right I mean come on and I'll line up there and say and have been and maybe maybe will be again some respect in other words being wise or being foolish or being tall or being strong or being you know fill in the blank these are all things we are over and above being human I am five foot eight I used to say five foot nine when I was younger just on my driver's license you know but that's not true I'm five foot eight in the morning I'm five foot eight you know you kind of stretch a little bit at night five foot eight in the morning um James being five foot eight is not true in virtue of my essence being human being five foot eight is a quality of being it's an attribute of being that I have it's technically quantity it's a quantity it's a attribute of being I have over and above being human how do I know this how do I know this for sure because I was once human and not five eight my mom says that anyway you see I was once a lot shorter than this I'm probably not gonna get taller than this I'm done dreaming about that that's that's not going to happen so that here's an attribute of being namely quantity I am five foot eight my being five eight is actually something I am over and above being human that's a composition of parts in this case this would be substance and accidents accidents are just things that come upon a being and give it a new actuality over and above the actuality that it has an essence so being five eight is more than being human being wise is more than being human I'm being tired being bored running fast all of these things are things that you can be that are real attributes of your being that you can possess over and above your essence so that in you there's a composition of existence in essence but also of essence and attributes not everything in you is your humanity I mean kangaroos can be five foot eight if being five foot eight and being human were the same thing then what's up with five foot eight kangaroos you gonna say does that make sense in other words there's a real distinction between essence and attributes there is no real distinction between God's essence and God's attributes be God and to be wise are the same thing in God to be wise or to be God and to be powerful to be God and to be good to be God and to be and then fill in the blank whatever or in fact in God the same thing there's not a bit of this godness and then a bit of something not godness over and above it that adds to him to give him being that his essence doesn't give him my essence doesn't give me five-foot-eight my essence doesn't give me wisdom that's something I have in addition to there's nothing God has in addition to being God by the way to the title of the book all that is in God you may have seen it it looks very short big title short book but this is the point all that is in God just is God there's not in God God and then the other stuff God is over and above his divinity good so in this oh by the way and we depend upon those attributes to give us something I depend upon the quantitative attribute of five-foot-eight to give me the height that I have okay now the really tricky position this also means arguably that in God God's attributes are each identical with each other that is to say that in God to be wise is not something really print in him than to be powerful and to be powerful is not something really different in him than to be eternal and to be eternal is not something really different in him than to be loving etc now that is the case in us if let's just take as an example if I am if I am maybe now be too easy if I am foolish and powerful these things may be really at really true attributes about me they may be really true James is a fool James is a powerful fool I mean take I mean you could just point a you know pulpit or Mao or Stalin or Hitler fools with power it's possible okay being foolish and being powerful are not the same thing in me because the thing is I could be foolish and weak which would be better for everyone else I could be powerful and wise but these are not the same things so that my being powerful and my being wise are being foolish are not each of each and themselves the same thing in me to be one is not necessarily to be the other the reason is because in me metaphysically speaking these things are really distinct qualities of my being but if God is simple God is and by the way I'm composed of parts I'm composed of a bit of 5/8 and a bit of 5/8 a bit of forgetfulness above you know what another put it all together I'm composed of all this and that just gives you the whole package but God in God to be wise or good or powerful or true eternal are not actually really distinct things God has all sort of collectively in him rather this is just simply what God is in virtue of his essence to be God and to be wiser to how it be powerful or true we're all the same thing John Owen says the attributes of God which alone seem to be distinct things in the essence of God and when he says seemed to be he means from our way of speaking about them they seemed this way to us or all of them essentially he says the same with one another in other words in God wisdom is goodness is power is love as justice is truth as eternity but why because actually all of those things are just nothing but his own irreducible godness divinity if you will he says all of them are essentially the same with one another and everyone is the same with the essence of God itself what we're wanting to say then is that for God to be simple means that God's attributes are not technically speaking a set of powers or qualities he possesses you and I and everything else is composed of parts possess sets of attributes that is to say things that when you put the whole when you put them all together collectively produce the the whole okay but God's godness and God's being is not the consequent of a set of really distinct things comprised together therefore producing him Thomas Morris at Notre Dame University said in a most splendidly awful way of expressing this that God is the greatest Kompas at of great making properties that sounds all technical my brief response to that is no he's not my more elaborate response to that is God isn't a set of properties rather because sets are dependent upon the components of which of the set is made in which case God be reducible to something not God in order to explain in other words I like to say it this way I'm don't put one part wisdom one part goodness one part power together one part eternity shake well right and then the wonderful concoction is divinity okay divinity is not the consequent of some mixture or putting together of something that is not divinity okay not the greatest compatible set of great making properties even though as Owen says from our standpoint we talk like this I mean you'll notice that I haven't said anything very simple yet about the simple simple God wait a minute if God's simple how come you're using so many words and how come this is so confusing good question the reason being because while God is simple we do not have the ability to express simplicity simply and the reason is because we are not simple and our ways of thinking are not simple and by the way I think in Scripture God mercifully accommodates himself to that ordinary way of speaking can I talk about God's wisdom and God's power and God's love and God's justice in other words multi-part statements yes what I can't say is that my multi-part way of thinking and speaking as it were captures a multi-part way of being in God that's what I need to be careful of I'll return to that theme toward the end good the fundamental so while while it's certainly uh well it certainly makes things perhaps confusing Peter Sandlin says that simplicity makes claims about God that are profound counterintuitive and difficult to articulate and that it recasts everything we say about God Sandlin is absolutely correct it does make things more odd to say that God's wisdom is God's power is God's justice is God's love certainly seems more peculiar because I just don't know anything like that I'm not that way nothing else I know is that way nevertheless for all that I think the fundamental rationale is compelling and it's simply this all parts are causes or principles of being that are really distinct from the entities in which they are incorporated that's the first premise secondly things composed of parts depend upon sources of being namely the parts and the composer of them more fundamental than the whole and things that are in one sense prior to themselves thirdly that God cannot depend on what is not himself in order to be himself with these three principles I think we can say the doctrine of simplicity is is a well-reasoned Christian position about the irreducibility of God and his godness so what biblical support do we have for this doctrine this is my second concern the main biblical support and this is not where I'm going to do lengthy exegesis but simply point you to different sorts of statements in Scripture that that support or lend blend viability to this claim or even arguably generate the claim and what we're saying here is not that there's a proof text any more than there's a proof any more than there's a text that says everything the Nicene Creed says about the Trinity is there a text that says everything that we're saying here about simplicity but rather it follows by way of a good and necessary consequence from other things that scripture explicitly states and theologians look at different sorts of data I'll just tell you now I think the most important set of biblical data is the third one all cans sitter which is the doctrine of creation I think that that is the most compelling of all sets but I'll first just begin by mentioning divine independence or what in theological literature is called divine hacia t if that sounds odd to you I'll break it down to say God is aw say me it's just a Latin way of saying God is of himself that is to say the reason for God is God the reason for your Toyota Camry is not your Toyota Camry it's the tires and the drive shafts in the fuel injectors in other words it's all the other stuff the reason for you is not your humanity rather it's the other things you it's the existence you have in addition to being human and it's all the attributes you have in addition to being in addition to being human but the reason for God is simply God's own self he is self-sufficient or independent that is to say nothing not God makes him be or makes him operate I just simply call this God's of himself Ness if you can put it like that the reason for God is God negatively we and we say this by saying that God is independent in being in acts 17 25 contrasting the Creator God to the gods of the nations and the gods in the of the athenians Paul says that the God who created all things is not served by human hands he says as though he needed anything that's his that's his qualifying cause um that God is not the one who receives being or augmentation or enhancement or whatever whatever you want to call it um from the creature God gives to all generously life breath and all things right he says at the end of 17 25 but God does not receive and turn from what is not God any aspect of his being Paul says in Romans 11:35 who has first given to him and it shall be repaid to him the idea is that God is not on the receiving end of being but things with parts are okay things with parts must be on the receiving end of being but God in the scriptures is not no one supplies to God what he lacks and for this reason he is indebted to none Romans 11:36 what he began for from him and through him and to him are all things that is to say all things depend upon him but God does not in turn depend upon others in fact there's a certain sense in which if this weren't if God weren't simple that statement just couldn't be true all things are from him through him and to him but if he's composed of parts God Himself is from do you watch this because holes are from their parts they derive and depend upon their parts God would be from whatever that thing is that it's not equal to his divinity that his divinity depends upon to be the composite divinity it is this make sense so that if all things are from him through him and to him then saying that he's without part seems to be a necessary confession to maintaining the truth of that statement otherwise there'd be something not God namely those parts because parts are not equal to wholes there'd be something not God upon which God Himself depended so that God would be from you name it whatever the parts are okay but they wouldn't be his divinity because parts are not equal to in the same as wholes in addition to this we could point to a biblical conviction of infinity now scripture doesn't use that term infinity but it usually gets at this notion with the idea of fullness of being or unboundedness of being that God is not the god is not the sort of being to which you can say and here lie the edges of the great God can you find out the limit of the almighty job 11 the answer is no the reason is because there are none in other words when it comes to his greatness his greatness of being is without measure it is unbounded it is actually impossible the psalmist says in Psalm excuse me so I'm 145 three great is Yahweh and highly to be praised and his greatness is it says literally unfathomable that is to say without bottom okay that there's an that there's an in other words you'll never get down to the bottom of God because there is no bottom of God find that you'll never find the last great thing about God's being because there is no last great thing about God's being there's not this edge of divinity so to speak where the God's being as it were terminates at that point these are all ways of saying that God is unbounded in his being even text like I am the first and I am the last these sorts of statements that God is not a being who is measured rather he is immeasurable in his divinity why would this support the notion of divine simplicity simply this that no part could be actually infinite are we good on this and the reason a part whether a metaphysical or a physical part can't be actually infinite is because parts must be in as much as they are parts less than the whole of the beings in which they in here that does that make sense a part in order to be a part is necessarily finite it must be otherwise it could not be less than the whole in which case I take it it wouldn't be a part but it doesn't matter how many finite attributes you add together you're never going to arrive at unboundedness does this make sense I'll put it even more simply um you can't get to infinity by adding lots of finitude together just make sense you could in other words finitude will never generate actual unboundedness and infinity nothing built out of finitude will ever be more than a great finite thing parts are necessarily finite therefore things composed of parts are necessarily finite even if they are great and immense finite beings this is exactly what the Christian tradition is trying to avoid saying about God when it says that he's without parts if you say that he has parts you'll never be able to say that he's actually unbounded in his being because he would be bounded to the extent that he would have to be comprised out of something itself not infinite that you can't add finitude to get infinite finally then the doctrine I think there's most compelling in this regard is the doctrine of creation itself that all things that are in the world exists by his will the 24 elders say in revelation 4:11 by your will all things work from you all things were created and by your will they exist from Romans 4:17 he calls that which is does not exist to be or as in other words God is the one who is the absolute foundation of all that exists everything that is not God is made to be by God can I can I say that as a basic Christian conviction everything that is not God is made to be by God but parts are not the holes of which they are parts in other words if God were composed of parts there would have to be something in the world not God but also not creature does this make sense there'd have to be something in the world that was neither God nor created by God album planning a modern of philosophical theologian would argue that in fact that's exactly the kind of theology that we are all required to have in his argument back in 1980 against the doctrine of simplicity this is exactly what he's saying we need to say that there is God the stuff God creates and then the other stuff eternal ideas and by the way the other stuff is that from which God composes himself God is that we're in planning his view God builds himself up out of parts that are not identical to himself I'm not going to go into the whole critique of why that's in fact impossible when you get down to the level of existence nothing that is not can make itself be because you have to be to do that make sense to make a thing you have to be already there for God cannot be self-made in the absolute sense you have to if if God is self-made in the absolute sense then you're describing an absolute impossibility something that is not is the reason for is that's I submit that that's not just theologically objectionable that's quite literally what we mean when we say things like nonsense that is quite literally nonsense if all things are from him through him and to him and God is not from something not himself but rather all things not God are from God then of course there can be no parts which would not be God of which he's composed this is these are just samplings of sort of historically the types of texts that Christians go to to say this is what motivates this Christian conviction that God's without parts I think it's well I think it's well motivated in as much as we want to avoid all theäôll theological descriptions of God that turn his divinity or his operation into a dependent reality that would be to reduce him to the level of a finite and caused being finally then a little bit of historical witness just to hear the voices of the past who has talked this way well Christians down the ages probably by the middle of the second century the early Christian apologists Afeni gooris for sure and others are already invoking the doctrine of simplicity as though it were a commonplace in Christian conversation and Christian theology and Irenaeus of Lyon a Greek speaking pastor who's really kind of a frontier pastor in the West and currently on France writes of a great book against heresies okay and you still you can find the full text online for free against heresies Irenaeus dies in 202 ad so if you can think of his writings this is mostly late second century and in his argue and Irenaeus at one point is arguing against the critics some of the greek critics that argue that a true god can't be the creator of the world and the idea in the greek mine was that the reason that the true god cannot be the creator of the world is because creation would necessarily involve any creator in some change in other words if you if you create then you'd have to somehow be changed by the act of creating and therefore if God is really if God is really impassable and immutable and simple and without parts then God cannot be the absolute creator of the world it's got to be something else and for the Greek especially the neoplatonist that we're emerging about this time I'm some kind of Demiurge or demigod we might say some semi divine intermediary being was thought to be the one that created the world in response to this and I'm not gonna unpack his whole response but in response to this Irenaeus writes in his against heresies with regard to God he's he's simply stating this is what Christians believe late second century he is a simple uncompounded being without diverse members by the way Irenaeus is a great Trinitarian theologian when he says without diverse members he means really distinct parts that's his way of saying that and altogether like and equal to himself since he is wholly understanding and holy uh not H but WH holy understanding holy spirit holy thought and holy intelligence and holy reason and holy hearing and holy seeing and holy light and the whole source of all that is good you're thinking what's why what's with this holy thing what he's simply saying is we cannot think of God we cannot think of light and wisdom and power as less than the being of God you get what he's after hear what he says Holy Light he means that light is not something that God is less than the totality of what God is and the same thing for uhm reason intelligence spirit thought understanding all that is in God just is God this is a this is a very ancient fundamental Christian conviction he then says this even as the religious and pious are want to speak means are tend to speak concerning God so I find a fascinating statement what Irenaeus is saying is this is what all really religious and pious people say about God he's talking about Christian theologians you know know our doctrine of creation does not undermine our doctrine of simplicity in fact we hold the divine simplicity and in fact all of us pious people whatever our want to speak this way I take it that by the late 2nd century confessing that God is without parts simple and uncommon Airy vanilla Christianity which is Orthodox Christianity Athanasius adds a little bit to this in his doctrine and he's a fascist I won't go into this but is the first one to sort of bring it into consideration of the Trinity as well and explain begins to sort of explore how we situate simplicity and Trinity together and I'll leave that aside because that's a whole nother world of discussion in itself but he says this particularly with regard to God being the creator of the system the absolute source of the system of the world cannot himself be a system because here's the thing we're appealing to God as the explanation of a multi-part universe in which we live that's the system of the world but if it turns out that God himself is but yet another system of being does this make sense that it's a a multi-part reality the world what do we appeal to it to explain a multi-part reality we appeal to God but if it turns out that God is a multi-part reality then you know what the problem is we're now gonna have to find the explanation for that system this make sense so that the system is what needs explanation the multi pardon is why there are so many things holding together what explains that we appeal to God but if God is a being of multi parts holding together we will have to seek to explain what causes that to be the case as well and ihren end Athanasius says this for God is a whole and not a number of parts and does not consists of diverse elements but is himself the maker of the system of the universe what's the juxtaposition he's making here you can't explain a system in terms of another system and actually get to the end of the question you just simply push the question back a step what makes everything hold to get what make makes diversity hold together well God does but if God is a diversity holding together then you can legitimately ask the question what makes that the case he says but no God explains the world system but not because he is another system rather he is not a number of parts for see what in piety they utter against the day at deity when they say this ok this is actually similar to Irenaeus Irenaeus says the pious and the holy say that he's without parts Athanasius is saying what impiety when they say that he's composed of parts he says he if he consists of parts certainly it will follow that he is unlike himself and made up of unlike parts Agustin jumping forward two centuries says this arguing for the unchangeableness of each person of the Godhead he says if for this reason it is for this reason then that the nature of the Trinity is called simple and it has not because it has not anything it can lose and because it is not it is not one thing and its contents another in other words to be God and to be powerful or to be God and to be wise are not really distinct things it's being in its contents it's not that it's being as one thing in its contents another as a and the liquor or a body and its color or the air and the light or the heat of it or a mind in its wisdom for none of these is what it has sounds complex what he means is simply this let's just take the a body in its color here's a body it's a lectern and its color is black to be a lectern and to be black are not the same thing there's a real distinction here because I take it that there could be lecterns that weren't black and still lecterns so therefore the body the lectern and the color of the body are not the same reality net rather they are a composite reality okay he's saying God isn't like this for God to be God and God to be whatever else God is is in fact not like anything else we're talking about a bit of this and a bit of the other put them together and you get the whole rather he's not like this at all he says for the human spirit is not of course for the human spirit it is not of course the same thing to be and to be courageous or to be sagacious or just or moderate in other words to be a human and to be a wise human to be a human and to be a moderate self controlled human are not the same thing because there are humans that are not self controlled and they're humans that are not wise and but they're still humans okay so he says for the human spirit to be wise or to be and to be courageous and wise and moderate he says it can be a human spirit and have none of these virtues for God for God it is the same thing to be as to be powerful or just or wise or anything else that can be said about his simple multiplicity in multiple simplicity what he's saying is in you it is really different for you to be human and for you to be wise are really not the same thing there's there this they're both true about you the concrete individual but they're not the same thing in you those are really distinct things that you have all right with that said um one I'll give you one just one last from from our 18 will stay with Anselm in this case and so I'm praying to God in His Prophet on which is very much August in Ian if you've read Augustine's Confessions it's just one great big gigantic prayer to God he's addressing himself to God in prayer it's a written prayer that's all it is the Prague in of Anselm in the an some lives and some dies in eleven if you want to sort of locate him in late medieval period Anselm and Augustinian monk actually writes his treatises like a prayer very Augustinian he says this in his process on speaking to God you are so much a unity so much identical with yourself that you are in no respect is similar to yourself you are in fact unity itself you cannot be divided by any understanding therefore life and wisdom and the rest are not parts of you they are all one each of them is all of what you are very much like Irenaeus and millennia earlier right I'm holy wisdom Holy Light holy each of them is all of what you are and each is what the rest are God's wisdom is God's goodness as God's powers cause justice and since you have no parts and neither does your eternity which you yourself are it follows that no parts of you or your eternity exists as a certain place or a certain time instead you exist as a whole everywhere and your eternity exists as a whole always completeness super abundance of being not a bit of this that and the other together but rather holy now to this question I'll leave this as a final sort of remark we'll leave them at evils Aquinas then develops this a little more but doesn't actually offer a new doctrine just give some some precision to what was already handed down to him and then the reform do effectively the same thing all the way down to like Lewis Birkhoff writing in the twentieth century again it's gonna sound like Agustin and Anselm and athenais shis and later Aquinas the question that perhaps raises in our minds I'm just gonna anticipate this maybe is one that could be asked is why then is my thought of God so seemingly disjointed from the manner of his being if the manner of his but in other words if God is simple why don't we just say this instead of saying God is wise good loving just true and eternal if God is really simple and these aren't really saying things in God why not just say God yeah in other words why don't we have a simple just sort of non composite multi-part way of talking if about God if God is a non composite not multi-part being what gives why all the multiplicity of God talk if we're talking about a God who is not a multiplicity of parts the answer given historically is when I say historically I mean from the early church right down to someone like Birkhoff in the 20th century is that with regard to the manner of God's revelation and with regard to the manner by which God gives us words to speak about him God accommodates himself to our way of knowing and speak is irreducibly multi-part when I when I make a statement about God like God is love that's a multi-part statement right there's a subject God and there's a predicate love in the statement you just heard the subject in the predicate are not the same term and for us it might be tempting to think therefore they must not be the same thing and like if I just said if I said jaw is strong there's a multi-part statement subject John predicate strong and it turns out that my multi-part way of speaking about someone named John corresponds to a multi-part way of being because it turns out that being John and being strong are not just distinct in my statement they're also distinct in John said fair enough well you wouldn't you don't want to say you're weak I get it I understand no but but my multi-part way of speaking about things more or less syncs up with and sort of mirrors the multi-part realities about which I speak but if we come to the question of God when I come back to God is love when I say God is love that's a multi-part statement but I am NOT suggesting that God and love are really distinct in God does this make sense God it's not God plus love that makes God the God of love rather being God is what makes God the God of love so that so say God is love love is already included in terms of God's being into simply in the statement God being God and being loved are in fact the same thing even if in my statement about God they're not the same term what has got what is this God allows us to use multi-part language by the way we that's how we communicate that's how we think we think in terms of propositions and sequences and bits of this and that and the other put together and by the way God also reveals himself in a multi-part way sometimes he reveals his power he reveals his wrath he reveals his love and these revelations are not all identical in the way that we see them and process them or the way that scripture records them for us so that as God shows us the fullness of his being he doesn't show us the fullness of his being in naked fullness he shows us the fullness of his being in an unfolding manifestation of that being one thing after another after another after another not because there's one thing after another in God but rather the showing of the simple God is showing itself in a multi-part sequential bit-by-bit way okay so God shows himself to us bit by bit but not because he exists bit by bit just what we're after here so that the manner of God's being in himself and the manner of God's showing of himself and speaking to us about himself are not in this sense strictly symmetrical there's a certain non commencer ability in our God talk and the being of God there's a certain way in which our God talk does not actually sync up in a one-to-one way with the manner of God's being I always put it this way um have you ever had a thought of the infinite God have you ever had an internet thought of the infinite God no so that there's all edges that's the easiest one but I can say this have you ever I mean now tonight have you had a thought of the simple god I hope so have you had a simple thought of the simple God I haven't I'm not suggesting you're about to and I'm not suggesting that this is what we need to do turn all about theologizing into simple God talk God doesn't expect that of us he expects of us to be what we are as creatures multi-part thinking in multi-part way he's predicating in multi-part ways but all the while realizing that our multi-part ways of thinking and speaking and knowing God do not in a certain sense capture or measure the manner of God's being God alright I'll leave it with that that's my sort of your sort of immersion into the deep end of what is the doctrine of simplicity what motivates that what are some of its basic claim a few voices from the past and we can open up for questions are we at that point then on the guest part of the back for the next semester as well I just want to take a moment kind of highlighted decompressor equipped for QA this is gonna really heavy something that the alum and I do that see the importance of that with the type of question I'm about to ask as we also look forward to relief in 2019 this is very practical southern ideology family I just want to encourage it when you think that as we think carefully right focus on focus on this Luke 2:52 his book really was one of the most most helpful books to me in the last few years and as I'm thinking it's important for reasons like this mutability doesn't change and Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God what does it mean for God to tell us that Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature does that verse disprove everything you just said about Devon simplicity it's a great question yeah the oh did Jesus change answer simple answer yes of course he did Jesus G and I'll explain what my former students will know that I'm a sucker for Christology questions if you ever want to like derail a Dalzell talk just bringing Christology and then like I never find my way back so you've you you thought you local you know located simply to put when I say this Jesus changed we need to speak about Christ in two ways in two ways at once and it's be very difficult to do when you just speak about Christ in terms of both nature's and things proper to each nature so that when we speak about the Sun as divine the Sun is simple and mutable eternal unchanging impassable etc when we speak about the same Sun as man everything that we can say about man except sin we can say about Christ that he had a body that he had a digestive system that he that he learned things that he didn't know things all of these things that might have to do with finitude not moral imperfection any respect of course but finitude Jesus in so much as he is man is created that is to say Jesus as humanity is just as much creature as your humanity is and Jesus as humanity is just as much dependent as your humanity is and since simplicity is all about ruling out dependency and since his humanity is dependent there's no read no there's no reason to argue for a simplicity of humanity and there's every reason to believe that his humanity is as composite as any other humanity is so in this case you're talking about an accident that's wisdom wisdom is something accidentally comes upon you that's actually all it means so you get in an accident what you're actually saying is something came upon me when philosophers say add Kedar a to befall a thing okay when you when you get wisdom something befalls you new knowledge it's an accident it adds to you it makes you a know it makes you to know in a way you did not know before does Jesus increase in knowledge in terms of his human mind his human mind is not his omniscient divine mind we believe in two natures with two minds one proper to those to each nature so I would say in so much as Jesus is a man we can say passable absolutely mean that's our hope a second Adam I hope he's passable in with passions I mean that's that whole thing about the passion week that he undergoes passions in my place suffering in my stead and that he learns that he grows that he's composite you name it I'm that he's mutable that he's temporal every thing that we can say about creature saves sin we can say about Christ in terms of his humanity no that's not I'm not saying that because that opera that's a great question Josh that operates on a one mind view so there's this what I kind of call the problem of the either-or Christology it's the view that says Jesus the son can only operate according to one nature at a time either he's infinite knowledge someone 47 five or he doesn't know things light doesn't know the day or the hour as he says either he's equal to the father or the father is greater than he you know as he says what we want to do is avoid and either/or Christology I call that a if you want my fancy word for I call it functional monophysitism which is to say Jesus can only operate according to one nature at a time yeah that's that is seriously how bad no brother that is how bad it is like that to me is actually my shorthand which is like I've I need yeah yeah no anyway but this idea that Jesus can only do one thing at a time according to one nature another so it's kind of I put it this way in a kind of cute and maybe a demeaning way but it's kind of like he's got two pair of trousers he's got the god trousers and he's got the man trouser and he's got to decide he can only wear one pair of trousers at a time I'm gonna do something divinely or I'm gonna do something humanly what we want to do is avoid that entirely and say no at the very moment I'll just get right down to at the very moment by which G in which Jesus hangs suffering upon the cross in his humanity he upholds the worlds by the word of his power according to his deity so that his deity does not either suspend go into mothballs you know whatever stand aside for his humanity the person of the Sun does not need to displace one nature to make room for the function of another nature and in that respect then Jesus is in terms of his human mind eternally omniscient never growing in knowledge but rather the source of all things knowable that transpire and in terms of his human he is not so omniscient and that both are what we the temptation for us is to think that Jesus as a person sort of stands outside of these natures and sees both at once so that it sounds like well if he knows all things according to his divinity then he can't really not know things according to his humanity like that I think that misunderstands how the human and the divine relate in God so that we can say I mean I'd be like saying he couldn't really be creature in his humanity if he's really created but no he's both he's really immutable in his divinity and really mutable in his humanity and really infinite in his divinity and really finite in his humanity and we need to say them in a way that we don't sort of displace one in order to fit the other yeah that's a great question I deal with the creator part of that question and one of the chapters in my book and I deal with it I mean part of it's cathartic for me I'm sort of trying to undo a long train of thought in my own mind which is this creation is not eternal God is the creator therefore creation is not eternal God being creator is not eternal therefore being creator must be something God became after previously not being the Creator um I think we should at least say what that means that means that there's time with respect to God because there's literally chronological before and after it means that there is change of being with respect to God being one thing and then being something more other than that and so it gets into a question of does does showing himself does the can I put this way does newness in his production necessarily correspond to newness in his being and the answer is no but newness in his production does correspond to newness in the way that we speak about him and in fact scripture will in in countless places I'm looking at one here in in Isaiah 63 scripture will allow us to use even the language of becoming to describe God in so much as we are newly related to God when we enter it into new relations with God will often say I became I'll just give you an example Isaiah 63 he said surely they are my people sons who will not deal falsely so he became their Savior got it I mean you can find texts like that all over scripture what is this becoming where is it located and what if what is its character what we don't want to say is that it's a becoming of being we don't want to say that be God began to be what God was not but we can say that there was a becoming with respect to the way in which we speak of God in fact if you call God your Savior but once he was your adversary before your regeneration can we say God was my enemy and is no longer and God is my friend and is my Savior whereas before he was not yes but where do you locate exactly the newness of being if you located in God then you run down you run into a number of problems the first one of which is you have to explain how God began to regard to be in new ways if in fact he's really infinite in other words if you really believe that God is unbounded in his being then there cannot be newness of being in him or maybe put a simply um infinity cannot be added to only finitude can be added to only finitude can begin to be but there can be a beginning to be in terms of both the dispensations of his plan and the revelation of himself and in the way that creatures relate to him and in so much as he in so much as he brings a people to himself from their relation to him there's a newness in their relation that of people saved so that they can say he became their creator but again what we don't want to do is say that something God wasn't in himself ontologically God began to be because then you get into the whole source hood problem which is what gave God the new being God didn't have God now is something God there's a sufficient reason question which is what explains the newness of being and God if you say well God explains it then you have to explain how it is that he then lacked it in other words if he received the new being from himself how did he receive new being from himself if he didn't have it and if he did have it then of course he didn't receive it anyway so you go down that path what I think we should say is we should talk about it in terms of the new relation of creatures to God the newness of the way in which we relate to God in which he revealed himself and the newness of his plan as it unfolds allows us to predicate a newness of God what we should do is be careful not to say that the newness is a newness of being and God is such it's a newness of his creature in relation to God such that we began to call him things like Savior and father that we didn't call him before so dicey that's a heart that's a hard one and it's it depends on how committed you are to this fullness of being notion if you're not very committed to it then it's gonna be much easier to say yeah God can become in some non-essential ways but then of course that's composition because the newness of being wouldn't be identical with maybe that's the thing if this this would be Savior hood would not be the same as divinity if it were something really new and God does that make sense and then you'd have God and then the stuff not identical with godness that made him be more and more over and above what he is as God we want to avoid that oh sorry and I'll try to and I'll try to be brief sorry I [Music] who can I go with the first one and then the other ones are the other ones are Christian anthropology and big okay or on what makes humans human it is the human essence that makes human humans now what is a human essence it's it's that which determines a thing to be it's that which determines a thing to be of a certain kind in particular what kind if you're saying philosophically I think rational animal is decent it's certainly not enough from the spiritual standpoint of what it is - what is our relate what we are as humans in relation to God and in his world as image bearers and as those that have you know and everything that comes with image bearing but I think I think it kind of gets at what we don't want to do and this is sort of contra John Locke and everything else since Locke is say that essences themselves are sort of sort of critical a critical mass of a bit of this that and the other I think we want to watch out for that and simply say that there is such a thing as a nature and nature's are what determined things to be your nature to be human involves two things it involves your soul and involves your soul as determining a body to be of a certain kind know there was to be human is to be a soul body composite with a certain set of features particularly powers of will and rationality how is that different than an angel an angel is not technically determined to a specific sort of body and that's what explains demon possession and all that but anyway it's did so different I would say I would say and now I could point you to some books but they're kind of technical but they're good ones that talk about what makes a human human in terms of the imago Dei question though I'll leave that I'll leave that aside except only to say that I don't take the Lutheran view that you can actually lose the imago I think that there's a narrow and a broad sense to the imago Dei so that you can lose the image of God in terms of moral capacity there are also features of the imago day that extend beyond our moral condition in which case even fallen humans remain even unsaved humans remain in the image of God and that's more of a Catholic and reformed view as opposed to a Lutheran view

Channel: Christ Church West Chester

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Id: sJpRU6-Z8Co

Length: 84min 53sec (5093 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 16 2019