Truth Unites - DEBATE: Is Divine Simplicity True? Gavin Ortlund vs. Ryan Mullins

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

Gavin Ortlund and Ryan Mullins debate whether divine simplicity is true. Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

Hey, friends. The debate you're about to see was between myself and Dr. Ryan Mullins on divine simplicity. Is God simple? Okay, that was the debate. And it was a great debate. One of the interesting things was the format. So you can skip ahead in the timestamps. But basically what you'll see is my opening 15 minute state, then his opening 15 minute state. A statement. Did I say state? I'm recording this in the morning. Okay, my opening statement, his opening statement. Then there was a week pause. I'm reproducing this on my channel, the channel Idol Killer, give me permission to reproduce on my channel. Thanks for that. And so there's a weak pause, which I thought was a cool way to do things so that you can see, I don't know, you have time to digest the opening statements. Then we attempted to steal man each other's arguments. You can be the judge of how well we did at that. Then there was 30 minutes of open dialogue. Then there were questions from the audience and then there was a five minute conclusion. So I think I covered everything in there. So that's what you're about to see. You can skip around in the timestamps as you want, but divine simplicity is a really important topic. So I hope that this debate will serve the truth about that.

I wanted to do a quick book recommendation before I dive in, and I really love this book. Bullies and Saints, an honest look at good and evil, at the good and evil of Christian history by John Dixon. If you're interested in church history, as I am, I know a lot of people who watch my channel, love church history. This book, I found it riveting, especially, so Chapter 17 is about the Christianization of Scandinavia, how the Vikings came to accept Christianity, just the brutality of those. those times. And it was fascinating to read. He's arguing for something similar to what I was trying to say that it wasn't just politics. There was genuine courage and missions and so forth. What I love about this book is the brutal honesty. He's got chapters on the Crusades, all the ugly stuff,

the Inquisition. It's not triumphalist. It's not like anti-Roman Catholic or anything. He's Protestant, but he's very fair. He talks about those ecumenical issues as well. But he also is basically saying, we need to be honest about the bad. And that's what I love. He talks about, like, you know, he has a chapter on Ambrose and how Ambrose was kind of a bully at times. But he talks about the good as well. He's got chapters on the role of Christians in founding orphanages and hospitals, the role of Christians in the abolition movement, all the good you see as well. And one of the things he's saying is it's such a mixture of good and evil. And that's such a powerful point. So if you're interested in learning about church history, even these specific

topics, slavery in church history, the Crusades, the Inquisition, some of these challenging things, the issue of the early church and the role of the early church in founding hospitals, so many things like that. This is a terrific book. You can skip around in it or you can read the whole thing through. I think you find it really, really helpful. I'll put a link to this in the video description. Without anything further, here is the debate. We'll start with my opening statement. I feel very honored to be a part of this debate. Dr. Mullins is well published in this area, and he's a very capable proponent of the alternative position, I believe that divine simplicity is foundational to a Christian view of God.

It should be maintained by Christians today. In my opening statement here, I just want to build a case for the doctrine's truthfulness in three steps. First, a historical observation, second, a conceptual clarification, and then third, a theological rationale. So first, my historical observation is simply that some form of divine simplicity is nearly unanimous throughout all of church history. history until recent times. I'll come back to those words some form of in just a moment, but you see divine simplicity almost immediately in church history among second century apologists

like Athenagoras for whom accepting a simple God is just part and parcel with rejecting the polytheism of the day. It's affirmed pretty much universally among the church fathers, both east and west, into the medieval era, both east and west, albeit with some variation, and then into the modern era, including among Protestants, and not just scholastic Protestants, but pretty much all Protestants, from John Wesley to the Baptists, the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession, the Congregationalists, the Savoy Declaration, pretty much everywhere until the 19th century. Now, in his work in this area, Dr. Mullins disputes this historical claim by appealing to figures like Isaac Newton and Samuel Clark as exceptions, but these figures are heterodox in other areas of their doctrine of God.

Isaac Newton was basically an Aryan on my reading. He said the father created the son. Samuel Clark had an aberrant doctrine of the Trinity. He seems to be a kind of subordinationist. So it's telling that these would be among the figures who are adduced as pre-modern witnesses against the doctrine. Within Orthodox Christian history, some form of divine simplicity seems to be basically just among the normative assumptions of theology.

But here we have to flesh out these words some form of divine simplicity, because there are differences in how Christians have construed this doctrine, and this is really important. This may be one of the most important things that will come up in this debate, because one of my concerns with Dr. Mullen's work is that he tends to take the strongest possible version of divine simplicity and make that the measuring stick for the doctrine as such. So definitions are going to be very crucial here. The essence of the doctrine of divine simplicity basically just means that God is without parts or composition.

So the opposite of a simple God would be a composite being. And that applies to any kind of composition, whether physical, spatial, or metaphysical. So without parts or non-composite, that's the basic idea. But that basic idea is understood and put to use a little differently throughout the Christian tradition. Among early Christians, especially in the East, but also among some Western fathers like Hillary, for example, God is routinely called simple or non-composite or undivided or not consisting of parts without a further construal of what that precisely entails, for example, for God's relationship to his attributes.

But as the Eastern tradition develops, a distinction is made between God's essence and God's energies. You can see that antecedently in the Cappadocian fathers and in John of Damascus, and then climactically in Gregory Palomis. Gregory Palomis is quite clear that the energies of God, quote, are numerous, yet in no way diminish the notion of simplicity, end quote. I have an hour-long video on YouTube on the essence energies distinction. I think it's fascinating for anyone interested in that. Now, in the West, you get a much stronger account of divine simplicity. Antecently, you see it in Augustine and Anselm, and then climactically, of course, in Thomas Aquinas, where you have an explicit identification between God's essence and his existence and attributes.

But there are alternative accounts in the West as well, most notably John Dunn's Scotus and his concept of a formal distinction, which he will then apply to, for example, the relation between the divine attributes. Now, here's the thing to be clear about. The Scotist and Palamite traditions still robustly affirm God is simple. Okay. Palomis calls God, quote, most wonderfully simple, the most simple of all things. End quote. John Dunn Scotus prays, quote, you are the ultimate in simplicity, having no

no real distinct, no really distinct parts, or no realities in your essence which are not really the same, end quote. So these are different accounts of divine simplicity, not rejections of divine simplicity. Therefore, refuting Thomas Aquinas is not tantamount to refuting divine simplicity as such. Similarly, it's methodologically problematic to take the strongest possible statements from particular tomists and then make them the yardstick for what all tomists believe. So, yes, some Thomists might not allow the claim that God has accidental properties, including what we will call Cambridge properties, and that'll come up later, I'm sure, in the debate, at the end of this, hopefully, if I can talk fast enough.

But many Tomists are perfectly comfortable, and I'm going to argue that that's the best reading of Thomas himself, and I'll give some quotes. Perfectly comfortable to speak of God is having Cambridge properties. Now, the point for now is to say, whoever's right and wrong in those disputes, these are all disagreements among those who are committed to the more basic affirmation that God is simple. That conviction, the simplicity of God, is virtually unanimous among Orthodox Christians until around the 19th century. So that leads to a question.

If divine simplicity is as baldly incoherent as its critics often imply, how did that incoherence escape everyone's attention in the pre-modern tradition? Surely there's something more going on here, right? And indeed there is. This is my second observation. Pre-modern Christians articulated the doctrine of divine simplicity within a different ontological framework than what is assumed in its criticisms today for the most part. And I think basically James Delissel is correct in asserting that what unites most criticisms of divine simplicity is the assumption that God and creatures are correlatives within a

univocal order of being. Now, for the sake of a YouTube debate, I'm going to try to condense down and collapse down from other work in this area to make this as clear as possible. Put it like this. God and the world do not compete on the same scale of being. God is not one thing among others, even as the most important thing. Rather, God is the ground and source of all things. Therefore, God is not merely a different kind of entity than the world. The very potential for distinction itself resides within the people.

being of God. The way I've often put it, trying to collapse it down and make it clear is, in my work in this, God is not within reality, reality subsists within God. And for this reason, we must exhibit great caution in applying creaturely logic and categories to God. It's not that God is irrational or unknowable, it's that God bears an absolutely unique relationship to our thoughts and to our logic such that we cannot treat him as one member of a class. Okay? God is utterly unique. So we speak of God analogically through humble reliance upon his revelation to us.

We're trying to protect the godness of God. That's the way you could put it. So as this pertains to God's relationship to his attributes, pre-modern theologians have generally functioned with what is sometimes called a constituent ontology. That is to say, God's attributes are not external abstractions that God exemplifies, as we often conceptualize with creatures. Rather, they're ontological constituents. And I know this can seem counterintuitive, but alterations in our normal manner of predication are not at all surprising when we're dealing with an absolutely unique entity like God, the source of all reality.

utterly unique. So, okay, so that gives us a historical and conceptual backdrop to now ask this question, which is the fundamental one, and my third point, why is divine simplicity so important? And the answer is this. Divine simplicity is foundational to a biblical and orthodox doctrine of God, particularly related to divine necessity, divine uniqueness, and divine transcendence. It's also helpful against the Uthofro dilemma, but I leave that aside for here. here let me focus on divine aseity and absoluteness so divine aseity means god exists from himself means a little more than that but just say that for now absoluteness means god is not conditioned by anything external to himself divine simplicity undergirds important affirmations about god like that

which are just basic to a christian conception of god as god has revealed himself in holy scripture Now, in a response video to me, Dr. Mullins glossed the word absoluteness there as impassibility. But that's just a completely different doctor. And I'm not talking about impassibility right now. I'm saying divine simplicity undergirds, aseity, and absoluteness. And the reason for that is if God merely instantiated or exemplified his attributes, then in some sense they would exist independently of him. And God would not be utterly absolute and self-concundated.

He would be dependent, it seems, on something outside of himself. Just think about it. You know, when the Bible says God is love in 1 John, for example, if the Bible instead merely said that God is loving, then we could ask the question, where does love come from? In being loving, God would then, presumably, be participating in a larger reality external to himself. Love would somehow be separable from God, it would seem. Now, an opposing view could perhaps say, well, God can just have attributes without depending upon them. But it's unclear where these attributes would then come from. It's hard to see how this doesn't entail a kind of multiplicity

up there in the being of God, which Christians have rightly been worried about. So what all, what is basically needed to explain reality is what divine simplicity offers. As counterintuitive as this doctrine is, it's actually exactly what you need to make sense of reality. A supremely simple, singular entity with no potentiality whatsoever that stands totally apart from the causal chain of contingent being whose existence and essence are one and the same. Divine simplicity is really important because it undergirds basically who God is. So to wrap up, let me offer three clarifications that can help us anticipate a couple of potential areas of concern. First clarification, divine simplicity does not necessarily deny that God has accidental properties, like being a

creator or being a judge. This is one example where I'm going to have concerns of caricature and how divine simplicity is cashed out. You can find some really strong statements that sound like that. But here's the deal. Philosophers sometimes speak of Cambridge properties as pertaining to extrinsic or accidental relations. So here's a metaphor that I borrow from Ed Faser. I currently have the property of being the tallest person in my family, but my sons could very well outgrow me and be taller, at which point I would no longer have this property, but I've not changed essentially. I just no longer have this new property because they have outgrown me. Proponents of divine simplicity are often perfectly fine to introduce categories like this

to explain contingent properties and perfectly fine to speak of God as having, you know, speak of God as our creator and our judge and so forth. When Thomas Aquinas denies accidents in God, He's not against Cambridge properties. He's using the term accident differently than modern philosophers do. He means something that is real in the subject. He's talking about an intrinsic property, not an extrinsic property. So he's not denying that God can have extrinsic accidental properties, like being a creator. Thomas, of course, will routinely speak of God as a creator and Lord and Judge and so forth.

And concerning God's relation to creatures, he says himself, This is Thomas Aquinas. Quote, It cannot be said that these relations exist as realities outside God, end quote. So we can absolutely speak of God as becoming creator. So long as we recall, this does not mean a change on God's side. It means a change on our side. Okay.

Second clarification, divine simplicity does not deny that our relationship with God is meaningful or true. When Thomas Aquinas denies that God has a real relation to creatures, the word real has a technical meaning. Its alternative is not fake, but rather logical. And Thomas, basically, for him, a real relation is one that has a foundation in the subject being related, and thus does imply change or composition in that subject. So Thomas is totally fine to say, for example, quote, God is related to the creature for the reason that the creature is related to God. And since the relation of subjection is real in the creature, it follows.

that God is Lord, not in idea only, but in reality. And quote, that's from the Summa Theologica. Thomas can also speak of God routinely as in all things by his power. God acts upon all things and touches them by his power. So divine simplicity does not slice off God from meaningful relationship with creatures as though God were a kind of static monad. God's utter separation is not a prison. Paradoxically, it is that by which, which God freely and truly relates to the world. Third clarification, divine simplicity does not mean that we cannot make conceptual distinctions of God.

It just means those conceptual distinctions don't entail composition. Richard Mueller says, quote, divine simplicity by definition means not an absence of distinctions, but only in strictly an absence of composition and of the kinds of distinctions that indicate composition, end quote. Okay, those are all concerns I anticipate. Come up. Come up. I'm out of time, but I'm looking forward to talking about all this more.

Hello, everyone. In my opening statement, I want to accomplish five things. First, I will define divine simplicity, as it has been traditionally understood. Second, I will consider an argument in favor of divine simplicity and find it wanting. Third, I will argue that divine simplicity contradicts scripture. Fourth, I will say that divine simplicity is incoherent because it violates the Christian affirmation that God is free to create or not create. Fifth, and finally, I will argue that the doctrine of divine simplicity is incompatible with the doctrine of the Trinity. So let's get started. So it's often said that divine simplicity denies that God is a composite, and that's unfortunate for two reasons. First, the majority view among Islamic theologians

is called the attributionist view. The attributionist view says that divine simplicity is false, and that God is not a composite. So claiming that God is not a composite, it does not help you demarcate divine simplicity from other very popular rival views. Second, the seemingly modest statement about lacking composition, it hides just how radical divine simplicity is. Divine simplicity is radical because it has a very permissive view of what counts as a part or what counts as composition. So according to Christopher Hughes, the classical tradition affirms that genus, differentiate, forms, accidental properties, essence, and existence are metaphysical parts. Even distinct actions, as well as the distinction between actuality and potentiality count as parts.

parts. The claim from Jeff Brower, Moses Momonides, and Avicenna is that God does not have any attributes at all, nor does God have any unactualized potential. And this is somewhat confusing. See, Augustine and James Dozel, they say that all that is in God is God. The claim is often made that all of God's attributes are identical to each other and identical to God's essence and existence. You'll often see the claim that all of God's actions are identical to each other such that there is one act. then you'll see the claim that this one act is identical to God's necessary existence. You'll see all of these claims, but then you'll also quickly see the claim that God does not have any attributes, properties, tropes, or imminent universals. You'll see Augustine, Henry Church, and Kate Rogers say that, strictly speaking, God does not have any properties, nor is God a property.

There's just the simple, undivided substance that we call God. Now, if you find that confusing, you're not the only one. In her analysis of divine simplicity, Rebecca Rice says that she is also confused. She asks, well, which is it? Are God's properties identical to God, or does God not have any properties at all? And she points out just how deeply confusing all of this is, and yet you're going to see both claims from proponents of divine simplicity. So despite this confusion, proponents of divine simplicity insist that we can talk about God's attributes,

just so long as we recognize that our predication of attributes do not pick out any extramental distinct attributes in God. And even the Cappadocians affirm this view. Our talk about divine properties is merely conceptual and does not pick out actual distinct attributes in God. In a 2019 article in modern theology, Andrew Radeh Gawalwit says that he now affirms the majority view, which is this, the Cappadocians deny that God has any properties.

Now, not even accidental properties can be predicated of God. Thinkers like Augustine Boeuthi, Peter Lombard and James Arminius, they tell us that God is not really related to the universe. Why? They say this to avoid God having the accidental properties of Creator, Lord, and Judge of All Men. That's not the end of the story, though. Ansom, Evacchina, and Arminius remind us that even our conceptual distinctions do not apply to God. And that's a very bold statement, but Rogers reminds us that it is connected to a very old slogan. What can be divided in the mind can be divided in reality. Proponents of divine simplicity do not want a divided God.

As I pointed out in several publications, the denial of conceptual distinctions in God is actually very important for certain Ansalmian arguments from divine simplicity to divine timelessness. So this is not just a passing statement, it's actually crucial to the rationality of classical theism. So that's divine simplicity. I want to consider one of the most common arguments today in favor of divine simplicity. You can call this the fiddler on the roof argument. This is where you appeal loudly to tradition, whilst accompanied by background dancers, and talking about what you would do if you were a rich man.

Now, let's set aside the choreography and the desire for wealth. The main claim from this argument is that the majority of theists throughout history have affirmed divine simplicity. You see this kind of claim everywhere from thinkers like David Bentley Hart and Edward Faser. You even see this from contemporary critics of divine simplicity like Timothy O'Connor. I've even said the same thing a few years ago. The problem with this argument from tradition is that it is wildly false. According to Yoram Hazoni and James Diamond, prior to Moses' monadies, divine simplicity was not the majority view in Jewish thought.

And even then, it was rather controversial within Jewish thought. Within Islam, divine simplicity is the minority view among theologians. Going back to at least the 8th century, theologians within Islam have thought that a god without attributes is philosophically incoherly. and it goes against the teachings of Scripture. And this was pointed out in the 12th century by Shareshtani. It's continually pointed out today by Ramon Harvey and John McGinnis. I repeat, the majority of Islamic theologians say that divine simplicity is false because God has distinct attributes.

Sharesani calls this the attributionist view. Representative thinkers are people like Al Mataridi, Ibn Taymiya, and Al Ghazali. Within Hinduism, such great luminaries like Ramanuja argue that divine simplicity is false. Why? Well, because scriptures teach that God has a multitude of distinct attributes, and we ought not to be fictionalists about these attributes of God like divine simplicity within Christianity. Within Christianity, it's also quite easy to find people who reject divine simplicity. One of Thomas Aquinas' teachers, Peter of Ireland, says that God changes and has passions, and that's inconsistent with divine simplicity. The early Thomas Aquinas and

some of his students affirm that God has distinct attributes. They held this until the Catholic authorities started saying that such a view was worthy of damnation. After that, Aquinas gives a very clear affirmation of divine simplicity in most of his writings. Although, according to Giovanni Ventimilia, you can still see hints of distinct divine attributes in some of Aquinas' later writings. Now, John Duns Scotus, he affirms that God has distinct attributes, but he claims that he's also affirming divine simplicity. But in Scotus' own day, though, he was accused of rejecting divine simplicity. And contemporary Scotus scholars, like Thomas Williams and Richard Cross, they say that Skodis is affirming simplicity in name only.

In Islamic scholars, like Ramon Harvey, they point out that Skodas' view looks remarkably like the Mataridi view. You know, the view that says that divine simplicity is false? Now, after the Reformation, it was quite common to hear Christian philosophers mock the unintelligible notions of the schoolmen. Those are the words of John Tillotson and many others who reject scholastic notions like divine simplicity. You see similar statements from Isaac Newton and Samuel Clark.

Clark claims that actus purists is simply unintelligible. Now, if you're a Baptist, you should care about this next guy. Augustus Strong was a late 19th and early 20th century theologian. His systematic theology textbook was incredibly influential in the Baptist world. Strong rejects divine simplicity because he says it leads to pantheism. And before the turn of the 20th century and on into the 20th century, rejecting classical theism was by far the dominant position. So it is simply false that the majority of theists have affirmed divine simplicity. Now, sure, you can find lots of people affirming it throughout history, but it is false that simplicity is the majority default view.

So let's talk about an argument against divine simplicity. This one comes from the Bible. One might be surprised to find an utter lack of biblical support for the doctrine of divine simplicity. You never find a passage in Isaiah declaring, Thus saith the Lord, all of my attributes are identical to my existence. You never see the Apostle Paul say that God has no unactualized potential. and you never hear Jesus say, Truly, truly, I say unto you,

God does not have accidental properties. I want to focus on the denial of accidental properties. I say that this contradicts the very clear teaching of Scripture, which does affirm that God has accidental properties. So one of the most peculiar arguments in favor of divine simplicity is the appeals to Exodus 314 in the surrounding verses. This is where God speaks to Moses through the burning bush. According to Hazoni and Diamond, the early rabbinical literature does not see this in connection to divine simplicity, nor do most contemporary biblical commentators.

And it's not difficult to see why. The passage has absolutely nothing to do with divine simplicity, and God twice declares that he has accidental properties, and God says that these accidental properties are his forever moving forward. That's really bad for divine simplicity, which says that God does not have any accidental properties. So here's what's going on in this passage. Moses does not want to lead the Israelite people out of Egypt. He is doing everything he can to avoid this calling. One of Moses's tactics is to say to God, well, you know, who should I tell the Israelites sent me to be their leader? So here's what God says to Moses.

So God says to Moses, I am who I am. And he said, say this to the people of Israel. I am has sent me to you. God said to Moses, say this to the people of Israel, the Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has sent me to you. This is my name forever. And thus, I am to be remembered throughout all generations. Okay, so think about this for a second.

Most biblical commentators will point out that the name I am, it is in the imperfect tense, which is meant to suggest some kind of openness and change in God. The common claim is that this should be translated as I will be who I will be, which basically means, if you want to know who I am, pay attention to what I'm about to do for Israel. And in context, this makes sense. God twice declares that he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is a God with a past.

And in the past, God made promises to Israel. You want to know who God is? Watch how God is about to show that he keeps his promises to Israel. So focus in on the accidental properties for a second. In this passage, God twice declares the accidental property, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is not a property that God essentially has, since he did not have to make any promises to the Hebrew people.

Instead, God freely takes on these accidental properties by entering into a vulnerable solidarity with the Hebrews. And God takes these accidental properties to be so important that he declares that this is going to be his name forevermore. That completely contradicts the simple God who does not have any accidental properties. So divine simplicity is incompatible with divine freedom is incompatible with divine simplicity.

Before I present this argument, I need to mention something about religious language. The argument that I'm about to run can be understood is using either univocal or analogical predication. This is because the doctrine of analogy is very popular among non-classical theists like Richard Swinburne, Keith Ward, and William Hasker. You know, people who all argue that divine simplicity is false. So you cannot try to hide behind the doctrine analogy in order to avoid the argument that I'm about to run. So let me start with a deeply held view of divine freedom within the Christian tradition at large. It is a hallmark of classical Christian theism. The claim is that God is free to create

or not create. God does not have to create the universe that we find ourselves in because he could have created a completely different universe. That's the classical Christian understanding of divine freedom. The problem is that this account of divine freedom conflicts with divine simplicity in multiple places. To start, consider the claim that God is pure actuality and that God has no unactualized potential. This is incredibly difficult to square with a claim that God is free to create or not create. This is because if God does not create, then God has unactualized potential. Further, if God really is free to create a different universe than the one we find ourselves in, God has unactualized potential. Here's my point. The classical

understanding of God's freedom entails that God has a great deal of unactualized potential. That contradicts the classical claim that God does not have any unactualized potential. If that argument does not persuade you, let me try another. Earlier, I mentioned the classical affirmation that all of God's acts are identical to each other, such that there is only one divine act. This one divine act is identical to God's absolutely necessary existence. Well, let's see if that's compatible with the classical understanding of divine freedom. Again, the classical claim is that God is free to create or not create.

God's act of creation is not absolutely necessary. It is contingent. Well, if God's act of creation is identical to his existence, his act has the same modal status as his existence. Thus, God's act of creation is absolutely necessary. That means that God is not free to do otherwise. Okay, final argument. Divine simplicity is incompatible with the Trinity.

Why? Well, let me say a little bit about the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity says that there are three divine persons who have the same essence in such a way that there's only one God. The persons are intrinsic to God, yet somehow not identical to each other. Well, I want you to remember that common classical slogan for divine simplicity. All that is in God is God. Anything intrinsic to God is identical to God.

We get a very straightforward problem here. The Father is intrinsic to God and thus is identical to God's essence and existence. The Son is intrinsic to God and thus identical to God's essence and existence. Well, identity is transitive, so the Father is identical to the Son, in which case we have no Trinity. Now, are there different ways that a proponent of divine simplicity can respond to my arguments? Obviously, of course. This is just my opening statement. If you want a deeper analysis, if you want to see a good back and forth about these sort of arguments,

just wait for the dialogue between Gavin Ortland, and myself. It's going to be quite the show. We have Dr. Gavin Ortland, Dr. Ryan Mullins. These are gentlemen that you should know. If you don't know who these gentlemen are, familiarize yourself with them. They're, I think, two of the kindest people that I've seen on the YouTube space, they're very intelligent, very thoughtful, very considerate. I don't think we're going to have to censor tonight's program for any sort of violence, verbal, or otherwise. These are gentlemen that you really need to get to know. If you're interested in Christianity, if you're interested in learning more about church history,

if you're interested in the philosophy of religion, familiarize yourself. But gentlemen, welcome to Idol Killer. Great to be here, looking forward to it. Yeah, thank you for having us. Absolutely. I think this is, I got to, I got to be transparent. There's a little bit of butterflies. Like, I know what it's like to debate. This is my first time hosting a debate, right? And I think I'm more nervous because I want to do the two of you justice in tonight's discussion than I am in any time I've ever debated personally. So I'm more nervous now than I've ever been before. And so if you, if you see me stuttering or stammering, please bear with. me. I'm just here trying to facilitate a good debate. But as I said, this is a little bit of a different format. If you're interested in their opening statements, if you have not had a chance to watch those yet, go over to, not right now, but later, go over to their opening statements and

review those, spend some time in consideration. But tonight, we're not going to waste your time with that. And I'm almost done wasting your time with my intro. Instead, what we're going to do is we're going to allow Gavin about two to three minutes to steal man Ryan. Ryan, two to three minutes to steal man Gavin. And this way we can ensure that we're having good communication. We understand where everybody's coming from. It gives you the audience who aren't necessarily familiar with divine simplicity, a brief crash course. And then we're going to go into a 30-minute open discussion portion where I'm going to bow out. You didn't come here for me. And we're going to let these gentlemen and talk. And I will give a one minute warning when we come close to the,

that the end of that 30 minutes just so that you guys can know if there's any points you want to make to go ahead and try and get those out. But as Gavin is taking the positive position, is it all right? If we start with you with a steel man of Ryan and then Ryan, you can start with a steel man of Gavin. Is that acceptable? Sure. Yeah, sounds good. Excellent. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to bring the two of us out and then just when you're ready go ahead and give a steel man and then when you're done i'll bring Ryan back in okay great so if i'm starting off here i'm really honored to be a part of this and i think this is a great way to do a debate to have the 10 minute or the 15

minute openers in the last time and then to try to steal man each other here so whoever came up with that idea great that's a great way to do it okay so to try to steal man dr mullen's position i think the general concerns I'm locating are kind of in three sort of buckets. He sees divine simplicity as unbiblical, contrary to what scripture portrays about God. Second of all, he sees it as incoherent, and third of all is compromising other important Christian affirmations like God's freedom and the doctrine of the Trinity. He sees, I'll just try to give the best I can to kind of condense this down a couple of points here. He sees more diversity in the Christian tradition, regarding divine simplicity, and he also appeals to other forms of theism and other religions.

One example he provides is the attributionist view in the Muslim tradition and perhaps elsewhere, which agrees that God lacks parts in a sense, but doesn't fall within the scope of what he sees as divine simplicity. And Dr. Mullins focuses upon divine simplicity, especially in the tomistic form, he finds it incoherent to say that God, for example, is identical to his affidavit, and says that this is clearly unbiblical because he takes this to mean that God has no contingent attributes, and yet the God of the Bible clearly does have contingent attributes. He also sees problems with divine simplicity for divine freedom. So divine simplicity says that God has no unactualized potential, but if God is free and could

have created a different universe or could have created no world at all, then there would be a great deal of unactualized potential. So that's a problem for divine freedom. He gives a second argument about divine freedom. He says that if God's actions are identical to God's existence, then ultimately he has one act, and ultimately his act of creation, therefore, is of the same modal status as his own being. And thus, basically, creation is as necessary as God is necessary, and therefore that punctures divine freedom. And then lastly, he argues that divine simplicity is incompatible with the doctrine of the Trinity. He appeals to the common classical slogan maintained by people who affirm divine simplicity that all that is in God is God.

And he argues that since identity is transitive, and since the father and the son are both identical to the divine essence, then divine simplicity would ultimately require that the father and son are identical to each other and same kinds of problems with the Holy Spirit and so forth. So he sees divine simplicity is compromising the doctrine of the Trinity. All right, that's my briefest. I turned to collapse that down. I hope that was fair. No, thank you. Thank you so much, Gavin. And I'll bring Ryan in. And then again, when you guys have concluded with your steelman, if you object to any part of the other steelman, just address that in the open discussion. But I'll bring the two of us out now. And then Ryan, it's all you.

So Gavin mentions several different things related to history, trying to clear up some conceptual confusions. And so we'll get to all of that. the open discussion. But there's something, there's a point that Gavin mentioned, but he didn't get a chance to develop. And so I want to give him three arguments to develop a point he made. So there's this point that he made about, where's this question? If God is not simple, where does God's love come from? And that might sound tantamount to like, well, where does God come from? And if people like Al Ghazali, Tim O'Connor and E.J. Lowe would say, yeah, you're just asking like where God comes from. But there's a bunch of arguments in the neighborhood to, I think, what Gavin's appeal. to. And so these can be called dependency arguments. And so the idea is that if you deny divine

simplicity, that entails that God is dependent on external entities in order to be who he is in some kind of problematic way. So I want to give three different dependency arguments to help Gavin out and build his case. So here's the first one. And this is, you see this in people like Abichina, Aquinas, and W. Matthews Grant. And so this focuses on God's essential attributes. So anything made up of other entities or component parts is derived from those entities and exist in dependence on those entities. But God's not supposed to be derived from or exist independence on any other entities. So therefore, God is not made up of other entities or component parts. And if God's not made up of other entities or component parts, then God is simple.

So therefore, God is simple. And so the idea is in this argument is that if God has extramentially distinct attributes or grit-making properties, well, then those properties count as parts. thus one like you would be like saying that God's composed of parts and you know that's not good. Here's a second argument. This one focuses on God's accidental properties like God acquiring the accidental property of creator, which is something that I affirm. So this is a way that people like James Dozel or Gavin can argue against me for saying that God acquires

comes to have the accidental property of creator. And so this is Dozel's argument. that. If God acquires the property of creator, then God comes to have a part. God acquires the property of creator because I say, yeah, yeah, he does. Well, then God comes to have a part. If God is composed of parts, then these parts are before God in being, even if not in time. I don't know what that means, but that's what Dozel says. So therefore, the part creator is before God in being. Now, if something has a part, then that thing is and its parts are composed by an extrinsic source for its unity. You got to have something that smashes Creator and God

like smashes those things together. So therefore, God and the part Creator are composed by an extrinsic source of unity. Well, no thing that has an extrinsic source can be the Creator of all. Thus, God cannot be the Creator of All. So the argument basically boils down to this. If God becomes the Creator, then God cannot be the Creator. Here's the third and final version of these dependency arguments that I can develop on behalf of Gavin. If God is not identical to omnipotence, but just merely has omnipotence, then God is dependent on his omnipotence in order to be powerful. If God is the property of love, then God is dependent on his love in order to be loving. If God has the property of goodness, then God is dependent on his goodness in order to be

good. And you can extend this to every single attribute or great making property. And this looks quite bad, because surely you do not want to say that God depends on his own osseity in order to be all say. So those are three just quick arguments to try to develop a particular point in Gavin's opening statement that he didn't get to develop very well. Oh, you're you look like you're muted there, Warren. I am. I've done that so many times. Thank you. Thank you. No, that was definitely those first time hosting jitters gentlemen. No, but thank you so much for those steelmen. And what I'm going to do now is I'm going to bow out. I'm going to set the timer, let you guys have an open discussion.

I know you're going to keep it. So we'll try to allow. We'll try. We'll try to allow for some good back and forth between both of you. And then I'll give you the one minute warning. And then we'll come back in and we will begin answering questions and then move to closing. All right. You guys can start as soon as I'm out.

Yeah. Gavin, do you want to start? Well, maybe I can just hit some headings of things maybe we can try to get to in this. So if we take a hard lunge into something, someone we can pull back. So I think the main things that I think would be great for us to touch on, and I know in a 30-minute back-and-forth here on YouTube, we're not going to resolve all of this. But at least we can, you know, flag a few things to work through a little bit. One would be, it'd be fun to talk about church history and broader history and just the relation of that, to divine simplicity. Another would be both of your arguments about divine freedom and the Trinity.

I think we should work through those a little bit. And then I think just also talking about what divine simplicity is would be helpful because I think that's part of where we have some differences. So those would be four buckets. I'm open to starting whatever. I will say your attempt to steal man my view, what I can appreciate about it just now is it seemed as though you were trying to take one particular point of my opening and try to extend it in very particular ways. I didn't really recognize it as a great steel manning because it didn't really seem to follow my pattern of thought and argumentation very well. So maybe we could go back to some of those points. Yeah, because that was something I wanted to bring up was I had at least two things to start out with that I'll relate to parts of your opening statement.

So the first is I've got this question about creaturely logic and then I've got a question about tomism. So let me start with a question about creaturely logic. So simplicity is like a creaturely category, and the principle of identity is part of creaturely logic. And you cannot articulate the doctrine of divine simplicity without it. And so all these arguments for saying that God's not a genus, not a being among beings, those are all based on Aristotelian and Neoplatonic categories. And then the doctrine of no your relations is based on Aristotle's category of relational accidents. So when Augustine explicitly says that relational terms and relational titles do not belong to the simple God,

he's relying on creaturely logic and creaturely categories. So one of the questions I have is in your opening statement, you had this claim that we should be very, very cautious about using creaturely logic and creaturely categories. But everything that divine simplicity says depends upon creaturely logic and creaturely categories. So I'm trying to get some clarity on here on like, when is it okay to use creaturely logic and creaturely categories and when is it not?

Yeah, I think we're always going to be using creaturely logic. The idea isn't that we step up. outside of our creaturely status, but it would entail a modesty and a caution with respect to assuming that God functions the same way as creatures. So basically what this will do is just simply open us up to consider perhaps God functions absolutely uniquely in ways that are relevant to the question of divine simplicity, just as he functions absolutely uniquely in other ways. So it's more of a modest cautionary claim insofar as it goes. Then it will work out as we go further. So it will come up with the question of God's relation to his attributes. Because the worry I have, because a lot of times

when I see this rhetoric, it's usually just sort of creatureally logic for me, but not for thee. I just want to make sure we're not doing that, because I don't think you're doing that. But I just want to make sure that, like, take it for the audience, at least, we're clear on that point. Fair point. And, you know, a weakness of those on my side could be to basically, anytime we hit a roadblock, say, hey, well, it's a mystery. Now, I don't think that that is what is necessary for a proponent of my view to do, of course, but that could be a danger that we should be alert to. Yeah.

So then I want to get to the Thomism thing. So in your opening statement and then in like the steel man, you said I keep focusing on tomism. And I don't understand this claim. So in my opening statement, when I'm articulating the doctrine of divine simplicity, I intentionally did not mention Aquinas once to do two things. One, to demonstrate that you can develop this. doctrine of divine simplicity from across the world's religions and from across Eastern and Western thinkers. And then, too, to also demonstrate that, like, because I keep hearing this claim that I'm

focused only on Thomism. I'm like, everything I've written is not on Thomism at all. Like, I am talking about a diverse range of thinkers. So, so I'm curious, like, why do you think I'm focused on Thomism when I explicitly mentioned everyone other than Tomism, than Aquinas in my section where I articulate divine simplicity in my opening statement. It seems to me, and look, I apologize in advance, if anything, I say a noise. Okay, so just upfront. But it does seem to me like the way you're defining divine simplicity does border on caricature in a specific way in that it seems that you're going through and finding

the strongest possible statements about divine simplicity and then sort of aggregating those into this what is called divine simplicity, and it seems to me to be a kind of radicalized version of divine simplicity, which would be mainly located within the Thomist stream. So it's irrelevant whether you mention Thomas in the context of doing that, it's whether it's located in that stream of thought. So, you know, lots of the statements that are taken to be characteristic of divine simplicity, like God has no attributes. You know, that I do regard that as a caricature to say that that's what divine simplicity means. And yet it's primarily in the Thomist stream that you'll find some people, though even among Thomists, you'll find lots of people who wouldn't say that. And so that the concern is

taking these strongest statements about it, making them representative of the whole. And so Thomism comes in because the strongest statements are primarily located within that stream of thought about divine simplicity, not necessarily because Thomism is being explicitly mentioned. I don't know if that clarifies. It doesn't. So when the medieval scholar, John McGuinness, says divine simplicity, no attributes and he's describing avicenna and when the anselmian uh kate rogers says divine simplicity means no attributes i'm still curious like what's tommist about avicenna that's easy and so i mean yeah anselm would be pretty similar to thomas it's not the case that you have to live after thomas aquinus to say something that's similar to that school of thought ansel's very similar

um avicenna absolutely i mean he's got an extremely strong view of divine simplicity he would be i would say strong much stronger some of the things you say about divine simplicity that I think are a caricature of divine simplicity as such are true about avicenna because his his view is like as I say a very robust form my concern is taking the strongest statements that anyone says about divine simplicity and making those statements representative of the doctrine as such because as I pointed out you've got lots of different streams of thought about divine simplicity I've mentioned the palomite and scotist stream but even among tomists you can find people. I mean, Catherine Rogers is, you know, she's one person who will say those things, but there's

lots of Tomas who would disagree with her. There's lots. Barry Miller would be a great example of someone who is a Thomist with kind of analytic sensitivities. He's very happy to say, God has contingent properties. Of course, God has contingent properties. And then there's all the discussions about Cambridge properties and so forth. So that really is my concern. With all respect, I think you can locate some of your statements about divine simplicity. You can give the footnote and say, well, there's this guy. you said it, whether it's Ava Chenna, Catherine Rogers, or who else, I still think it borders on caricature in that. It seems to me to be kind of going through and taking just the strongest statements. And then that's the doctrine as such. Whereas, like, to give an analogy, it would be like

if I was a social Trinitarian, which I'm not, but if I were, and then I basically took statements that were affirming social Trinitarianism as representative of Trinitarianism. objected to those and then construed this as an objection to trinitarianism as such but that's just one form of trinitarianism and so it is also with um if you don't want to use the word tomism let's just say i'll say what the way i put it a radicalized version of divine simplicity so i'll pause and see if you want to interact with that at all yeah i'm still not seeing how it's a it's radical or a caricature because the representative thinkers i draw out are augustine anselm boethius most Moses, Momodities, Peter Lombard, Avetchena, Aquinas, Arminius.

I mean, I can go on through and list in like tons and tons of others. So I'm like, they sound like major thinkers that are pretty big deals. So I've got all these medieval scholars saying that this is the way they understand them. And so I'm like, where's the caricature? So if I can quote all of them saying these things and they've got all these media little commentators going, yeah, that's exactly what they're saying. Where's the caricature? The caricature is that many of them don't say those things, and then those who do will often say them,

but then immediately following, there will be another assertion with which that statement needs to be harmonized. And so that's why I use the verb plucking out. It's like you go through and you comb out and you pluck this statement here, that statement there. Take the assertion that God has no properties. Or the assertion that God is just one pure act or the other one I was just going to mention. It just left my mind. The conceptual distinctions? That'd be another one.

I was thinking of a different one. Oh, okay. But so starting with contingent properties, I don't think all those figures do deny contingent properties in God. I think that you get there if you kind of abstract certain statements out at the expense of others. In my opening speech, I gave those three clarifications at the end. That's where I think in a second we should go back, and I would like try to return to try to steal man my own view.

Sure. Because those three clarifications I gave would be one example of that where I get, you know, there's passages in Thomas Aquinas that make it very clear there's a sense in which he's fine with affirming contingent properties. The basic distinction is we want to protect the godness of God. We want to have a thick line. And on this side of the line, God in himself is absolutely immutable. He is absolutely primal. He is absolutely simple.

We want to protect that. But in God's extrinsic relations, there's, you know, and so like here's an example of where the worry of care. can come in. The word properties, when we say God is contingent properties, the word properties can be used in lots of different senses. A lot of times when, if someone says God has no properties, sometimes, first of all, the quote is being abstracted so that it's sliced off because the person goes on to say, God has no properties that are not identical to his essence or something like that, which is a little bit of a different statement. But more basically, you can find people immediately qualifying and saying God has no properties in the sense of on this side of the

line, in himself, in his internal life, in his own essence, et cetera. But they're not saying that God has no properties in his extrinsic relations. And I do think it's a caricature to construe someone, even like someone like Thomas Aquinas, certainly a Gregory Palomis or a John Don Scotis, who also affirm God is simple as though they're saying God is no contingent. property. So I, you know, for people following along, I've tried to always pause and, and, you know, if people are following along and lost a little bit, basically, I would just say, someone can affirm divine simplicity that God is not composite, which is how I think what it means, and still think that God has extrinsic causal relations to creatures and contingent properties.

The category of Cambridge properties is one way that people try to make sense of this. someone could come along and say, hey, that's wrong, that's incoherent, but that's well represented within even the Thomist stream of divine simplicity, and certainly for divine simplicity as such. So, I mean, that, you know, that'd be an issue right there. Scotus and Palomis, I think, affirming a different version of the doctrine. So anyway. So, yeah, let's come back to the different versions in a second. So I want to make sure I'm following this, because I'm still wanting to reject the claim of

caricature, and here's why. So in the end of the timeless God, I have 10 pages of exegesis on the problem of Augustine, saying we cannot have, allow God to have relational terms applied to him and relationship titles. And this is in the de Trinitatis five. And so, and he's relying on Aristotle's categories of accidents, one of which is relations. And when I'm looking at Jeff Brower, who's a medieval scholar, and he says, yeah, the Dr. No Real Relations says, God does not have those relational. accidents. And then when I look at someone like, again, like Jeff Brower saying, God does not have any properties, imminent universals, any tropes, any sort of exemplifibles of any sort. When he says that, I'm like, okay, he's trying to be as exhausted as you can about all the different meanings of

our property talk and says none of that applies to the simple God. And this is in his own defense of divine simplicity. And I'm like, is that a caricature when a medieval scholar, a top-notchnotch medieval scholar says those things about the doctrine of divine simplicity and says this applies to broadly like all these different medieval thinkers like augustine all the way to aquinas and so on i i think i addressed this in my initial speech because i expected this might come up i think that the media evils do use the word accidents in a different sense than modern philosophy and i think that's been convincingly argued by a couple of articles i was just reading this week so i would say that it is a caricature so i guess there's two issues here um the first is i don't think augustin or thomas aquinas

meant God has no accidents in the same sense that this is often carried out in the philosophical discussion. So we can work through that if you want. I think that you can point to other passages than Augustine and Thomas that make it very clear. God does clearly have extrinsic relations. The word accidents is almost the opposite for them. They're talking about something that does in here in the being of God, and that's

what they want to deny. But the concern of caricature would still be on the table, even if Thomas and Augustine were being accurately portrayed there because that's one stream of divine simplicity. And the palamite stream really is, and as is the Scotist, significantly different. And they wouldn't say things like that. So even if the word accidents were being used in the same sense with Augustine and Thomas, I still would have the concern of caricature there. So when Augustine explicitly says that he's worried about the relationship title of Lord

and creator. That's not talking about relationship accidents, even though he says he's talking about relationship accidents. Is that the claim? I think he's trying to protect God in himself, not in his extrinsic activity. Augustine calls God Lord about 600 times in the confessions alone.

So he's clearly happy with talking about that. That's why when you get to a puzzle like this, whether it's a puzzle of language or whether it's a puzzle of seeming immediate incoherence, and this is where I'd love to ask you a question to go back to. So my opening speech spent a lot of time, first of all on church history, second of all on ontological frameworks. And my argument is basically a lot of modern philosophers have a different ideological framework than pre-modern theologians when it comes to this.

And that explains a lot of the seeming impasse like two trains colliding. And then I talked about why I think divine asciety and other doctrines like this actually require divine simplicity. So those would be the points where if I were to steal man my own argument, I would work through those three points. But on the history section, I mean, I would just say it's interesting to me that when I look back through Orthodox Christian history. So because I think when you are addressing the historical point, a lot of the people you're talking about, first of all, might be in other religions like Hinduism or Islam or Jewish thinkers prior to Maimonides. And then some of the Christian thinkers you appeal to seem to me to be heterodox, like Newton, Samuel Clark, etc. When I look at pre-19th century Orthodox Christian theology,

I find divine simplicity pretty much everywhere. In one form or another, there's a little variation, as I've mentioned, but it's pretty much everywhere. So to me, that alerts me, like, if this is so incoherent, if this is so weird, if this is so wrong, surely it wouldn't be that. It doesn't mean something is true if something, it's that widely attested automatically, but it sure probably means that it's not immediately obviously incoherent in the way that it might strike us in our modern categories to start with.

So, you know, like this comes up in my mind now to ask you about because of when we're talking about Augustine, we're on the one hand, in one sense, he is worried about what kind of contingent labels and categories we apply to God in some sense. But at the same time, it's clear if you read Augustine and you try to harmonize these statements with other statements, it's clear that he does think God has extrinsic relations that are meaningful and authentic and true. And so I guess I'd love to just kind of see how you think about this, that since I've articulated a concern of caricature, can you see how perhaps if this doctrine is so widely attested among Orthodox Christians, perhaps there are worries here that their terminology and their categories are different,

and that can explain some of the impasse we're facing. I'm just kind of posing that broadly and see what you think about that. Yeah, there's a few things to go through. Let's start with the Augustine claim. So first off, I don't think that Augustine's views on accidents is wildly different from our contemporary usage of it. And so in my own articulations of these things, I actually go very medieval on my understanding of accidents and relations, mainly because I read so much medieval philosophy and metaphysics. So when Augustine's talking about, again, relationship terms, that this is explicit phrase, and he's worried about how do we talk about these relationship accidents?

And Boethius is like, well, this category of accidents of relations, that doesn't apply to God at all. And that's also in his treatise on the Trinity. So I'm thinking in terms of their understanding of these accidental relations. So when Augustine's very clear, what he says is when we can say God is Lord and Creator, but what we have to understand is that the accident falls, on the creature and not God. That's a direct quote from Augustine. And so here's what's going on in the doctrine of real relations.

And this is taken from the creaturely categories that Aristotle gives us. So Aristotle says a real relationship is when both subjects have a property that could be essential or accidental, could go either way, that points to the other. And so if both subjects have a essential or accidental property or points to the other, then they are really related.

It's if they're not really related, sometimes it's called a mixed relation. And so here's the example that you get. Plato is thinking about So Plato has the accidental property that that points towards Socrates. And for some reason, that is beyond me, Socrates does not have the accidental property being thought about. So this is the Aristotelian understanding that gets inherited into the broader Western world. And so what Augustine is doing there is he goes like, okay, fine, let's take that example. and say, so So Socrates doesn't have the accidental property of being thought about. So the relationship only goes one way.

So Plato is really related to Socrates because he has a property, an accidental property in this case that points towards, that points towards Socrates. Socrates does not have any property, essential or accidental, that points back. So it's a real relationship in one direction. It's not a real relationship in the other direction. And so this is what's called mixed relations. And so Augustine's like, hey, I got a way to fly. solve all these problems about God changing and how to like preserve God being timeless.

Because we can't say that God's like creator from everlasting. It seems like God's acquiring the property creator. We don't want that because then God would be temporal. Well, here's what we do. We say the creature has the accidental property that points towards God. But God doesn't have the accidental property that points back. So creation is really related to God. But God is not really related to creation.

So this is how I understand it. This is how Peter King, this is how Thomas M. Ward, the medieval scholar, Thomas M. Ward. This is how Matthew McHawder, a lot of, and Jeff Broward, a lot of these other medievalists, this is how they understand the doctrine of no real relations or mixed relations. So that's what I think is going on there. And I'm happy to say, cool, but here's a plot twist. So Thomas M. Ward, he's a medievalist. He's a more interested in Scotus than Aquinas. But he points out there's an inconsistency in this view.

And here's the inconsistency. So the classic examples of real relations are the relationship between cause and effect and the relationship between knower and known. So if God is the cause of the universe, you know, creation X-N-Lo sounds like God's cause of the universe. And God knows that the universe exists. Oh, goodness, those have to be real relations. And so what Tom Ward, again, not Ord, but Ward, W-A-R-D, is worried about. He's like, well, wow, crap.

we've got an inconsistency here in the view. And so he tries to do some stuff like, God, it's analogically really related. And he knows it's super controversial to say that. And I don't know what it means to be analogically related. I have no idea. But I'm like, yeah, if you want to say these things, you've got real relations there.

And that goes against what you see in Augustine, Boethius, and so on. So that's the worry here that they have is how to preserve timelessness, how to preserve immutability and simplicity. And so again, I'm still not understanding how this is a caricature, when this is exactly what you see the medieval scholars saying, yep, this is what they're going on about. It's not what you see the medieval scholars going on about.

You see some. I mean, I've mentioned Barry Miller as an example. There's a lot of Thomists, even. But let me respond like this. Again, I was focused on Augustine, not Aquinas here. So yeah, Tomas can like say whatever they want, but I'm talking about earlier thinkers and what medieval, a lot of medieval scholars say about that.

Like you don't have the cult-like obsession with Augustine related to Thomism. So you've got people saying, And they're not playing the no one understands Augusta but me card like you do with the Thomist. So I'm talking about Augustine here. Well, fine for Augustine as well then. When there's the denial of the real relationship, the alternative to that is not fake. It is a very technical term. And I think the concern is to preserve God from having accidents that obtained to him,

accidents being defined as something that inheres to the being of God. So this is not the way that sometimes people use that term today. But let me say this. Even if everything you just said were correct, I would still see the concern of caricature because why, let's suppose the Augustinian Thomist stream is entirely wrong. Why would that then mean divine simplicity is not true? I mean, this is the larger thing I'm trying to keep gesturing toward that gets to the definitional question here. I just think that's an eccentric way of kind of cashing out where the boundaries of the doctrine are. In my opening speech, I read some statements where Palomis and Scotis are saying, God, you are simple. You are non-composite. We can go back to the earliest times of church history where we have Christians speaking of God routinely as not of parts. You know, I'm a Baptist, which I take a lot of abuse for.

But the 1689 London Baptist Confession says, God is without parts, without passions and parts. I mean, this idea that God is non-composite or without parts, I would say is the core idea of divine simplicity. And then I would locate the Augustinian, Boethian, Anselmian, tomming, sort of Western tradition as one species of that, maybe the dominant species of it,

but not the only way to cash out divine simplicity. So that would be one part of the concern of caricature here is I think you're locating your concerns primarily on one strand of the doctrine rather than the doctrine as such, just as I mentioned, focusing on social Trinitarianism when you've got Trinitarianism as such. The other concern would be, I think that you're privileging some medieval scholars and some ways of understanding the extremely abstruse matter of the relation of creator and creation and how we understand these different terms and how we all, we do what I assume we all want

to do. And that's protect the godness of God from being punctured in the process of genuine, meaningful relationship and contact that we all want to affirm is genuine and meaningful. And it does get really abstruse there. But I would say, I do think the word real, the technical sense of that needs to be understood. And so for viewers, I know for viewers watching this, they're going to hear, wow, Thomas or Augustine talks about the God's relation to the world is not real. And they think, oh, so they think it's fake. That's not what they're saying. It's a more technical term than that. But, I mean, let me ask you this. Would you acknowledge that Palomis and Scotis and those in their tradition of thought affirm divine simplicity? Not exactly. So with Palamas, I see a lot of disagreement

among Eastern Orthodox theologians on this point. Some will say it's a version of divine simplicity. Others will say, we do not believe in that the satanic or devilish. This is sometimes the way they talk. This is not me talking, this satanic doctrine of divine simplicity. I've had a lot of Eastern Orthodox theologians tell me this. And I'm like, so what is Palamas saying? And then I see no agreement on what Palma is saying.

And then I'm told I should become Eastern Orthodox. I'm like, but I don't know what you guys are saying. And they're like, that's part of our charm. And I'm like, if you let Swinburne in, then I guess you could let me in. But so yeah, with Palomas, I just don't know what's going on. And I see a lot of disagreement there. With Scotis, I think there's something very particular going on. So Scotis in his own day and even afterwards, so like William of Ackham, for example,

says, Scotus, you are not affirming the doctrine of divine simplicity. I know you say you are, but you are not. And then you even have contemporary Scotis scholars like Thomas Williams and Richard Cross, who are doing all the Scotus translations saying, yeah, he affirms it in name only or like just kind of a verbal affirmation. And then I've got all these Muslim scholars going, yeah, Scotis's view is identical to the Mataridi view. The Mataridi view is a much, much older view,

which says divine simplicity is false. And I think I can give an explanation for why that's the case, why what's going on here? And this goes back to your earlier question about like, well, how did the church not notice all this incoherence? My answer is this. The church did notice the incoherence. They are aware of the Jewish and Islamic debates going on.

They're aware of the attributionist view that goes back, at least the 8th century, which is the majority view among Islamic theologians saying, God is not a composite. Stop, you know, what would even that mean for God to be composite? But God has literal attributes and simplicity is false. And Aquinas and his students are aware of this. So his teacher, Peter of Ireland, is aware of these kind of issues. And he denies that these sorts of doctrines.

So he says, you know, God has passions. God's got all, you know, God has movement and change. That's one of Aquinas, his teachers. And then Aquinas himself in his first translation, or his first commentary on Peter Lombard says, God has distinct, not just in my mind, but in reality. And Peter of Therese, who later became Pope Innocent of Fifth,

says, that's right, that sounds good. Then this anonymous pamphlet goes around from the Dominicans, saying, anyone who says this sort of stuff is condemned. And Aquinas is like, oh, you know, I believe, no, God doesn't have attributes. These are not distinct, they're distinct by my mind, but not in reality. And all of a sudden he just starts changing his view. Now, I'm, so I'm like, okay, I've got an easy explanation

for why Aquinas and Peter Teres are willing to overlook that. They've got the Catholic authorities breathing down their neck. And then the number of condemnations that come out against Aquinas, even after his death, and on all these issues that keep coming out, by the time you get to Scotus, Scotus has very good reason to go,

I do, trust me, I totally affirm divine simplicity, you know, because his job is on the line. So he's going to give you all these formal distinctions that he knows, yeah, that looks like this so-called attributionist view, but I'm going to say it's simplicity. Why? Well, because you've got all these political authorities telling you otherwise. So the very fact that the political authorities

are not allowing people to say distinct attributes in reality, they'll say that doesn't count as divine simplicity. That can give you an easy explanation for all these people are going, ooh, I'm not going to say that. Okay. Well, if I could just interact with that briefly, I think disagreements about how to interpret Palamis are not a good reason to say Palamis doesn't affirm simplicity as such, because there's just so many passage where he says, God is simple, God has no parts. Now, you might then, yeah, you might wrestle with how to interpret that statement, but that would not result in a denial of the doctrine. Same with, yeah, of course, there's some people who don't like John Duns Codas and will say,

oh, that's not, he's not a real proponent of divine simplicity. I don't think that's a good reason to say he doesn't affirm the doctrine any more than when Muslim theologians say, no Christians really believe in divine simplicity because they believe in the Trinity and therefore contradicts it. And so you can't be a Christian and believe in divine simplicity. Of course, in other words, you expect that denial. I think with the political or the concerns of, you know, with Thomas, I don't agree that Thomas changed his mind or didn't affirm divine simplicity early on.

I'd like to check the date of the work you referenced. I'm aware that in the mid-1250s, when he's just 30 years old, Thomas writes on being in essence. And he has a chapter, a chapter five, where, you know, the angels are composite. God is not composite. And he says, everybody knows. God is simple that's completely taken for granted. I don't think it's correct that there was kind of political pressure or ecclesiastical

pressure and Thomas changed his mind or that that could explain. To me, I need to say, I do think that the tradition is basically ubiquitous in affirming divine simplicity as such, i.e., God has no parts. God is a non-composite up until the 19th century. Maybe, you know, whenever you say something like that, you're aware, my knowledge is not infinite. Maybe there's something. I'll keep listening.

I'll keep looking. but among orthodox christians within that span of time palomis scotus and thomas i think consistently i do see that so you know we we disagree there but i'm just i guess articulating where we're looking at that differently and i would just encourage viewers to look into that look into thomas's early views and and because the other way of of saying oh well he did not he affirms distinct properties in god that wouldn't necessarily mean he denies divine simplicity that would just mean the doctrine is more versatile and dexterous than it is often often assumed because, again, we can say, I believe in divine simplicity, but I'm happy to say

God is creator, God is judge, God is Lord, God has contingent properties, so that those statements aren't well taken, I think, to be a denial of the doctrine. Warren, can I give really quick, like 30 second response? Yeah. So the issue about SCOTUS, I'm citing like the leading SCOTIS scholars saying, and there are people who love SCOTUS to death, saying, yes, Skodas is just, he's just giving a verbal affirmation. So Richard Cross and Thomas Williams, it's not like, oh, they don't really like what Scotus. No, they love Scotus to death. There's been the whole life obsessing over him.

And the issue with Palmas says, I just don't know what to earth the guy's saying. So I just can't comment because I can't figure out what he's saying. Now, the question of without parts. So here's the conceptual problem. If we say without parts mean simple, the entire attribution of his view in Islam says, simplicity is false and God does not have parts. And so if there are different versions of divine simplicity and they all just really mean God does not have parts, then all of these Islamic theologians are affirming divine

simplicity. I don't want to tell them that. I'm assuming we probably don't want to tell them that. And then also all these contemporary thinkers like myself, William Lane Craig, Tim O'Connor, Thomas Morris, on and on and on we go. They all want to say divine simplicity false. But yeah, God's not a composite. And so if that's all it takes to be affirming divine simplicity,

then all the major contemporary critics of divine simplicity actually affirm divine simplicity. And then all of the major historical figures, which is the majority view of an Islamic tradition, saying divine simplicity is false. Then they are all affirming divine simplicity as well. And so I don't understand how to make sense of history anymore. And I don't understand how make sense of contemporary debates anymore.

So that's the worry I have. Well, I've thought to that about that, but I'll save them so we can press it forward here. No, guys, thank you so much for, I promise the audience a robust discussion and I think you've delivered on that. Thank you both for your thoughtful engagement there. There is a lot of confusion in the side chat over what divine simplicity is. And they're saying, you need to define it. Give it a clear definition. But it seems like there's, there's some disagreement on even how to properly define it. So just if we could add maybe one or two sentences,

from each of you. Gavin, if you would go first with just as concise of a definition as you could give, and then Ryan, if you would give a definition, and then we'll move into some of the questions that were posted on the opening statements. So, yeah, I think if you would look in most theology textbooks, most theological dictionaries, you know, you'd find the basic assertion of divine simplicity to be that God is, non-composite, i.e., God has no parts. And the word parts is traditionally taken to be a fairly generic term referring to anything that is ontologically distinct in God, or from God. So I could cash out and build more in terms of why that's important and what the concerns are, motivating, and so forth.

But since you asked for a brief definition, dictionary definition, if people are confused, that's where I would locate it. God is without parts. So my brief definition is the one that you see in every single handbook to theology that has a chapter on divine simplicity, which is you start with the no parts, but then you go, everything under the sun counts as a part. So properties, attributes, forms, accidents, tropes, universals, actions, existence. These all things count as parts. According to Christopher Hughes, to give one example, Gatha Roger, again, like all the people I mentioned my opening statement. So they'll say all those things counts as parts. So God doesn't have any of those. Okay. Thank you both for that. Now, we'll start with Gavin here and then we'll go to Ryan. One of the questions asked, and I'm trying to summarize this and make sure that I'm getting a good blend for both of you here. They asked, what early church writer, let's say anti-Nician sources have quotable statements that inherently challenge or affirm divine simplicity? And since Gavin, you're affirming it, I'll ask you.

And then Ryan, you can answer that as well. But again, what early church writer, I'm sorry, I don't have the ability to throw this up on the screen. What early church writer, Antinician sources have quotable statements that inherently challenge or affirm divine simplicity. Okay, so I'll just go quickly on this one. So I know we've got a lot of questions we can get through. So I've mentioned Athanagoras a couple of times in his plea for the Christians chapter 8, he says, quote, God is uncreated and impassable and indivisible, does not, therefore, consist of parts, end quote. That'd be like just, you know, an example of where you see

someone saying God is without parts. And these would be the more minimalistic assertions that are not fleshed out in terms of all the entailments. And an example of where I think we have to kind of make a distinction between the doctrine as such and then where it might run and rumble as it goes forward. Another key early proponent would be Iranes. He spends a lot of time developing divine simplicity and his against heresies, and there's been some good scholarship on that. So those would be two key witnesses. And then as I, as I've said, I do think it's pretty much everywhere you can look where anything like that is being addressed. It is in the fourth century that you get a lot of these more heavy-hitting theologians who will develop it, like Augustine and the Cappadocian

fathers and so forth. Thank you, Gavin. Ryan, I'll read, I'll read the question one more time here. What early church writer, let's say anti-Nician sources, have quotable statements that inherently, I guess in your case, challenge divine simplicity? I'm not aware of a lot of challenges to it, but they are, but I do know that when I'm looking at the Cappadocians versus Unomius, they are aware of the modal collapse objection or that the idea that if divine simplicity is true, then the cosmos necessarily follows. And so what you see in Unomius, his response to the Cappadocians, he's like, oh gosh, this is a very serious problem. Maybe I should say that God's will is not identical to God's essence, which is very

controversial, especially at that time. And I'm like, if that's what the essence energy distinction is, okay, cool. But it's a deviation from what you see from like, say, like origin or like a lot of earlier thinkers. Got it. Thank you. And then this question popped up quite a lot in the opening. statement, Ryan. Why did you appeal to non-Christian religions in your opening statement? Two reasons. One, it's called scholarship. Everyone should try it at some point. And the number

two, I thought it was pretty cool when Aquinas did it. He thought, like, hey, I can quote Avedetta and Momonides very positively. And I thought, if it's good enough for Thomas, it's good enough for me. Excellent. And then Gavin, a question for you, sir. Does God have propositional knowledge? and if so, is he identical with such knowledge? Okay. Yes, in his own godlike way. So whenever we speak of God, we are, this goes back actually to where we first began

is we just need to be chastened with great humility to know God is infinite, okay? He's up there, we are down here, so we are speaking. I think it is helpful to consider our speech of God to be analogical, but even if someone disagrees me on that category, I think we could all recognize that when we speak of God's knowledge, we're speaking of something that is remote and before which we tremble.

But yes, any form of knowledge that we can conceptualize, we can consider God to have. And then in terms of his God identical to that, I would make a distinction between God's knowledge in the sense of the content of that knowledge and God's knowledge in the sense of the act of knowing itself. And so when theologians speak of God is identical to his attributes, they are not saying he is identical to the content of his knowledge or of his will or of his power or something like that. Something can be singular and have multiple effects. Something can be simple and have composite effects of its actions or something like that. But his knowledge in itself is the act of knowing, then yes, in that sense. sense, God would be identical to it. Okay. Thank you.

And then this would be a question for both of you. Gavin, we'll start with you and then go back to Ryan. Can one hold to divine simplicity alongside moulinism and monarchical trinitarianism? Gavin, you don't like moulinism at all, so I don't, I feel like that there's... I like... I didn't know if that was like... Because I thought you were Calvinist, I didn't know if that was...

I don't know if that was... I don't know. all of your perspective beliefs. And in no way am I trying to set anybody up. I was just curious. I just kept, Gavin, if that person was involved in you. And I thought that's kind of an interesting question. That was a good question.

Yeah. I mean, I would just say absolutely. I don't think there's anything in either of those doctrines that would be such that, you know, it would conflict with divine simplicity. Those would seem to me, both of those areas would seem to me, at the top of my head, just to be different domains, different questions such that one could go either way on either question. They're not like dominoes that knock each other over so far as I can tell.

So, I mean, Molina himself affirms divine simplicity. The monarchy of the Trinity, though, I think is kind of tricky because if you've got the father causing the son and the spirit to exist or the father and the son together causing the spirit to exist, depending on how you want to go on the filialque, it's a bit difficult for me to understand how that's going to be consistent with divine simplicity. Yeah, maybe in the conclusion, I'll try to say, a word since we didn't get to the divine freedom and Trinity objections. I'll try to get to say just a brief word on the Trinity. But I mean, if monarchical Trinitarianism is defined as God causes the

sun or causes the spirit, yeah, that would be a strange view. I don't, but even with divine simplicity, I don't know how that would play out. I need to listen to the question and understand what they're thinking of specifically. But divine simplicity really is answering a different question, it seems to me. And so I think the distinction between persons and parts is a valid one. So even though I wouldn't affirm this idea that God causes the father and the and the, or sorry, the father causes the son or the father causes the spirit, I don't really see that as bumping into the doctrine of divine simplicity simply because I think those are kind of different questions that we're asking. And when we talk about God's attributes versus when we talk about the persons of the Trinity, we're just talking about

we're using identity claims differently, it seems to me. And so that's why I ultimately don't think there's a conflict between saying God is simple and yet saying God is tri-personal. I think those are just basically, both of those affirmations are basically speaking to a different question, it seems to me. So I'll say more about that as we go, hopefully. Okay. Now, Gavin, what would be the positive case?

For, like if you were, if you were looking for a positive case in Scripture itself, a lot of people are going, hey, there's too much philosophy in the air. We can cut it with a knife. You know, what would be the positive case for divine simplicity from Scripture? Are there certain verses that come to mind as you're, as you're considering that? Yeah. And I really do sympathize with, if you're, I never look at the live stream during a debate. I am, I'm not too smart, but I'm smart enough to know. Don't look at the last. Don't look over there. It's a trap. Don't do it. But I can imagine on a YouTube discussion how it can seem like that. I mean, one thing I could say, though, is I think one of the reasons it's so important to be willing to delve into philosophy and more technical discussions about the nature of God is even if you don't think in our positive affirmations we should go beyond the language of scripture, ultimately we have to answer heresy and we have to answer error. And to do that, there's no way around kind of getting into the,

these more technical questions, it seems. So that's one appeal I often make to Christians to try to say, you know, we should be patient with these discussions, even when they get a little more technical. The technical is important. But in terms of answering the question here for the biblical case, I would basically say, a doctrine can be taught by the Bible explicitly and at great length, or it can be taught more implicitly and by way of entailment. And I think it's legitimate that some of the things we believe are implicit and by way of

entailment. And I would see the doctrine of the Trinity as broadly in that category, at least in its technical understanding. I think we can find passages that get you a long way toward the doctrine of the Trinity, but they don't really get you to all the technical vocabulary and precise understanding. And I would see divine simplicity is functioning like that. I would see it as an entailment of the biblical portrait of God concerning God's ultimacy, God's absoluteness, God's aseity, which means that God exists from himself. And so then, you know, just looking at so, and those things are explicit and clear in the scripture, it seems to me. You know, the claim that all things are from God, that that's a biblical claim explicitly in passages like Romans 11. I even think assertions like

I am the first and the last in Isaiah 40 to 48. Statements like that are relevant to the doctrine of divine aseity. And so then simplicity is basically a mechanism. philosophically that we're trying, by which we are trying to protect these important biblical affirmations about God, God's Aseity, other things like this. And I would say another corollary supportive strand of biblical teaching is what the scripture does teach about God's attributes, and statements like 1st John 4, 8, and 16 that God is love. I don't think that that is a, I don't think a verse like that just kind of closes the lid on anything. But I think it's relevant in that, for example, a lot of the claims of incoherence against divine simplicity,

depending on how they're cashed out, could equally be cashed out against the Apostle John. Because it's not, and it at least invites you into the challenging questions of the philosophy of identity. You know, if someone made a really bad argument like, well, God is love and God is the father, and God is the son and God is the spirit, therefore there are four persons in the Godhead, this would be the and all of us would disagree with that of course but in explaining why we disagree with that this would be an example of why the technical questions are unavoidable because we need to get into what's the philosophy of identity and what's and basically there are different ways that the word is can be used we can we can denote a relation of identity in different senses and so but but the the biblical

teaching that god is love or you know it is interesting to me i used to think it was really weird when Thomas Aquinas would appeal to a verse like John 14, 6, where Jesus says, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. And he talks about how Jesus, I am the life, not just I am alive or something like that. And he's talking about this. And it's a springboard for that for further considerations and reflections that ultimately end in the confession of a simple God. So I would say the biblical portrayal of God's relation to his attributes has certain grooves of thinking that are very harmonious with the doctrine of divine. simplicity.

Okay, thank you. I got a final question really quick. So Gavin, do you think that, who do you think wrote the book of Revelation? I've not studied that at great length. I remember going through that briefly in seminary and not being persuaded that you can't believe it was the Apostle John, but I'm not really an expert on that. I just sort of, we did a drive-by study of it. And a lot of those arguments about biblical authorship, I think the statement, the more liberal

views that the same person can't have written these different books, I think are often based upon certain presuppositions that are very questionable. So I'm very skeptical of those. Say John couldn't have written revelation. I tend to incline it to thinking it was John. Yeah, when it comes to the New Testament authors, like some of these arguments, I'm like, no one person could write all that. I'm like, you just wrote a ton of, what are you talking about? What do you mean? So, yeah, so I'm happy with that. Here was the thing I was thinking, though, is, so Richard Balkham and a lot of others point out that when you're looking at the book of Revelation, the author there explicitly refuses to use the well-known and established way

of talking about divine timelessness, and instead talks about God in terms of was, is, and is to come, which is explicitly temporal. And so that would be very inconsistent with any notion of divine simplicity. So I was kind of curious about that. I need you to explain that. So first of all, the state, statement was and is to come, as you said, explicitly temporal. Correct. And then you said that that's inconsistent with divine simplicity. I didn't follow either of those.

Oh, sir. Sorry. Yeah. So the well-established way of talking about God being timeless in this time period is to talk about in this sort of timeless present tense alone and not saying that God is a past or a future. And what you see in John is, or if John wrote Revelation, is this continued, the one who was so God of the past and the one he is and the way he only is to come. So if God's timeless, God exists without succession and without temporal location, where you have being predicated of the was,

is and is to come. This is a God who has succession, was in the past, is and is to come. So you've got succession and temporal location. Where that conflicts with divine simplicity is you're going to have a God who is acquiring all sorts of accidental properties undergoing changes per accidents, going from potential to actual. So like, that's that's the worry. And it's just pretty standard. Like most people who affirm timelessness, they're going to say, yeah, we got to, if timelessness goes,

simplicity goes. Yeah. I don't know that I could agree that it's explicit in that that language. I mean, I would say that's a derivation from that language. That similar language is found elsewhere in the scripture, it seems to me, like Isaiah. I mean, I would just say that I'm not really feeling the force of this point that because John wrote Revelation, Revelation says who was and is and is to come, therefore that is a certain view of God's timelessness, therefore that's a problem for simplicity.

I think there's actually a couple different ways you could understand the language of who was and is and is to come. I mean, that'd be a great example of where, you know, as someone who believes in divine simplicity, I love that language, and I'm happy to speak like that. That divine simplicity is not against speaking of God like this. That would, that'd be actually one way you could either refer to God. God and his extrinsic relations like that, or that could be a more metaphorical way of speaking of God's sort of eternal now or something like that. So that would just depend on how you interpreted that language.

I don't know. I don't think I could agree. It's explicit the way you're taking it. I see it as more of a just a construal of it. Okay. And then question, Gavin, and then I'll ask you, Ryan, as well. how does divine simplicity interact with the incarnation of Christ? Okay.

I see the divine immutability is more the, and then how that doctrine relates to divine simplicity is more kind of the immediately pressing thing here. Traditionally, Christians have spoken about the incarnation of Christ as either, sometimes as an addition. So God, there's an understanding. addition of a human and human nature, the son of God adds a human nature or probably better terminology would be an assumption or God assumes. The son of God assumes a human nature. So now he is both and he is both human and divine, but there is no subtraction from deity. The divine nature has not been punctured. It's not been reduced to 99%. He's still 100% God, even as he assumes a human

nature as well. And thus, strange as it may be to say for people to hear, we would say that there's uh we can speak of god as uh you know becoming man and we're referencing what god has done that is in time that we are speaking of it but it does not change the essence of god and therefore in that sense god remains immutable and therefore remains simple so the short answer to the question is divine simplicity some have argued that the incarnation is a problem for divine simplicity i don't really see that as the most is the best objection it basically i would just say divine simplicity is harmonious with the incarnation classical theism in all its contours affirms the incarnation and sees it in that way of thinking of the son of god assumed a human nature

thank you and then ryan do you see any any relation between the incarnation and in divine simplicity that that you would push back on yeah there's three problems uh two of which are pointed out by richard cross in his book on the metaphysics of the incarnation and then another one that all bring up. So the first is Richard, the first two, Richard Cross says, remember, divine simplicity says no accidents, the incarnation's accident. So if God's simple, he can't have accidents. And so this is, again, a medieval, a world leading medieval scholar saying these things. And then the other thing that Cross points out is God's not really related to the universe. And that's goes back to the earlier discussion of no accidents. And what that entails, again, Cross points

out is that the sun is not really related to his human nature. Now, you could say, well, that's fine, because the sun is still really related to, or the human nature is still really related to the sun. But something I point out in the end of the timeless God is, well, I'm also really related to the sun. So what's the unique relationship that distinguishes me from Jesus? Because they're better be one if there's really incarnate. Here's the third claim. So divine simplicity, a simple person has no parts. The overwhelming dominant view of the incarnation throughout church history is what's called a compositional approach to the incarnation, which involves a composite Christology, where the sun either has parts or becomes part of a larger whole. And if a simple being,

a simple person, which according to the fourth ladder and counsel, the persons are simple, how do you get a simple person having parts when the claim is supposed to be no parts? So those are the three areas of conflict that I see. I don't know if you want me to interact with that at all, Warren. Yeah, yeah. If you'd like to. Yeah. I mean, this is, this is a gentlemanly discussion. So if there's something you would like to respond, I have no problem. Well, and I'm very aware, having done a lot of these of how,

you know, if anytime we say, oh, I just have one little thing to say, and that can be the start of 30 minutes. So I really won't make this. I'll just say sort of a summative one sentence comment on that, of what we could kind of work through,

rather than try to, you know, work through all the weeds. But I think the thing there that we need to work through is the distinction between the divine and human natures. And I think, robust emphasis upon that distinction can meet the concerns that Ryan has brought up. But to work through that, we need to talk through that.

So I guess I just like to flag that. Okay. Anything you want to respond to that, Ryan? Oh, yeah. So according to the, the, the historian of dog. I just gave one sentence so that we could just move on. If I was going to give a detailed response, I'd flesh that out. Yeah, but I'll just give like, again, one sentence.

So according to Thomas Marshaller, the historian of dog of dogma, he says, according to the Fourth Lateran Council in a doctrine that no none of the Medieval's denied the persons of the Trinity are identical to the simple nature. So you can make distinctions all you want between, but they're identical. So I don't know what these distinctions do. Okay. I'm sorry, that was a long German sentence with way too many semicolins. Okay.

Thank you, gentlemen. I think we've already asked this, Michael, but I wanted to say thank you for the super chat. we did address the question of God being identical to his knowledge a little while ago, but thank you, Michael. We also have a question here from Aaron. He says, Gavin, you define divine simplicity as God not having parts. Can you now define what you mean by parts? What is a part and what isn't a part and why?

Who decides what those parts are? Sure, okay. So traditionally, the word part refers to in these conversations, something that is ontologically distinct from God. And so the concern here would be that if you say that there are different parts in God, then when you go back to that which is primal and original, that from which all reality flows, you have instead of something that is absolutely singular, something that is multiple. And that's what divine simplicity is trying to protect against. is trying to say that which is primal and original, the cause of all other reality is absolutely singular and simple and one thing,

and it's not consistent of a bunch of different pieces or parts. So parts are that which is ontologically distinct. I'm not denying that you can find people who maybe would cash this out differently, but the way I'm doing it is how you will often see it in the tradition and in the contemporary discussion. So yeah, someone could cash that out differently, but that's how I would answer that.

Thank you. Ryan, do you want to address anything here? No, that's just basically anything you can name that would be distinct is what counts us apart. That's, I mean, that's pretty pretty standard textbook according to this tradition. Yeah. Thank you. And we've got a statement here. He says, fan of exploring reality is an atheist plant. So totally on topic.

Thank you, brute facts. Dan is a good guy. Why are you guys picking on him? But thank you for the super chat. And then we have another super chat here. Gavin, my audience is a little wild here. Brute says he's the goat against DDS, but he says you're cool too. So, you know, he's stating his opinion on the doctrine,

but he recognizes everybody here. Pretty good people. So thank you guys for the super chats. I'm looking through. I'm not really seeing too much in the way of questions. And so I did promise these gentlemen that we would. get through this in a timely manner. So I think what we need to do now is transition to the five-minute closing stage.

Okay. All right. Michael, we just got one in. You got it in under the wire, sir. Thank you for the super chat. Is God able to add attributes or parts to himself? So let's mix it up here. We'll have Ryan go first and then give Gavin the final word on that.

So Ryan, can God add attributes or parts to himself? Yeah, so two thoughts. So since I deny divine simplicity, I think God can have attributes and acquire accidental attributes. So I see no problem with that. And then my view explicitly entails it. And then can God add parts? I hope so, because otherwise I don't know how to develop the doctor of the incarnation. Thank you.

And then Gavin, do you want to tackle this? As has come up previously, I would again appeal to a thick distinction between God in himself, so the essence of God, and then God in his extrinsic relations. So I would say, no, God does not ever add anything. It would be impossible to add on anything to God in his essence. You can't make perfection better. But in his extrinsic relations, you can say that God became the creator, and you're not referring to a change in the essence of God. You're thinking in the realm of what we sometimes call Cambridge Properties. So that distinction would be, I think, key to explaining the sense in which we mean it when we speak of God becoming a creator or becoming man

or something like that. Thank you. And then we've got one more super chat here from exploring. This is, this is Than. He says, don't listen to that slander. He's not an atheist plant. So he just wanted everybody. He wanted everybody to know.

Thank you. Thank you, Than. We have one question here from Seth. This may be related. And I'm not really sure. but I think I saw this a moment ago, so I want to make sure we give him an opportunity. Question, was Jesus omniscient given Luke 2.25, Isaiah 715 through 16?

So Gavin, how would you respond to that? And then Ryan, if you want to address it. Okay, yeah, I'm not able to pull up Luke 225 off the top of my head. Oh, that's probably the Gruen Understanding passage. I was thinking they were going to talk about in Mark where he says, the sun doesn't know the final hour where you usually see this question. come from, but okay, sure. So yeah, I mean, the short answer, I think, is he is omniscient with respect to his divine nature, but he is not omniscient with respect to his human nature. And I think that when you're doing work with the doctrine of the incarnation, that thick distinction between those two natures is really important for addressing questions like this and then other things that we describe Jesus as. And the key then will just be to not slide off into Nestorianism in any moment and deny. the unity of the person of the Son of God.

So that is the great challenge and the great, you know, the fun challenge of Christology. But the answer to this question by my lights is, yes, with respect to his divine nature, no with respect to his human nature. Thank you. Ryan, you want to respond to that? That's all right.

You don't want to talk about Jesus' exhumations? I mean, I've got too much to say, so I can't do it concisely. Okay. And then we have one more here. from Brut. Thank you for the super chat. How does divine conceptualism tie into simplicity? And he says from both. So we'll start with Ryan and then we'll go back to Gavin. Yeah. So this relates to a point Gavin made earlier about there's these different conceptual or ontological frameworks in the ancient world, the modern world. And I want to say this is demonstrably false. So Catherine Rogers points out that you've got neoplatonic and Aristotelian views

going through all the traditions and you see all these different people affirming simplicity or denying simplicity. The same thing is true today. You've got people who are affirming a constituent or a relational ontology or just go in full-blown divine conceptualism who are affirming and rejecting divine simplicity. So I think the way this relates to the debate is there's no direct relationship to the debate. You've got people on both sides historically and today affirming all manner of views and affirming or rejecting divine simplicity. Okay. Thank you. Gavin, do you want to I'm actually just happy to yield that answer that Ryan gave, because I don't know enough about divine conceptualism to be able to address this question.

I need to look into that more first. Do you want me to, should I say like a quick one sentence like what that is? Yeah, that'd be great for my own business. Just so everyone knows. Yeah, because otherwise people might be like, what are we talking about? So yeah, so it's a debate about God and abstract objects. And so there's this doctrine of divine ideas that's very, very old, which says that all these abstract objects,

They're not these things floating independent of God. They're just concepts in the mind of God. So that's the conceptualist view. If you want to know more, Paul Gould edited a book called God and Abstract Objects Five Views, beyond the control of God, God and Abstract Objects Five Views.

And you'll see the conceptualist view laid out there. Thank you. And I'm just checking to make sure I have not missed anything else. Oh, no, we did. We had a couple come in. Thank you so much for that, Lekeva. appreciate that. That is truly appreciated. And then Aaron, also thank you for the super. Ryan, you seem to agree with Gavin's definition of parts, meaning something that is ontologically

different. So do you believe God has parts that are ontologically different from each other? Oh, right. No, so I agree that that's the way of people historically affirm divine simplicity. That's how they understand parts. What I side with is what the attributionist view and then what all the contemporary like thinkers who deny simplicity also say is why on earth should I count all these different things as parts? So that's like Al Ghazali's argument against all these things. It's like, why should I count attributes as parts? And we've asked contemporary myriologists, like, what do you think about like, you know, God having these abstract properties? Like does that count as parts? And they're like, parts applies to physical things. I don't know what it means for parts to apply to non-physical things.

So, so yeah. So I want to say this is how they understand parts. So it would be everything under the sun, but I want to say that's a very permissive view of what counts those parts. And I very quickly lose my grasp of what a part even is because I see no good reason to say all these things are parts. Thank you. Gavin, do you want to address that at all? No, that was a question for Ryan.

I'm happy to leave it there. Okay. Excellent. Now, we do have some naysayers, gentlemen, in the side chat. I told you it's a dangerous place. And I'm required to go into the mud here for you both. but he says, guys,

why does this conversation even matter? This is pure entertainment. So could either, could you take a moment, Gavin, and just explain why? And I think you did this in your opening statement, but just for Brian's benefit and those naysayers in the side chat

that just go, you guys are just, you're having too much fun. What does this even matter? Could you just give like a brief defense of why the truthful whether you're for or against it is important. Why is it's conversation relevant? Yeah, and this is probably a point that Ryan and I can agree upon here because the answer I'm going to give,

it wouldn't even just be only applicable to like divine simplicity, but it'd be applicable to other more technical parts of the doctrine of God or theology proper. And I think I could say two things. One is that, first of all, I can sympathize with the question. I mean, we all know what it's like to be reading an abstract philosophy book and your eyes to glaze over and you just wonder, resists being pedantic? Is it just word games? But the thinking accurately about the nature of God is really important. I mentioned earlier one of the reasons is to be able to answer heresy or error, because heresy is often very technical. And so to answer that, there's no way to do that without entering into those categories of thought and responding. Another reason is that if we avoid

thinking really carefully and in terms of technical vocabulary with philosophical precision and so forth about the nature of God, we won't be avoiding philosophy and we won't be avoiding certain assumptions about the nature of identity, the nature of ontology, and so forth, will just be having an assumed framework that is unexamined, that is driving how we think. This was driven home to me in my own study on this doctrine, reading church history, and just how much I was challenged and realizing, was taking so many things for granted. And the same thing happens when I read high-level philosophy. I realize, wow, I'm just assuming so much, and this is puncturing my assumptions and forcing me to

cover my bases. So that's another reason it's important is that it's really unavoidable. You know, there's absolutely no way to be a faithful Christian and think about God without working really hard. And part of that is entering into the tradition. So that's why a discussion like this, I think is really fruitful and good. I'm grateful to be part of it. I think it's been a great thing. you know, because the cause of truth is served by these kinds of conversations. And I think a topic like this and other aspects of the doctrine of God is actually really important. And it does actually make a difference just in how you relate to God and think about God and so forth. Thank you, Gavin. Ryan, you have anything to add?

Yeah, two things. One, what's wrong with entertainment? I mean, come on. That's a value. And then number two, in my mind, if divine simplicity is true, Christianity cannot possibly be true. So I think these debates matter for like the truth of the Christian faith. Thank you. We have one last super chat.

And then I'm cutting it off. If they come in, know that I'm grateful, but I'm not going to ask them. So sound faith consulting says to both of you, Dr. Craig, we call him Bill around here. We're on a first name basis. He doesn't know my first name, but I know his. Dr. Craig denies the to mystic version of simplicity, but is also an anti-realist. are the abstract objects. Does he fall in the simplicity tradition?

Ryan, do you want to take this? And then we'll give the last word to Gavin. Yeah. So because I've been reading through Craig's, some earlier drafts of Craig's forthcoming systematic philosophical theology. So we've had a lot of conversations about this. So it's not just the to mystic version. He wants to say like Augustinian and originist and all these different things.

Like those are all false. but he's also going to be affirming this nominalist view about abstract objects and he's going to still say simplicity is just false, which I think is important because, again, we're not talking about there's like different modern ontological frameworks because you see William of Ackham say nominalism, cool, simplicity cool, and you've got Craig saying nominalism, cool, simplicity, no, no, thank you. Yes, I think the question, I think that's right. I think Dr. Craig, I love Dr. Craig in his work.

My understanding of him is he wouldn't affirm divine simplicity in any sense. So it's not just the to mystic account that he's rejecting. Yeah. And I think that's, but I think the point about his anti-realism is also correct. So I think he just affirms both of those things so far as I can tell. Excellent. And Dr. Craig, you're more than welcome to come on this show and enlighten us all if we've gotten any of it wrong or you just feel like chatting. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to bring myself out.

Again, Gavin, as you have the positive, you're going to have five minutes to do your closing statement. When that is done, I'll bring Ryan in. He'll have five minutes and I'll give you both a one minute warning when we reach the four minute mark. You'll see that ticker on the bottom of the screen. And then we will wrap it up and call it a night. I'm going to bring us both out. And am I going first year with the conclusion? Yes, sir.

Yeah, you'll start off with the five-minute closing statement. Great. Okay, fantastic. All right. Yeah, well, I'll just say again, thanks to Warren for setting this up. Thanks to Ryan. I'm honored to dialogue. Ryan is a fantastic scholar. He's well published on this area, so I'm grateful for the dialogue. Just to sum up a few thoughts, and I've not scripted this conclusion out exactly, but just maybe a few concluding synthesizing thoughts. One is just to draw attention again to the historical record.

I do think it's the case that basically before the 19th century among Orthodox Christians, divine simplicity is a ubiquitous doctrine. I think it's problematic to try to say someone like Gregory Palomis or John Dunscotis doesn't affirm the doctrine just because, you know, you can find a scholar who will say that. You can find scholars who will say the opposite. And I mean, just read their writings and they're continuously saying, God is simple. As I say, it's pretty much ubiquitous. Now, as I said in our discussion earlier, that doesn't mean automatically that it must be true,

but it definitely raises some strong cautions against an immediate concern about incoherence. If someone is saying this doctrine is just weird, or even what we've brought attention to just in the conclusion here about the importance of this. This was important to a lot of people throughout church history, and that raises the question of, okay, what's really going on here? And then secondly, just to return to the point that I made in my initial statement, that there is a different ontological framework. We just got into this a little bit. Of course, I'm not saying it always neatly charts out that everyone in this side is a nominalist and everyone in the side isn't or something like that. Of course not. But at a more basic methodological level, I do want to maintain a concern about a caricature here.

A lot of the arguments being put forward that, you know, well, the doctrine of divine simplicity just says there's no properties in God in any sense. so there's no accidental properties, but the Bible shows that God does have accidental properties. This is, I think, targeting at a caricature. And I'm not denying that you can never find someone who will go that route. We've mentioned Abacchena in the Muslim tradition, and certain statements from Catherine Rogers have come up, and you can find it among certain tomists.

But I think the concern here is that it is a form of caricature to take the strongest possible statements of a doctrine, as representative of the whole, thus obscuring diversity and overlooking possible ways of harmonization. And at the end of the day, I think that the doctrine of divine simplicity simply means that God does not have parts, parts being defined as that which is ontologically distinct from God. And I do think that affirmation is extremely important and universal. Let me just say real quick prior to the 19th century among Orthodox Christians. Because of course, you can, I think it's very telling that you have to appeal so broadly to other religions to try to get historical instantiation in my view.

Real briefly, some of these objections, I think the divine freedom objection that came up, we unfortunately didn't get to talk about that very much. But we did talk about other things that I would see is basically involved in the answer to this. And that is, I'd say there's a distinction between the content of God's will and God's act of willing itself, which is necessary and immutable and so forth, but its effects are not. And so the divine, another way to put it, the divine power by which God creates is necessary, but not what is actually created or whether to create. And so God is free. God can create any universe he wants. He can not create at all.

And I don't think there's any contradiction between that and saying that in his own essence, God has no composition. The Trinity objection is, try to do this in a minute here at the end. basically I could just flag what we need to walk through here is basically we need to get into the philosophy of identity. I've talked about 1 John 4-8 and 416, God is love. We could build a really bad argument against the Trinity from something like this. What it draws attention to is the danger of equivocation on the word is. So when we say the father is God, the son is God, the spirit is God, we're making one particular kind of claim.

When we say God is love, we're making a different kind of claim. Parts and properties don't always work the same. in as much as the persons of God, excuse me, in as much as the persons of the Godhead are God, they are identical to each other, but in as much as they are subsisting relations, they are really distinct. And there's nothing in the doctrine of divine simplicity that denies that. There's nothing that says there can be no possible personal distinctions like that. Again, one of the caricatures is this idea that there's no distinction in God whatsoever. And that's just not what the vast majority of proponents of divine

simplicity would affirm. Final thoughts would just be that divine simplicity is, I know it sounds incoherent or bizarre to people at first. If you work on this, if you think about this, I'm persuaded, you, many of you will agree with me if you study this, that it actually is really important, precisely in some of the ways it is so odd at first glance to secure divine uniqueness, divine absoluteness, divine asciety. It basically equips the theism to be the best explanation for a reality.

It reduces brute facts as much as possible, and it eclipses other challenges like the Yuthaer Dilemma and other things that come up like that. I'm probably at about five minutes, so those are some my final thoughts. Thanks again for the debate. You're muted. Of course I am. Of course I am. Thank you, Ryan.

I'm going, Gavin, I said thank you for your closing remarks, by the way. Yeah, we didn't hear it. You didn't hear it. You just saw me miming in my glass. of emotions over here. But I'm going to bring Gavin and myself out. Ryan, you're going to have five minutes for your closing statements. I'll bring you both back in for a farewell. And then we are going to dismiss for the evening. Okay. Okay. So first issue, the historical record. The reason I bring in all the different religions

is because, again, if you're trying to understand the debates throughout Western history, you have to look at the other religions. You cannot understand someone like Aquinas if you do not understand the other religions because Aquinas explicitly appeals to Momonides and Avicenna in his defenses of divine simplicity and other divine and discussions on the divine nature. So if it's okay for Aquinas, great and holy, blessed be his name, the infallible Lord and Savior, if it's okay for him to do it, it's okay for me to do it. The issue about non-Orthodox thinkers, again, you can appeal, you can find all sorts of orthodox thinkers today who say divine simplicity is false.

And then I've pointed out all these discussions in the past where you've got people like Aquinas, Peter F. Tarentes and these others who earlier on said, God has distinct attributes. Now, another issue is the different ontological framework. I do not understand this claim at all because, again, someone like Catherine Rogers, Giovanni Vitamilia, lots of other medieval scholars point out, there are a lot of different ontological frameworks throughout history. One of the major debates throughout Western histories between Neoplatanist and Aristotelians.

Those are different ontological frameworks. And one of the major debates you see throughout Western history is people who are neoplatonist or Aristotelians affirming divine simplicity and rejecting divine simplicity. The issue of only attacking the strongest version, I'm attacking the version that I see in all of the different handbooks, like your average handbook to philosophy of religion or systematic theology, that's the version I'm seeing. The so-called other versions, I think causes historical and conceptual confusion. if all these so-called other versions of divine simplicity, if that's really the case,

then the entire debate in Islamic thought over the attributionist versus divine simplicity, that's just a completely muddled debate. All those people who said, I reject divine simplicity, they're just confused and they're wrong. All these people today, like Richard Swinburne, T.J. Mawson, Wayne Craig, and so on,

who say, I reject divine simplicity. They're also just confused because they're affirming a version of divine simplicity. I don't find that plausible. to map onto the historical record or the contemporary debates. We didn't get a chance to go into God is free. So, you know, there's nothing to say there. The Trinity, yes, it does get into technical issues about the philosophy of identity.

But the philosophy of identity that's affirmed throughout the Christian tradition is very clear. So again, Thomas Marshaller, he says the fourth Lateran Council reaffirmed, quote, the strict numerical identity of the essence with the three persons, a doctrine which later scholastic theologians did not question. And then James Dozel agrees that the divine persons are identical to the divine essence. God's simplicity, this is a quote, God's simplicity pertains not merely to the divine substance, but to the divine persons as well. So I don't think that there really is much of a debate about the philosophy of identity here when we're talking about simplicity and trinity. Now, the no distinctions claim that that's a caricature. I don't understand

how it's a caricature to explicitly quote all these different classical thinkers say, no distinctions, not even conceptual distinctions, nor do I understand how it's a character to quote lots of mainstream medieval scholars saying the exact same thing. And that's something I'm really going to maintain here is I've quoted a lot of mainstream medieval scholars and I'm following their lead.

And so if it's a character when I do it, then it's a caricature when these other medieval scholars themselves do it. Final claim, Gavin keeps saying that divine simplicity is the best theistic explanation for God's necessity, his uniqueness, and so on. We have had no argument to that effect. Josh Rasmussen, Tim O'Connor, William Lane Craig, Samuel Clark. So many people throughout history and so many people today are developing counts of how God is the best explanation of reality,

how God is a necessary being without making any appeals to divine simplicity. Also uniqueness, it's very easy to capture God's uniqueness without ever mentioning the word simplicity. God is unique in the following sense. The very concept of God is that of a perfect being, which is the ultimate foundation of reality. No one else is a perfect being, nothing else in reality is perfect being, and nothing else is a single ultimate foundation of reality. You do not need divine simplicity to explain any of these things. And I'll rest my case there.

And I unmuted myself. You didn't need to tell me that time. Thank you. All right, gentlemen, thank you so much for this debate. Thanks for trying something different with the format. I really like this. I think that it gives the audience more time to really digest what your arguments are.

I think it gives you more opportunity to engage and understand the pushback and criticism. And I like this. I don't know. I would like to continue this format moving forward. Gavin, thank you so much for coming on and participating. Everyone, be sure to check out his channel. Truth Unites. Information should be in the description. If not, I'll add it. Ryan, thank you so much for coming on. Again, everybody go check out the reluctant theologian. My alarm was telling me you're out of time. Everybody go check out the reluctant theologian, again, his channel information will be in the comments or the description below. But thank you both so much.

Really truly appreciate it. But with that said, I'm going to go ahead and sign us out. Thank you so much for tonight's debate. Thanks everyone for tuning in. Thank you for the super chats. Thank you for your thoughtful questions. And thank you for your consideration. You'll have a good night.