Truth Unites - 1 Protestant + 2 Catholics Discuss Divine Simplicity

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

Gavin Ortlund, John DeRosa, and Pat Flynn discuss divine simplicity, following up on Gavin's debate with Ryan Mullins. See The Classical Theism Podcast: https://www.classicaltheism.com/ See Pat's book on God's existence: https://www.amazon.com/Best-Argument-God-Patrick-Flynn/dp/1644137801

Hey, everybody. What you are about to see is a discussion between myself and two Roman Catholic friends about divine simplicity. It was with Pat Flynn and John Derosa. John has a great podcast, a classical Theism podcast. I've been on there a couple times. Check that out in the video description. Pat has a new book, newish, called The Best Argument for God. I'll link to that as well. We're going to have a discussion at some point, too. I like both these guys. And we were basically talking about divine simplicity. This was occasioned by a debate I'd had with Ryan Mullins on whether divine simplicity is true. I was saying it is true, and you can see that debate on my YouTube channel as well. But I wanted to share this discussion for a couple of reasons. One is it's healthy when I'm

doing a lot of Protestant apologetics. It's also healthy to appreciate where we have common ground with the other Christian traditions because our common ground is considerable, and I don't want it to seem like I'm always in negative mode. Polemics. I mean, there's a place for polemics, but I think it's also healthy when you can just step back and say, okay, let's celebrate what we have in common. So whenever we can do that, I think that's healthy to do as well. The other, the reason I wanted to share this is because divine simplicity, something I keep thinking about. And I think it's important, an important doctrine. I think it's one of those things that oftentimes you first hear about it, you might think, oh, it's kind of weird. Okay, well, no big deal either way, you know.

That's how I, when I first heard, I was probably in high school. He said, God is simple. What, that's weird. Oh, well, don't, you know, no big deal either way. The more I think about it, the more I think it actually has a really important doctrine. It's not just out in the periphery somewhere. It's really important for making sense of the creator creation relationship and also for the way we commend theism in apologetics context. I'm not saying it's like, you know, going to make everything, but it makes a difference. And so it's important to think about this. And stemming from both of those comments, I would just say one of the things that came out in the debate, in the aftermath that I think hopefully is a point of sort of clarification about divine simplicity.

Two things I will say, and then we'll get into the discussion that I hope are clarified through this process of the debate, the aftermath, and so forth. One is just how universal divine simplicity is in the pre-modern Christian tradition. This is something I thought was the case, but in the, you know, you never know fully everything that's out there. So I was kind of wondering, well, maybe there's stuff I'm not aware of, you know. But one of the things that sort of came out is the only efforts to show a pre-modern precedent for rejecting divine simplicity, which is the doctrine that God is without parts or without composition, is you people go to the Muslim tradition or people go to heterodox Christians. So you really don't have anybody until the 19th century that I can find who reject this doctrine.

And one of the reasons I want to belabor that point, not so much just at the debate, but just because one of the things I see today, and this relates to my broader Truth Unites ministry, is people pit this as a Roman Catholic versus Protestant issue, or something like that. You know, as though that, well, that's the Catholic doctrine, but Protestants, not so much. It's like, you know, that is absolutely not the case. It's a historic Protestant doctrine. This is a part of our common heritage that Protestants and Roman Catholics can together come, sort of coalesce around and defend and commend today. This is part of where we can and should agree, I think. And to see that, all you have to do is go to almost any major historic Protestant confession of faith and read the first sentence.

Not everyone, but many, the Belgian confession, read it up. First sentence, God is a, there is a single and spiritual being. The Lutheran Augsburg confession starts off by referencing the divine essence, which is without body, comma, without parts. The 39 articles of the Anglican tradition, Article 1 starts off with this phrase referencing God as without body, parts, or passions, and then that phrase, I'll put it up in the London Baptist Confession of 1689. You can see the full thing on the screen. It's also reiterated verbatim in the Westminster Confession of Faith and in the Savoy Declaration.

So these are the three sort of parallel 17th century British streams of the, the reform tradition, Presbyterian, that's Westminster, Congregationalist, that's Savoy Declaration, and Baptist, that's London Baptist Confession. And so they're all saying God is without parts and so forth. So this is a, and you can find other examples. This is a historic Protestant doctrine. I just think, I want to commend that and encourage people to think about that. It's definitely a weakness of contemporary Protestants, but I would just want to encourage Protestants to see this as not some other tradition. This is part of our heritage. The other issue, though, real quick, before we dive into the discussion that I hope is sort of clarified through this process as these

conversations are going on is just what is divine simplicity? Because this is a point where I have continual concern about this. And basically I think that in the philosophical discussion, sometimes one very narrow understanding of divine simplicity that particularly comes in with the Thomist tradition, but it's not representative of all Thomists, is singled out. And then other, the whole rest of Christendom in the pre-modern era is sort of marginalized or excluded altogether. So the Palomite tradition coming out of from in the east from Gregory Palomis and then the Scotist tradition from John Duns Scotus. You know, I pointed out in my opening speech that Palomis calls God the most simple of all things. And he's very clear that God he affirms divine

simplicity. The energies of God are not at odds with saying God is simple. I have a whole video on the Essence Energy's distinction on YouTube, if anyone's interested in that. And then John Duns-Codis, I quoted as well as he's clearly a proponent of divine simplicity. And so the fact that there are some scholars who will say, well, that's a defunct account of divine simplicity or something like that, it doesn't mean we just get to discard those whole traditions and say, well, they don't count as divine simplicity. I think the more reasonable and generous interpretation and the less eccentric classification would just be to say something like, well, those, if you hold this view, Those traditions have an erroneous understanding of divine simplicity.

But it comes to a point where if someone is saying, I believe God is simple, and then we're coming along afterwards and saying, well, you don't really mean that. It becomes a way of sort of jamming words in their mouth. And as I say, this is an eccentric classification because it's customary to hear reference to the Palomite version of divine simplicity or the Skodist version of divine simplicity. So there is a tradition in the West, in the Thomas tradition of criticizing the Palomite tradition, but there's a lot of recent scholarship that is emphasizing those two traditions have more in common than you think.

And whoever is right and wrong there, most would grant, well, Palomis is still affirming some kind of account that God is simple. And certainly that's how Scotus is interpreted. So there's a huge danger in, again, just like this issue can be framed like it's Protestant, versus Catholic, it can be framed as though this is just a Thomist idea rather than something that's sort of common to different Christian traditions. And then the other problem here is that some contemporary definitions of divine simplicity put so much emphasis not only on the Thomist tradition, but upon one particular slice of the Thomist tradition. So you don't even have most tomists represented by how divine simplicity is defined. And this is why I addressed this in my opening speech.

because when I was reading through Ryan's material on this topic prior to the debate, I bought one of his books and I read through several of his articles. I noticed he was describing divine simplicity as claiming, number one, you cannot make any conceptual distinctions of God. And number two, God has no properties at all, even relational or extrinsic properties, like being a creator. So this is how divine simplicity is being cashed out. And my abiding concern about this is this is a total caricature.

Many Tomists are happy to say God has extrinsic or relational properties. We can call God Creator. The category of Cambridge properties came up in the debate. If you're watched the debate, you're familiar with that labeled. Just to define that, I borrow this metaphor from Ed Faser, basically. Think of it like this. I have the property of being the tallest person in my family. But if my sons outgrow me, then I no longer have that property.

But it's not because I've changed. It's just, but I do have a new property. That's one metaphor to describe the idea of Cambridge properties. This is, I'm just trying to give some examples of how Thomas will often describe God's extrinsic or relational properties. And I think what Ryan Mullins wants to do is say, well, no, I've got this one, I've got these two or three footnotes, you know, Catherine Rogers says this, James DeLiesel says this, therefore that's what divine simplicity is.

And part of the problem here is some of those thinkers are being very, misrepresented. In my email correspondence with James Dolazol, this was very clear. He was very explicit saying, I think Cambridge properties can be predicated of God. So he's being misrepresented. But the deeper problem here is citing a couple of proponents of divine simplicity and then forcing their claims upon everybody else who affirms the doctrine. And just ignoring the fact that many, many tomists are fine saying that God has relational properties or extrinsic properties. You know, Ed Phaser points to Barry Miller as a Thomist who has developed that particularly. And then, of course, Thomas himself is fine to speak of God as having properties like

Creator and Lord and Judge and so forth. I've drawn attention to passages in Thomas like this. I'll put one up as an example. God, he's clearly not thinking of these as just in our minds, but no, he's saying we can predicate that of God. And I think the confusion here, and I went into this in my opening speech, is that when Thomas denies that there are accidents in God, he's using the term accident differently than modern philosophers. He means something that is real in the subject. He means an intrinsic property,

not an extrinsic one. It's fine to say. So I'm just jealous that these caricatures get pointed out because I think it causes confusion. You can believe that God is simple and still affirm that God has extrinsic properties and we can call God a creator and so forth. And the attempt to deny that has to basically ignore the majority of proponents of divine simplicity and say, no, no, I get to define it based upon these few statements I can find. And that is a form of caricaturing the doctrine. So I just, I don't know, I guess I'm just jealous that that gets out there and gets cleared up for people. So with that, with that said, you'll hear more about all that. If this discussion is not of interest to you, I totally get that. But I would just say, you know, don't think of divine simplicity

is just for the nerds, though it is, you know, it's pretty abstruse and out there. Nonetheless, it's actually really important. And there were some metaphors that Pat and John went into here that I hope, I think can kind of clarify this and help people understand what this doctrine means and what is at stake in it. So I hope this discussion will bring greater clarity about this topic. All right, with that said, let's dive right in. Gavin, I wanted to start with you because you were the participant in the debate. And just a little stage setting, what was the format and nature of this debate?

And then particularly, how did you structure your case? Yeah, it was a fun format, excuse me, because we had a weak intermission sort of between the opening statements, which I actually thought was a really cool effort to try to create time for both the viewers and for both of us. We've all watched debates where you can tell talking past one another is happening because people are trying to think on the spot, which is hard to do. So that gave some, you know, just time for processing. And then we came back. We tried to steal man each other's positions.

And then we had 30 minutes of open discussion, Q&A and a close. And the five minute conclusion, the thesis was, is divine simplicity true? So that's what we were debating. Yeah, it was a great discussion. I enjoyed it. I felt like it could serve value as an introduction to the issue for people, probably, you know, getting into it a little bit. I did feel like we were talking on different wavelengths a lot of the time.

And sometimes that's neither person's fault or both people's fault. A lot of times when it's like, I've noticed this a lot, the theologian versus philosopher, we have different inclinations and this can cause problems. And I'm not saying it's the blame is on either side more than the other. We all have our weaknesses. But, you know, I think in this case, I felt like we got started off a little bit, not really intersecting. as much as we could have. So I don't feel like we actually made a ton of progress, but I still, but that happens a lot in debates, but I still feel like it had value in introducing the topic.

But, you know, his steel manning of me wasn't really a steel man. It was kind of a, just say what you didn't do. So that was right out of the gate, we were kind of missing each other, because I had made three points. I had a conceptual point, a historical point, and then a basic brief argument that divine simplicity is necessary for other aspects of the doctrine of God, like divine aseity, for example. And the steel, his steel, his steel, man of me was more just saying, well, here's what Gavin could have said. And then when that was pointed out, he went on to some further criticisms. So it felt like we never really got back on the same wavelength, really locking into some of the specific things. But that happens

sometimes, no big deal. And it's hard with a live back and forth like that. I want to just comment quick, I'm going to let you keep talking about the debate, but I wanted to comment quickly that I did think the format was cool to have those opening statements posted ahead of time, allow the viewers to comment, ask questions, even leading up to it. And then the host was able to to share some of those questions. So that was very interesting and aiming to set up for what I've heard Dr. William Lane Craig call clash. Clash is like when both people are okay, they're on the same wavelength, they really understand the views, and then they go back and forth on those particular points where they disagree. And, you know, the nature of this debate is it touches on a

lot of different topics where it was difficult and maybe the best clash didn't necessarily take place. Nonetheless, I thought your points were important. Before you give some more thoughts, though, Gavin, can you just say real briefly what those three points were, the historical point, the conceptual clarification, and the brief argument. You don't have to give all the details of your opening statement, but just in case folks are listening to this that haven't heard the full debate, I'll recommend they watch the full thing. But what were those three ideas that you presented? Yeah, and I can do it really briefly. Historical point, basically all Orthodox Christians prior to the 19th century affirmed divine simplicity. I say basically as an adverb to

into that sentence to protect myself. Seems like all, but, you know, it seems virtually unanimous. And that's an important point because, you know, he's going to, the pivot that happens is he'll talk about theists. But, okay, so I'm not talking about theists because he'll, Dr. Mullins will go to the Muslim tradition to try to get backing for his view. But I'm saying orth, or heterodox Christians, but I'm saying orthodox Christians. Second point was a conceptual clarification just basically trying to say, well, you know,

how is this doctrine that can seem at first glance so incoherent? How does it make sense? And I was just talking about how the ancients approached this question in a different ontological framework than modern philosophers tend to. And I cash that out a little bit. And then thirdly, I just made an argument that divine simplicity is necessary for a biblical and orthodox doctrine of God. I talked about other doctrines, especially divine asseity and divine absoluteness,

so that God exists from himself and that God is not conditioned by anything external to himself. I said basically simplicity is necessary for those, and those are necessary, therefore simplicity is necessary. That's a basic rundown of kind of the third argument there. No, I think that that's a great overview of the case. And we're going to bring in a little bit more back and forth, but what did you think about how the discussion went? What were some other points that you wanted to highlight or reflecting back on. How did you think it went overall, given that that was your opening statement? Yeah. I'll share one takeaway, and then I'll be curious for Pat and your thoughts, too. And I'm happy to be talking with you guys, by the way. This is fun. I think, you know, one thing I walked

away with is this concern I articulated throughout the debate of a caricature. There really is the concern I still have to this moment. I do think there, that his, that Dr. Mullins, definition of divine simplicity, I called it a radicalized version of divine simplicity. And what I mean by that is he tends to go through and pluck out the strongest possible statements made about divine simplicity in the tradition or by contemporary theologians and philosophers sometimes shorn them of nuance or harmonization with other things that that person will say and then privilege them over other statements about divine simplicity so that you get this kind of like extreme version of the doctrine where, you know,

claims like God has no properties at all. Even Cambridge properties cannot be predicated of God. We cannot make conceptual distinctions about God. God cannot be called a creator, you know, properties like this. These kinds of statements. Now, he will say, well, it's not a caricature because I can locate. Here's the footnote. This person said this.

Sometimes if you look up what's in the footnote, it's a little bit of a distortion or simplification. other times it's just that scholar or resources being privileged over others. So we hear a lot about Catherine Rogers, but we don't hear about Barry Miller, you know, in the Thomas tradition, for example. And then, of course, that's just within Thomism. Then of course, you've got the Palomite and Scotist traditions, which I would say affirm divine simplicity as such. And then, and they're kind of excluded as well, they don't really affirm divine simplicity. And so, you know, the, yeah, there's some other things that could go into that too.

but that that'd be the kind of the bottom line is I think you know the analogy I gave is like if I if I advocated for social trinitarianism which I don't but if I did and said that and then I said basically that's trinitarianism you know that that that's kind of a way of in another doctrine of what this is it's kind of isolating the strong you know one particular version as though that's the entire thing and I would just you know kind of come back to at the end of the day I just number one I think divine simplicity is an important and true doctrine and I know we all agree on that. But also, I just think it is actually something that needs to be treated with greater respect. And so just to recognize, no. I mean, I, you know, if you read through like Dr. Mullins'

interactions with Ed Phaser, Ed Phaser makes a lot of great points. So I know that Dr. Mullins is familiar that a lot of Tomists will say, you know, God has Cambridge properties. That's totally fine to speak of God as creator. And there's various ways to understand that. So that's maybe something we could talk about here is. Yes. Why is it, you know, I'd be curious if you guys are with me that you can affirm divine simplicity, even a robust tomistic account and still say, we can speak of God with these extrinsic properties. We can make conceptual distinctions of God. You don't need to construe this in that kind of radicalized. And we can make contingent attributions of God as well. That's right. Yes. So, Pat, I want to, I want to go to Pat Flynn for this

comment too, Pat. I want you to follow up on this, but let me just kind of frame this part of the discussion, Gavin, because what you're bringing up and what did come up in the debate, And what Dr. Chad McKintosh talked about in their own debate debrief was kind of regrettably that the definition of divine simplicity wasn't set necessarily super clear before the debate or even during the time, during the exchange, you didn't get into that definition until maybe 10 or 15 minutes in. And then there was a lot of just disagreement over the definition. But I do think the way you presented it, Gavin was correct, that the core of doctrine of divine simplicity is that God is not composed of. parts. And then how that gets cashed out in a tomistic tradition, in an Enselmian tradition, in a palomite tradition, in a Scotis tradition, will have some variation. But they all affirm that fundamental core idea that God is not composed. So I think that's something that we have to

insist on and keep saying. But Pat, I'm curious how you think about this. And even Pat, what you think about these phrases of, there are some writers that will say, God has no attributes, God has no properties. How do you understand what's going on here? Yeah, it's, it's complicated. And like Gavin said, it's really important to evaluate divine simplicity within its proper metaphysical framework. If you don't understand that metaphysical framework, then divine simplicity is going to seem probably ludicrous to you. And there's some really important stuff in the background, like one's theory of existence, right? How does one think of existence, right? For Thomas, existence is a very thick thing. It's super rich and soupy and juicy. Existence is some, it's the common sense. It's the common sense.

view that existence is something that things actually have participate in. You know, it's a first level property for Tomas, right? That's not something that a lot of sort of contemporary analytic philosophers are on board with. I think, unfortunately so. I think this is the, this is a necessary commitment to make sense of a lot of other independent philosophical issues like the one and the many, right? I think the to mystic system is really useful, if not necessary for solving like those big, broad, deeply historic philosophical puzzles, like not just like the one in the many, but puzzles of change and identity through time. Like Thomas's metaphysical system supplies the theoretical resources to make sense, right,

to supply the necessary conditions for these phenomena. And then once that sort of system is in place, it's from within that system that certain first cause arguments are made that run to the divine. simplicity. Now, John, I know you're going to bring this up, but I'll just cut ahead a little bit, is this is different than the Enselmnihan approach, right? So the Enselmnihan approach, I'm not a fan of, right, where you think of the greatest conceivable being, and you think that, you know, you think of certain great-making properties or stuff like that. You think that maybe simplicity is a great-making property because it implies independence or what have you. And, you know,

I have several issues with this approach. I just want to throw a few of them out there and then get Gavin's thoughts and then get clear on what has always been. Before you do that, Pat, can I set it up as to why you're bringing that up? Yeah, yeah, please do it. Because in their and I know we will get back to the first debate itself, but in their own debate review when Dr. Mullins was talking to Dr. Chad McIntosh, they, Dr. McIntosh brought up the point that the real, a big reason for holding to simplicity is by taking this principle that dependence implies imperfection. And since God is a perfect being, then he can't be dependent on any parts because then he would have imperfections.

And then what Dr. McKindosh presents is an analysis or a bit of a critique of maybe we can doubt that principle, that dependence always involves imperfection. And that's why it might be okay for God to depend on his parts and that way of him coming at it. But I think what we're kind of getting at is, well, no, it's actually that dependence implies a lack of ultimacy. or, you know, being the fundamental thing and that that's the core problem more of at a metaphysical level. But he did bring up that point in their debrief. And it is relevant because some Anselmians might press it like Pat, as you're explaining. So feel free to continue. So I want to point out a few issues with that. One is when it comes to, you know, perfect being theology, I mean,

you're always going to have these sorts of, you know, intuition clashes that at some level will seem irresolvable to me. Now, I guess if anything seems obvious, it does seem obvious to me that not being dependent is better than being dependent. But I'm not going to fight about that, right? Like, being the cause of everything else and in no way being caused yourself just seems like to be more powerful and to be greater. I don't know what, like, if we're going to clash over that intuition, then I just going to probably give them the whole project altogether. But that's not my project. So I don't, I don't really care. The problem with the, the, the, the, the, insomnia approach is really this, is that we're thinking of, like, great making properties. We're

thinking of, like, God as sort of the maximal member within a category, right? Like, God just sort of maxes out a sort of. A. certain category, right? But never escapes that category, that creaturely category altogether. So you think of like knowledge. God just knows all true propositions, but he's got propositional knowledge and his knowledge is in no way, it's different in degree only, but not different in kind, right? So to me, the insomnia never escapes the creature category with God, right? It just makes God into this sort of super being or something that would be hard to differentiate from a super angel, right? From that understanding of omniscience, you have to seriously ask, well, why is only God omniscient?

Right? You say, like, if you got enough time and technology, could a human being omniscient? Well, I don't know, maybe not, but maybe a super angel could, just knowing all true problem. So what is it that makes it so only God can be omniscient. I think a the theist wants to say that. I think the insomnia approach is going to struggle with that. Now, we'll come back to that, because I think the classical theists can give a principled answer of why only God is omniscient, but they're going to have an understanding of God's knowledge, it's different in kind, not just different in degree. I agree. Can I ask you more direct follow-up, or did you have more you wanted to say

their facts? I wanted to follow up. Okay. And I don't want to say that honestly, I think Anselmians are in the camp of classical theism, the way they cash it out. So not all of them might spell out, maybe some of the ways. I agree. Amcelians are often self-identified classical the thesis. I think the methodology is the problem. I think the methodology is the problem. It invites, it invites these concerns, whereas the Thomistic approach, right, is starting as the field metaphysician, right, carving reality at its joints, realizing that there's these, these these certain, you know, broad metaphysical structures of the world as necessary conditions for certain phenomena, right? And then running these sort of primary cause arguments that ultimately

trace back to this being whose essence just is existence as the ultimate cause of everything else that is the one thing that could be also self-explanatory, right? That entity that, in more traditional terms, could bring brute facts down to zero. And they posit this sort of entity, by way of metaphysical demonstration, because nothing except for something whose essence just is existence that lacks any intrinsic passive potency that is purely actual could really be the ultimate, you know, self-explained explainer of everything else, if you want to put it that right, right? And then that's going to come with a whole bunch of spooky other entailments, right? But I don't think the spooky stuff is something we need to be

scared of. I think it's something that we can be excited about. But it is going to entail that, of course, there is no real distinction in a God that amount to real composition. It's divine simplicity. That God is not only identical with his existence, but he's identical with his non-existential attributes as well, his goodness, his power, and so on and so forth. And of course, we can make many attributions of God. We can make contingent attributions of God's as God is creator.

We just can't make, if people would actually read classical theists like Barry Miller on this, we just can't make contingent attributions that imply intrinsic passive potency. That's ruled out. I want to put a bookmark. some of the that metaphysical stuff of bringing brute facts down to zero because I think that is super interesting. We're going to get to that in the second half of our discussion. But I started out with asking you a more yes or no question, Pat, that I want to get your thoughts on briefly. Sorry, I totally didn't answer that. Does God have properties? Does God have attributes? What can we say?

Yeah. So I would say, yes, we can make attributions of God. But at the end of the day, like, if we're trying to be careful metaphysicians, we're going to say, okay, well, what are we actually saying here? The property is any old, you know, any old thing we predicate, right, of God. Well, of course, we can say things. of God, right? But what are we really saying? Right? And that's that's the whole, you know, the heart of debate. Can we, can we say that God is creator? Can we say that God is Lord? Yes, we can make those attributions of God. They're contingent attributions. And we're going to need some sort of model of how we can make those attributions of God. And yet, God remains, you know, invariant across all possible worlds and stuff like that. So, yeah, I'm definitely okay with those qualifications of saying

that we can, you say that God has properties in a very broad sense, right? So, Gavin, I wonder if you would agree with this kind of summing up this discussion about the definition of divine simplicity. It almost seems like there is a real core idea about God not being composite that all those classical theists that we talked about before agree on. And perhaps even Dr. Ryan Mullins and other folks would agree in a sense that God is not composed of parts. I mean, we'd have to kind of go into the details.

but then there's the core affirmation, but then behind that, there's a metaphysical and theological discussion about what counts as parts, what's our analysis of attributes, what do you mean by properties, and then all of the, you know, there might be further disagreements about the details, but disagreements about certain details and the way certain people say things shouldn't mean that we jettison that fundamental core agreement that we find throughout the Christian tradition that God is not composed of parts. What do you think about that as a summary? That seems right to me. And yeah, I'll say three things. Number one, I love Pat's word supian that he used a moment ago. And I'm going to incorporate that into my vocabulary.

That is a great word. Number two, on Anselm, I think I would actually make a distinction between Anselm himself and the way some Anselmian approaches go, because I think Anselm himself isn't as vulnerable to some of these concerns as some others. But to your question, John, yes, I think the way this was an issue in the debate is kind of we're just defining the terms and conceptualizing things within sort of different taxonomies. I would locate the attributionist view of Dr. Mullins as just outside the camp of divine simplicity, even though he wants to say, well, yeah, God doesn't have parts in that view, because he really means It's really a fundamentally different claim.

I think there's a different understanding of the word parts. Whereas I would say, Anselm, I've mentioned the Scotist and Palomite traditions. The way I conceptualize it, you guys can tell me if you see it differently. Those are all broadly within the basic idea of divine simplicity. Okay. And then within that, you have further differences and so forth. But we're all agreeing that God is without parts. And I would just, if I could just finish up real quick, for people viewing this,

We kind of started off at like 70 miles an hour here, which is often. But for people viewing this, they may be a little bit lost. So let me just define, I mentioned Cambridge properties a moment ago. Can I just define that for someone? Yeah, let's go back to that. This is an example of the kind of thing where the concern of caricature is coming up here. Because Dr. Mullins and others may say, oh, you can't even have Cambridge properties if you believe God is simple. But this is one way that people have thought this through trying to be careful, as Pat was just saying, to get the nuance.

is right here. So Cambridge property is like the Fasers metaphor that I mentioned in the debate is as a dad, I have the property of being the tallest person in my family. If one of my sons outgrew me and became taller than me, I would no longer have that property, but it has nothing to do with me changing. It's an extrinsic relationship. That kind of instantiation of properties is totally fine, even for the Thomists, for all people. And, you know, it'd be a rare, person who would deny that kind of thing. So that's an example trying to help people understand that that's not, as it is being put forward as, that's not a problem for proponents of divine simplicity. I hope that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And the direct,

sort of tie-in to that is that when God brings about the world, it doesn't require any sort of intrinsic gears rotating or anything to change in God. It just requires the world coming about with a causal dependence relation on God. I think, okay, I think this is some good points. And I am an agreement with that, Gavin, that all of those folks, the Anselmians, the Tomas, the Skodos, the Palomites, they fall into the camp of holding to a robust doctrine of divine simplicity. And the discussion is in the details of the models because all of the divine simplicity theorists that we're talking about here, even including St. Thomas, who makes, has a very strong doctrine, are okay with making contingent predications of God, but also making certain kinds of

distinctions within God. And so when it comes to the discussion of, well, what kinds of distinctions are allowed? What are those distinctions even mean? These get very complicated and they can be confusing. And that's where the Scotist has his own kind of formal distinction that he talks about. The Palomite has the essence and energies distinction. And which kinds of distinctions don't commit us to composition, to a division or a potency or a contingency invading the divine substance, which kind of distinctions are we allowed to talk about, which aren't we? Those are all the interesting details across those different models. But I think the three of us are in general agreement that holding to any one of those positions

would count as divine simplicity. But you know what, here's Gavin, maybe this is why I can get confusing. When you pluck out statements from people in different traditions and that say things in different ways, you can get something that kind of sounds Frankensteinish and monstrous and confusing. Because it's just, you just walk up to someone, you're like, well, hey, what do you think? These divine simplicity theorists say, God has no properties and he has no attributes. Do you think God has attributes? And the proper question there is just like, well, what do we mean by attributes? What do we mean by properties? And it often involves a much longer conversation. But you did bring

out the attributionist view, Gavin. And I know, Pat, this is something we had wanted to talk. Yeah, can I say one other quick thing, John, because I think this, this might be helpful to people. If not, then we can, we can, we can skip ahead, right? But for the Thomist, and this relates to the Anselmian methodology, especially as it is seen in practice by a lot of contemporary philosophers, I agree with that you said, Gavin, that's an important distinction to make. Of course, I think of like, you know, Anselm did himself talk about great making properties, for example. That's a very contemporary thing, right? for for for for the tomist and gabin mentioned barry miller so we might as well sort of bring him up here right the approach to god uh for the classical theist is actually somewhere between the the methodology of the

of the sort of perfect being theologian and the complete negative or completely apathetic theologian now it's closer to the completely apathetic theologian but not entirely and the thing that could be very helpful here is and this is sort of miller's approach is this distinguishing between a limit simpliciter and a limit case. And this will relate to the other models of simplicity that you brought up. So a limit simplicity. Buckle up, audience. Buckle up again.

Here we go with Barry Miller. So a limit simpliciter is something like the speed of light, the fastest something can move if there's a sort of cap on that, right? But a limit case is something that an ordered series converges upon, but is it not itself a member of that category ordered series. So think of a standstill, right? You have ever decreasing speeds. You come to a standstill.

the standstill is not a speed or a series of regular polygons converging upon a circle, right? It's clear that that's what it's converging to, but a circle is not itself a polygon, right? This is the idea of a limit case. And Natomis. Yes, can I say that one again in slow motion? Because that is a hard one to pick up. But once you have that in your mind, I really like that example. So picture a regular polygon, regular means it has all the same sides and angles. So you have an equilateral triangle. Just get that in your mind's eye. And then you look at a four sides, increase the number of sides. Then you look at a pentagon, same amount of sides, same angles there.

You kind of have that house-like shape that we like to draw. Then you go to the hexagon. Okay, and then the heptagon, also known as a septagon with seven sides. Octagon, showing off a little of my high school geometry knowledge here. No, no, no. Picture the number of sides increasing. And then what Pat is saying is as N heads toward infinity, as you increase the number of sides there,

you're still dealing with in every iteration of that sequence, you have polygons, which are closed, planed figures with straight sides. Nonetheless, if you look at it, it's very clear that what is being approached, the type of shape being approached by those polygons is the number of sides increase is a circle. And a circle is something outside that set, yet which those items are converging to. and that's what Barry Miller means by a limit case. Okay, go ahead and tie it. I just like to explain that one in slow-mo because it took me a while to get it, but once you get it, it's fun.

Yeah, it's brilliant. And I think this is a great way to articulate what the tomas is up to and it solves a host of issues. One is once you understand that God is the limit case instance of existence, power, goodness. God escapes the creature-creaturely categories altogether, right? So whatever is converging upon the limit case, the limit case of that series is not a member of that series. Right. So God is different in kind, not different in. mere degree. And I'll give an example of that with omniscient so we can close that loop here in a minute.

But the other upshot of this is that it grounds a doctrine of analogy. Think of the polygon and circle example. It's clear that a circle is outside of that series, but there's still some similarity there, right? So it's like, univocity won't work. It's not equivocation. There's some similarity here between the limit case and the members of the ordered series. Right. So it's actually a good argument for the principle of analogy to play here. There has to be. Otherwise, you should be, if there wasn't some similarity, then we could swap in any limit case instance with any ordered series who we want, right? But we can't do that. That's frankly absurd, right? We can't swap in a point for a circle, right, of decreasing lines or a raisin, right? It's clear that there's some

similarity there, similarity in difference, right? So I think this really shows that, no, we have to use analogical language when talking about about God, right? Right. So it does that work. But then it also alleviates some concerns of people who want to draw further distinctions. I won't get into the defined details of the Tomas for Scotis debate. But a lot of times what motivates people want to draw further distinctions of God that Thomas don't want to do is the worry that things in us seem really distinct. So how can't they be really more distinct in God, right? The power and knowledge. But the Thomas can say, well, we're not talking about it as it is in us, right? God has something like power, something like. knowledge. God is the limit case. So whatever the limit case instance of power, of existence, of intellection is, those things are all identical. We're not saying that power and knowledge, you know, as they're manifest in us are identical. We're just saying there's a convergence upon the same limit case of all these orders series, right? And that, once you grasp that, it alleviates a host of, I think, major concerns that are often thrown at divine simplicity

that critics continually bring up without, I think, reading the relevant experts on the subject. I feel like we are now on a bus ride that not allowed to go lower than 55 miles per hour right now. Yeah. I love Gavin's thoughts on all that real quick. Well, Gavin, here's what I wanted to go back to because what Gavin, you brought up initially and Pat, those were relevant towards what I was going to ask about, which is the attributionist view. Because Gavin, you were kind of situating. We were talking about the definition of divine simplicity. There's all these traditional views cashed out in the Christian tradition.

But you think that the attributionist view actually is a departure from that doctrine of divine simplicity. So I was going to just going to ask you a little bit more about that. How do you understand what the attributionist view is? And why don't you think it would plausibly count as holding to divine simplicity? Yeah, I love Pat's metaphor of the circle and the polygon and so forth. I think what always, what comes into my heart and mind and imagination whenever I'm reflecting upon divine simplicity is always the uniqueness of God. And I think that's really a key, both for approaching the doctrine and as a consequence of the doctrine, it kind of further cements that in the heart

and mind and so forth. God is like nothing else. Simple point, but profound implications from that. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't close loop. Can I do one more point for Gavin respond? And it's the, it's the omniscience thing, right? So if you take the idea of limit case, you're you realize that all creaturely knowledge is in some sense passive, right? Even the knowledge that I'm sort of talking right now depends on the knowledge I would receive passively that I have a body and you guys are there or this or that, right? So, you know, Miller and Thomas would say that God is as as pure act escapes the creaturely category of knowledge altogether because his knowledge is entirely active, right, which can, along with simplicity, commits you to some sort

of mode of knowledge that is non-propositional. And when it comes to creation, it's entirely executive, more like a practical knowledge, right? So God is different in kind because only God's knowledge is purely active or actual. We're all creaturely knowledge, even at the highest degree, will always have some element of passivity, right? And that's what's going to help ground the sort of utter uniqueness of God's mode of knowing why only God can be omniscient in the proper sense. And it's those differences that I think make a real difference when it comes to securing the uniqueness and ultimately of God. I think you really need this sort of wider metaphysical framework. and divine simplicity to secure all that. Sorry, I had to just close that loop. Yeah.

No, it's good. Yeah, I was just going to say in the attributionist view, I think to the best that I can understand it, and I may not have studied the Muslim tradition. I've studied a few Muslim thinkers on this, but I've not, may not have studied the Muslim tradition as much as Dr. Mullins has, so I hope I don't get this wrong. But basically, there's an affirmation that God is without parts, but it feels like a bit vacuous in terms of what is involved in that, because you still have attributes that are sort of external to God in some way. And I guess the old concern, the originating concern about divine assaity, he's still on the table for me here.

If there are, if God has properties that are not identical to himself, the question simply still is on the table of, well, where did they come from, you know, and what grounds them and so forth? And so that would be the concern that is still on the table there. And I think one other thing, too, is just. we've really hit this point of contingent properties or Cambridge properties as wanting to be clear that it's wrong to say we can't possibly have anything like that if you affirm divine simplicity.

The other points, though, were about conceptual distinctions in God. I just want to reiterate that point. There's no problem when they can conceptual distinctions of God properly done. And the other thing is with, I think something that might be good to touch on at some point before we finish, or if not, that's fine. But if we have space and we want to, is this ideal of a, real relation between God and creation. I have that in my notes to come back to that.

Because I think there's some misunderstandings about that too. So this is something honestly, I want to study a little bit more about what the attributionist view is and entails because what Dr. Mullins presented is that there are Muslim thinkers that believe God does not have parts, but that he has really distinct attributes. And I think when it comes to those thinkers, we just have to kind of press and dialogue further about how is that view cashed out. I think we all kind of grew up in a similar generation. Maybe you played the Madden football game on Nintendo 64 or PlayStation PlayStation 2. Pat, I assume you did.

Gavin, I don't know. Did you? Oh, yeah. So when you could like design your own player in Madden, there were like all these attributes and you could like make him have like a lot of stamina and like strength and like different kind of stuff. And if that's kind of the notion that we have in our mind that, okay, there's these items and then like God instantiates them or exemplifies them to varying degrees or perhaps even the maximal degree for all of them. It does start to sound a little bit like, well, right, where did these things come from? I think one of the things the attributionists might say is that these distinct attributes are grounded in God's eternal essence. And because they are grounded in God's eternal essence, there's no problem with ultimacy.

because his essence is eternal. And Pat, I know you've thought about this a little bit with grounding, but how do you understand this talk of the attributionist view? And why don't you think we should say God has really distinct attributes? Right. So if grounding is a causal relation, which I have a paper in the review of metaphysics, arguing that we should think of grounding as essentially order to causation, I mean, that's going to be a problem.

So I don't think that they'll want to say that. So then I would, for all the reasons that we've just said, right, that God would, in some sense, be caused by principles of being that are sort of deeper down than himself, right? And that's really the heart of the issue, right? That if God is truly ultimate, there can't be anything back of God, right? And a whole stance in potency in relations to parts that actualize it in some respect. So if God is composite of potency and act, right, then he can't be strictly identical with his act or essay or something like that. So he is dependent or caused by principles of being more fundamental than himself.

Same thing. If God has certain attributes and God is like the composite whole, then again, there's something deeper down, some part or some aspect, right, that is the metaphysical cause if we're thinking of grounding in that way of God. If they're thinking that these are just different aspects and these are just conceptual distinctions, that I would say, okay, we don't really have an issue with that. But I want an account of why that's the case. And the classical theist has an account because in their sort of wider metaphysical

system. And again, that's why it's so important to look through a paradigm. Like, this is how you evaluate these things. You have to put on the paradigm and evaluate things within the paradigm. The classical the thesis is coming in with other commitments like the theory of the transcendentals and the convertibility thesis that, for example, goodness just is being under the aspect of perfection or desirability. So it actually makes a lot of sense that if God is pure being, God is going to be pure goodness as well. So we have an account of how things are different in sense, but the same in reference for the classical Theeathe. right and if somebody's going to say that you take an i don't know an aspect i've goto

account i want a deeper metaphysics to make sense of that but they wouldn't necessarily be at odds with the classical theist uh or if they're just saying or this is this is asserting uh that this god just has these you know distinct attributes and that's just the case because god's at i don't see how eternity helps with this issue any more than immateriality does i think that i think I think that changeability and materiality are contingency applying features, so you have to strip them away of God, but it's not enough to just leave it at that, right? If you think that something is, I mean, angels presumably are not material, right?

But we still don't take them to be ultimate as well. So, yeah, they have to be stripped away, but it's not stripping away enough to secure the sort of ultimacy and assaity that I think we all, as classical thee, or wanting to get after. And really, that's related to it's like simplicity is the glue that holds all of it together. The reason that we are committed to things like eternality and immutability within, again, the system, since God is purely simple, he's not composed of potency and act,

he has no further states of being to enter into. So God isn't changing. And if you're committed to some broad, a recitalian theory of time, where time is just the measure of change, and that's going to put God outside of time altogether, right? He's not just like everlasting. He's just not even in the temporal domain to begin. So eternity, eternity comes from simplicity. Immutability comes from simplicity, right?

Simplicity is kind of like the core commitment of supremacy, if you will, of true ontological ultimacy that then gives you the daisy chain to these other sort of commitments. That's funny to see other kind of thinkers just sort of latch on to. But it's like, well, that's great. But I guess that's, to me, that's not. Or are you just going to leave God a brute fact? And this is just a sort of a brute fact model of God that he's just sort of composed in this way. And I know there are in a number of sort of neoclassical theists that are willing to say that there's aspects of God that are just brute.

And to me, that's a really bad move, right? Because at this point, you've sort of lost what I think is a truly principled advantage that theism has over atheism or naturalism. And at that point, you're stuck in a sort of brute facts arms race, which you see a lot of people get like, well, I just have fewer brute facts. than you do, Mr. Naturalist. But to me, like, once you let in any, like a little bruteness, I think you're just, you're sort of done for in terms of the hunt for ultimate explanation. So sorry, threw a lot out there, but I'll let somebody else talk now. Yeah, so I want to go, Gavin, to that real relations discussion in the biblical case in just a moment,

but to kind of sum up where we just were with the attributionist view, my own understanding, trying to get my head around this. And these are hard topics. You know, we're going pretty fast at a high level and trying to get our sense of this. but we also want to keep in mind that this is an important doctrine and the fundamental intuition behind it that God is ultimate is there. But with the attributionist case, we need to follow up and ask, well, how does this attributionist account work? And Pat, what I kind of detected you saying is there's kind of three different prong. Maybe you said two of them. I'm going to add a third one. If the person

says maybe like an Alvin planting a type conception, I don't know for sure if he held to this, that these attributes are platonic properties that exist that God instantiates or exemplifies, or if someone has like a more, you know, pure or strict platonist approach, well, then the problem there with that attributionist type view is with, that it threatens God's ultimacy, because where did these things come from alongside of God? But perhaps they don't say that these things were eternally existing alongside of God. Maybe they have more of a grounding flavor to their, uh, attributionist view and they say that the attributes are grounded in God's essence and there, Pat,

your point was, well, you have to ask what grounding is and if the nature of grounding ends up implying things like caused being, contingency, moving from potency to act, well, then you have another problem of ultimacy and fundamentally bubbling up. It doesn't seem like God then is the one simple fundamental entity anymore. There's like he's a caused being or parts of him are caused and that's strange. Or as a third prong, and this is, is why I'm not, I'm not yet committed to saying, you know, all attributionists deny divine simplicity. A third prong is to develop some kind of aspect tival account that what they're calling really distinct attributes really are just aspects of God. And again, I haven't studied this in great detail,

but Dr. Joshua Sidhuwati, I know Pat, you've had him on the show, and he's got papers about that where people can explore that. And he has a, he holds a divine simplicity, but he uses what he calls aspects in spelling it out. So with the attributionist view, you just have to ask for further details and go into that. But that being said, I know our time is short here. So Gavin, I wanted to give you a chance to talk a little bit about this because this did come up in the debate. Originally, it came up in their debrief. It also was relevant to the biblical case and to whether God can have real relations to creatures or whether in God he is really related to his creation. Because some people are going to say, you know, Aquinas says God's not really related to creatures. And if he's not

really related to us. How can he be our creator? How can he be the Savior? And this just all sounds preposterous. So I wanted to give you a chance to talk a little bit about this in the context of the debate. Yeah, yeah. And I think I'll be brief on this knowing we're at the end of time here. But I think the key is that the word real has a kind of technical meaning, the opposite of when we say God's, we speak of God's not having a real relation to creation or something like this. We're not saying that the word real is not opposed to fake. We're not saying that this is like a fake relationship or something like that. The opposite is logical. And it's simply, I sometimes wonder if maybe our terms, we need to kind of, you know, consider using additional terminology on these

points in today's discussion, because it can really trip people up. But as I understand it, this is simply a way of trying to protect God's immutability, God's godness, basically. Nothing on the side of creation is going to go up into the being of God and create multiplicity or rearrange things or something like this. God is God always and ever, immovable like a rock. But then in God's extrinsic relations, that's fine. So we can speak of God as our creator. I put up a quote from Thomas himself in the intro in my first 15 minute that you sent me, John. Thanks for that. And it just makes it very clear that Thomas himself is, not conceptualizing the relationship between creator and creation as a kind of mirage or something

like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is, I mean, it's, it's, it's, I agree, Gavin, like, especially for, you know, a lot of people who haven't spent a lot of time on this. It's, it's important to be careful with language, not to mislead people. But for the professional philosopher and theologian, you got to do better, right? Like, you just, just read what these people are saying.

And it's clear when we're talking about real relations, real relations or rational relations. We talk about the ontology. We're talking about the ontology of these relations and what they include, or really more importantly, what they do not include. And we're going to say that God is not really related to creation. We're just saying there's no real foundation in God for creation, such that anything had to change in God for creation to come about or anything would be different about God intrinsically if he didn't create at all or he created some other world. That's it. It's really just a matter of ontology. It's not that God doesn't really love us or that he's not really our savior.

It's just it's a complete misunderstanding of what's being discussed here. I don't even know what else to say about it. I mean, it's just so far a feel of what Thomas is up to with, with, we talk about real and rational relations and stuff like that. Yeah. There's actually a lot. I mean, we could say about it. I'm going to refer listeners to an episode I did with a great Protestant Thomist, Ryan Hurd, who was on my show about a month ago now. And we just talked about this topic.

And Gavin, he actually agreed. with your caution and counsel that this is not the language that we should use when just ordinarily talking to believers about, hey, did you know God's not really related to creatures or God's not really related to you? It sounds bad, bizarre and confusing. This is the language of technical philosophy, getting into the metaphysics of relations. And I do affirm it. And I think the doctrine is true and properly understood.

But that doesn't mean that we should bring it up all the time. I'll just say to another book I was going to recommend it. which I think is pretty cool. W. Matthews Grant has a book called Free Will and God's Universal Causality, the dual sources account. And even if you don't go for all the free will discussion stuff in here, I think it's very good throughout the book is excellent. He just has a lot of stuff on relations.

And he's got like multiple pages and footnotes devoted to the metaphysics of relations and different accounts. And it's complicated and confusing. And the nail on the head, Gavin, is when you said, we have to say when God is not really related, what do we mean by not real? And in the listener's mind, they might hear, oh, he's not really related. He's faking related or he's not truthfully related. And not really related to us does not mean for Thomas that he's not truly related to us. It more just means he's not related to us in a certain manner that requires the introduction of a new accident in his being to reach out to us.

And so Father Michael Dodds actually has a great point where he turns the tables on this whole objection. And he says, no, actually, the fact that God is not really related to creatures truly means that he has a closer relationship with you than you or I could ever have with each other. Because whenever we relate to it, when a created being relates to another created being, it requires some new accident be introduced. Maybe they have to like move their hand out to touch the person or use their vocal cords to talk to them or even eye movements and, you know, whatever. writing a note and so forth. Whenever we communicate with one another in a physical way and an intellectual way, we have to introduce new accidents to get to the person because we're already at a

distance. But for God, he directly and immediately is present to all of his creation as their creator. And there's a direct and immediacy that doesn't require the introduction of accidents on his part. All the change is on the side of God. and we can say he is truly the creator because he is the one that brought it about that we exist. He is truly the Savior because he is the one that sent Jesus into the world to save us, even though all the change takes place on the side of our creation. So there's a lot of citations and things that people can look at to discuss it, but just be cautious.

Don't just go around saying that God's not really related. and remember that it's a technical metaphysical point, not a colloquial point. But if you do want to do the deep work, you might come away with, at least I was, a deep respect and awe of the fact that, yeah, the way that the unique God of classical theism relates to us is not going to be the way that you or I talk to each other. So I did want to get that on the table. I don't know if there's anything more, Gavin, that you wanted to say on that or the biblical case, but I had a couple other points here that we can wrap up in the last five minutes or so.

Yeah, just a summarizing comment of how I'm currently, as I'm listening to you, unfold that experiencing this afresh, that's how I've often thought in the past, is that paradoxically, God's radical otherness is part of what makes his relationship to us so intimate. And that is, yeah, once we can start, to think in those grooves i think those who experience the doctrine of divine simplicity or just god's general transcendence as a threat and as frightening this might help soften us up a little bit to consider it so i appreciate your comments is what i'm saying yeah yeah that's that's an interesting point Gavin because i come from a slightly different perspective i know a lot of people who come after

divine simplicity are coming from prior you know theological or christian commitments and i think there's some tension or incompatibility i'm coming from somebody who's just looking for philosophical answers to things, right? So it just seemed like it's simplicity or bust for a lot of issues. And then I, once I got into literature that, I read all these wonderful accounts to show that, no, this radical transcendence of God is not incompatible with God's perfect love for us or his, or any of that. So I just want to say, while those were never real concerns for me, I can see how they would be real concerns for people. And I appreciate that. I just want to encourage people look into it because I think that you will find that there are good answers to those concerns

and that once again divine simplicity elevates, I think, are all in understanding and appreciation of God once it is, I think, grasped in its proper context. Yeah. So why don't we close with a couple more important considerations? Why do you think divine simplicity is an important doctrine for Christians to hold? I know, Pat, for you, a lot of that is philosophical, and I want you to have a chance just to lay out. I know we can't go into all the details in a short podcast, but for folks to explore, and Gavin, you brought up a couple, too, towards the end of the debate, or maybe even in the Q&A section of why you think it's, or might have been in your closing of why you think it's important for certain objections to God's existence, like the Youth of Prod dilemma, and things

of that sort. So I was wondering if we could just get a few of those things on the table in the last few minutes. Less people think this is a, you know, totally esoteric and unimportant doctrine. Why is divine simplicity important? What advantages does it give us in our worldview if we hold to it? So, Gavin, why don't we start with you? And then Pat will close with you. Sure, and I can go briefly, and then I'm curious how Pat will answer this question as well. But the way I put it in the debate is it's a way of protecting the godness of God. And that's just one way of trying to get into it a little bit. But I think to unfold that a little bit in terms of how that then will play out in like the public forum when we're interacting with, say, our naturalistic, atheistic friends, and we're sort of

looking at these rival worldviews, I think we can make the case well that Christian theism, adorned with a robust doctrine of divine simplicity, is a more elegant and simple explanation for reality that reduces bruteness more than any other alternative. So the word bruteness came up from Pat's good comments earlier. And I think this is right that a belief in a simple deity is the most intuitive and elegant way to conceptualize reality. And I don't know that I can unfold that any more than that right now, but I've sort of given some of the reasons for that earlier.

But Pat, what would you say about this too? Yeah. So I think that there's a lot of theoretical advantages to design simplicity. Ultimate explanation is one of them, right? So certainly if you're in a timistic framework, like why does this thing? exists is really only appropriately asked of things with a real distinction between their essence and existence and to ultimately ground the existence of any of those things, you're going to have to be a causal first cause reasoning, get back to that whose essence just is existence,

which is the only sort of thing that could serve, I think, is the only really candidate in town conceptually to be the ultimate explanation of everything. That could be a sort of self-explained explainer of everything, as I mentioned before. And again, if you're in the timistic system and you have this act potency ordering of how, you know, essence and existence relate as potency to act, and God's going to be purely actual. And like, you're just, you're just right on, right on the road to simplicity from there. So ultimate explanation is a huge one, right? So just, just in metaphysics, it's, I think, I think it's the king, right? I think simplicity is simplicity or bust if you're looking for ultimate explanation. Otherwise, you're just like, yeah, you're in that

brute fact, facts arm race at best with the, with a naturalist. But I think there's other advantages in all the other metas in in in meta ethics we have this wonderful theory of goodness right again there's there's background here of the convertibility thesis between goodness and being if god is pure being he's pure goodness and this is going to give you resources to respond to things like you the pro dilemma you know everything acts according to its nature even god and god is subsistent being just is subsistent goodness so god wills what he wills uh you know in accordance with his nature as a being of supreme and perfect goodness i think there's really good it's not this god has goodness Right, right? Like we have a really good theory of grounding God's goodness as really identical to his being, right?

So I think that's useful. I think that there are other advantages in philosophical anthropology like libertarian freedom. This one is technical, but that's what Matthew's Grant is up to. And this relates to the idea of God only being rationally related to creation that when God brings about creation, his action is direct, it's immediate. It just results in creation coming about. with an ontological dependence on God. But if we think about the conditions for determinism, you have something is determined when there's some factor that is both logically prior and sufficient for the effect. But what's cool about the ontology of divine simplicity is you don't have that on the scene, right? God's act of creating is sufficient for creation, but it's not logically prior to it, right?

It just is creation coming about. And since there's nothing in God, like God forming some prior intention or anything like that, what I'm saying is that the threat of determinism is completely removed with the ontology of divine simplicity. And that's really cool if you're like, you know, you think that libertarian freedom is a thing, which I do. And if you want a very robust defense of that, look to Matthew's Grant's book. And he's using the doctrine of divine simplicity to shore that up. I won't get into it now, but I think there's advantages in meta epistemology for avoiding skepticism and radical skepticism.

Like we need a model of God's knowledge that doesn't invite the question of how. How does God know he's not a brain in a vet, right? Where he has to have some sort of organ that he scans reality with or something like that. And I don't think it's enough just call it infallible. We want like a model of divine cognition. It actually makes sense of how God is infallibly in cognitive contact with the world. And when we have a model of this God's knowledge as executive, that's really helpful. That's really fruitful of God's knowledge as purely actual.

I think so it helps in meta epistemology as well. So I think it's an extremely fruitful theory in terms of in terms of from a philosophical worldview perspective. I think it's by far in a way the best theory on the market. And it's holistic. It's systematic. These these commitments are connected. They inform one another. And to me that was what so attracted me to this sort of great philosophical tradition was seeing the coherence of it all,

of seeing how the commitments to being informed the commitments to ethics, of all that. So sorry, there's, there's a lot there and I'm just kind of teasing it, but hopefully, if nothing else, maybe I'll get people interested in just having another look at the doctrine if they've sort of ignored it or dismissed it before. Absolutely. And just so we know, this is not intended to be a comprehensive discussion by any means. Gavin had a really interesting debate. We wanted to bring them on to debriefit, talk about some of the topics. And why don't we just close with some resources and that you want to point folks to and where they can find out more about your work as well. I'm just going to hold up a few here.

We didn't really talk much about the biblical case in this debrief, but I know, Gavin, that was a little bit of a topic in the debate that you got into somewhat. I think this book, God in himself by Stephen J. Duby, Scripture, Metaphysics, and the task of Christian theology. He does a lot of good work of going into the exegesis of various passages and showing how they point to God's immutability, his ultimutability, his ultimacy, and his simplicity, even if there is no single verse that says, God is absolutely simple. There's the book by W. Matthews Grant, already mentioned free will and God's universal causality. All of all these in the show notes. These are just four that I picked up off my floor. They should be on the shelf, but I have books on the floor there because I have to organize. This one, the anthology, classical theism, new essays on the metaphysics of God.

Great essay by Ed Faser, just on what is classical theism. It's got an essay by Dr. Alexander Proust, defending some new arguments for divine simplicity. And also a very helpful essay from Dr. Daniel DeHan on going into Aquinas' account of simplicity with respect to God having multiple divine attributes and conceptual distinctions, things we talk about. And then another one, this one is from Father Thomas Wine Andy, Does God Suffer? This has, I think, the best footnote, one of the best footnotes ever. That might be an overstatement. But it's got a great footnote on the no real relations doctrine. If you're confused by it, that's in this book on page 136. I'll put a little reference up

there with a piece of the quote in the show notes. So folks can check that out and also other podcast episodes. But Gavin, let's go to you. Where do you want to point folks for more resources and investigative work into these topics? I'll give one contemporary one and then one, well, two, two ancient ones. So I still think the first book that James Dolazol put out, God Without Parts, is a really helpful book. That was really formative for me when I first started thinking about this and he goes through a lot of objections. but he really gets into this issue of the way modern ontologies tend.

There's not just one modern ontology that came up in the debate, but the way these tend to spin off in a different direction from the way pre-modern thinkers tended to work, and that's really helpful point that he makes in that book. I like to encourage people to just go back and read some of these primary sources. I think people are more intimidated than they need to be sometimes. The Summa Theologica, Divine Simplicity is right there out of the gate. that's the first thing that comes up after the five ways.

I think just I would love to encourage people just to dive in and read right there. And then in the Eastern tradition, I think John of Damascus, an exact exposition of the Orthodox faith, also gets into divine simplicity. And I think that's a helpful resource for approaching it more in the Eastern tradition. It's a good synthesizing kind of text for the East. Yeah, great. Well, you guys stole of mine. I was definitely going to recommend Dr. Dolzell's, that book is Wonderful God Without Parts.

So you know what? I'll recommend Barry Miller's. If you have, the problem is it's very difficult to find. It's hard to find his work, which is a shame because it's so brilliant. One of them is findable. Yeah, that's fullness of being, which is great because what he's going to do is he's going to defend Aquinas' theory of existence in that. But it's the book before that, a most unlikely God where he really defends classical

theism and divine simplicity. And that one is very difficult to get your hands on. But if he can find it, it's really, it's, it's, it's, it's, towards the top for me. Excellent. Well, Gavin and Pat, I'm going to make sure to put links to those resources in the show notes page. But thanks for joining me on the classical theism podcast and to talk about this super interesting debate on a very important doctrine, divine simplicity for classical Christian theism. Thanks so much again for joining me today. It's been a blast.

Thank you, guys. Enjoyed it. Thanks, guys.