Pints With Aquinas - 97: Bishop Barron and William Lane Craig on divine simplicity

Episode Date: March 13, 2018

Please support Pints with Aquinas on Patreon here. Check out Word on Fire ENGAGE here. SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/  Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/  GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show. LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd MY BOOKS  Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform

Welcome to Pints with Aquinas. I'm Matt Fradd. If you could sit down over a pint of beer with Thomas Aquinas and ask him any one question, what would it be? Today we're going to follow up our discussion with Aquinas on divine simplicity. And today we're going to be listening to an amazing back and forth between Bishop Robert Barron, Dr. William Lane Craig, and Ed Fazer. So it's going to be fantastic. I also want to let you know that next week, I'm going to be interviewing Father Mike Schmitz about the issue of homosexuality. And it's a fantastic talk. The reason I bring it up is if you're not yet subscribed to Pines with Aquinas, be sure to go subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

That way you don't miss an episode. Here we go. All right. It's good to have you back with us. Thanks so much for tuning in. I hope you all enjoyed last week's discussion on divine simplicity, which, if you remember, I'll say is one of the least simple things to discuss ever. Well, today you're going to hear a great recording of a conversation, of a paper that was read by Bishop Robert Barron, which William and Craig responded to, and Dr. Fazer was there, he responded to it as well. So it's really fascinating, and I think you're going to like it as much as I did. you, right? Like, it seems like more and more we're getting Protestant listeners, atheist listeners

writing into me and telling me that they are converting because of Pints of the Quietness. Now, I'm not stupid. I understand that it's not Pints of the Quietness as it is as much as it is the Holy Spirit, but it would appear that our blessed Lord is using a humble little podcast such as this to bring people into the fullness of truth. So I want to share this real quick excerpt from a husband and wife. They're a Protestant couple. They wrote this and I asked, could I share it? And she said, yes. Okay. So here's a quote from her. I just got this like three days ago. She says, so in short, we would simply like to say that your podcast has changed our lives. It has introduced

us to the beauty of a church we once summarily dismissed. It has led to a renewed vigor in the way we pursue Christ as the center of our marriage. And it has started us on the inexorable march toward conversion, as much as the Protestant in us still sometimes hates to admit it. We can't thank you enough for revealing the beauty of Aquinas' teaching, for the enthusiastic joy of your faith, and for how passionately you strive to share it all with others. So, that's huge. As I say, we're getting these more and more frequently, and so a big thanks to every one of you out there who prays for the listeners of Pints with Aquinas. I know that there are some of you who do that because you've told me. Big thanks to you because these sort of supernatural conversions don't take place

without prayer. So thank you. Also, thank you to those who support me on Patreon. You are what makes these conversions possible. Seriously. So if you want to support what you hopefully consider to be good, independent Catholic content, where, you know, I'm really not being pressured by anyone to say certain things or not say certain things, because some people find them offensive, please, please consider being a supporter of Pints with Aquinas on Patreon. We have people who are dropping out all the time for different reasons. I have different projects and plans that I'm working on that I will only be able to do

thanks to your support. So if you don't get support this show, go to pintswithaquinas.com, click support. There you can give 10 bucks a month. And when you do, you'll get a free book. My free book, Does God Exist? A Scradic Dialogue on the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas. I'll sign that for you. You'll also get the e-version of that book right away. You'll get a weekly exclusive video that I produce for you. You get access to an ever-growing library of audio books, including Papal Encyclicals and Works by Thomas Aquinas. You'll have early access to Pints with Aquinas comic strips. You'll have access to our bi-monthly live stream, and you'll have access to the private Patreon community forum. We do have a Facebook forum, but there's like thousands of

people in there, and I don't have time to respond to everybody, whereas I do respond to people in this Patreon community forum. So again, please go to pintswithaquinas.com, click support, and there you can learn how to get involved. So yeah, really cool things happening. who's a Protestant apologist, and Bishop Robert Barron and Dr. Edward Fazer, who doesn't speak as much as the other two, but it's really fascinating. I want to thank Bishop Robert Barron and Word on Fire, who allowed me to share this audio with you. If you don't know Word on Fire, go check out the Word on Fire show podcast and be sure to subscribe. It's a weekly conversation with Bishop Robert Barron, who's amazing, and a really good friend of mine, Brandon Vought, who's actually also a patron. So if you're listening, thank you, Brandon. Yeah, you're going to love it. Everything Bishop Robert Barron does is amazing, and same thing with Brandon Vought. Also, Word on Fire just released something really amazing. You're probably aware of, you know, the rates of decline in the Catholic Church today, right? Like how many people are

actually going to church, like as opposed to how many people are actually Catholic. And then of those who go to church, how many are actually engaged? So it's like, what do you do? Like, how do you engage them? Well, this is where Word on Fire comes in. Bishop Robert Barron had just released an amazing program. It's called Word on Fire Engage. So how does it work? It's a new platform that allows you to send short Bishop Robert Barron videos, mini courses, emails, and texts to parishioners, even those who aren't showing up to mass. Now, the best part is that everything is already done for you. Word on Fire's team of digital evangelization experts, that's such a cool title, by the way, digital evangelization experts. I want to be one of those,

has pre-written all the emails and text messages and prepared all the videos. So then just one or two clicks, you can schedule an entire Bishop Barron mini course for your parish. The videos are seen by millions of people. I'm sure you've seen some of Bishop Robert Barron's videos on YouTube. If you haven't, you got to go type in Bishop Robert Barron into YouTube right now, right? He is very smart and the stuff he does, it's not just intelligent stuff. It's actually really beautiful. He puts a huge emphasis on beauty and quality. And that comes through in everything that Word on Fire does. Also, listen to this. When your parish signs up for Word on Fire Engage, every person in the parish also gets digital streaming access to 100% of Bishop

Barron's films and videos. That's really cool, right? So, this is going to be something that's going to bless you. That's really cool. If a parish gets it, you get access to it just by in virtue of being a member of that parish. And if you're a priest and this is great, here's what you do. Go to engage.wordonfire.org to check it out. Engage.wordonfire.org to get started. All right. So, I hope that's a help. And here is the discussion between Dr. William Lane Craig, Bishop Robert Barron, and as I say, Ed Fazer. Again, if you haven't listened to last week's episode that I did with Father Chris Prochaszko on Divine Simplicity, you might want to go listen to that before you listen to this one.

Both are on Divine Simplicity. As I said, it's a very complicated topic, regardless of the name, or you might choose to just listen through this one and then go back to last week's episode and listen to the one I did with Father Chris Pachashko. Now, I want to apologize for the audio quality. They didn't have microphones right up to their mouths as they were kind of doing the back and forth. So some of it's a little difficult to understand,

but the content is second to none, A grade amazing. And so if you're a sort of listener that I think you are, it's not going to bother you much. Okay, here it is. Good. Joe, thank you very much. And thanks everyone for coming. It's a great honor for me to be here. And we've been working on this for about a year, haven't we? Yes. To make it happen. So very grateful to all the organizers and everyone for coming. It's a great honor for me to be here and we've been working on this for about a year haven't we? To make it happen. So very grateful to all the organizers and everyone for coming. I remember the first time I heard of William Lane Craig was in 2007. I was at the North Merion College in Rome

talking to one of the brighter students there and we were bemoaning the state of Christian apologetics. And this is the member of the New Atheists were really all on the rampage at that time. And we were observing the fact that so many Christians did so poorly against the New Atheists. And he said to me, well, do you know William Lane Craig?

I said, no, I'd never heard of him. He said, well, you have to watch his debate with Hitchens, I think, at that time he had, and maybe Sam Harris. So I did. I went to YouTube and watched the debates and became a fan overnight. So from that moment on, I followed Dr. Craig carefully, especially in these wonderful dialogues with the new atheists.

And I said to him this morning, I believe this, I think maybe in God's strange providence, the rise of the aggressive new atheism served a purpose, which is to wake a lot of Christians up and to sharpen our intellectual tools. And I do think Dr. Craig has just been a pioneer in that. So I'm very grateful for the work he's done and for being with him today. It was maybe only a year or so ago, someone said to me, you know, William Lane Craig, I said, oh yeah, she was great. Well, you know, he doesn't hold to the divine simplicity. And I said, oh, really? Is that right?

Because for me, it's such a key notion in Catholic theology. And so that just repiqued my interest, so I began reading around a little bit and finding out his views on that. And so when we were organizing the symposium and we're looking at different topics, I said, well, one thing that interests me anyway is this divine simplicity issue. So I said, why don't you give it a go? So that's the reason why this topic emerged today. Just one thing I can't resist before starting. I heard this story some

years ago. There was a lady who wanted to read Thomas Aquinas, and she approached him for the first time. And going through these famously complex texts, and she was kind of despairing, and she finally turned and saw an article on the divine simplicity. And she thought, well, this might be good. And then said, well, if that's the divine simplicity, I don't want to read all the book. So anyway, let me launch into this now. I find the debate in contemporary philosophy of religion concerning the divine simplicity to be not only compelling as a sheer intellectual exercise, but also of supreme significance in regard to both the dialogue with non-believers

and to the ecumenical conversation among Christians. In the course of this very brief presentation, I'll attempt to lay out the doctrine of God's simplicity, especially as has been articulated by Thomas Aquinas, to respond to some of the principal objections that have been raised over the years, excuse the two finales here, to demonstrate how this teaching has a significant bearing on the doctrine of the incarnation, and finally, at least to indicate how the doctrine of the divine simplicity helps us at least to recontextualize, I think, some of the dilemmas and puzzlements bequeathed to us by the 16th century reformers. Again, all this in very short compass necessarily.

So first of all, what does it mean to say that God is simple? What's the import here? To say that God is simple is to say that in him there's no distinction between his essence and his existence, between what he is, his quiditas, and that he is. For Thomas Aquinas, this divine simplicity follows clearly from God's status as the uncaused cause of the being of the created world. According to Thomas's metaphysical program, a thing's existence is a function either of its own essence or of the influence of some extrinsic cause. Either it explains itself or it has to be explained through appeal to some agent beyond itself. Now, everything

in our immediate experience is marked by a real distinction between essence and existence, for we can contemplate their natures apart from their acts of existence. In regard to all such things, therefore, we are logically compelled to seek a cause of their being. Precisely because there can be no infinite regress of caused causes in a series subordinated per se and not merely per accident, there must exist finally a reality whose existence is a function not of an extrinsic agency, but of its own essence or nature. This simple reality, whose very quiditas is to be, and who grounds the to be of every creature,

is what the great tradition has meant by the word God. Another way to explicate this doctrine is through appeal to the act-potency distinction. For Thomas, the first reality, whether construed as unmoved mover, uncaused cause, or necessary being, must be characterized as actus purus, pure energy or actuality. But essence functions as a principle of potency, since it delimits the actus essendi, the act of being, somewhat in the manner that matter sets a limit

to form. Thus my humanity determines that I am a very particular type of being, relating to my existence as potency to act. Therefore, in the actus purus of God, there can be no principle that delimits the divine act of to be, or to state the same thing, there can be no distinction between essence and existence in God. As David Burrell, the theologian and philosopher from Notre Dame, put it, to be God is to be to be. In regard to any creature, from an archangel to a stone, no such formula could possibly be applied. A third way to illuminate this teaching is through the principle of the one and the many. In the medieval metaphysical schema, any reality which is complex, that is to say composed of parts,

would have to be reduced to a more basic cause that brought the parts together. This is particularly clear in regard to matter and form. By an altogether correct intuition, we are led to wonder precisely why matter is found in a given configuration, at a particular speed, here rather than there, according to this modality rather than that. In a word, the distinction between form and matter compels us to search for the cause that brought them together. Now the same principle holds for Thomas regarding essence and existence. If the two are distinct, as indeed they are in every

creature, then we must seek for a cause that brought them together. Therefore if essence and existence are not identical in God, we'd have to search out the extrinsic cause of the divine being. But this is repugnant to the claim that God is the uncaused cause of finite existence. Now, in light of these clarifications, we can understand why, for Thomas Aquinas, God cannot be, strictly speaking, defined. For as the word itself indicates, any definition involves the setting of a limit, and all limitation is a type of potency. It's also why it would be incorrect to say that God belongs to any genus, even that most generic of genera, namely being.

Accordingly, God is not, for Aquinas, a being, one thing, however ontologically impressive among many. It is invalid, he says, to refer to God as an individual. Though it's true that sometimes Aquinas uses the phrase ens sumum, or highest being, to speak of God, he much more commonly uses the expression ipsum esse subsistent, the subsistent act of to be itself. Now, as my own manner of expression is suggesting, I believe the divine simplicity is best read under the rubric of the via negativa. That is to say, the removal from the idea of God of any and all creaturely imperfection. In service of defending the divine transcendence and sovereignty, the doctrine holds off any temptation to describe God in categorical terms.

As Thomas himself famously says, with regard to God, we cannot know what he is, but only what he is not. Now, just a word about some of the objections. Before considering some of the objections to the doctrine that have arisen in recent years, I feel constrained to point out that the position Thomas Aquinas defends is by no means peculiar to him. Rather, he summarizes and gives pointed expression to a tradition that stretches back to the Church Fathers and comes up through the High Middle Ages. Augustine, Ambrose, Anselm, Bonaventure all defend the divine simplicity, and in point of fact, as Stephen Long has demonstrated, none of the great reformers essentially quarreled

with the idea. Nevertheless, as Aquinas has demonstrated, none of the great reformers essentially quarreled with the idea. Nevertheless, as Aquinas himself insists, the argument from authority is the weakest, so let us consider the rather strenuous exception that a number of series critics, including Dr. Craig, have taken to this classical idea. A first objection voiced by a number of critics, especially in the Protestant world, is that the doctrine of the divine simplicity is unbiblical. Drawing, it seems, far more on pagan philosophical sources than on the scriptural witness, Aquinas has presented, it seems, a deeply distorted and hopelessly abstract notion of God, more akin to a Buddhist abyss or a Hindu absolute than the living,

personal, and very particular God of the Bible. Here's how the Catholic scholar Eleanor Stump summed up the problem. Who could possibly use second personal address in any locution towards God if God is ipsumesse, or being alone? Now, before getting to a point in response to this, it might be illuminating to consider something that I think is often overlooked, namely Aquinas' rather intense relationship to the Bible. As a young man at the University of Naples, he was beguiled by the street preaching of the Dominicans, an order devoted to a back-to-basics evangelicalism.

When Thomas assumed his role as magister, master or teacher at the University of Paris, his first responsibility was predicatio, preaching. Attended immediately upon this was the obligation to engage in biblical commentary. And in the course of his career, Thomas produced a substantial number of such commentaries, including a masterpiece on the Gospel of John. Moreover, he assembled the so-called Catena Aurea, a compilation of patristic observations on the Gospels. Indeed, one of the titles he bore was Magister Sacre Pagine, Master of the Sacred Page. As any serious commentator on the Scriptures realizes,

a close reading of the Bible leads, naturally enough, to questions, conundrums, and puzzles. Hence, a magister sacri paginae would become inevitably preoccupied with what the medievals called questiones disputate, disputed questions, and indeed, Thomas entertained such questions throughout his public career. Now finally, eager to present these theological musings in an organized, systematic manner, Thomas produced summaries, or summae, of his thought. I think far too often even careful students of Aquinas read only the summae, and they overlook the rootedness of these texts in biblical commentary and preaching.

This produces a distorted understanding of Thomas as a pure philosopher or detached rationalist. Indeed, the master was composing the Summa Theologiae, including the great text on the divine simplicity, at the same time that he was writing commentaries on John, Isaiah, and the Apostle Paul. So I think that at the very least, it should give critics pause to consider that the subtlest mind of the Middle Ages quite evidently did not see the slightest contradiction between the God of the Bible and the simple God articulated through more philosophical categories. The clearest conceptual link between the God of the Scriptures and the simple God is the notion of creation,

which runs, of course, throughout the sacred writings. is the notion of creation, which runs, of course, throughout the sacred writings. For Thomas, the claim that God makes the world ex nihilo is functionally equivalent to the assertion that God is the unique reality in which essence and existence coincide. For anything that is marked by distinction between quiditas and actus essendi would require, ultimately, the sustaining influence of the one whose very essence is to be. To put this in more straightforwardly biblical terms, creatures depend upon the Creator. To claim, as the Bible clearly does, that God is the Creator of the heavens and the earth, a reality qualitatively other than anything in the universe, is tantamount to

affirming that God's essence is not other than God's existence. Now, what becomes apparent upon even the most cursory reading of Aquinas' text on the matter is that the identity of essence and existence in God is in fact signaled by one of the most famous and influential of all biblical verses. To give just one example from Aquinas' oeuvre, in Article 11 of question 13 of the first part of the Summa Theologiae, Thomas wonders whether qui est, the one who is, is, quote, the most proper name of God. In the said contra of that article, he cites Exodus 3.14. It is written that when Moses asked if they should say to me, what is his name, what shall I say to them? The Lord answered him, thus shall you say to them, he who is has sent me to you.

Therefore, this name qui est is, quote, maxime probrium nomine Dei. So there's Aquinas' citation. In the respondio of that article, we discover this elaboration, quote, since the existence of God is his essence itself, which can be said of no other, it is clear that among other names, this one specifically denominates God, close quote. The great 20th century Thomist, Étienne Gilson, went so far as to characterize Thomas's doctrine

of God as a metaphysics of exodus. Of course, this biblical critique of Thomas' teaching on God becomes more pointed. How could a God who is not an individual, not a definite existent, not a person in possession of attributes other than existence, possibly be the God who speaks to his people, enters into covenant with them, becomes aroused in anger at their sin, and who loves them abiding?

Doesn't the Bible speak of God as good and righteous, as intelligent and compassionate, as provident and merciful? Then how could Aquinas possibly assert that all we can know of God is what he is not? How could a magister sacri paginae set before us a vague entity that cannot be defined and it seems to possess only the thinnest of qualities, namely existence itself. Now here we have to be careful lest we construe Thomas's via negativa as sheer apophaticism. We must indeed remove from our conception of God anything that smacks of creaturely

imperfection or finitude. But by the same token, we must affirm of God anything that is good and perfect within the realm of creatures. Thus under the rubric of the negative way, we must say that the simple God is immutable , eternal, immaterial immutable, since he cannot be reduced from poesy to act, eternal, since he cannot be circumscribed temporally, immaterial, since he's not susceptible to formal change. But under the rubric of the via positiva, we must also say that he is intelligent, loving, providential, personal, powerful, etc., as Thomas clearly does. Ipsum esse, in other words, is not a thin abstraction,

just the contrary. He, and I use the personal pronoun here very much on purpose, is unlimited to be. That is to say, fully actual, entirely realized existence, ens realissimo, the most real reality in Thomas' terminology. Hence, it's altogether correct to say that the simple God is in absolute possession of any and all ontological perfection. To affirm, therefore, that God is not a being or an individual is by no means to imply that he's less than personal or doesn't have the perfection of individuality.

Second principal criticism of the doctrine of the divine simplicity comes from Alvin Plantinga in his school, marked by an analytical philosophical approach to these matters. Plantinga correctly points out that an implication of the classical teaching is that God, precisely as simple, is identical to his, quote, properties. Thus it's not the case that God is a subject that has certain qualities. Rather, God is his own goodness, his own justice, his own power, etc. But this seems to involve, the planting of school argues, the identification of God's manner of being with the manner of being of a property,

which is to say, impersonal, abstract, and incapable of engaging in action. I'm quoting now from Plantinga, no property could have created the world. No property could be omniscient or indeed know anything at all. If God is a property, then he isn't a person. But see, this critique, in my judgment, is born of a confusion. In creatures, we find a distinction between substance and accident or subject and properties. And in this sort of metaphysical composite, the latter does indeed have a mitigated mode of existence vis-a-vis the former. It would be silly to say, for instance, that my power is acting or that my justice is offended. But it's precisely this

sort of distinction that does not obtain within the simple God. Therefore, instead of saying that God is a property or set of properties, one should say that God has no properties, that God is all substance, if you want. In other words, I just move in the other direction of the criticism. A related critique is that given the simplicity of the divine being, all properties of God are in fact identical. Thus his intelligence is his power, which is his mercy, which is his justice, etc. But this seems to the critics, on the face of it, contradictory, for those attributes

are quite obviously distinguishable one from the other. Well, they are indeed distinct in creatures, that is to say, in finite substances that have properties. But God is not a creature, not a supreme being among many. What appear as separable qualities in finite things cohere in God, just as a prism breaks the sheer white light into an array of colors. To illustrate the principle with just a few examples, we could choose many more, consider the knowledge, will, love, and power of God, say four qualities or four properties. For Thomas Aquinas, God's knowledge is not passive and derivative, as ours often is. Rather,

it's always creative. God doesn't know things because they are. They are because he knows them. And this is about a philosophically refined expression of the biblical idea of the divine word as productive of what it enunciates. As the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return without watering the earth, so my word does not go forth from me in vain. From the prophet Isaiah, of course. Thus knowledge and power are identical in him. Moreover, to know the good as good is precisely what it means to will. And since God knows himself completely as a supreme good,

will and knowledge coincide in him. Finally, to love is to will either the absent good or to savor the good that one possesses. Since God is always, by his knowledge and will and possession of his own good, he is, by the same token, marked by the sheerest love. Hence, knowledge, will, power, and love coincide in him. Or to state it differently, all are different ways of squinting from our perspective at the one simple divine act of to be.

squinting from our perspective at the one simple divine act of to be. A third major objection that I will consider also comes from the Plantinga Analytical School. The charge is that the doctrine of the divine simplicity locks God into a sort of necessitarianism, whereby every move, thought, and action on his part would be determined and his freedom effectively eliminated. If God has no accidental properties, it seems impossible to imagine that God could have created a world different than the one he has in fact created, or indeed that God might have chosen not to create at all. Using, as is their want, a possible world schema, the followers of Plantinga argue that if God is

truly free, we must be able to imagine a variety of scenarios in which God remains God, but in which God has different relationships, in which he performs a different set of actions. But if we can imagine this, we must assert that, along with certain essential features, which are obtained in all the different worlds, God must have accidental qualities that obtain in only a given world. But this seems to militate against the divine simplicity. Now, by way of very initial response

to this objection, which I think is an important one, I would note that from beginning to end of his career, Thomas Aquinas maintained both that God is simple and that there's a distinction between things that obtain necessarily within God, such as the Trinitarian relations, and things that are the result of God's free choice, such as creation. Unlike Alvin Plantinga, he saw no contradiction in the matter. The explanation for it hinges upon the difference between the world's relationship to God, which involves causal dependency, and God's relation to the world, which involves no such dependency.

In Thomas' admittedly ambiguous formulation, the former is a real relationship while the latter is not. Creatures are utterly different depending upon how God relates to them, whereas God is utterly the same whether creatures are related to him or not. As Robert Sokolowski specified this unique state of affairs, quote, after creation there are more beings, but no more perfection of being, close quote. Hence, we can indeed imagine an array of possible worlds, even the scenario in which God didn't create at all. But in any and all such worlds, God's simple nature would remain unaffected. Just a last little section here. A few implications for the doctrine of the incarnation.

Just by way of conclusion, I want to make a connection between the doctrine of the divine simplicity and that most characteristic of all Christian doctrines, namely the incarnation. The Chalcedonian claim that two natures, divine and human, come together in the person of Christ, quote, without mixing, mingling, or confusion, is predicated upon the assumption that the to-be of God is qualitatively different than the to-be of any creature.

Finite natures always exist in an ontologically competitive manner. What is distinctive to one nature militates necessarily against what's distinctive to another nature. Hence, we could speak of one creaturely nature becoming another only through some process of destruction or assimilation. The wildebeest becoming the flesh of the lion or the podium becoming a pile of ash.

But in Jesus, God becomes human without ceasing to be God or compromising the integrity of the created nature he assumes. This means that God is transcendent, but precisely in a non-competitive manner. He is indeed other, even totalitarian, but by a non-contrastive otherness, for he's not competing for space, so to speak, on the same ontological ground as creatures. The best way to express this unique form of transcendence is to speak of God not as a being, but rather as the sheer act of to be itself. Ipsum esse is obviously other than anything in the realm of beings, but at the same time, he's the most intimate ground of whatever

exists in the finite arena. If God were simply one being among many, the supreme instance of the genus of being, it's difficult indeed to imagine how his nature could come together non-competitively with the creative nature. Now, extrapolating from this insight, Catholic theology sees many of the conundrums and dilemmas posed by the reformers to be false problems. So the zero-sum game that Luther and his disciples saw as obtaining between faith and works, or between divine glory and human achievement, or between grace and the cooperation with grace, are born, Catholic theologians would tend to see, from a misconstrual of God as competitive with his creation. We have no time, of course, to explore the roots of

this in the abandonment, I would say, of the analogical conception of being. But suffice to say, from a Catholic perspective, the best way to avoid, or at least I'd say we contextualize these dilemmas, is to embrace with enthusiasm the Irenaean model, gloria de homo vivens, the glory of God as a human being fully alive, and to return to what undergirds that, I would say, the understanding of God as the simple act to be itself. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Well, I want to express as well my thanks for the privilege of taking part in this dialogue. I was very eager to join with Bishop Barron in doing the event this evening,

and I think it's wonderful to have this symposium as well before. It's evident from the topic he's chosen that Robert Barron is not one to shy away from controversy, he's chosen that Robert Barron is not one to shy away from controversy, for he has elected to defend one of the most controversial of the divine traditional attributes, namely divine simplicity. He has ably stated that doctrine in its most radical Thomistic form and fairly and forcefully stated several of the objections which have led many, if not most, contemporary Christian philosophers, not to speak of theologians, to reject it. Alas, I find myself among them. It seems to me that the question is

not whether God is simple, but whether divine simplicity is best understood along Thomistic lines. Consider the three objections Bishop Barron mentions to the Thomistic construal of divine simplicity. One, the Thomistic construal is unbiblical. I must confess that I could not agree more with the objector that drawing far more on pagan philosophical sources than on scriptural witness, Aquinas has presented a deeply distorted and hopelessly abstract notion of God more akin to a Buddhist abyss or a Hindu absolute than to the living, personal, and very particular God of the Bible, end quote. The roots of Thomas' doctrine are to be found not in the Bible, but in Neoplatonism. For thinkers like Proclus and Plotinus, the one is an absolutely undifferentiated unity from which all multiplicity derives. By contrast, in the Bible, God is described as a positive being who has properties like holiness, power, eternality, goodness, personhood, and so forth. Whereas other divine attributes like omnipotence, omnipresence, eternality, holiness, and so on,

find support in the biblical text, there is no support for Thomistic simplicity. Aquinas' treatment of Exodus 3.14, I am that I am, is a classic case of eisegesis. If this statement in the mind of the Pentateuchal author was meant to be a metaphysically heavy statement rather than just a way of saying don't stick your nose into things that don't concern you, then why take it as a proof text of Thomistic simplicity rather than a proof text of divine aseity, self-existence, or metaphysical necessity, broadly logically necessary existence. Aquinas reads his thesis of the identity of divine essence and existence into, not out of, the passage.

The terrible consequence of Thomism is that all the wonderful biblical attributes for which we worship him are annihilated by divine simplicity. For the pure act of being is not delimited by any essence. God becomes an unintelligible blank. God is no longer religiously accessible except through mystical experience. Bishop Barron insists that under the rubric of the via positiva we must also say that God is intelligent, loving, providential, personal, powerful, etc. The problem is that these positive predicates cannot be literally ascribed to God on Thomism. They are at best analogical. But God is not literally personal, nor does he love you, nor is he active in the world. For the pure act of being has no properties and stands in no real relations.

Two, Thomistic simplicity falsely makes God a property. Bishop Barron's response is telling, quote, instead of saying that God is a property or set of properties, one should say that God has no properties. Yes, and that is precisely the problem. The pure act of being is inconceivable because it has no properties. We really have no idea what we are talking about. Three, Thomistic simplicity brings about a modal collapse. Since God is absolutely simple across possible

worlds, never knowing or doing anything differently, modal distinctions collapse, and there is in effect only one possible world. God can have no contingent knowledge or action, for everything about him is essential to him. Since God knows that P is logically equivalent to P is true, the necessity of the former entails the necessity of the latter. Thus, divine simplicity leads to an extreme fatalism, according to which everything that happens does so with logical necessity. Bishop Barron tries to avert this unwelcome consequence by appealing to the Thomistic doctrine that while creatures are really related to God, God is not really related to creatures. The problem with this doctrine is that it makes the existence of

creatures inexplicable. Since God is absolutely the same in a possible world in which no creatures exist, as he is in a world chock-full of creatures, the explanation of the difference cannot be found in God. But neither can it be found in creatures, for they come too late in the order of explanation to account for why they exist or not. It follows that on Thomism, there just is no explanation of the existence of creatures or the differences between possible worlds, which seems absurd. which seems absurd. Now in light of these objections it seems to me imperative that we retrace our steps and ask ourselves where things went wrong. It seems to me that the most plausible candidate for the crucial misstep is

Aquinas affirmation of a real distinction between essence and existence. It is this that lies at the root of the causal regress that terminates in something uncomposed of essence and existence, but just is existence itself. Why think that beings are metaphysically composed of essence and existence? Bishop Barron says, everything in our immediate experience is marked by a real distinction between essence and existence, for we can contemplate their natures apart from their acts of existence. But this suffices to show only a conceptual distinction between essence

and existence. Compare properties. On Aquinas' view, properties are merely entierationis, not mind-independent realities. They are formed by the mind's abstracting from an object everything except for the particular feature in question. They are no more really distinct things than, say, the southern exposure of a house is a thing distinct from the house. Deny the real distinction between essence and existence, and the nerve of Thomism is cut.

Finally, that leads to the question, how then ought we to understand divine simplicity? Well, how about this? We reject constituent ontologies. We should not think of things as metaphysically composed in any way. In this sense, everything is simple. But there are still positive predications true of them, including God. If we want, we can strengthen divine simplicity by adding that God is not composed of separable parts.

That suffices for a biblical and philosophically intelligible doctrine of divine simplicity. The Thomistic interpretation of divine simplicity is not essential to Catholic theology. To be sure, the Catholic Church, like the Protestant reformers, affirmed divine simplicity. The Fourth Lateran Council declares God to be absolutely simple and the First Vatican Council completely simple. But neither council caches out these

expressions in Thomistic terms. Their statements are consistent with interpretations of divine simplicity that are not committed to the radical Thomistic theses that God has no properties but is the pure act of being unconstrained by any essence or that God stands in no real relations to the world. Catholics who balk at these claims should feel free to embrace a different understanding of divine simplicity than that offered by Thomas Aquinas. So, Mr. Farrow, do you want to say a few words now? Do you want to open up the session and say some words later? I'm not your big fan of Thomas Aquinas.

That comes through very quickly. No, let me say just a couple things. And it reflects very well the reading I've done in Dr. Craig and a lot of his colleagues. I think he summed up very well the back and forth that goes on. I think a key thing is the question of analogical versus univocal predication. I think you're quite right in suggesting for Aquinas, all of our language about God has this analogical versus univocal predication. I think you're quite right suggesting for Aquinas,

all of our language about God has this analogical quality. So yes, when I say God is intelligent, God is powerful, God is loving, I don't mean that in a univocal way. I can't simply say, now, he's the greatest instance of a loving thing or the greatest instance of a powerful thing. I'm taking something from the creaturely realm, but applying it only in a highly analogical way to God. But it doesn't lead, it seems to me, to a complete apophaticism or to surrender to the Buddhist void or something. I think we can say

meaningful things about God that respect his integrity of being. They don't reduce him to the level of a creature so that the difference of God is honored, but also our ability to name God and to do so using all the biblical categories, as Thomas clearly does. Thomas affirms God is intelligent, full of will and love, full of power, et cetera, et cetera. So he wouldn't deny that for a second, but he placed all that under the heading of analogical rather than univocal predication. And to my mind, that's where things got off the rails. If I can riff on your observations there, I think in the later Middle Ages when the analogical gave way to the univocal in Duns Scotus and especially in Ockham, and that

was received then by a lot of modernity, I think that's where a lot of the discourse went off the rails. And simplicity's got to be read under that rubric. And I would just insist again, it's not a complete apatheticism. Or if I say God has no properties, therefore I can say nothing about God. I can say plenty about God, but under the right epistemological discipline. Lest we collapse God at the level of a creature. Because as I listen to your rhetoric, Bill, in that school,

God starts sounding to me like a very impressive creature, a being with these qualities at a very high level, rather than somebody that really is qualitatively other than the world, even as he grounds the world. And that's what I think simplicity is trying to maintain, is that balance. I was very interested, I'll just end with this, very interested in your last comments about other ways of understanding simplicity.

I think there's something valuable there. I wouldn't say Catholic theology has to be married to Thomas' way of doing it. I think he gives very precise expression to it. But you look in a Bonaventure, you look in Anselm, even Anselm saying God is that than which nothing greater can be thought. That's the simple God that I'm describing. If God's a supreme being, then God plus the world is greater than God alone. And so

Sokolowski's remark there about after creation there are more beings, but no more perfection of being. So id quomios cogitari mequit, can't be a big being. It has to be the sheer act of to be. I think Anselm's naming what Aquinas is naming with somewhat different philosophical tools. But I find that intriguing. I mean, other ways of approaching the question, other systems of thought, but I still think Thomas names it precisely.

Those are a couple things that just struck me as you were responding to that. Eager to have other people jump in. So let me just say, what we're going to try is to do this without raising hands, without me having to call on people. If the traffic gets too heavy, then we'll make an adjustment. So let's have a conversation, and people

come in as they see fit. But having said that, I did see my colleague speak at this hand-off, so we'll let him go first. Yeah, please. So Anselm calls God, as often translated, the greatest conceivable being, except that then which nothing greater can be conceived. But listen, I've always thought that it does not in any way

impugn or mitigate God's transcendence to say that God's a being. It quietly thinks it does, and you clearly think it does. It does that. And I just have never quite followed that. I mean, if being is a bad word, then I'll make up some other word that includes every creature plus God.

And we'll make up a new noun to cover all those things. And now we'll say God is the greatest member of that set. But that's what you can't do. That's a very good way to do it. Well, I'm wondering why. Why not? Because then God does become a being. Yeah, that's right.

That's right. Absolutely. And that can't be the creative, self-existing reality Thomas is talking about. And if you make that move, you're right. That's why Thomas denies that God can be put in any genus, even the genus of being. the creative self-existing reality Thomas is talking about. And if you make that move, you're right. That's why Thomas denies that God can be put in any genus, even the genus of being. And that's where he differs from people like Akka. Right, that's true.

But why can't God be the thing you just mentioned, if God is a being? That's what I'm saying. What makes him potential and finite, for one thing. No, I don't think that. What you're doing is you're making him an instance of a category, an instance of a kind. And then several problems arise from that way of framing God's nature. One thing, if he's one instance among others of a kind, or even if he's a unique instance of a kind,

we have the question the way we would with any other instance of any other kind, an instance of the kind tree, an instance of the kind. We have the question the way we would with any other instance of any other kind, an instance of the kind tree, an instance of the kind dog, is what makes it the case, what causes it to be the case that that universal is instantiated, that that kind is instantiated. So we bring in a causal question with respect to God, but that he's not the first cause. The way that the Thomist, of course, would frame this

is also that if you make God an instance of a kind, an instance of a universal, then you are implicitly bringing in an essence existence distinction within God. In which case that raises the specific question, well how is it the case that in God his essence and existence are combined? What causes this essence which is of itself merely potential to be actualized by being conjoined with what Quines would call an active existence. I'm still not seeing why. If I say that God is a being, and God is a being that is absolutely unique, unlike any others, being self-existent, being a necessary being,

then that raises all the questions about how he got that way. If he's a necessary being, he is. Because it's the fact that he's an instance. That's the problem. It doesn't matter what he's an instance of. If he's an instance, that is to say, he's a particular instantiation of a general pattern

of a universal. At some cost, that's what the problem is. OK, so you don't think he's even an instance of divinity? No, no. OK, well, I do. He's his own divinity. This is this real distinction between essence

and existence that's being presupposed here. And I think if we deny that. I have a question. When you say he's a being, do you mean he's being in the world? Because I think that's where the confusion is. You mean he's in the world if you mean the physical universe is part of that. He created the world, the universe.

But then what category does he belong to? If he's not part of the world, how can you use being? I think that from my perspective, this conversation seems to be a confusion between the way Catholics and Protestants use the term being. Because I think being, the way Father Bishop Barron is using it, is we tend to talk about beings as objects in the world. A being, a being is going to be something different.

I think to me a being is the widest possible category, the widest possible noun that can cover anything, that has an identity apart from other things, and that has properties. And I think God is one of those. Yeah, it's too facile to try to dismiss this as being a misunderstanding or so. Many of us have made great efforts

to try to understand Aquinas and to represent his views fairly. And it's not a matter of misunderstanding. It's genuine disagreement about whether or not God is a thing or a being or an individual. I want to respond to the argument you gave that if God is a being, then the world plus God is greater. I can think of two reasons I think that that argument is not sound. First, God has infinite goodness, and infinity plus any natural number is still infinity. In transfinite arithmetic, aleph no plus two is aleph no.

And so it's impossible for there to be something greater or more good than God. And secondly, I think it's false to think that there is such a thing as God plus the world. There isn't any such thing to be greater. No, but that's the way to say it. That's what I'm arguing somewhere, is that you can't fit God into a pattern like that.

That's what Ed is arguing. You can't see God as an instance of a genus. So in a way, that's right, that you can't make that sort of conceptual move with God. Tom was trying to get at that. Yeah, I was just saying, well, I think part of the problem here is that when we're saying it's not a genus,

being is not a genus, it's because it's not said univocally of all the things that come under it. An example, this problem comes up with just the ten categories of Aristotle. You've got the genus of substance, quantity, quality, relation, time, place, etc. Aristotle argues that being is not said univocally of all those. He wants to say, yeah, you can call them all beings. You can call a place a being, a color a being.

But obviously, I don't mean exactly the same thing when I call a horse a being and when I call white a being. And so he's saying that word is being used analogically and not univocally. And so that doesn't preclude us from saying God is a being, but here's realizing when I say being and I call God a being, I don't mean exactly the same thing as when I say Socrates is a being.

Nor do you. I think this is important to add, because I think this is one area where Professor Craig misunderstands St. Thomas. You characterize analogical language as non-literal, but that's a mistake. So in Thomism, non-literal or analogical language as non-literal, but that's a mistake. So in Thomism, non-literal or metaphorical language is one kind of analogical language, but it's not the only kind, and it's not the kind that's operative in theology and metaphysics.

Well, actually, in St. Thomas, it actually says metaphor is improper. Improper, right. Whereas analogy is proper predication. So when I say God is good goodness properly belongs to God but I call God a lion lion doesn't belong properly to God that's a metaphor he makes that distinction

good the point is that analogical predication is empty if there isn't any univocal element and that's where I agree with Scotus and ultimately we're talking equivocally if God has no properties and that there is no univocal conception that applies.

I would say furthermore, even if the meanings were entirely equivocal, one is still ascribing some sort of property to God in that analogical predication that you, the Thomist has to say he doesn't really have, even if it's a totally different meaning. That's where we can say the kind of thing you said before, that those things are conceptually distinct but not really distinct. You can have that with creatures. You don't even need to have God in the equation for that. Good and being don't mean the same thing. Good being and one don't mean the same thing, but they're all said of all the same things.

Okay, I don't see the point. The point is whether or not God has these. You can say God is wisdom and God is a substance and say those don't have to be two really different things about him. You mentioned mathematics earlier, so I'm going to bring up an example from that. In triangles, you can have different centers. So you've got the place where the altitudes meet, you've got the place where the perpendicular bisectors meet, you've got all these different kinds of centers, and they have different names. In the case of an equilateral triangle, they're all the same point, but they all still meet the definition. All those definitions apply to that one same point. So in God, you've got something like that, where his existing is not something different from his loving, which is not something different from his understanding, which is not something different from his being a substance. So in him, wisdom is substantial. And as to the biblical point, we haven't been talking too much about that right now.

substantial. And as to the biblical point, we haven't been talking too much about that right now, just that I kind of agree with you that philosophy shouldn't sort of take center stage when we're talking about these questions in theology. In scripture, you see God is love, God is wisdom, God is truth, God is life, God is word. Those sound like properties, and they should shock us. But are they metaphors? Well, maybe. But if you say that they're metaphors, you're bringing your own philosophy to it and reading the scriptures and liking them.

So that's where St. Thomas would say, no, my doctrine is quite biblical. There are surprising things. Wisdom is what created the world, not just the one who is wise. Wisdom did it. That's what Proverbs says. And also, as to the Catholic doctrine

point, we're not really free as Catholics to say, well, God is love is just a metaphor. I don't think so. I think we are required to say it means he is an act of love. That is what God is. As a biblical scholar, I think a lot of the biblical texts are underdetermined to what really matters is what you have been discussing up to now is the metaphysical issue. So do the arguments work or not? And if they do work, if the essence existence argument

or the act potency argument so that philosophical, at points, this philosophical system of divine simplicity is true, then those scriptures can be read in such a way, including Exodus 3.14. So more so with the Septuagint than with the Hebrew. The Hebrew is more ambiguous. And I don't think

the essence of existence aspect, which you get in the Septuagint, exhausts the meaning. I think there's other things going on in that passage about God's covenant relationship with Israel as well. But I think lots of scriptures are in themselves

undeterminative. But once you sort out the metaphysics, you can see that the scriptures are compatible with that. I agree with this quite a bit. That's right. Can I just jump in on this very important point? In Aquinas' method, I'm always resistant to univocal construals of it. Thomas begins with philosophy, then he kind of marches his way toward a biblical proof text or something.

Or, oh, he's a biblical theologian. They wash back and forth in Aquinas, and they do it often in all the medievals. Sometimes biblical commentary washes toward metaphysics. Sometimes metaphysics is the propodutic to the Bible. It's a monoduxio, Thomas says, to lead you by the hand. He would see Aristotle and Averroes and all this as simply as a propodutic to get people ready to read the Bible properly. But I don't think we have to lock him into a method.

I think it washes back and forth a lot in this thing. And you're quite right about Exodus 314, the famous debates around that. I use it simply to illustrate Thomas using it as a biblical exegete, and that he saw his metaphysics as rooted in the Bible. But in the wake of Gilson's famous metaphysics of Exodus, there are huge debates around it.

Yeah, Revelation 1, it was 1 for the New Testament scholars, so Jewish scholars would feel freer to reject the Septuagint translation and so on. I don't think Christians can because of Revelation 1 where you have the

self-existent one even before the one who was and is to come. I know in Revelation 4 it's done past, present, future, but that's because God as the eternally self-existent one, it's already established the theology in Revelation 1. Yeah. I think there were some comments we decided.

Yeah, I had actually two things. So in terms of the biblical commentary, Aquinas believes, and many Christians do, that Scripture is God's word. And so the proper interpretation of Scripture for him has to do with God's intention. And because of his understanding of who God is, there's an inexhaustible sort of richness

to the interpretation of Scripture that is unt understanding of who God is, there's an inexhaustible sort of richness to the interpretation of scripture that is untrue of any other text, a kind of plenitude of meaning. And that, it seems to me, opens the door for this sort of interpretation to come later in the traditions. But the other thing I want to mention, and this goes to what Bill was saying about possible worlds, applies to his view

is that God didn't have to create it all, and that God also didn't have to create this particular world. There could have been other sorts of worlds that God didn't have to create it all, and that God also didn't have to create this particular world. There could have been other sorts of worlds that God created. And the reason for that is that he thinks that the created world that exists in any created world only dimly reflects the infinity of God, and so no created world can properly mirror, as it were, who God is. And so God, from all eternity to one eternal after,

the world chose, freely chose, to create the world that we exist. But he didn't have to create it all, and he didn't have to create the particular world that we're in. Well, of course, I realize that. The question is whether or not these affirmations are coherent. And in the same way that these positive predications about God are incoherent, given the doctrine that God has no properties but just is the pure act of being, these statements that creation is a free act, that creatures don't have to exist,

that it doesn't lead to modal collapse. These are incoherences in the Thomistic system that these objections are intended to bring to light. You know, St. Thomas, I guess the proof for this is the doubt of the first thing. The second article after that is the one on the divine simplicity. The one following that is on perfection. And he really has to do the divine simplicity first because all his arguments for divine simplicity have to show that any kind of composition whatsoever involves imperfection. And so he doesn't just deal with essence and existence. The first one is whether God's a body. The second is whether he's composed of matter and form. The third

is whether his nature and his subject is the same. And then the fourth one was whether his essence is the same as his existence. He asked whether his substance is the same as his accidents. So what he's showing is that there is no composition. And that's what he really means by simple. There's no composition, because any kind of composition would involve imperfection. Why is that so? I get off the bus right there.

Why does it involve imperfection? Because it involves some kind of potency, finally, or dependence on something else. Not if the thing is a necessary being whose parts are all necessary parts of it. I don't think that's all. You're still not able to make one being unless one thing is to another as potency to act.

If you've got a bunch of different things that are your components, and you say you've got one being, but it's all actual, well, you've got an actual component and an actual component, right? That's, well, you've got two actual beings. What makes them one?

Either they are in potency to something else that forms them and constitutes them as one, or one is in potency to the other. If you don't have that, you really just have many VAs. Right. So you need potency there. I think it's crucial here to point out that there is an ambiguity in the proposition that God has no properties, which I think that Professor Craig and also Alvin Plantinga, they make a lot of heavy use of that proposition as a weapon against divine

simplicity. But we have to ask, what does Aquinas mean, or what does the Thomist mean? Because Aquinas doesn't use precisely that formulation. And in Thomism, I mean, just a side quibble, the word wouldn't be properties anyway. The word property has a very specialized use in Thomism. But putting that aside, so if we use a term like attribute or accident, the claim is certainly not that God has no accidents in any sense whatsoever. The idea is rather that God does not instantiate any accidents. He's not instantiating platonic forms. He's not instantiating universals or anything like that.

So can we say that God has wisdom? Can we say that God has power? Absolutely. Not only can we, we ought to say those things. We must say them. But that doesn't mean that God is one instance among others of powerful things. Or that his wisdom is something that he has and is different from him. Yes.

That's his own wisdom. Right. And that's what we mean when we say Socrates is wise, is he has this aptitude to borrow significant. And he can either have it or not have it. Whereas we're saying God, there's not that kind of sexual interest. Right. The substance of Socrates is not good enough and rich enough

to also be wisdom. Socrates is an instance of wisdom. But God is wisdom. He's not an instance of wisdom. That's true. I think it's a slightly different point. But God is wisdom. He's not an instance of wisdom. That's true.

I think it's a slightly different point. But Socrates, his being a man, is not good enough by itself. It's not rich enough to make him also be wisdom. That's not where he lies. God's substance is good enough. His act of existence is rich enough to also be his wisdom. He doesn't need something additional to that, as if his substance were too impoverished

and needed sort of accessories. That's not the case with God. With us, it is. That's why I thought question four, which follows the divine simplicity, is important because Thierry argues that God has all the perfections that any creature has

because he's the cause of all creatures. So he pre-possesses in a preeminent mode, as he says, all the perfections of creatures. So those are-possesses in a preeminent mode, as he says, all the perfections of creatures. So those are the things we want to attribute to him positively. So he has all of that, all of the things that answer to definitions of wisdom and love and so on. But without any of the things that are in those definitions that imply limitation or imperfection or potency,

and he has them all in one actuality, one perfection. Can I ask a general question? Is it the case that this is an issue of divine simplicity that almost universally splits Catholic and Protestant theologians? No. No. No.

No. I think there are some implications there. But I wouldn't see it as the sort of falling and rising or fall or standing point between Protestants. Is it the case that at least one gets the impression from the conversation that maybe most Protestants have a problem with divine simplicity, Protestant theologians?

Well, Thomas, you do. No, but most Protestants and most Catholics do not understand that. Yeah, I think that's right. They just don't even think at that level. But I do think rightly understood, it's a hinge point. It's an extremely, it's Thomas' way of naming what's really distinctive to God.

Now, we can't define God, but what's distinctive to God, the best we can do is to name this issue of simplicity. God is that absolutely unique reality in which essence and existence coincide. Everything else is a creature. So, what other, I know you pointed to some of them, that absolutely unique reality in which essence and existence coincide. Everything else is a creature.

So what other, I know you've pointed to some of them, but what other significant major theological issues turn on that hinge? To me, it's that competitiveness. And I got this, it goes back to Robert Sokolowski. The Ipsum Essay is a non-competitively transcendent reality. That's to say, transcendent to the world. God is not the world. God is totalitar, alitar.

Not the way that the planet Jupiter is not the planet Earth, you know, just set at a distance apart from. So Augustine, that God is superior sumo meo, et intimior intimomeo. That's the hinge. God is higher than anything I could possibly imagine,

and he's closer to me than I am to myself. That's possible only if God exists in this absolutely unique way, I would say non-contrastively or non-competitively transcendent to the world. And I think a lot then hinges on that. As I was suggesting, when we start thinking of God over and against us, all sorts of problems begin to arise. And I go back to Irenaeus there. He said, Gloria Dei Homo Vivem.

God's glory is when we're fully alive. It's not as though God's glory is bought at a price of creaturely degradation. But the more the creature is enhanced, the more God is glorified. And that signals something very unique about God. Yeah, so one thing I want to add is you made the application of divine simplicity to the incarnation. And I think that's actually where things

get even more interesting. Because I think that the whole issue of the non-competitive thing really clarifies for me the whole Eucharistic debates between Protestants and Catholics. I mean, that's something that I write on.

It seems like that whole understanding, I've used the Chalcedonian formula of the two natures, leaving out the two natures, two persons, and the one nature, one person. So leaving out the Nestorians and the Monophysites, with the Chalcedonian formula that stands, they argue about it during the 16th century Reformation. And in the end, the whole notion of the transubstantiation

in the Eucharist, so incarnation comes up again, in the practice of the Eucharist. And the question that's debated over and over is, how is Christ present? And I think this is where this whole, the difference actually comes up again and it's around this competitive, non-competitive aspect. Because transubstantiation, which is the Catholic doctrine

about the traditional Catholic doctrine about what is happening and how Christ is present in the Lord's Supper, understands that the essence of God is there somehow, the substance of God is there somehow. The substance of God is there. But you still see, you know, the cup, and you still see the bread, but those are the accidents. But Protestants do see it as competitive.

They can't, for them, if Christ is fully human, if you really want to embrace the incarnation fully and say Christ is human, then Christ also has to have human property. So the issue of location is where competition comes up. So how can Christ be at the right hand of the Father? How can Christ be in the supper? And then this becomes one of the debates. So I think divine simplicity, when you say it's a hinge,

it also becomes a hinge in something like doctrine of the universe. And it's a huge thing to be opening up there, but I do think you're right that both with incarnation and sacramental theology, there are very important implications. If we get the doctrine of God wrong, then other things start falling down too. So I think that's quite right. And I think that non-competitiveness

has been a hinge up and down the centuries. How do you read that? Where would Eastern Orthodoxy fall with regards to Thomic divine simplicity? Because they have the essence and distinction. Yeah, they're uneasy for different reasons. Yeah, and something like Gregory Palamas and so on would depart from Aquinas in significant ways.

Yeah, I wouldn't claim any expertise to go much beyond that. But they're uneasy with what would take maybe hyper-rationalism of hyper rationalism for one thing. And the whole essence energy is debate, right? It's a kettle of fish I wouldn't want to open up right now. Would you say that the Cappadocian fathers, are they compatible with the

On what issue? Well, it's often said that there's more emphasis on the threeness of God in the Cappadocian Fathers than what you get in the West. So would the understanding of God that you find in the Cappadocian Fathers would be, would divine complicity fit in with that? With Thomistic Thomas' understanding.

I'm not aware that they say anything that's relevant. They may not. They may not. Just seem right that St. Thomas' treatise on the Trinity, the divine simplicity is kind of key to understanding the procession of persons in divinity.

If it weren't for the divine simplicity, the Word would not be God. And that's central to his account because he argues for the fact that God's act of understanding is the same as his essence, that the Word that comes forth in divinity has to be God. Well, he's got to say, to keep simplicity, he's got to say that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not parts. That's right. And his word's not like our word. But also to keep monotheism.

Yeah, absolutely. It seems to me that with respect to the Incarnation, the doctrine of simplicity makes the doctrine of the Incarnation all the more difficult, if not impossible, because the doctrine of the Incarnation is that the second person of the Trinity assumed a human nature, right? He has a nature, and that's exactly what divine simplicity denies. God's essence is his pure act of being. So how does the second person of the Trinity have a nature? He's got human properties.

Well, he doesn't turn into a creature. Now that's the other point I wanted to make. I think you gave a false analogy that just jumped out at me as you were reading your paper. I hadn't noticed it before. On the last page, we could speak of one creaturely nature becoming another only through some process of destruction and assimilation and it struck me that's not an abacus to the Incarnation. The doctrine of the Incarnation is not the divine nature turned into a human nature. That's

canonicism. So what we want to say is, when you say, how can this nature come together noncompetitively with a created nature? By having both natures possessed by the same. The one person has a divine nature and a human nature. And so there's no problem. But the problem would be simple. He can't have any properties, human or divine. Yeah, I don't think St. Thomas, when he says God's essence is the same as existence,

he's denying that God has an essence. Well, you know, yeah. His essence is to be. I guess what he's saying is that every creature has a distinction between its essence and existence because they receive their existence. But God's existence is not received from him. Yeah. So there's no real distinction.

Yeah, that's the difficult one. Well, that is the doctrine. His essence is to be. His existence is not something received. And that first being can't receive his existence. His existence is not something we receive. And that first being can't receive. Yeah, I think what Steve and I have been emphasizing is you don't have to affirm divine simplicity to affirm things like divine aseity and metaphysical necessity.

These are affirmed by non-Thomists. I think the worry is that if you hold it to divine necessity and you also hold on to there's some kind of act of potency distinction in God, then in fact what happens is you have one thread of a sweater. And if you start pulling at it, the necessity comes apart. Because if the being is composed of act of potency, there has to be some principle by which that composition is

made. So in other words, every composed entity has some sort of composer, some sort of principle by which it has its unity. And so the trouble is that God's necessity ends up being undermined unless we also affirm that in God there is no act in potency. There's no potency in God, just pure actuality.

So where do we work? One of the difficulties to see that creatures actually have a composition of essence and essay. That's what I think we are discussing. That's what I think is really the thing that is the point of difficulty. If people agreed on that, I think we'd agree on the rest. Well, do we exist in a limited way?

Do we exist in a definable way? I mean, for Aquinas, my Octus Ascendis are received and delimited actus ascendis precisely by the potency principle of essence. That's why I'm different than God. God can't have a being received in such a way. And so otherwise, then all the potency act stuff kicks in, and we have to find a cause that brings them together and so on.

That's his problem. Yeah, nothing is its own limit. So if you have unlimited or infinite being, that's what God would have to be. If you've got a finite being, a limited being, you're going to have to have something other than just the existence, which is the capacity in which it exists. That's the essence, and those are different things. So we're almost out of time for this segment,

but I do want to make sure, is there anyone who hasn't gotten into the discussion and would like to before we close down this first half? Would either of you like to say another word about this? You're wrong. I'm just delighted, thank you. I appreciate it very much, I think it's a very stimulating conversation.

I do think it's an important point. When I feel strongly about ecumenical conversations, I've been in a lot of them. And what I call ecumenism 1.0 is that we can get together around a table and not hurl anathemas and we're friendly and all that, which I think is great. But I always say, let's get to ecumenism 2.0, where we can really start engaging issues.

And what I love about this issue is it's behind the 16th century it's not the immediate 16th century justification sacraments on it's a deeper issue that doesn't form those so i'm just delighted to have a conversation with this all right hey good on you for sticking around to the end i hope that this podcast blessed you the discussion blessed you as much as it did me it was a fascinating discussion thanks to everybody who supports points of the coin us on patreon seriously y'all are the best and y'all are what make this show possible so if that's you from my family to yours which sounds like a super cheesy slogan but i mean it thank you Who's gonna survive?