Today, I’m going to start looking at chapter 5 of Dr. Edward Feser’s Five Proofs of the Existence of God. I thought I’d begin with Feser’s take on Divine foreknowledge and free will. To cut a long story short: Feser is a predestinationist who professes at the same time to believe that humans possess genuine free will. In order to reconcile these beliefs, he proposes an analogy which at first seems plausible, but which ultimately collapses because it completely ignores our personal relationship with our Creator. To make matters worse, Feser holds that God knows everything that happens in this world, non-propositionally. He proposes another analogy to explain how this might be, but at most, it merely explains how God might know creatures; it fails to explain how He knows what they get up to. I conclude that not only is Feser’s account of God’s foreknowledge incoherent, but his account of how God knows any fact whatsoever about the world is also unintelligible.
This will be a much shorter post than my last one, so there’s no need to crack open a beer (at least, not yet). I’ll explain the picture of Mia Farrow shortly.
Divine foreknowledge and human freedom
Let’s begin with Feser’s predestinationism. To be sure, Feser never uses the word “predestination” in his book, but that is precisely what he believes: he hold that God decides everything that happens in this world. As Feser puts it, “he knows everything – including the present and the future – precisely by virtue of being its cause” (2017, p. 214) and he also compares God’s knowledge to “an author’s knowledge of the characters and events of the story he has come up with” (2017, p. 212). As Feser explains:
Now, the way an author knows these characters and events [in his story] is not by observing them. It is not a kind of perceptual knowledge. Rather, the author knows them by knowing himself, by virtue of knowing his own thoughts and intentions as an author. And that is precisely the way in which God knows the world. … [I]t is in a single, timeless act that God causes to exist everything that has been and will be. And it is in knowing himself as so acting that God knows everything that is, has been and will be. His knowledge of the world is a consequence of his self-knowledge. (2017, p. 212)
This analogy invites the obvious objection that if God knows everything that happens in the world by causing it to happen, then human beings cannot be said to have free will. Feser has a ready answer: just as the characters in an author’s story can be said to act freely, so too can the human characters in God’s story. In his own words:
Consider once again the analogy with the author of a story. Suppose it is a crime novel and that one of the characters carefully plots the murder of another, for financial gain. We would naturally say that he commits the murder of his own free will, and is therefore justly punished after being caught at the end of the novel. It would be silly to say: “Well, he didn’t really commit the murder of his own free will. For he committed it only because the author wrote the story that way.” The author’s writing the story the way he did is not inconsistent with the character’s having freely committed the murder.… It is perfectly coherent to say that the author wrote a story in which someone freely chooses to commit a murder.
Similarly, it is perfectly coherent to say that God causes a world to exist in which someone freely chooses to commit a murder, or to carry out some other act. God’s causal action is no more inconsistent with our having free will than the author’s action is inconsistent with his characters’ having free will… The author’s causal relation to the story is radically unlike the relations the characters in the story have to each other, and God’s causal relation to the world is radically unlike the relation we and other elements of the world have to each other. (2017, pp. 214-215)
Which brings us to Mia Farrow, who played the part of Jacqueline in the movie Death on the Nile, which was based on Agatha Christie's book of the same title. As most of my readers will be aware, in the book, Jacqueline de Bellefort and her fiancé, Simon Doyle, plot the death of wealthy heiress Linnet Ridgeway, coming up with a very clever scheme which they nearly get away with. Only at the end of the story does detective Hercule Poirot uncover the truth, at which point Jacqueline finally confesses before embracing Simon, and then shooting him in the head before killing herself.
I don’t imagine any of Agatha Christie’s readers felt terribly sorry for Jacqueline de Bellefort or her fiancé, Simon Doyle. But if someone were to use the characters in her novel, Death on the Nile, in an attempt to explain how God’s causing human choices is perfectly compatible with human free will, then I would have to point out three massive disanalogies:
(i) in crime novels, it’s one of the characters (an officer of the law) who catches up with the criminal and brings them to justice. Moreover, it is only the characters in the story (not the author) who blame the murderer for his/her actions, and denounce him/her as an evil person when they discover the truth. But in our case, it isn’t human characters who ultimately punish sinners (many of whom end up getting away with their crimes on Earth), but God, the author of the human drama. [For instance, many Jews, Christians and Muslims believe that God publicly pronounces sentence on sinners, on Judgment Day.] And unlike a crime novel, it isn’t just other human beings who blame and accuse these sinners: rather, it is God who says, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41), and who berates the servant in the Parable of the Talents who buried his talent in a hole in the ground as a “wicked, lazy servant” (Matthew 25:26). That would be like Agatha Christie punishing Jacqueline de Bellefort, instead of Hercule Poirot, and telling her off for being a wicked, wicked woman. I’m sure my readers can readily see that it makes no sense for an author to personally blame one of their own characters for his/her misdeeds. And if God’s relationship to us is like that of an author to a character in his story, then by the same token, it makes no sense for God to blame us for our misdeeds, even if other people do;
(ii) in crime novels, the characters are not even aware that they are characters created by an author, and of course, they make no attempt to communicate with the author. Many human beings, on the other hand, are very much aware that they have a Divine Author, and some of them even communicate with Him daily, in prayer, believing that they have a religious duty to do so, since He is their Creator;
(iii) in crime novels, the characters are incapable of defying the will of the author: they simply do whatever the author wishes them to do. By contrast, human beings are perfectly capable of defying the will of their Divine Author: it’s called sin.
But the irony is that Feser himself pointed out what was wrong with his own analogy in a 2011 post, titled, Are you for real?:
All the same, the world is not literally a mere story and we are not literally fictional characters…
…[P]recisely because the characters [in a story] do not exist but are purely fictional, they are not true causes the way real things are. Everything they seem to do is really done by their author: We say that Spider-Man punched out the guy who shot his uncle, but all that happened in the real world is that Steve Ditko (in collaboration with writer Stan Lee) first drew a panel in which Spider-Man punches the guy and then drew a panel in which the guy is unconscious. Strictly speaking, Spider-Man didn’t do anything, because there is no Spider-Man.
Well, if Spider-Man didn’t do anything, then he didn’t choose anything either – and neither did the bad guys he pursued in the comics that bear his name. And in that case, the guy who shot Spider-Man’s uncle did not “commit the murder of his own free will” (as Feser suggests in his analogy above) because he didn’t really murder anyone. It is therefore a mystery to me why Feser declares in the same post that he thinks the storybook analogy is “useful for helping us to understand why divine causality is not incompatible with human freedom.” Really?
I conclude that Feser’s reconciliation of Divine causation of human choices (or predestination) with human free will is radically flawed. The analogy he invokes is faulty, in three fundamental ways.
Finally, here’s a little thought experiment. Suppose that after you die, you find yourself confronting a Being who reproaches you for the bad choices you made while on Earth, and says He’s going to punish you for them – and then proceeds to tell you that He caused you to make those choices! What would your reaction be? Probably an unprintable one, I imagine.
OK, now it’s time to treat yourself to a beer – and some cookies, too. Why cookies? See below.
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(A tip for anyone thinking of visiting Australia: VB [image courtesy of Wikipedia] isn’t our best beer. Cascade Premium Lager is, IMHO. Boag’s Brewery in Launceston, Tasmania, makes some pretty good beer, too.)
God’s knowledge of what goes on in the world
But Feser isn’t finished yet. In his section on omniscience, in chapter 5 of his book, he goes on to explain that it would be an anthropomorphic mistake to think of God as having multiple concepts in his Mind, or entertaining various propositions. This, we are told, would conflict with the doctrine of Divine simplicity (defended by classical theists of all stripes), which means that God is totally and utterly devoid of parts: He doesn’t even have any real properties, let alone the mental property of believing a certain proposition (e.g. Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK) to be true.
So how does God know what we’re up to? Does He perhaps have a single super-proposition in His Mind, which is a conjunction of all true statements? That won’t work, either: as Feser points out, the super-proposition “will itself have component parts,” contradicting Divine simplicity. Instead, Feser proposes two more analogies of his own:
A better, though still imperfect, way to understand the nature of God’s knowledge would be to think in terms of analogies like the following. From a beam of white, various beams of colored light can be derived by passing it through a prism. Though the colors are not separated out until the beam reaches the prism, they are still in the white light in a unified way. From a lump of dough, cookies of various shapes can be derived by means of cookie cutters. Though the various cookies with their particular shapes are not separated out until the cutters are applied to the dough, they are still on the uncut dough virtually. Now, God is pure actuality, whereas every kind of created thing represents a different way in which actuality might be limited by potentiality. That is to say, each created thing is comparable to one of the specific colors that might be derived from the white light that contains all of them, or is like one of the many cookie shapes which might be derived from the dough which contains all of them. God’s creation of the world is thus like the passing of white light through a prism or the application of the cutters to the dough. The prism draws out, from the color spectrum which is contained in a unified way in the white light, a particular beam of this color and a particular beam of that color, and the cutters draw out, from the variety of possible cookies contained in a unified way in the lump of dough, a cookie of this particular shape and a cookie of that particular shape. Similarly, creation involves drawing out, from the unlimited actuality that is God, various limited ways of being actual.…
Now, just as if you knew the white light perfectly, you would know all the colors which could be derived from it, and if you knew the lump of dough perfectly, you would know all the shapes which might be carved out of it, so too, perfectly to know that which is pure actuality would entail knowing all the various limited ways of being actual which might be derived from it. And that is how God knows all of the various kinds of finitely actual things which exist or might exist – by virtue of perfectly knowing himself as that which is pure or unlimited actuality. (2017, pp. 215-216)
Now, Feser is very careful to point out that the foregoing illustration is just an analogy, and a highly imperfect one at that: for example, “created things are not made out of God in the way cookies are made out of dough” (2017, p. 216). But theological errors of this sort do not concern me greatly. When using an analogy, there is one and only one thing I expect it to do well: represent accurately the specific state of affairs which it’s meant to be an analogy of. If it can explain that one little thing which it’s meant to shed light on, then I’ll forgive whatever additional deficiencies it might possess.
In this case, the “one little thing” that I’m asking Feser’s twin analogies to shed light on is God’s ability to know everything that happens in the world, without knowing it propositionally (as that, according to Feser, is precluded by God’s simplicity). At the very best, Feser’s analogies relating to light and cookies only serve to explain how God could know what might happen, in a simple fashion. But in the light illustration, we need to know about the size, shape and positioning of the prism, if we wish to know what color of light can actually be seen. And if we want to know what kinds of cookies are actually made by the chef, we need to know which cutters he is using. Nothing in the nature of light or dough will tell us anything about the actual choice of colors or cookies that was made. And likewise, nothing in the nature of God as unlimited actuality will tell us (or Him) about what actually happens in the real world.
“But surely God could know what happens, simply by knowing His own choices when creating the world and all that is in it?” I hear you suggest. Indeed he could – assuming for the moment (as Feser does) that God knows what happens in the world by causing it to happen. But here’s the thing: just as the size, shape and positioning of the prism (which determines what color light we actually see) is something complex, and just as the shapes of the various cutters (which determine what cookies we actually eat) are also complex, so too, the specific choices God makes when causing the world to be in its present form are complex, not simple: “Yes, I want lions in my world; no, I don’t want unicorns; yes, I decree that Lee Harvey Oswald will kill JFK and thereby change the course of American history; no, he won’t kill Jackie or Governor Connally.” And so on. The whole point of Feser’s light and cookie analogies was to explain how God could know about these events without in any way compromising His simplicity. But it is precisely on this point that the analogies fail.
Let us recall Feser’s earlier remark that God knows the world “by virtue of knowing his own thoughts and intentions as an author.” I respectfully submit that it would be impossible for anyone (God included) to make a warts-and-all world like ours with a single, simple thought.
Until and unless someone can suggest a better analogy than Feser’s light and cookie analogies, I am forced to conclude that the notion that God could have simple, non-propositional knowledge of earthly affairs is a nonsensical one, just as I am forced to reject Feser’s reconciliation of God’s causing our choices with our making them freely.
Time for another beer, I’d say. What do readers think? Over to you.
fifth,
No surprise there. Christianity is deeply irrational.
Hence the use of the word “mystery” to refer to goofy doctrines like that of the Trinity. It’s a euphemism. To say that the Trinity is a mystery is equivalent to saying “This makes no sense, but we believe it anyway.”
No no no. I was not talking about the simplicity claim. The discussion was about whether God can be both simple and triune. Trinity defenders have taken a beating on that claim for centuries. And this is unsurprising, since it’s an utterly absurd suggestion.
The doctrine of the Trinity is not just the majority position it is a defining touchstone for Christianity. It’s one of the few things that unite all Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christians. The majority of scholars from each of those traditions down through history have also held that God is simple
I certainly would not say traditional Christians have taken a beating in this regard. In fact I’d say that the criticisms that have been offered are pretty easy to dispatch.
That is why I asked you which specific ones you wanted to discuss.
As it is your objection seems to amount to some sort of cross between mere flippant dismissal and Argumentum ad populum along with a dash of literature bluff.
You are certainly entitled to your opinion. It’s a free country. Different strokes and all that. After all I think that all non-christian worldviews are absurd.
If you are unwilling to share your objections we will just have to agree to disagree
Peace
What possibly could refute such a God? Or non-personal God? Or a omnipotent, omniscient single person God? Or a non Biblical God?
fifthmonarchyman,
Again, you’re still confusing lots of different things. Of course most xtians are trinitarians. Who has ever denied that? Why not respond to actual criticisms instead of silly ones? (Well, actually I know why.) Of course, it’s theologians claiming both simplicity and trinity who have always failed miserably. And, for about the fifth time, this is entirely unsurprising since three is both complex (see russell/whitehead) and also, as is obvious even to toddlers, quite different from one.
If you’re going to contine to respond to made up objections, and attribute them to me, I guess I’ll just have to add that in to the numerous other problems with your posts in this thread.
These points are quite simple and have not been confuted by anybody ever–by xtian or non-xtian. No sane philosopher would think of denying them. If some crazed monks have, good for them.
It would be easy to refute the Christian God.
Off the top of my head you could show that all knowledge is impossible, truth doesn’t exist or that the world is incomprehensible.
I think the inability of those non-christian gods to provide justification for knowledge would constitute a refutation.
peace
fifth,
You’re pretending that the Christian God is essential for the justification of knowledge, but in case you’ve forgotten, you’ve never been able to demonstrate that.
Your attempts have ended rather badly, in fact.
If it is logically possible for the finite to fully understand the infinite.
What evidence do you have for that claim? That is certainly not my experience
The Trinity does not refer to three gods as apposed to one God
It refers to the one simple God who is tri-personal.
The three persons are not three parts of the one God or three separate instances of divinity that together add up to one God.
The Trinity is one simple God who exists eternally as three persons.
I’m not responding to objections.
I waiting patiently for you to share your objections.
You just keep saying that my position is absurd you aren’t sharing any cogent reasons.
If might be helpful if you interacted with the Trinity papers I linked so I could know what you object to
Interaction would look something like this.
Edwards says X but X is impossible for because of Y.
That sort of thing would help me to see what you are getting at.
As it is all I’m seeing is goofy stuff irrelevant stuff like “three is more complex than one.”
What points???????? The irrelevant observation that three is more complex than one???
That is not an objection to the Trinitarianism
At most it’s an objection to Tritheism or Modalism.
peace
That nothing that is three can also be one is not “goofy, ” it’s a very simple necessary truth. That there is a simple God that’s “tripersonal” is not just false, it’s necessarily false. Nothing can exemplify both of those characteristics, any more than something could be both elephant and man (like Ganesha!). These aren’t subtle, complicated points. You simply deny them because they’re inconsistent with a position that appeals to you. But that’s not philosophy (love of knowledge) or truth. It’s childishness.
I leave you to your dreams of cotton candy.
Perhaps it just was an observation based on his worldview.
I don’t know what you mean by any of that. If by “universe” you mean “all that exists”, then that’s what I mean by existence. Perhaps an example of something that is finite yet has no boundaries (in the sense of its relationship to a contextual “other”) would serve to enlighten me?
William,
Just as the surface of a sphere has a finite area despite having no edges or borders, the universe as a whole could have a finite volume despite lacking edges or boundaries. It depends on the overall density.
Simple but triune, transcendent but incarnated…
I very much suspect that is the case.
That sort of output makes me doubt the coherence and consistency of said worldview.
peace
Word become flesh.
The profound awesome mystery at the very heart of the universe.
It’s more than a human mind can comprehend but that does not mean it’s irrational or impossible for God.
peace
Of course three gods can’t be one god
Three persons can be one God, just like three bowlers can be one bowling team.
You are confusing essence with person.
Dumbo and Jumbo can both be elephant at the same time
You and I can both be human.
Each of the three persons can be God.
The only difference is that the essence of both human and elephant are compound but the essence of God is simple.
Simple does not mean unitarian it only means with out parts. The three persons are not parts of God so we are good no contradiction and no inconsistency.
peace
No, I deny that they are inconsistent because they are not inconsistent. Claiming they are inconsistent does not demonstrate that they are inconsistent.
OK then that is fine
I will only note that you did not choose to actually interact with the doctrine and certainly did not demonstrate that you tried to understand it but instead just dismissed it with slogans.
peace
Sorry, that doesn’t work. The surface of a sphere does have boundaries that contextualize the finite-ness of its nature, such as the inside of the sphere and what lies beyond the surface. Perhaps you’re not understanding what I’m saying here – the finite nature of thing requires contextual boundaries (something else) where something other than the finite thing exists to give that finite thing existential limitations and identification. One cannot conceive of a finite thing with no contextual boundaries because then it would have no discernible identity “as” a finite thing.
IOW, you can only imagine “the surface of a sphere” because you can imagine the space it exists in and the space that exists within it. Those are its necessary contextual boundaries.
There are more things in this universe than “what you can imagine” William. Disputes regarding this stuff go back hundreds of years, but they were settled dispositively during the time of Einstein, Minkowski and Riemann. There need be nothing (nothing!) outside the sphere keiths described–no space, nothing whatever–whether you can imagine this or not. Our own universe is finite but unbounded.
You have misunderstood the meaning of “surface of a sphere”.
He should have stuck with drinking beer. Sounds like that bloke is having a fantastic trip.
From the Wikipedia entry on “siege mentality”:
“Among the consequences of a siege mentality are black and white thinking, social conformity, and lack of trust, but also a preparedness for the worst and a strong sense of social cohesion.” (my emphasis added)
One can also claim that a triangle can have four sides and that just because I can’t imagine it doesn’t mean it can’t happen. One can also claim that the law of identity doesn’t necessarily hold for everything. Unfortunately, claiming that a logically incoherent statement is not incoherent doesn’t make it so.
I’m not saying it’s difficult to imagine, I’m saying it is a logical impossibility. If you can give me an example of a finite thing without a contextualizing “other”, then please do so. Otherwise, you might as well be saying that square circles are possible. Finite things cannot exist within “nothing”. “Nothing” doesn’t exist, so there cannot be “nothing” outside of the sphere. “Nothing” cannot even be imagined. It’s impossible, like “non-existence” (really the same thing as “nothing”).
I do appreciate the comment though! Gave me some good stuff to think about.
Neil Rickert,
Care to explain?
Whereas infinity is such as an easy concept to grasp.
You really need someone to explain to you that the surface of a sphere doesn’t begin or end anywhere, despite of being of finite area? Lulz
No. You are so far off it might not be possible.
Okay, here’s a half-baked effort. Your comment showed that you see the surface of the sphere as a boundary of the solid sphere (or ball) that it is the surface. Fair enough. But that has nothing to do with whether the surface of the sphere has its own boundary (hint: it doesn’t).
You appear to not be looking for enlightenment. From where I sit, the example given by keiths seems admirably well-suited to your question.
The 2-dimensional surface of the sphere does not begin or end, but it clearly is not of infinite area.
Not being mathematically inclined myself, I think I see where WJM is getting confused.
He’s thinking that the surface of a sphere has a boundary because it’s the surface of a sphere. It has constraints or conditions — it’s distinct from the interior volume, and distinct from where is exterior to the sphere.
What he has trouble understanding (and I admit some trouble here myself) is that the surface is the boundary of the sphere, but the surface does not have its own boundary. (Does the term “boundary” have a technical meaning in geometry?)
I’m always been fascinated by this claim that the universe is finite but unbounded, and I’d appreciate it if folks here could help get me a better understanding of this idea.
Kantian Naturalist,
The only time where an “other” needs to be referenced is if we try to assign a position or diameter to the sphere as a solid 3-dimensional object.
Think of the experience of a 2-dimensional being projected onto the surface of the sphere. If it were free to move along the surface of the sphere, it would find no boundaries. It would appear to that being that it was on an infinitely large flat sheet.
I’m struggling to follow your logic in this model. Everything exists, has always existed, and always will exist. That makes God everything and everything eternal.
If everything is eternal and infinite, how do individuals exist at all. And more importantly, how do we experience time (even if it is illusory). How can there be “permutations in the cookie dough” if God is everything and eternal?
How does the Incarnation not entail a compound essence? Was Jesus not simultaneously one of the persons of the eternal triune God and a flesh-and-blood human who was born circa. 4 BCE?
WJM does not really “do” follow up questions.
Yes, that’s about right.
It’s best to think of the surface of a sphere as the only world we are talking about, instead of thinking of it embedded in a larger world.
When mathematicians say “sphere” they normally mean that surface. They use the term “ball” for the solid object that it is a surface of. Similarly, “circle” means a one-dimensional line, and “disk” means the space enclosed by a circle.
“Boundary” is perhaps used informally. To a mathematician, the set of points defined by
0 < x < 1
does not have a boundary, while the set of points defined by
0 <= x <= 1
has two boundary points (0 and 1).
I suppose you could say that 0 and 1 are boundary points of the first of those sets, but the set doesn’t have them. But to look at it that way, you have to be thinking of that open interval (with the end points) as being embedded in something larger where the end points are present.
Hmm, maybe I just made that more confusing.
I never said anything about a finite thing having “its own boundaries”. I was very clear on this and you even quoted me in your response:
Here’s the rest of that post:
I’m wondering how my term “contextual boundaries” suddenly became “it’s own boundary”? I never claimed that a finite thing had to have “it’s own boundaries”; I claimed it had to have a context boundary, or a context that provided for the finite-ness of the thing in question – which the surface of a sphere definitely has.
William,
I can see the source of your confusion. You think that the finitude of the surface of a sphere can be established only by reference to points inside and outside of the sphere itself. That’s not correct.
Here’s an easy thought experiment to show why that’s not necessary: Imagine that you live on the surface of that sphere. The surface is white, and it extends as far as you can see in every direction. You want to know if it’s finite.
Turns out you have a paint sprayer and a large amount of red paint at your disposal. You get the idea of dragging the paint sprayer around behind you as you systematically explore the surface. It’s easy to see that if you go about it correctly, you will eventually cover the entire surface in red paint. There will be no more white patches left. At that point you can conclude that the surface is finite, and you can do so without referring to any points that are not on the surface.
So when you say this…
…you are incorrect. The finitude of the surface can be established without reference to points that aren’t on the surface.
Why the distinction between finite and infinite space (and time) WJM, If God is supposed to be “outside” space-time anyway?
So what’s “outside” the universe then? What does the context then become?
William,
A second source of your confusion is a disanalogy: the sphere is situated within a larger space, while the universe is not. The universe contains all of space; there are no points outside of it.
Whereas you can imagine jumping off the sphere, or burrowing into its interior, with the universe itself there is no such possibility. Move in any direction and you are still inside the universe.
Where the analogy still holds, however, is here: You can move in any direction on the surface of the sphere and never hit a boundary, despite the fact that it’s finite. Likewise, you can move in any direction inside the universe and never come to an “edge”.
And if the density of the universe is above a critical value, then the curvature is positive and space itself is finite, just like the surface of the sphere. You can imagine doing the three-dimensional equivalent of the “paint the surface” thought experiment, thus proving the finitude of the universe. All without reference to anything outside of the universe.
William:
OMagain:
William would say “nothing”, and that’s how he reasons from his faulty premise to the supposedly necessary “infinitude of existence.” To him, if there’s no context, then the thing in question must be infinite.
Go figure.
The whole thing strikes me as a God of the gaps argument, just literally… God is in the gaps: If space was a swiss cheese, what’s in the holes? it can’t be “nothing”, you know
dazz:
To William, God is just the totality of existence, which he takes to be infinite:
Hence my response:
fifth:
A bowling team is compound, and so is your triune God. Just as the bowlers interact with each other, so do the “persons” that make up your God. Hell, you even insist that they reveal things to each other!
Your God ain’t simple, fifth. He’s compound.
Deal with it.
Hi everyone,
keiths is right in his criticism of the bowling team model proposed by fifthmonarchyman, which basically the same as that advocated by the philosopher John Philoponus (c. 490-570) in the sixth century, and subsequently condemned at the Third Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 680-681. Michael Rea explains why such an account is tritheistic, in his article, Polytheism and Christian Belief – although I have to say he goes wrong in his first sentence, where he writes that Christians “believe in three fully divine beings—the three Persons of the Godhead: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” That is incorrect: they believe that these three persons are all one and the same Being.
So how can God be simple and tripersonal? That depends on what you mean by simple. Simple is defined in this context as “not composed of parts,” but what’s a part? I’d like to propose the following definition:
A and B are parts of X if and only if:
(i) A and B are really (and not merely logically) distinct;
(ii) A and/or B are logically (or metaphysically) prior to X.
The Divine attributes are not parts of God because they fail to satisfy condition (i): the distinction between them is merely logical.
The three persons of the Trinity are not parts of God because they fail to satisfy condition (ii): they are not logically or metaphysically prior to God.
I would describe God as a tripolar Deity, with the second pole timelessly generated by the first pole’s act of knowing itself, and the third by the first pole and second pole’s act of loving each other. Each of the three poles is inseparable from the other two, because necessarily, God knows and loves Himself.
Plantinga’s arguments against Divine simplicity don’t work against all models of God’s simplicity, and in any case, they seem to misunderstand the doctrine. I’ll say more about that later.
vjtorley:
I would describe the God of the Bible as a bipolar Deity, with extreme mood swings. 🙂
Vincent,
How then do you address the dogmatic belief that the second “pole”, and only the second pole, incarnated? If the three poles are inseparable, then Jesus isn’t just the earthly manifestation of the Son, but of the Father and the Holy Ghost as well.
Excuse my ignorance, does this mean that the parts (A, B) are what make X, Y what they are? if so, is a man missing a leg, a man?
There is a compound essence involved in the Trinity but it is not the divine essence. The incarnation involves two essences. The divine essence is united with a human. The divine essence does not change.
quote:
one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably;
the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ;
end quote:
from here
https://www.creeds.net/ancient/chalcedon.htm
peace
Vincent,
If the second pole is merely “timelessly generated by the first pole’s act of knowing itself”, why is it capable of loving the first pole?
There’s some serious rationalization going on here.