'God Without Parts'

GOD WITHOUT PARTS:

SIMPLICITY AND THE METAPHYSICS OF DIVINE ABSOLUTENESS

by

James E Dolezal

FOREWORD

Dr James Dolezal’s treatment of divine simplicity, which provides a defence of this doctrine in perhaps its strongest form, is a first–rate piece of work. He shows himself to have a grasp not only of the primary and secondary intellectual sources, but also of the arguments of contemporary critics as well as of defenders of the doctrine, especially those in analytic-style philosophical theology, ‘analytic theology’ as it is coming to be called. He does not simply dust off the cobwebs of old ideas, and rehearse antiquated positions. Not content with mere exposition, able as this is, the author likes to argue, presenting robust defences of divine simplicity against some of its eminent detractors and modifiers – for example, Alvin Plantinga, Thomas Morris, and Eleonore Stump. He takes these on, utilizing some current arguments, of Brian Leftow, William Mann and others, but also offering arguments of his own. The result is the best at-length philosophical treatment of divine simplicity that I know.

God’s simplicity is a central element in the ‘grammar’ of classical Christian theism. The data regarding the essence and nature of God, as revealed in Scripture, have by and large an occasional and unsystematic character to them. But because Scripture, as God’s word, is self-consistent, the varied data must be self-consistent, and when properly appreciated, must also be seen to be. Or at the very least, it may be recognized that alleged inconsistency cannot be proven. The classical conceptual shape of Christian theism offers a template in terms of which that consistency may be appreciated. For it provides rules, drawn from the varied data of Scripture, in terms of which the varied language of Scripture about God, not only in his unity but also in his Trinitarian glory and in his actions in the economy of redemption, can be learned and used without falling into inconsistency or serious error. It is not so much an explanatory as a grammatical template.

So in thinking about divine simplicity as an account of divine unity we are not to think of it primarily as a description of that unity, much less as an explanation of it, but as offering rules for appreciating and employing the character of divine unity. This is a central part of the fuller grammar of Christian trinitarianism. It aims to bring together a way of thinking and speaking about divine unity, that God is one, and that the Lord our God is one Lord, that does justice to the manifold witness of Scripture to that unity, and to ways of handling its apparent references to divine complexity and disunity, in a way that considering each isolated datum in turn could never do. Fundamental to that grammar is a conviction about God, made evident throughout the Scriptures, that he is the creator of space and time and all that it contains, existing at a point beyond space and time and not therefore subject to it. God is not spread out in space, or in time, a creature among fellow-creatures. How then are we to think and speak of him?

Part of the answer to that question is that we are to think of God partly in negative terms, as we have just been doing: not in space, not in time. An account of divine unity must be consistent with such timelessness and spacelessness. But there is more. For in being the Creator, and not a creature, or creaturely, God does not depend for his existence on operations or forces working upon him. He is not fashioned, or the product of parts forming themselves into a unity in an arbitrary fashion. He is necessary, self-existing. This means, for example, that God is not composed of elements that are more ultimate, in a logical or metaphysical sense, than he himself is.

It is by attention to such considerations that the doctrine of simplicity has been developed, in order to safeguard that divine sovereignty and transcendence to which Scripture richly testifies. Divine simplicity is not the doctrine that God has no features, an infinite tabula rasa. Nevertheless he has no parts and so is not divisible.

But what of the Trinity? Christian theologians have routinely stated that the threefoldness of the Trinity, that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, each person being wholly divine, refers to distinctions in the godhead, not to divisions in it. All divisions involve distinctions, but not vice versa. This distinction between distinctions and divisions has been in service in Trinitarian thinking a long time; it can be found, for example, in Tertullian.

To suppose that the distinction between the Father and the Son (for example) is a division between them is to suppose that the terms ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ denote different parts in God each of which is separable from the other. A triune Godhead that consists of a divisible threeness would thus be made up of three parts – Father, Son and Spirit – who together comprise it. The obvious problem with such a proposal is that it violates the biblical affirmation that God is one, which the doctrine of divine simplicity articulates. Another consequence of supposing a division between the persons is that Father, Son and Spirit is that each would each be part of God, and so not the whole God, and so not wholly divine.

God the Creator is one God, and not creaturely. Because God is timeless he is changeless, immutable. Not simply in the sense that he has chosen to be so, or covenanted this, proposals which offer a rather unstable account of God’s changelessness, and are probably incoherent. He is metaphysically changeless. Such changelessness in turn entails divine impassibility, an idea frequently misunderstood and derided. But impassibility is not to be confused, as it often is, with impassivity or with dispassion. Although it may seem paradoxical, the stress on impassibility is meant to safeguard the fullness of God’s character. He is eternally impassioned, unwaveringly good, not moody or fitful as he is buffeted by the changes of his life, some of them, perhaps, unexpected changes.

Another way of entering this territory, a way which is quite consistent with what we have been thinking about, is via the idea of God as the most perfect being. God is a being than which no greater can be conceived. This is not a piece of metaphysical speculation, but is clearly stated or implied in Scripture, as in Hebrews 6 13-14 which refers to God as one besides which there is none greater. For had there been a greater than God then in establishing his covenant God would have sworn by that greater. But he swears by himself and so establishes a covenant which is immutable and which for that reason is utterly trustworthy.

Of course there are other biblical data to support the wonderful verses of Hebrews in their assertion about God’s unsurpassable greatness. David refers to the greatness of God, and the fact that there is no God besides him (2 Sam. 7 22); Nehemiah refers to the great, the mighty God, (Neh. 9.32, also Jer.32.18, Titus 2.13)). Besides, the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods (Ps. 95.3); he is to be feared above all gods (Ps. 96.4. 77.13); he is greater than all gods (Ex.18.11) ; his greatness is unsearchable ( Ps. 145.3). It is hardly plausible to suppose that God’s kingship over other gods is a mere contingent matter of fact. Paul’s ‘golden chain’ (Rom. 8. 31-9) is mere rhetoric if is not supported by a view of God who necessarily transcends his creation. And so on.

It is not that these biblical writers suppose that there could be a greater than the God of Israel, and that one day there might be. The God who is the creator of the heavens and the earth is one than which no greater can be conceived. How could God be worshipful if he could have been greater than in fact he is? If there is a being greater than God then why is that being not God instead? So all the grammatical features of the doctrine of God that we have mentioned express metaphysically necessary truths.

James Dolezal’s favored way of approaching divine simplicity is through the distinction between act and potency. He offers a close and careful reading of Thomas Aquinas. A subject’s potency or potentiality expresses its liability to change and develop, or to be changed. So it is a sign of compositeness. Every creature in space and time has such potency. By contrast, a simple God does not develop by acting, much less by being acted upon. He does not develop at all. His actions express his perfection, they do not contribute to its attainment. I think that it is fair to say that it is in this area, that of God’s freely expressing his perfection in creation and in human redemption, that the sense of ineffability and incomprehension of the doctrine of God’s absoluteness is at its highest.

Noting the author’s close adherence to Thomas’s approach to divine simplicity, some may think that this book is a work of ‘Catholic’ theology, meaning by this an exclusively Roman Catholic theology. But this judgment would be seriously mistaken. Dr Dolezal is at pains to show that adherence to the doctrine, and an appreciation of both its strengths and of its profundities, is the property of the entire ‘catholic’ church. He draws the reader’s attention to Stephen Charnock, John Owen and other Reformed and Puritan theologians, to Reformed confessional statements, as well as to their present-day expositors, notably Richard Muller. He flags up the thought of a notable Dutch Reformed theologian who straddled the 19^th and 20^th centuries, Herman Bavinck. The work deliberately reinforces the view that divine simplicity is the property of truly ‘catholic’ Christian theology.

It might be objected that if an argument for some fundamental feature of God’s existence, such as divine simplicity, concludes in emphasizing the ineffability and incomprehensibility of the life of the Creator, we ought to suspect its premises. Dr Dolezal touches on such matters in his fascinating dialogue with a contemporary evangelical philosophical theologian, Jay Richards, over the conflict, or apparent conflict, between divine simplicity and divine freedom to create worlds other than our world, or to refrain from creating any world at all. This is, in effect, a debate about a concept of God who is first and foremost anthropomorphic and anthropopathic, and on the other hand of a God who creates and upholds everything that exists in space and time, as their transcendent Creator and Lord, while working immanently within the creation.

It is God’s transcendent will, the expression of his simple nature, that generates in the most acute way the in creatures’ apprehension the sense of incomprehensibility and ineffability. This is hardly surprising. Indeed, it would be surprising if such bafflement were not felt. Yet its presence hardly amounts to a reason for denying or attenuating God’s absoluteness, central to which is his simplicity.

Such debates will be taken further, and without doubt Dr Dolezal’s work deserves to be an impressive and powerful stimulus to them.

Paul Helm

Teaching Fellow, Regent College, Vancouver

Colin Gunton’s Point

In his article, ‘Augustine, The Trinity and the Theological Crisis of the West’, which first appeared in the Scottish Journal of Theology for 1990 and then formed part of his The Problem of Trinitarian Theology (T & T Clark, 1991), the late Colin Gunton, whose friend and colleague at King’s College I was for several years, made a number of serious charges against Augustine. Since his death, that article, and Colin’s approach, have been subject to a certain amount of criticism. Here I wish to defend my old friend on one point, not on all his criticisms of Augustine, for some of them seem extravagant and rather hurried. But in this short piece I concentrate on the one charge, that in view of Augustine’s understanding of the persons of the Trinity as purely relational he imperils the personhood of the persons, and tilts towards modalism. But I believe that the point that Colin raised here is not so much an argument against Augustine as a general problem with Trinitarianism.

Preliminary

The business of contrasting Western with Eastern views of the Trinity, which Colin was very concerned about, has become quite an industry. But possibly an industry that has been financed with junk bonds? For surely the significance of this contrast, and with it the alleged superiority of the Eastern way of construing the Trinity, has been overdone. Suppose a triangle. How are we to understand it? Maybe one way, the ‘Western’ way, is to understand it as one plane-sided figure with three internal angles. Or maybe, the ‘Eastern’ work, as a three-angled or three-sided plane figure. It does not seem to matter much.

Nor does the charge that Augustine was a modalist in view of the three-personhood of the Godhead seem plausible.

The Point

But Colin did have a valid point in one of his charges, though I don’t think that it’s an argument in favour of ‘the East’, but in favour of social trinitarianism. But then ‘the East’ may be a form of social trinitarianism, if indeed there is ‘an East’ that is distinct from ‘a West’.

The point is as follows. First, in Colin’s words, and then in mine.

Colin’s Words

On the ‘Eastern’ view:

…concepts are developed, that is to say, by means of which the Christian God can be thought of as triune without loss to his unity. The second is that, as this is done, a new ontology is developed: for God to be is to be in communion….

When we look at Augustine’s treatment of the topic, it becomes evident that he has scarcely at all understood the central point….for despite his avowed reason for the use of the term, he has prepared the way for the later, and fateful, definition of the person as a relation….But where do the three persons fit? Uncomfortably, it must be confessed. Augustine uses the concept of relation to designate that which can be predicated of God in the plural but which is yet not accidental…..

In all this, Augustine is taking a clear step back from the teaching of the Cappadocian Fathers. For them, the three persons are what they are in their relations, and therefore the relations qualify them ontologically, in terms of what they are. Because Augustine continues to use relation as a logical rather than an ontological predicate, he is precluded from being able to make claims about the being of the particular persons, who, because they lack distinguishable identity tend to disappear into the all embracing oneness of God.

It is for reasons such as this that there is in Augustine, and in most Western theology after him, a tendency towards modalism. (39-42, Colin’s italics).

My words

What Colin is alleging here is that in Augustine’s account of the relations of the three persons in the one God, ‘relation’ is being used in a purely logical, not an ontological sense. And what he means by that, it appears, is that such usage robs the three persons of their distinctive ontological characters. For what it is that these relations are relations of, or between?

Let us separate the question of whether Colin was right to impute this view to Augustine from the view itself.

We could put the issue in the form of a dilemma: either the three persons are persons in their own right, or they are not. If they are persons in their own right, and each is fully divine, what is the status of the ‘personal distinctiveness’ that each is, or has? Is the fatherhood of the Father divine, the sonship of the Son divine, the spirituality of the Spirit divine? If so, then in turn, Father, Son and Spirit possess a divinity (or a feature or aspect of divinity) lacked by the other two. If they are not persons in their own right but (as Colin says Augustine is committed to) their personhood is merely relational, then that personhood looks altogether insubstantial; at best, modal.

From this dilemma it is easy to see that what Colin called the Cappadocian approach is no more satisfactory than the alleged ‘Western’ view. For in that view, according to him, God’s being is to be in communion, and the problem then becomes the apparent insubstantiality of the one God whom the three persons are persons of. For God’s oneness then consists only in the relatedness of the three persons. God is the point of intersection of the threeness. What sort of a substantial oneness is that?

(Incidentally, for those interested, Colin is not the only one who thinks that Augustine is committed to this insubstantial view of personhood. See A.C.Lloyd, ‘On Augustine’s Concept of a Person’ in Augustine: A Collection of Critical Essays ed. R.A. Markus (Doubleday Anchor, 1972))

This crux is not an issue for Augustine, or for the Cappadocians, but for the Trinity as such. This can be further illustrated from contemporary literature by something that Lewis Ayres says in his exposition of Augustine on the Trinity in Nicaea and its Legacy. (Oxford University Press, 2004) Ayres is to be applauded for expounding Trinitarianism in grammatical terms, as providing ‘appropriate rules’ (374) for the development of habits of mind, and also for being skeptical about the fashion of contrasting ‘East’ with ‘West’, usually to the disadvantage of the ‘West’. He insists that on Augustine’s view the persons are not just relations (378) and recognizes that on that view (and on the traditional view more generally, no doubt) we cannot comprehend the divine essence (385).

Maybe he should have left the matter there, applauding Augustine’s view as a way of avoiding self-contradiction (377) but he ventures further. Rather ominously he refers to ‘explanatory resources’ (371) and of deploying the principles, the irreducibility of the persons and the oneness of God, to ‘show how’ God can be three and one. In a further attempt to elucidate Augustine he goes on to claim that the Son has or is an essence (379), a truly simple essence, and then, and as a consequence ‘they are of one essence’. Notice the ‘of’ there. Is that warranted.? What is it to be ‘of one essence’? Or ‘of one being and substance’ (381) Is it to be one essence, one being, one substance? Or is it to be ‘generated by’ an essence? The Son has a truly simple essence and so that essence is one with the Father’s simple essence, and ‘more than we can grasp’ (379), to put it mildly.

Thus, in using the grammar of simplicity to articulate a concept of Father, Son and Spirit as each God, and as the one God, we find that the more we grasp the full reality of each person, the full depth of the being that they have from the Father, the more we are also forced to recognize the unity of their being. (379-80)

For if the essence of the Son is the essence of the Father, then there is one essence. But then (once again) what is it to be the person of the Father as distinct from being the person of the Son? Does the Son have a ‘standing’ that the Father does not share? In view of the simplicity of the godhead, hardly. Ayres claims that the Father generates the Son’s essence (378) and then, a page later, maintains that the Son’s essence is the one essence that is also the Father’s. (379) Granted that God’s essence is independent and self-sustaining, it is not a part of such aseity that God is self-creating, surely an incoherent notion if ever there was one.

This way of further elucidating the Trinity begins to court formal self-contradiction: The Father’s simple essence is both uncreated and the begetter of the Son’s simple essence with which it must be identical since according to the grammar there is but one simple essence which is God.

Why not resist the itch and stop? Why not merely ‘There is one God, three divine persons distinct from each other?’ Why not rest with the ancient ‘distinct but not divided’?

Anyhow, we can see that Colin has raised a good point, but one not about Augustine per se (as he claimed, nor about ‘East versus West ‘), but about the pellucidity of the entire Trinitarian ‘grammar’ if it is pressed into service to provide us with an explanation or two.

Augustine and The Categories

Augustine’s deliverance from Manicheism brought its own intellectual problems, which focussed on how to understand the Church’s teaching regarding divine immutability. He comments that he had yet not come to see that the hinge of the matter of God’s immutability lies in his being the Creator. It is during this earlier phase that he also has an encounter with a notable philosophical work, Aristotle’s Categories.

In a way that is rather uncharacteristic of him, he notes that though Aristotle’s book was reputed to be difficult, he easily read it with understanding and without the help of anyone else.

The book seemed to me an extremely clear statement about substances, such as man, and what are in them, such as a man’s shape, what is his quality of stature, how many feet, and his relatedness, for example, whose brother he is, or where he is placed, or when he was born, or whether he is standing or sitting, or is wearing shoes or armour, or whether he is active or passive, and the innumerable things which are classified by these nine genera of which I have given some instances, or by the genus of substance itself.

The books seem to have established in his mind the presumption that the ten Aristotelian categories had universal application, embracing God himself within its categorization. And so, later on, and consistently with Aristotle’s outlook, and still manifesting the remnants of Manichean anthropomorphism, he tried to conceive God, ‘wonderfully simple and immutable’, (as Ambrose and his circle taught) as if he was a substance with temporal and even spatial location and having distinct properties, like one of Aristotle’s substances. It must be noted that in reference to the simplicity and immutability of God, Augustine was willing to appropriate the language of the Christian faith of his Christian acquaintances in Milan, appropriating their words, but still casting around for a way to understand them.

He tells us that he then thought that the beauty and greatness of God were

In you as if in a subject, as in the case of a physical body, whereas you yourself are your own magnitude and your own beauty. By contrast a body is not great and beautiful by being body; if it were less great or less beautiful it would nevertheless still be body. My conception of you was a lie, not truth, the figments of my misery, not the permanent solidity of your supreme bliss.

That is a remark made by Augustine with the benefit of hindsight, as is this. ‘I thought that you, Lord God and Truth, were like a luminous body of immense size, and myself a bit of that body. What extraordinary perversity. But that was how I was…’ Despite having rejected Manicheism he had as yet no alternative but to continue to think in terms of Aristotle’s Categories, and so to claim that God is a subject with a nature known to us through the appraisal of his various attributes or properties, just as, according to Aristotle, we understand how it is with plants and artifacts such as tables and chairs. And he continued to think like this for some time. For at the beginning of Book VII, despite some development, we find him still in essentially the same frame of mind.

Although you were not in the shape of the human body, I nevertheless felt forced to imagine something physical occupying space diffused either in the world or even through infinite space outside the world. Admittedly I thought of this as incorruptible and inviolable and unchangeable, which I set above what is corruptible, violable and changeable. But I thought that anything from which space was abstracted was non-existent, indeed absolutely nothing, not even a vacuum, as when a body is removed from a place, and the space remains evacuated of anything physical, whether earthly, watery, airy or heavenly, but is an empty space – like a mathematical concept of space without content.

We note here once again his firm adherence to the language of the Church, the language of incorruptibility, inviolability and unchangeability. If the frequency with which he used certain terms is anything to go by, it is the immutability of God, his unchangeability, that particularly impressed him about the God of the Church. But thinking of such immensity and immutability in terms of the Aristotelian categories, (which, of course, at least as Augustine understood them, when applied to God, overlapped with his old Manichean ideas), had ridiculous and therefore unacceptable metaphysical consequences, for example the consequence that an elephant’s body would contain more of the divine being than a sparrow’s. A little later he affirms that that despite these oscillations in his mind God did not allow him to be carried away in his thinking from the faith which he held, that God exists as an immutable substance and cares for humanity and judges it and has provided in Scripture a way of salvation.