We sometimes believe in unclear things because of clear premises which entail them. The trinity, for example.
This (essential) Christian doctrine is mysterious — three persons sharing in one unrestricted divine essence, there is something admittedly strange about that — but we embrace the mystery because 1) it is not obviously contradictory, and 2) we believe the steps which entail the trinity are well fastened. We (as Christians) would further say it would be foolish to reject the trinity because it is difficult to comprehend, especially when one has good reasons to believe it, such that it has been divinely revealed. Because we don’t understand something (like the trinity, or quantum mechanics) does not mean it is unreasonable to accept and believe it. In fact, if the steps which produce a belief are themselves reasonable (even more if they are certain), then it would become unreasonable to reject such a belief just because it is enigmatic unless one first shows the premises which entail it weren’t reasonable, after all. In short, we should use what is clear to illuminate what is unclear and we should not allow concerns over what is unclear to cast doubt upon the obvious.
Please keep these points in mind as we discuss another mysterious theological doctrine, namely classical theism — or in other words, the claim that God is absolutely simple (non-composite), unchanging, and the cause of everything else which exists — wherein I hope to establish parallels to show that Christians are not entirely consistent in their commitments, particularly when it comes to those who criticize divine simplicity on grounds of being unintelligible, mysterious, or absurd without properly appreciating what motivates the position in the first place.
Background: Throughout the decades (centuries, really) objections have been posed to classical theism. However, many of these objections present themselves as maintaining not insignificant confusions about what classical theism/divine simplicity says. Alvin Plantinga, for example, is well known for rejecting divine simplicity on the idea that the doctrine entails power is the same thing as knowledge, since the classical theist maintains that “everything in God, is God,” and that God is both all-powerful and all-knowing. The latter is a true statement about classical theism – everything in God, really is God – but Platinga’s objection is a caricature arising from a misunderstanding of how someone arrives at classical theism as the conclusion to their metaphysical project. This is an important point. Classical theism isn’t something that’s “thrown out there” just because it sounds appropriately transcendent, but rather is the arrival point of a robust metaphysical undertaking which seeks to carve reality at its joints. Because of this, we conclude that qua ultimate explanation, God is non-composite since everything composite (physical and metaphysical) requires an outside explanation or cause. Ultimate explanations, then, can only cash out in terms of absolute simplicity, and that is what divine simplicity recognizes. To deny divine simplicity is to deny that reality is completely intelligible and to place God into a creaturely category. Big mistake.
Fortunately, the process which furnishes the outcome “divine simplicity is true” is one of moving along – as any good metaphysician should – apophatically and analogically; and so, we say more about what God is not than we say of what God is. Accordingly, one needn’t be overmuch concerned by attempts to undermine classical theism when so many of these attacks presume anthropomorphic notions of God (or God’s properties) which the classical theist is in their rights to deny.
For example, when classical theists say “whatever is in God, is God,” what they mean is that God has *something like* power as WE understand it (but infinitely higher) and that God has *something like* knowledge as WE understanding it (but infinitely higher) and that this *something like power* in God must be identical to whatever this *something like knowledge* is. We are not – I repeat, not! — saying that power and knowledge (as we commonly understand these properties) are identical, but rather whatever the ontological basis of God’s power is *just is* whatever the ontological basis for God’s knowledge is. Those are different claims, and only one of them (Plantinga’s) is incoherent. The other is mysterious (and why shouldn’t it be? We’re talking about God, after all.) but to reject divine simplicity because of an objection like Plantinga’s is to not to reject divine simplicity but something else.
What’s more, logical jabs are often taken to discredit divine simplicity from riddles surrounding God’s (presumably) contingent knowledge (see here or here) or the notion of modal collapse (see here). While each of these cases can be examined individually and found to not establish what they claim, a more general response should be considered beforehand, which is this. We ought not to abandon what KNOW based upon alleged contradictions (or absurdity) around what we do NOT know. We know, for example, that God has “knowledge” in an extremely stretched, analogous way (see Norris Clarke on analogy; but also Aquinas, who is emphatic that “knowledge is according to the mode of the one who knows… now since the mode of the divine essence is higher than that of creatures, divine knowledge does not exist in God after the mode of created knowledge, so as to be universal or particular, or habitual, or potential, or existing according to any such mode.” Qu 13 art 1), but that his knowledge is radically transcendent and operates differently than ours, and this must always be kept in mind, because to pose objections to classical theism based upon God’s knowledge of contingent things is often taking on assumptions (however implicit) that go beyond our powers to thoroughly investigate, let alone adjudicate.
But let us return to what we do know. Contingent things (obviously) exist but no contingent thing (whose essence is not identical to its act of existence) could exist unless something ELSE exists which is non-contingent, absolutely necessary, and whose essence just is subsistent existence itself. And that thing is going to be purely actual, non-composite, and utterly unique (i.e. God). Of this, there can be no compromise – reason demands it. There is that which just is pure subsistent being and cannot in anyway be composed – for example, be possessed of any intrinsic accidents—for the reason that the parts of an object are distinct from (not identical to) the object itself, and yet an object depends upon its parts at any point it has them. However, the metaphysical arguments for God demonstrate that God causes everything distinct from himself. Thus, to put composition in God is to say that God causes his parts – i.e. that God is in some way the cause of himself, which is absurd. Because a cause is logically prior to its effect, it is nonsense to say that God as the cause of everything distinct from himself could be metaphysically composed. Of this we can be certain.
From there, the classical theist maintains (again, based on causal reasoning) that God cannot have any real properties which are really distinct from the divine essence, even if God can have extrinsic/relational properties, or undergo what’s been labelled “a mere Cambridge change.” For example, God being “the creator of the world” is made true by something extrinsic to God (i.e. the world) and thus can be the case (or not be the case) while God (including God’s power, knowledge, etc) remains entitatively the same. (For what it’s worth, this position – known as the extrinsic model of divine simplicity, defended by thinkers like Alexander Pruss and Matthews Grant – also shows that God is not logically sufficient for the creation of the world, and thus avoids modal collapse. God can be the same while God’s effects differ.) Thus, if someone were to come along and say divine simplicity can’t be true, because God knows/believes “the world exists” (or doesn’t exist) and that must place an intrinsic accident in God (something which could have been otherwise) and so God must be composed, the defender of divine simplicity can rightly say… not so fast.
Why so? First, is because God knowing the world exists (or doesn’t exist) *just is* the world existing (or not existing, if only because God always knows nothing exists aside himself unless He causes it, and that God’s only essential content in HIs act of knowing is the divine essence itself) and its causal dependence upon God, making it an extrinsic denomination, which is compatible with divine simplicity. Critics often overlook this critical distinction, which draws from Aquinas’s notion that while creatures are really related to God, God is only rationally related to creatures.
But leave the technical analysis aside (see the linked article below for more on these specific issues; I also discuss objections from modal collapse and contingent knowledge in my $1 eBook.), and let’s return to the more basic point. Because what the proponent of divine simplicity says is something more reserved than critics of classical theism often realize: that, yes, God is the ultimate wellspring of intelligibility and universal cause of every finite thing, and from that we can deduce – in a broad, general sort of way – that God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent (as cause to effect), and so on. But all these concepts, while in one sense specific, are, in another sense, mysterious and profoundly so. Thus, for someone to come around and start taking potshots at classical theism, many of which make drastic (and often anthropomorphic) assumptions about God and God’s properties (like Plantinga does) – his beliefs, his knowledge, or whatever – are going to assume a burden of proof they cannot sustain, or else open themselves up to charges of question begging or strawmanning.
For the classical theist can always respond, “Look, Mr. Critic. You say God has ‘beliefs’ like we have beliefs, and contingent (and maybe propositional) knowledge like us, etcetera – and that is quite the claim, because it purports to know more about God than what we classical theists have asserted. We do not know whether God has beliefs (or knowledge, etc) in any sense similar enough to how we understand such things to evaluate your criticism, but we can tell you that if God does have beliefs, those beliefs are going to be similar to ours only in an extremely loose sense, unchanging (and probably only one), and could arguably relate to contingent objects which themselves could be otherwise without the belief(s) changing – just like God’s love does, which makes sense, given that whatever is in God, is God. All that may be impenetrably mysterious, but so be it; it is enough to undermine the charges of contradiction and incoherence, and it would be foolish to deny what we DO KNOW based on alleged contradictions around what we do NOT know.”
Or something like that…
The point is this. Unless the critic undermines the metaphysics which entail divine simplicity, it is not enough to engage in “play at tea time” philosophy, delivering random bodyshots without bearing a more significant burden of proof. What, exactly, does Mr. Critic mean when he says God has beliefs or knowledge or what have you? For example, does it make sense to say God has propositional knowledge?, that knowledge is a species of belief in God?, that content essentialism is true with God? that a Russelian vs Fregean, etc, account of mind and world is better when thinking about God?… and a thousand other things aside; things which probably we can never know until we (God willing) get a chance to ask Him. In other words: how do we know beliefs/knoweldge/etc in God are anything close enough to the way we understand having beliefs/knoweldge/etc to produce the alleged absurdity? And whatever they (the critic) happen to say, their assertion will be in principle unsustainable, because it would necessitate having a particular viewpoint on the divine essence which is beyond reach.
Of course, someone might respond that I am attempting to make divine simplicity unfalsifiable, and that is unfair. But that would be untrue. For I have already said how I think one ought to refute divine simplicity (if that is their intention): attack the metaphysics which entail it. Go for the legs of the act-potency distinction, for example. Because by the time we have gotten to the conclusion of divine simplicity from the metaphysical commitments which precede it, we are so deep in the fog of transcendent mystery that it becomes enormously, if not impossibly, difficult, to sort out anything clearly. I mean, we have barely a fingertip’s grasp on God’s existence as it already is, because we are the very edge, the literal foundation, of reality itself. So of course it is going to be difficult (if not impossible) to investigate and evaluate and adjudicate God’s nature to significant extent, which means we should not be presumptuous — and that goes as much for proponents as critics — in assuming we know more about our absolutely simple God than we in fact do, aside from the fact that God is absolutely simple.
In short, the position I am pressing is one of simple caution and proper procedure: If we know that (x) is the case and that (y) is the case and then deduce some further conclusion that is admittedly strange, we do not deny the conclusion just because it is not clear to us how everything comes together. Instead, we say – OK, this is mysterious, and perhaps a little spooky, but I have checked my work and the conclusion follows from these well established premises, thus I will continue to think hard about how this mystery can be, but I will not abandon the position simply because I cannot comprehend it. (Another example would be the Kalam argument, for those who are proponents of it. We know — by way of metaphysical certitude, not inductive inference — that whatever begins to exist must have a cause of its coming to be, and it seems very probable that the universe began to exist. Of course, it is mysterious that a universe could begin to exist, let alone that something could cause it. It causes one to scratch their head just thinking about it. But still, the steps which entail the conclusion seem eminently secure, and so we do not abandon the conclusion — i.e. that the universe has a transcendent cause — simply because that conclusion comes loaded with enigma.)
Returning to the parallel with the Trinity I presented at the beginning, here’s the reason I brought it up. I have recently heard Protestants who are otherwise attracted to Catholicism (God bless them!) confess they are resistant to conversion mostly if not only because the Catholic Church authoritatively teaches that God is absolutely simple and they are not sure divine simplicity is true. Interestingly enough, this was one of the reasons why I (Pat) became interested in Catholicism: the Church seemed to get things right, metaphysically, and that impressed me. Put my story aside; I think such Protestants may be being inconsistent, here. Imagine, if you will, a Muslim, who, being otherwise attracted to Christianity confesses they are resistant to conversion mostly if not only because they cannot wrap their heads around the trinity, and think it may be contradictory. In such a case, probably the Protestant would say something like, “Friend, I understand the difficulty of thinking through the trinity. It is, of course, a powerful mystery, but given what we know, we should embrace the mystery, even if we cannot wrap our heads around the inner workings and life of God. Then again, why should we expect to! We are talking about ultimate reality, after all! So, perhaps it will be enough to show the notion is not obviously contradictory, and leave it at that.”
From there the Protestant would probably make further appeal to the better historical and philosophical basis of Christianity than Islam (in general) and show that the balance of evidence is in favor of one religion over the other and that the Muslim should not let such an abstract issue prevent them from coming to Christ.
And so the Catholic can respond along similar lines to the Protestant who is resistant mostly if not only because they are stuck on the issue of classical theism/divine simplicity. Given the stuff that is clear to us — that Christ willed unity and left us not with a Bible but a Church and that He gave his authority to that Church — we have good (in fact, independent) reasons to embrace divine simplicity: Because God’s Church teaches it! Pair that with the difficulties of various Protestant commitments, such as Sola Scriptura, and it seems silly to avoid becoming Catholic – especially if one is already attracted to Catholicism – because one is held up on the details of an issue which are so profoundly abstract and difficult to think through. Start with what is clear and use that to put light on what is unclear. Don’t not abandon what we do know (that God is absolutely simple) based upon alleged contradictions around what we don’t (that God has knowledge or beliefs in close resemblance to us).
Related Resources
https://www.chroniclesofstrength.com/classical-theism-roundup/