Critique
Critique
Proofs of God’s Existence
As we begin to assess the “five ways” of Thomas, our concerns will overlap with our critique of Thomas’s theology proper, below. As we noted above, the proofs are both epistemological and metaphysical. That is, the proofs are a product of Thomas’s view of natural reason, as well as his view of being. So the concerns we express about the proofs will impinge on both.
In order to understand the metaphysical problems embedded in Thomas’s proofs, we need first to highlight the epistemological aspects again. We will remember from our discussion in chapter 2 that Thomas insists that natural reason, which is the reasoning capacity of all people, is able to discern God’s existence and his simplicity.
Due to Thomas’s influence, the paradigm for medieval philosophical theology included a “natural” substructure, that is, “natural reason,” upon which a supernatural layer, that is, revelation, could be added. In other words, according to Thomas, there is much truth that can be acquired and demonstrated without any need of revelation, and then there are truths that can only be had by way of special revelation.63
But this paradigm was rightly rejected during the time of the Reformation and in seventeenth-century Protestant theology. Because of the importance of Scripture, the Reformers saw true natural theology as a product, not of natural reason, but of natural revelation and of a regenerate mind. According to Richard Muller,
Theologia naturalis [natural theology], despite all the problems inherent in its formulation and elaboration, is properly discussed as a form of theologia vera [true theology], under the category of theologia viatorum [pilgrim theology]. This placement of the topic arises from the fact that theologia naturalis is neither a theology of union nor a theology of vision, but a theology of revelation. Since the mode of communication of natural theology is revelation, natural theology must be discussed together with supernatural theology. What is more, as indicated by the Reformed orthodox paradigm of true and false, archetypal and ectypal theology, the true, ectypal theologia naturalis is founded not on the interaction of reason in general with the natural order (so that it is not to be equated with natural sciences like astronomy or physics) but on the examination of natural revelation by faithful reason.64
Natural theology, according to the Reformed, is a product of “pilgrim theology,” that is, of the theology of the regenerate. This is the case because the Reformers, following Calvin, understood that reality is exhaustively revelational. There is no such thing as the “purely natural.” Since the heavens declare the glory of God (Ps. 19:1), since God speaks through all that he has made (Rom. 1:19–20), that which is “natural” is, at the same time, the very “supernatural” communication of God to his creatures. If that communication occurred only through his special revelation, then there would be a need for a natural substructure. But since all of reality is revelational, there can be no substructure that is not, at the same time, revealing God and his character to us.
Thomas, however, sees natural reason as that which is given by God to all people, and which can be exercised in the same ways by all. As Thomas develops his proofs, then, the question is this: what categories does natural reason have available to it in order to conclude that God exists?
For example, let us consider the “second way,” which concludes that there is a First Cause. What kind of First Cause would this be, according to natural reason? Would it be eternal or would it be in some way subject to temporal sequence? Would it be something necessarily correlative to its “effects,” or independent of those effects? What principle or principles can natural reason employ in order to answer these questions? In arguing for the necessity of a First Cause, Thomas says,
Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or one only. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false.65
In his assessment of the first, second, and third ways of Aquinas—all of which can be grouped as “cosmological arguments”—Stephen Davis makes a distinction between linear causality and hierarchical causality. He argues that Thomas might have been employing the latter, not the former.66 A linear cause is one in which the effect is dependent on the cause for its initial existence, but not for its continuation. Thomas clearly would not have had this in mind, since all effects are dependent on God. In hierarchical causality, the cause must exist “at some finite amount of time prior to the existence of its effects.”67 Not only so, but the existence of the effect(s) is, at every point in time, dependent on the cause.
If we import into Thomas’s cosmological arguments the notion of hierarchical causality, according to Davis, the argument can be demonstrated as valid.68 The problem, as Davis recognizes, is that Thomas would not have approved of a First Cause (or a Necessary Being) that exists at some finite amount of time prior to the existence of its effects. Thomas believed in the eternity of God, which means, at least, that God is not subject to a temporal sequence of moments. Yet in order for any version of the cosmological argument to work, the conclusion must presuppose some aspect of temporal causality. That is, the First Cause (or Necessary Being) must be prior to its effects.
The problem that Thomas’s arguments face is that natural reason has available to it only two ways of justifying its principles. There must be either a logical principle that requires a First Cause or an empirical principle, an experience, that requires it. But what logical principle requires that which is above and beyond time? In what way can logic apply to the eternal (especial when “the eternal” is meant to be God)? Additionally, it cannot be the case that one could have an experience of a First Cause. It looks as though natural reason is unable to provide a conclusion that would agree with Thomas’s conclusion, “This all men speak of as God.”
It might be helpful at this point to witness a modern-day example of Thomistic argumentation. This example will show how someone who does not affirm the existence of God—in this case, a self-avowed humanist—responds to a “First Cause” kind of argument. The response of the humanist helps us to see the internal weakness of the argument. Because the dialog below is taken from an actual transcript, the statements will have a conversational tone. We will denominate the discussion as one between a Christian (C) and a humanist (H).69 We have edited the discussion in order to focus on the salient points of our analysis of the proofs. The conversation begins:70
(H): So, humanism, I think, is the best expression of modern science. It’s the scientific outlook, using the rigorous methods of scientific inquiry in order to test hypotheses about nature.
(C): Well, I agree . . . that we need to be rational; we need to be scientific. . . . Now one of the fundamental, rational laws of all thought . . . is that every event, everything that comes to be, has a cause.
(H): Well, you said that every event has a cause. You maintain that every event has a cause. Is that what you said?
(C): That’s exactly right. Everything that comes to be has a cause.
(H): Okay. Then you say, “The universe has a cause,” and I take it that you would say that God caused the universe. My question then is, “If every event has a cause, what caused God?”
(C): You see, you just confused the statement. “Everything that comes to be has a cause.” God didn’t come to be, so he doesn’t need a cause. Just as the atheist believes . . .
(H): You contradicted your notion that everything has a cause.
(C): No I didn’t. Let me finish. Just as the atheist believes that the universe is eternal . . . and therefore didn’t need a cause, if you can have an uncaused universe, we can have an uncaused God. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Later on, this was said in the conversation:
(H): You’re only pushing your ignorance one step back.
(C): No, no, you’re missing the point. You’re not listening to it.
(H): I’m listening to everything.
(C): Everything that comes to be has a cause . . . that’s the principle. The universe came to be, therefore the universe has a cause. Now, if God always existed, he didn’t “come to be.”
(H): He did not come to be. I see.
(C): He doesn’t need a cause.
(H): Well, you’re defining the situation. You’re assuming your
case by definition.
(C): Not at all. The rational person.
(H): How did you know that God did not come to be? How do you know that?
(C): We know that the universe came to be.
(H): But how do you know that God did not come to be?
(C): And we know that everything that comes to be had a cause.
(H): But how did you know that God did not come to be?
(C): Because everything that comes to be has a cause, and if God caused the universe to come to be, he couldn’t have come to be.
(H): By definition you’re defining . . . you’re trying to define what you want to prove. How do you know?
Later on in the conversation:
(H): And now you’re leaping beyond the range of observation. You’re only pushing your ignorance back one step.
Then, finally:
(C): Well, why is it rational for you to believe that the universe is uncaused, and irrational for me to believe that God is uncaused?
There are a number of things one could say about this dialog, but we will be content here to point out two of the most serious problems. First, notice again how the dialog begins:
(H): So, humanism, I think, is the best expression of modern science. It’s the scientific outlook, using the rigorous methods of the scientific inquiry in order to test hypotheses about nature.
(C): Well, I agree . . . that we need to be rational; we need to be scientific. . . . Now one of the fundamental, rational laws of all thought . . . is that every event, everything that comes to be, has a cause.
The humanist sets the stage by affirming his allegiance to “scientific inquiry,” by which he means, in part, empirical investigation by way of the natural reason of both interlocutors.
The Christian then attempts to stand on the humanist’s ground. He sets his own argument within the context of a supposedly neutral rationality—natural reason—including supposedly neutral “fundamental, rational laws of all thought.” In true Thomistic fashion, the Christian has just conceded that his discussion can proceed apace on exactly the same ground that the humanist affirms.
We are not saying that scientific inquiry is useless and always in error. However, when it comes to questions of truth, of the origin of the universe, of evidences for that origin, the scientific inquiry of the humanist will suppress what is obvious and will not see the very facts of inquiry as God’s facts, in the first place. To concede the starting point to the humanist is to concede the argument altogether (a concession that is obvious in the argument’s conclusion).
This leads to our second concern. Notice again what happens toward the end of the discussion. As the Christian moves to the fact of God’s uncaused existence, the conversation takes this turn:
(H): How did you know that God did not come to be? How do you know that?
(C): We know that the universe came to be.
(H): But how do you know that God did not come to be?
(C): And we know that everything that comes to be had a cause.
(H): But how did you know that God did not come to be?
(C): Because everything that comes to be has a cause, and if God caused the universe to come to be, he couldn’t have come to be.
(H): By definition you’re defining . . . you’re trying to define what you want to prove. How do you know?
Five times in this short snippet of the dialogue, the humanist asks the epistemological question. He wants to know how it is that the Christian knows that God did not come to be. Notice how the Christian answers the repeated “How do you know?” question. His responses are: “We know that the universe came to be,” “And we know that everything that comes to be had a cause,” and “Because everything that comes to be has a cause, and if God caused the universe to come to be, he couldn’t have come to be.” The response of the Christian, in other words, is simply to repeat the argument, over and over again.
But the question being asked by the humanist is a good question, and it goes beyond a mere repetition of the same propositions. It is not a question about the statements already contained in the argument itself. The humanist’s question, “How do you know?” relates to the ground of the Christian’s knowledge about God.
But because the Christian began his discussion by conceding the humanist’s starting point, that is, by arguing according to natural reason and therefore supposing that scientific inquiry is based on the same presuppositions for both of them, there is no way for him, now, to move the discussion to another principium. In other words, if the Christian has agreed that natural reason is the principium for them both, it is not possible for him to jump to biblical revelation as his principium when the question of God’s character comes into view.
Not only so, but when the Christian says, “If God caused the universe to come to be, he couldn’t have come to be,” he is assuming, illegitimately, given his admitted ground of scientific inquiry, that the only options available to him and the humanist are either the existence of God as uncaused or the universe as uncaused. But why, we could ask, given scientific inquiry, are these the only two options available? What scientific principle requires that these be the only options?71 We can sense the struggle of the Christian in this discussion, wanting to affirm Christian principles, but having no access to the only means by which such can be affirmed—that is, God’s revelation.
Natural reason, in the way Thomas uses it, does not allow for one who is truly infinite, eternal, and immutable; it certainly does not allow for one who is triune. But with only the triune God that Thomas thinks is demonstrated, the cause and reason for anything that exists remains inexplicable. Thus, there must be some other starting point for these kinds of arguments that can recognize the reality of the Christian God. That starting point can only be the fullness of God’s revelation.72
Cornelius Van Til laid out for us the root of the problem with these proofs:
It is in some such fashion that Rome thinks of the natural man. Following Aristotle’s general method of reasoning Thomas Aquinas argues that the natural man can, by the ordinary use of his reason, do justice to the natural revelation that surrounds him. He merely needs some assistance in order that he may also see and react properly to the supernatural revelation that is found in Christianity.73
The outcome of this Thomistic assumption, however, is devastating:
If Christian revelation, which presupposes the darkness and error of unspiritual humanity, submitted in advance to the judgments of reason, it would by that token contradict itself. It would thereby place itself before a tribunal whose jurisdiction it had first denied. And having once recognized the authority of reason on the level of first principles [principia], it could no longer oppose that authority in the articles of faith. Dualistic supernaturalism always has to lead to rationalism, inasmuch it is rationalistic in principle.74
As Thomas himself said, “A small error at the beginning of something is a great one at the end.”75 For Thomas, the “small error” was to assume that Aristotle and the philosophers who were able to reason their way to theism had proceeded in the proper way. The “great error” that showed itself in the end was that only a finite and temporal god could be its conclusion.
Who God Is
In this section, we will confine ourselves to a discussion of Thomas’s view of God’s simplicity and its implications. Before we focus specifically on Thomas, however, it is necessary to recognize that the simplicity of God rightly became a confessional doctrine for Protestants. The Westminster Confession of Faith, for example, in chapter 2, affirms that God is “without body, parts, or passions.” This is the Confession’s way of describing the simplicity of God. With respect to who he is as God, he can have no parts, he can have no body, and he can have no passions. Christianity has always recognized this as an important truth. According to Richard Muller, citing numerous sources, “The doctrine of divine simplicity is among the normative assumptions of theology from the time of the church fathers, to the age of the great medieval scholastic systems, to the era of Reformation and post-Reformation theology, and indeed, on into the succeeding era of late orthodoxy and rationalism.”76 Because the doctrine of divine simplicity is so central in Thomas’s natural theology, however, it is important to analyze it from that perspective.
The first thing that must be said is that natural reason alone provides no reason to believe in divine simplicity. There certainly is no empirical basis that can support it, and there can be no rational reason to affirm it, unless one presupposes the triune God at the outset. The best one can hope for with a natural theology of simplicity is that the concept could apply to a god, if one existed.77 But no rationale can be given for the ascription of simplicity to a god of natural theology. There are no categories in “pure nature” that can give rise to such an idea.
But the problems of simplicity do not dissolve if one denies the existence of natural reason and the philosophical preambles of pure nature that are purported, by Thomas, to demonstrate it. Even when we assume the existence of the triune God of Christianity, the notion of simplicity remains enigmatic.
Perhaps one of the most significant challenges to the doctrine of divine simplicity has come from Alvin Plantinga. In 1980, Plantinga gave the Thomas Aquinas lecture at Marquette University, which was entitled “Does God Have a Nature?”78 This, of course, is a provocative question. Plantinga notes that, historically, the answer has been yes. However, an affirmative answer could very well deny the doctrine of divine simplicity. Divine simplicity affirms not that God has a nature, but that God is his nature.
Plantinga wants to answer yes to his question and to argue that God’s nature cannot be identical with who he is. Because Plantinga’s lecture provides a serious and rigorous challenge to this doctrine, we should at least be aware of its general contents and of possible responses to it.
Plantinga first notes that the doctrine of divine simplicity is “a dark saying indeed.”79 To his credit, he thinks it is a dark saying because if one believes it, one is forced to affirm all kinds of notions that imply the rejection of the Christian God—that God is personal, for example. So, his reason for seeing simplicity as “dark” is the threat he sees it posing to (aspects of ) traditional Christianity.
Plantinga’s first argument against divine simplicity can be stated fairly simply. If God is identical with his properties—his goodness, wisdom, and holiness, for example—then each of the properties is identical with the other. And if all of the properties are identical, then there is only one property. And if God is identical with that property, then God is a property. This is Plantinga’s first problem, since he does not want to affirm that God is a property; he wants to affirm God as a person, or a personality. Therefore, simplicity has to be rejected.
Plantinga’s second problem is a complex web of arguments centering on what he calls the “sovereignty-aseity intuition (SAI).”80 The SAI basically affirms that God is sovereign over all things and is dependent on nothing at all. Plantinga rightly sees that God’s aseity entails his simplicity, but he wants to reject both God’s sovereignty and his aseity. He does this, in part, by arguing for what he thinks are other absolute necessities alongside God. For example, he argues that while the redness of a rose may be within God’s control, the proposition “whatever is red is colored” is not within his control. This latter proposition is a necessary truth, and necessary truths, according to Plantinga, are not up to God; they are true by virtue of what they are. If they were within God’s control, according to Plantinga, then God could cause them to be false. In other words, if they were within God’s control, they would have to be contingent truths. But God could not cause such propositions to be false, since they are true necessarily.
What does this have to do with the doctrine of divine simplicity? Simplicity requires that there is nothing on which God is essentially dependent. If there were, then God would only be “potential” with respect to what he is, rather than essentially actual. In other words, he would not be who he is unless other things were true and applied to him; he would be potentially something or someone else. If it can be shown that there are some things on which God is dependent necessarily, then it should not be difficult for us to affirm that there are other things, things that compose who God is, on which he is dependent as well. So (to oversimplify), Plantinga’s argument here is that since God is dependent on a number of things, we should have no problem rejecting the notion of simplicity.81
There are other, much more detailed arguments offered by Plantinga, but this will have to do for now. In response to his discussion, we could ask, first, is it really the case that if God is identical with his properties, then there is only one property, and God is in fact a property? Perhaps that follows logically (given a certain understanding of “property”), but there are other ways to construe the relationship.
We should remember here that we are discussing apophatic theology. That is, we are focusing on what God is not. The doctrine of divine simplicity affirms that there are certain ways in which we are not to think of God. For example, we are not to think that God is made up of a number of parts. So, in arguments for simplicity, we are not saying that God is unqualifiedly identical with his attributes.
Rather, the argument for simplicity must include our understanding of the Trinity. While we affirm the oneness of God, we must also note real distinctions in him that are not in any way different from who he essentially is. In other words, simplicity affirms no composition in God, but it also affirms real (though not essential) distinctions in God (who is really Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). The same is true for God’s attributes, or properties. Goodness is not, first of all, a property of God’s that we deem identical with him; goodness is who God, the personal God, is. Its status as a property is only secondary to its status as God. So also for the other attributes.
We should also see that, to construe the argument differently, if God is identical with his properties, it may be (and in fact is the case) that, rather than God being a property, the property is first of all a tripersonal property. Since, historically, a property has been considered a “mode” and not a “thing,” it requires some essential thing in order to exist at all; it cannot exist without something essential grounding its existence. So, God’s properties are both distinct and identical with him. He alone is substantial or essential; his properties are not substantial, in that sense, but are modal, and are modally related to the personal distinctions in the Godhead.82
The other reason Plantinga wants to force the identity in the direction of properties is that he is convinced that at least some properties are necessarily what they are, whether or not God exists. So, conceptual priority is given to properties, rather than to God, at the outset. This priority, however, gets things backwards. If we begin our reasoning with God as a se, then we should recognize that, before God created, there was only the triune God. There were no necessities, no properties at all that, along with God, were not themselves identical to him. Thus, for example, before the foundation of the world, there were no necessary propositions that had to obtain, since there were no propositions at all. There was only God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—the one God. There was no “2 + 2 = 4,” no “all things red are colored”; there was only God and his triune, essential character—nothing else.
This brings us to the second response, a response to Plantinga’s rejection of the SAI. Is it really the case that, since the proposition “whatever is red is colored” is a necessary truth, God has no control over it? Or, to use a more abstract example, is it the case that since two plus two equals four necessarily, God has no control over it? Must it be that to acknowledge God’s control over it means that it must be possible for God to make it false? These questions are integrally related to current discussions of possible worlds and of modal logic and cannot be dealt with in depth here. We can say, however, that the answers to these questions have everything to do with how we think of the modal notions of necessity and possibility.
How do we know, for example, that two plus two necessarily equals four? One way is to look at the meaning of the terms. Four consists necessarily of two and two. So, it simply could not be four unless two and two were included in it (in some way). But what kind of necessity is this? Is it the same necessity that we apply to God’s existence? It cannot be the case that God and creation, including the necessary laws of creation, are subject to the same necessity.
A better, biblical affirmation is that necessity and possibility are all determined by God himself. This means that there is no such thing as a possible world (i.e., a possible state of affairs) in which God does not exist. Nothing else can partake of this kind of necessity. Regarding the notion of necessity, therefore, we must maintain a distinction between God’s necessity and the necessity of anything else. The triune God, who alone is absolutely necessary, determines everything else that is possible and necessary.
In order to think correctly about the modal notion of necessity, we should see it as defined in one way for created things and in another way for the triune God. Whatever is necessary for us is such because God has so ordered and determined the world in that way. He might have determined it in that way because it more closely reflects something of who he is. So, for example, the reason God cannot square a circle is not that he is subject to some necessity outside himself or in some way constraining his character, but because he created a circle to be a certain way, and a square to be a certain way, and thus their necessity lies in his creative hand, not in something abstract and above God. God, then, is indeed sovereign over that which is necessary in creation, because he is the author of that necessity.
So, must we affirm that if God is in control of something, it must be possible for it to be false? There seems to be no indication that we must. God is in control of, for example, the true proposition that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, but that does not mean that God can make that statement false. The book of Hebrews reminds us that God swore by himself that he would be true to his promises. The necessity of this truth (and others) lies in his faithful character, not in an abstract, modal notion to which he must be subject.
The same is true of all he created. Some things in creation are indeed changeable, but his creation also includes necessary elements, all of which are the way they are because of his sovereign activity, not because of a metaphysical reality (other than himself ) to which he had to conform in order to create. This conditional or created necessity is what the Reformed have called “hypothetical necessity.” Anything that is necessary in creation is necessary only because of God’s free decision to create some things as necessary. There is a condition (i.e., hypothesis) attached to every created necessity.
With Plantinga’s objections set aside, let us analyze Thomas’s view of divine simplicity from the perspective of some of his best contemporary advocates, who recognize the persistent problems that ensue when simplicity is affirmed. Once we see what Thomas’s followers see with respect to his view of simplicity, we will be able to offer a more biblical understanding of it.
Thomas Morris describes the central problems with the notion of divine simplicity like this:
If there is no multiplicity of properties really had by God, it will, I think, be very hard, if not just impossible, to make sense of standard distinctions we make about God. We believe that he is necessarily powerful, but that it is only contingently true of him that he used that power to create our world. He could have created another universe instead, or, perhaps, he could have refrained from creating any physical realm at all. We also believe that it is only contingently, not necessarily, true of God that he called Abram out of Ur, spoke through Moses, and sent the prophets he chose. . . . God necessarily is a knower. God contingently has the knowledge that I have on a striped shirt. Thus, there is both necessity and contingency with respect to God. And there seems to be no other good way to capture this truth than to say that God has both necessary (essential) and contingent properties. But if that is so, then he cannot “have” just one and only one property, a single property with which he is identical.83
We can summarize the problems that Morris highlights under two general categories: God’s freedom and his responsiveness to and in creation.
In her monumental and thorough exposition of Thomas Aquinas’s thought, Eleonore Stump seeks to defend Thomas’s notion of simplicity. She wants to affirm simplicity, not simply by explaining Thomas’s view, but by highlighting and addressing the problems that attach to such a notion. She believes, as Morris highlights above, that the most perplexing problem for Thomas’s view of divine simplicity finds its focus in the freedom of God (which includes his responsiveness).84 The freedom of God extends itself into the problems of contingency in God, and of God’s responsiveness to his creation and to his people, as recorded in Scripture.
Stump is rightly sensitive to these problems, and she works through the relevant texts of Aquinas in order to provide solutions. First, on contingency, Stump says,
If we can distinguish between necessitated divine acts and divine acts such that it is possible for God to have done otherwise, in what sense is there no distinction within God? It seems, on the face of it, that this analysis attributes contingency to some of God’s acts. And if some divine acts are contingent, then it seems that God does have intrinsic accidental properties, properties such that God could exist and have properties other than these, contrary to the explicit claims of the doctrine of divine simplicity.85
The problem of God’s freedom has to do with the possibility of God having intrinsic accidental properties. If God has intrinsic accidental properties, then he can be changed by virtue of those properties. God can, of course, have extrinsic accidental properties, because such properties would not require a change in God.86 How, then, can Thomistic simplicity extricate itself from the reality of intrinsic accidental properties as constituents of God’s freedom?
In order to address this question, Stump picks out, as a paradigmatic case of contingency, God’s act of creation. How can we reconcile the notion that God freely chose to create, and thus acted in a way that he did not have to act, with Thomas’s doctrine of simplicity? “If God can do other than he does, then it is possible for God to exist as God and yet will differently from the way he actually does will. If the nature of God is invariable, God must be the same in all possible worlds in which he exists.”87
Stump helpfully shows that the notion of “accident” in Thomas is not coincident with the standard modal locutions of today. She argues that Peter of Spain, for example, did not think of accidents as changes across possible worlds, but instead saw them as changes across time. So also, Thomas does not use the notion of accident in terms of “synchronous possibilities across different possible worlds. Instead, he characterizes an accident . . . as something that has being but in an incomplete sort of way.”88
If this is the case, then the negation of accidents in God is not a negation of God’s freedom—such that he must be the same in all possible worlds—but rather is a negation of anything incomplete or insubstantial in God. In this case, says Stump, being one’s own nature is compatible with change across possible worlds.89
In sum, with respect to accidental properties and God’s simplicity, Stump notes that Thomas
does not take any property anything has in some but not all possible worlds in which it exists as an accident of that thing; and, on his view, a thing can be its own nature without that thing’s having only properties necessary to it. . . . For him the denial that God has accidents does not entail that God is the same in all possible worlds in which he exists, and the claim that God is his own nature does not entail that God is necessarily whatever he is.90
But does this really provide a solution to the problem of freedom and divine simplicity? If God wills one thing contingently, does that not mean that God’s will is intrinsically distinct, such that it cannot be one, simple will? Does that not entail that God’s will is both necessary and contingent, in that it can choose one thing and not another?
Stump feels the weight of this objection and so introduces the notion of “conditional necessity” with respect to God’s will. Conditional necessity includes the fact that, once God contingently chooses a particular act, say, creation, then any act contrary to that is no longer available to him. If we combine that contingent choice of God’s with his eternity, then, argues Stump, the necessity of his contingent choice is analogous to the necessity of the present.91 So God’s “act of creating is a timeless action in the eternal present, and so it is logically impossible for there to be anything before (or after) his act of creating.”92
Not only so, and this will be important below, Stump argues that this conditional necessity with respect to God’s will is not intrinsic to his will, but is, instead, a “Cambridge property.”93 That is, the property is extrinsic to God’s one will, thus having no intrinsic effect on his simple nature:
But although the differing relationships and differing counterfactuals imply that God is not the same in all possible worlds, they do not show that in any given world God’s act of will is not one single metaphysically indivisible act. They provide the basis for drawing a conceptual distinction among Cambridge properties of God’s will, but because the distinction arises just from considering the different ways in which the divine will can be related to its objects, they do not constitute a metaphysical distinction among God’s intrinsic properties.94
So, because God’s contingent choices only produce Cambridge properties—properties extrinsic to him and thus not in any way affecting him intrinsically—the simplicity of God’s will can be affirmed.
With respect to the second general conundrum of divine simplicity, that is, God’s responsiveness, Stump again recognizes the seriousness of the problem for simplicity:
If it is the case that everything that God is and does is identical with his being, then God’s talking to Cain is identical with his being. If God talks to Cain, then God’s talking to Cain is not part of his essence; it is his essence, and God himself is that essence. Not only so, but if God’s talking to Cain is essential to God, then it is apparently necessary, and not something God could refrain from doing.95
In response to this, Stump first affirms what has been standard fare in theology proper, namely, that God wills both himself and everything else in one, eternal act of will:
As Aquinas understands it, God’s willing himself and other things consists in God’s willing at once, in one action, both goodness and the manifestation of goodness; and there is no special difficulty in understanding goodness to be manifested differently to different persons on different occasions . . . in ways that must be counted among the extrinsic accidental properties of the goodness manifested. On Aquinas’s view, the multiplicity of the objects of God’s will is no more in tension with his simplicity than the multitude of the objects of his knowledge is.96
In other words, there is no change in the will of God just because the object(s) of that one will are different. So, whatever God chooses is identical with that one will, which itself could have chosen another world or no world at all. It is God’s one divine act of will, even though its objects are not the same across possible choices God could have made.
But will this explanation suffice to defend Thomas’s doctrine of divine simplicity? In a fascinating and penetrating analysis of Thomas’s doctrine of divine simplicity, Brian Leftow remains unconvinced that Stump has successfully defended Thomas’s view. We will focus on Leftow’s argument against the idea that the contingency of God’s will can be an extrinsic, Cambridge property of his. According to Leftow,
A feature of Thomas’ general modal metaphysics defeats the claim that what makes it the case that God’s being F [for example, F = Creator] is contingent is extrinsic. Thomas holds views which imply that if there “are” possible worlds, prior to all Creation, they exist “in God’s power,” in the strong sense that what makes talk of them true is really God’s power. God’s power is intrinsic to him, then if God is contingently F [e.g., Creator], the worlds which make it the case that God’s being F is contingent are intrinsic to God. . . . If Thomas wants to make the extrinsic-modality move, this part of his modal metaphysics stands in his way.97
The argument here is that since God’s power is intrinsic to his nature, and since nothing can come to be without God’s power, the mode by which anything comes to be cannot be extrinsic to God, but must be intrinsic; it must be according to, since it is based on, the intrinsic power of his simple nature.
Leftow further recognizes the difficulty with respect to the simplicity of God’s will, namely, that it acts according to one, simple act. As with Stump, he focuses the discussion on the contingency of creation:
Let’s ask just how a necessarily simple event can contingently fall under the description “willing creatures to exist.” This description is either intrinsic or extrinsic. If intrinsic, it can’t fail to apply in virtue of a difference in part or in the broader sort of constituent a Thomist accident . . . is. A simple event is its own only constituent. Add a part or constituent and the result is not simple, and so not that event if the event is necessarily simple. Substitute something else for the one constituent the event is and the result is not that event either. But what other than a difference in part, accident or property could account for an intrinsic description’s applying contingently?98
The point here is that, once the contingency of an event, say, creation, comes into view with respect to God’s will, it doesn’t seem possible to affirm the simplicity of God; his will is now differentiated according to what he did, but did not have to do. In other words, a modal distinction in the will of God between the necessary and the contingent is sufficient to undermine Thomas’s view of divine simplicity. “So,” says Leftow, “it seems both that ‘willing creatures’ must be intrinsic and that if intrinsic it can’t on Thomas’ terms apply contingently.”99
Leftow then asks if the problem can be solved by an appeal to the “manner” of God’s willing. By this he means the “way” or mode of God’s willing. Could it be that the one, simple will of God could remain one and simple and act in a different way or manner? Leftow doesn’t think so. Even if the manner is different, when the will is one and simple, there is still some real distinction intrinsic to God:
If the same event could have taken place in a different manner, one could have the event without the manner. So event and manner can’t be just identical, it seems. So mustn’t there be some real distinction in God between the willing and the manner, and how is this compatible with divine simplicity? There either is or is not something in which it consists for the willing to be in the one manner or the other. If there is, it seems that that something must be there contingently and so we introduce internal complexity in a simple God. If there is not, we are no better off than we were with Stump’s simple solution: we seem to solve the problem by magic.100
As we pointed out above, Stump is well aware of the problems for Thomas’s view of divine simplicity that Leftow highlights. As she noted, the contingency of God’s will (with the attendant problem of God’s responsiveness) is the conundrum when the notion of divine simplicity is affirmed. Just how could one move from simplicity to the contingent acts of God’s one, simple will?
In a later article on simplicity, Stump reexamines and rethinks her previous exposition of Thomas’s doctrine of divine simplicity.101 In the context of her reexamination, Stump offers a new way to consider Thomas’s view. She argues for what she calls “quantum metaphysics”—which, she thinks, fits more closely with the overall emphases of Thomas’s philosophical theology, and which helps to better explain his doctrine of divine simplicity. In this article, Stump moves much closer to what a biblical view of God’s simplicity would require. In order to move our discussion in that direction, we will summarize her exposition of divine simplicity as she employs Thomas’s categories of God’s esse and his id quod est.102
Stump argues that we can better understand divine simplicity when we recognize Thomas’s distinction, use, and application of God’s esse (being) and his id quod est (essence). We cannot focus only on God’s being (esse), says Stump, when discussing Thomas’s notion of simplicity. We must always include as well the essence (id quod est) of God. For Thomas, as we have seen, these two are identical in God. In him alone are being and essence identical. God does not exist (esse) with a nature (id quod est); he is (esse) that nature (id quod est). This does not mean, however, for Thomas, that there is no distinction to be made between God’s esse and his id quod est. And with this distinction, Stump thinks she has a better, richer way to articulate Aquinas’s view of God’s simplicity.
In her analysis, Stump recognizes that any view of God as esse alone, and not also as id quod est, has the advantage of overcoming the conundrums above with respect to Thomas’s view of divine simplicity. Anything that is not an id quod est has no accidental or contingent properties. In other words, if esse signifies nothing concrete (as id quod est does), then anything that is only esse can have no concrete properties at all. Stump uses the example of whiteness: “Whiteness does not have a certain size or quantity, for example; it does not engage in action or receive the action of anything else. . . . Whiteness is what it is—whiteness—and nothing else at all.”103 But it cannot be the case, Stump argues, that, for Thomas, God is only esse:
In my view, the problem with this interpretation is not that it identifies God with esse. The problem is that it rejects the notion of God as id quod est. This rejection looks sensible, especially given Aquinas’s care to distinguish esse from id quod est; but, in fact, it is not true to Aquinas’s position.104
For Aquinas, God is both esse and id quod est. “In simple things, esse itself and id quod est must be one and the same as regards the things themselves (realiter).”105
But, given Thomas’s distinction between an esse and an id quod est—where the former is always and only abstract and the latter is always and only concrete—it may appear that “Aquinas is willing to violate the laws of logic as regards God.”106 He is positing that two incompatible properties are actually identical. It cannot be the case, however, that this is a violation of logic, as Thomas makes clear elsewhere. It is at this point that Stump invokes the notion of quantum metaphysics:
What kind of thing is it that has to be understood both as a wave and as a particle? We do not know. That is, we do not know the quid est of light. . . . Analogously, we can ask: What kind of thing is it that can be both esse and id quod est? We do not know. The idea of simplicity is that at the ultimate metaphysical foundation of reality is something that has to be understood as esse—but also as id quod est. We do not know what kind of thing this is either. And this conclusion is precisely what we should expect from Aquinas’s insistence that we do not know the quid est of God.107
Stump goes on to affirm that, for Aquinas, this does not mean that we can have no positive knowledge of God. As with light, there are true affirmations that quantum physics is able to recognize; so also with God.
“For this reason,” says Stump, “we have to exercise care in the way we frame our claims about God. It is acceptable to say that God is esse, provided that we understand that this claim does not rule out the equally true claim that God is id quod est, an entity, a concrete particular.”108
With this, in our estimation, Stump begins to move much closer to a biblical, revelational understanding of God’s simplicity. In affirming Thomas’s view of simplicity, Stump is arguing, we cannot be content simply with affirming the “being” (esse) of God. Those who emphasize only esse not only fall prey to Plantinga’s critique, but also “can leave one with the impression that the immutable, impassible, eternal, simple God of Thomistic philosophical theology is frozen, static, inert, unresponsive, and incapable of action.”109
How is it, then, that this simple God is capable of action, all the while remaining simple?
The doctrine of simplicity implies that at the ultimate metaphysical foundation of all reality there is esse. But it also implies that this esse, without losing any of its characteristics as esse, is something subsistent and concrete, with more ability to act and with more freedom in its acts than any concrete composite entity has.110
The advantage, then, of a “quantum metaphysics” view of divine simplicity is that we can now characterize God in terms of those attributes that accrue to his oneness—attributes such as eternity and immutability—and we can also characterize him as the one who acts, without in any way undermining or negating his essential character. To use Stump’s example, “Sometimes we have to characterize God with abstract terms—and so we say that God is love—and sometimes we have to characterize him with concrete terms—and so we say that God is loving.”111
So, even though we have no way of knowing how such apparently incompatible aspects of God’s character can cohere, we can, and must, affirm them both. As Stump concludes, “To try to explain the doctrine of simplicity in this way is not to provide an argument for the truth or even the compatibility of its claims.”112
We have belabored these significant and substantial discussions of Thomas’s view of divine simplicity because they begin to move us, inexorably, toward a biblical view of God’s simplicity. Now that the issues are before us, we can broach a more robustly revelational solution to the conundrums that divine simplicity entails.
What is most helpful about the distinction between esse and id quod est is that it points us to the relationship between God’s one essence and his tripersonal character. Stump recognizes that if God is esse only (as Plantinga seems to imply), then there would be no way in which God could be personal: “Nothing that is not an id quod est could be a person or enter into personal relationship with human persons.”113
If we begin with biblical revelation, however (something that Thomas’s natural theology cannot do) we can begin with, instead of the categories of esse and id quod est, the one essence of God as three hypostases, or subsistences. In other words, we can begin, contrary to Aquinas, with the ontological Trinity. With these biblical categories in view, we are able to affirm both that God’s essence is who he is and that there is no possibility that he could be otherwise, and that each of the three subsistences of the Godhead can and does act as that one essence.
With respect to God’s intrinsic character, his esse, the divine persons (in the technical sense of person as subsistence, or hypostasis) act relative to each other: the Father begets the Son, and the Father and the Son spirate the Spirit. These ad intra, or intrinsic, acts of God pertain to the persons, each of whom is himself the one God. Thus, God’s simplicity, by definition, includes ad intra modal (or subsistent) distinctions—of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—as well as the ad intra acts of God. This, indeed, might be analogous to quantum metaphysics, in which we affirm of God two or more characteristics that appear to be incompatible. But no such incompatibility exists within the triune God. There is simply no possibility that God could be in conflict with his own triune being.
With respect to the knotty problem of God’s triune simplicity and his free, contingent acts of will, we must refer, in the first place, to his eternal decree, including the pactum salutis (covenant of redemption).114 In this way, we would propose that the biblical notion of covenant helps us to think and speak of God’s absolute, simple essence properly, with respect both to his freedom and to his responsiveness.
In the pactum salutis, the three persons of the Trinity are in view at the eternal point at which they determine to create and to redeem. We cannot develop this in any detail, so we will only give brief examples.
We see, for example, that the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, “was foreknown before the foundation of the world” (1 Peter 1:20). This foreknowledge can be none other than the Father’s loving of the Son “before the foundation of the world,” of which Christ spoke to his disciples before his death ( John 17:24). This foreknowing cannot be God’s omniscience, because it has a particular, redemptive purpose in view; nor can the Father’s love for the Son be the ontological love of the triune God, for the same reason: because redemption is in view. Rather, it is the love that has in view the glorified Savior, once his work on earth is finished.115
Not only so, but with respect to the Son, we learn that he “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped” (Phil. 2:6). When might this consideration have occurred in the Son? It could not have been during his incarnation, because it preceded his self-emptying (v. 7). Instead, the Son, in eternity, willingly let go of his glory by taking on a human nature. This must refer to the counsel within the triune God in eternity past, the pactum salutis.
In this way, we can begin to see that (though we can never penetrate to the how) the one God remains who he is even while the three counsel together to will and to act according to their own respective persons. The three are essentially one, simple and absolute, even as they are hypostatically acting relative to their respective, personal modes of subsistence. In the pactum salutis, according to Geerhardus Vos, there is one divine will, but:
This will appears as having its own mode of existence in each person. One cannot object to this on the basis of the unity of God’s being. To push unity so strongly that the persons can no longer be related to one another judicially would lead to Sabellianism and would undermine the reality of the entire economy of redemption with its person to person relationships.116
More specifically, John Owen relates the being or essence of God to the subsistent acts of God this way:
Such is the distinction of the persons in the unity of the divine essence, as that they act in natural and essential acts reciprocally one towards another,—namely, in understanding, love, and the like; they know and mutually love each other. And as they subsist distinctly, so they also act distinctly in those works which are of external operation. And whereas all these acts and operations, whether reciprocal [i.e., ad intra or intrinsic] or external [i.e., ad extra or extrinsic], are either with a will or from a freedom of will and choice, the will of God in each person, as to the peculiar acts ascribed unto him, is his will therein peculiarly and eminently, though not exclusively to the other persons, by reason of their mutual in-being. The will of God as to the peculiar actings of the Father in this matter is the will of the Father, and the will of God with regard unto the peculiar actings of the Son is the will of the Son; not by a distinction of sundry wills, but by the distinct application of the same will unto its distinct acts in the persons of the Father and the Son. And in this respect the covenant [i.e., pactum salutis] whereof we treat differeth from a pure decree; for from these distinct actings of the will of God in the Father and the Son there doth arise a new habitude or relation, which is not natural or necessary unto them, but freely taken on them.117
We can begin to see here how a triune notion of simplicity is the only proper way to accommodate the language that Stump is concerned to maintain. God is love with respect to his essential being; that love of God (esse), to use Stump’s example, is loving with respect to the distinct and respective acts of the persons of the Godhead. This emphasis moves us from a rather amorphous idea of God’s id quod est to the necessarily personal character of that which is “concrete” in God. In other words, when the question is asked as to what kind of esse God is, the first answer should be that he is a triune personal esse. And here we begin to highlight again the traditional, Reformed understanding of the mutual interdependence of Trinity and simplicity.118
Stump makes the point that the properties of one mind and will of God refer us to his id quod est. That could be right, but we must also recognize that the willing and knowledge of God, all the while remaining essentially one, is also hypostatically and really distinct in each of the persons of the Trinity. God’s one will distinctly acts and operates according to the Three.
Thus, the more helpful, biblical distinction is not that between esse and id quod est; these categories are all that is available according to natural reason. Rather, the biblical-theological categories are the standard ones highlighting God’s one essence as three persons. These categories alone can provide a proper understanding of what we mean when we ascribe simplicity to God. It is simplicity with real distinctions. To paraphrase the Athanasian Creed, “The Father is simple, the Son is simple, and the Holy Spirit is simple; yet there are not three simples, but one.”
There is another advantage in recognizing God’s simplicity in light of the ontological Trinity. We noted above the conundrums present when different modes (or manners, as Leftow has it) are seen to be intrinsic to God’s essential character. That is, once the mode of contingency is recognized in God’s will, it is difficult to maintain Thomas’s view of divine simplicity.
But when we see simplicity in the light of the ontological Trinity, we recognize that there are three ad intra persons, who are themselves distinct subsistences, ad intra. Those subsistences, far from undermining or denying the simplicity of God, are intrinsic to our understanding of God (including his simplicity), according to his revelation. So, we confess the simplicity of God as necessarily including three distinct and real (though not substantial) ad intra modes of existence in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Surely if God’s simplicity must include distinct modes of existence—modes that are really distinct and not just rationally attributed—then other modes necessary to God’s character in no way undermine or negate his simplicity.
Add to this the proper recognition that anything contingent with respect to God must always refer to that which is ad extra, and we see that the Christian God, who (unlike the god of Islam, for example) is not a prisoner of his simplicity, can choose to do that which he does not have to do, and not to do that which he could do. This kind of choosing, while perhaps uncomfortable for an abstract notion of esse according to natural reason, is intrinsic to what it means to be a person (in the ontological sense) in the Godhead. This is quantum metaphysics in all of its biblical glory. That is to say, whenever we recognize that God is one in essence and three in persons, we will inevitably run up against notions and ideas that do not easily go together in our minds. Like quantum metaphysics, both things must be affirmed as true, even though we are not able to establish the details of the truths we affirm. Such is the case when we are thinking about a triune God who is incomprehensible.
The second conundrum that Stump seeks to solve is God’s responsiveness. How can it be, to use Stump’s example, that God can talk to Cain at one moment in history and not talk to him at another, if God is simple? Here again, the biblical notion of covenant is equipped to explain this.
We can illustrate this by focusing on God’s climactic and quintessential responsiveness to creation in the Son, specifically in the incarnation.119 Though there is much to say about this, we will confine ourselves to the specific matter at hand.120
How are we to think of the incarnation with respect to the esse of God and his id quod est? Better, how must we think of God becoming man when we consider who he is essentially and who he is personally? The easy part of the answer is that “God becoming man” relates only to the second person of the Trinity. But what does this “becoming” mean with respect to the essence of God?
It might help to think of it this way, and here we are indebted to Herman Bavinck. Bavinck notes that “God’s trinitarian [i.e., personal] essence is the presupposition and condition of the incarnation of God.” By that he means to say, “Not the divine nature as such but specifically the person of the Son became [man].”121 In other words, the reason we can acknowledge the relative human nature of the Son, is that, as Son, he is relatively distinct from the other persons ad intra, even while he is essentially identical to them, that essence itself being simple (and immutable, etc.). To put it another way, Bavinck says,
But Reformed theology stressed that it was the person of the Son who became flesh—not the substance (the underlying reality) [esse] but the subsistence (the particular being) [the id quod est] of the Son assumed our nature. The unity of the two natures, despite the sharp distinction between them, is unalterably anchored in the person.122
With this, we have the biblical application of quantum metaphysics with respect to God’s responsiveness to man.
To describe the incarnation this way is not to pretend to comprehend it; that is altogether impossible for human creatures. But it does allow us, biblically, to affirm what orthodox theology has always affirmed concerning the one God: that he is simple, immutable, impassible, infinite, eternal, etc.—and that, with respect to his personal subsistences, ad intra modal distinctions can obtain, even when the persons are directed toward an ad extra willing of God. The Son of God, in taking a human nature, in no way became less than the one God; such a thing is not even possible, in that God cannot deny himself (2 Tim. 2:13). He is and always remains, as God, simple, immutable, impassible, infinite, eternal, etc. But, his mode of subsisting ad extra did change, in that he took to himself, from the time of the incarnation and into eternity, a human nature. Thus, the Son of God, from that point forward, will always be the one God who is personally (subsistently) united to a human nature, even as he is and always will be essentially the same immutable, one God.
This, we should note, is what God’s “condescension” is in Scripture. His condescension does not and cannot change the essential character, the esse, of the one God. As in the incarnation, the essence of the Son does not take a human nature; the person of the Son does. From the eternal decree to eternity future, God’s (covenantal) condescension consists of the persons (which are ad intra modes, subsistences) expressing who God is, in their own distinctive ways, in the context of his creation. Those expressions require contingent modes of revelation, so that God’s human creatures can know him and have fellowship with him, according to their human capacity. This is what it means for God to “come down.” It is what all of history points to, so that, in the end, “the dwelling place of God is with man” (Rev. 21:3—not that the dwelling place of man is with God).
If we recognize that the incarnation is the climax, though not the first moment, of God’s responsiveness to man, then we have, in redemptive history, a proper understanding of the simple and one God interacting with, and responding to, his human creatures, always through the three persons, though focally and climactically through the Son. Charles Hodge, in his comments on 1 Corinthians 10:4, puts it this way:
This passage distinctly asserts not only the preëxistence of our Lord, but also that he was the Jehovah of the Old Testament. He who appeared to Moses and announced himself as Jehovah, the God of Abraham, who commissioned him to go to Pharaoh, who delivered the people out of Egypt, who appeared on Horeb, who led the people through the wilderness, who dwelt in the temple, who manifested himself to Isaiah, who was to appear personally in the fulness of time, is the person who was born of a virgin, and manifested himself in the flesh. He is called, therefore, in the Old Testament, an angel, the angel of Jehovah, Jehovah, the Supreme Lord, the Mighty God, the Son of God—one whom God sent—one with him, therefore, as to substance, but a distinct person.123
Geerhardus Vos is eloquent in his assessment of the Son in the Old Testament:
Sacramental condescensions on God’s part include his appearing in human/visible form. . . . Behind the Angel speaking as God, and who embodied in Himself all the condescension of God to meet the frailty and limitations of man, there existed at the same time another aspect of God, in which he could not be seen and materially received after such a fashion, the very God of whom the Angel spoke in the third person. In the incarnation of our Lord we have the supreme expression of this fundamental arrangement. The form in which the Angel appeared was a form assumed for the moment, laid aside again as soon as the purpose of its assumption had been served.124
Once we recognize the biblical category of covenant, in which the triune God expresses himself ad extra with respect to creation, we also recognize that such expressions of God are always personal and that they do not, because they cannot, in any way affect or alter his simple, divine essence. Instead, the persons express themselves in relative and contingent ways (e.g., grace, wrath, jealousy, mercy, etc.), so that we might know and have fellowship with him.
It is certainly the case that Thomas’s doctrine of the Trinity can be consulted with some profit with respect to what these relations are in the Godhead.125 The problem, however, as we have demonstrated above, is that his principia would not permit such a robust exposition to directly affect his affirmation and exposition of God’s simplicity; that exposition was confined to natural theology and thus to natural reason. That is what happens when a revelational principium does not inform theology at the outset. As Thomas himself said, “A small error at the beginning of something is a great one at the end.”126 An error in principium, however, is anything but small. It influences more or less everything else that is said from that point forward.127
1. Ronald B. Mayers, Both/And: A Balanced Apologetic (Chicago: Moody Press, 1984). See esp. chs. 2, 3, and 4 dealing with ontology, epistemology, and theology, respectively. Mayers contends that these three chapters develop his both/and approach, which turns out to be nothing other than a Thomistic apologetic. See my review of this book in the Westminster Theological Journal 47, 2 (1985): 354–57.
2. Norman Geisler, Thomas Aquinas: An Evangelical Appraisal (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2003). See also his Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1976), esp. 237–59.
3. R. C. Sproul, John H. Gerstner, and Arthur Lindsley, Classical Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), esp. 24–92, 109–36.
4. See, for example, Michael L. Peterson, Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
5. See Étienne Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. G. A. Erlington (New York: Dorset, 1971), 66.
6. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, trans. Anton C. Pegis (book 1) et al., 4 vols. in 5 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), introduction to book 1.
7. Ibid., 1:85–86. See also Joseph Owens, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1963), 342n30.
8. Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 1:85–86.
9. Ibid.
10. See Étienne Gilson, Elements of Christian Philosophy (New York: Doubleday, 1959), 56. Gilson cites one example of Aquinas’s own flexibility with the proofs: “What serves as proof of the existence of God in one of Aquinas’s works can very well become a proof of one of His attributes in another one. To quote only one striking instance, the admirable Disputed Question De Potentia, q.3, a.5, establishes that there can be nothing that is not created by God. Obviously, to prove such a conclusion is tantamount to proving that there is a God. Moreover, the three reasons alleged by Thomas Aquinas in favor of this conclusion rest upon the deepest among his own metaphysical doctrines. Still, what he is proving in this text is not that there is a God, but rather that the true notion of God as prime cause excuses the possibility that anything can exist without being created by Him.”
11. The best concise summary of Thomas’s proofs can be found in Matthew Levering, Proofs of God: Classical Arguments from Tertullian to Barth (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016), 57–69. The reason, it seems, that Aquinas’s “five ways” are widely discussed is that in other works, though the proofs are not set forth in the same way, they are not changed substantially. A summary of the five ways, then, will apply to any other proof or set of proofs that Aquinas employed.
12. Aquinas never used the word “change” for this argument, but it is summarized in that way, for example, in Owens, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics, 343.
13. Aquinas, ST, I q.2 a.3 resp.
14. See, e.g., Aristotle, Physics, bk. 7, ch. 1, 242a, in Aristotle, The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1968), 340.
15. Charles A. Hart, Thomistic Metaphysics: An Inquiry into the Act of Existing (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1959), 246.
16. Owens, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics, 344.
17. Aquinas, ST, I q.2 a.3 resp.
18. Ibid.
19. Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, 70.
20. Owens, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics, 345.
21. Aquinas, ST, I q.2 a.3 resp.
22. Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, 81.
23. For further elucidation of the principle of cause and effect in the second proof, see Gilson, Elements of Christian Philosophy, 69.
24. Aquinas, ST, I q.2 a.3 resp.
25. See Gilson, Elements of Christian Philosophy, 71–72, and Owens, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics, 346.
26. Aquinas, ST, I q.2 a.3 resp.
27. See Gilson, Elements of Christian Philosophy, 72.
28. Aquinas, ST, I q.2 a.3 resp.
29. Gilson, Elements of Christian Philosophy, 14.
30. Aquinas, ST, I q.104 a.1 ad 1: “Unde potentia ad non esse in spiritualibus creaturis, et corporibus coelestibus magis est in Deo, qui potest subtrahere suum influxum, quam in forma, vel in materia talium creaturarum,” quoted by Owens, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics, 149n10.
31. See, for example, Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, 86–92.
32. Aquinas, ST, I q.2 a.3 resp.
33. See Owens, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics, 348n44; Gilson, Elements of Christian Philosophy, 76; Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, 91.
34. Gilson, in the citations above, discusses what he deems to be some predominant misinterpretations of Aquinas’s fourth way and posits his own analysis. In my own study of the Thomistic proofs, I was convinced at one point that this fourth way was indeed foundational to, and preeminent among, the others. Since that time, however, I have come to believe that there is something deeper going on in the proofs themselves that may be clearer in the fourth way, but is nevertheless behind the entirety of Thomas’s apologetic. We hope to make that clear below.
35. Aquinas, ST, I q.2 a.3 resp.
36. Owens, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics, 349n46.
37. Ibid.
38. Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, vol. 1, Prolegomena to Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 227.
39. Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, 34.
40. See, e.g., Aquinas, “On Being and Essence,” in Selected Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Robert P. Goodwin (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), 54.
41. Hart, Thomistic Metaphysics, 88. For an example of the synthetic relationship, e.g., in the composition of body and soul, see Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, vol. 3, ch. 80.
42. Ralph M. McInerny, in The Logic of Analogy: An Interpretation of St. Thomas (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961), argues for Thomistic analogy as a logical rather than metaphysical construct. If he is right, then proper proportionality relates primarily to terms rather than to things. We cannot enter that debate here. We would only interject that, even if McInerny is correct, meaningful predication for Aquinas still depends on his metaphysics, and thus his doctrine of analogy would have significant metaphysical implications. Suffice it to say at this point that Thomas’s metaphysics requires his notion of analogy in a symmetrical way, such that if one is altered, so, to a greater or lesser extent, must the other be altered. For this latter point, see Scott MacDonald, “Theory of Knowledge,” in The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, ed. Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 160–95.
43. G. B. Phelan, Saint Thomas and Analogy (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1941), 8.
44. Ibid.
45. Aquinas’s doctrine of analogy is found, among other places, in ST, 1, Q. 13, De veritate, Q. 2, and, for our purposes here, in Summa contra gentiles, book 1, chs. 25–33.
46. See Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, book 1, ch. 32.
47. See ibid., book 1, ch. 33.
48. See, for example, Cornelius Van Til, Christianity in Conflict, 3 vols. (unpublished syllabus, 1962), vol. 2, pt. 2, ch. 3.
49. The distinction between analogy of proportionality and intrinsic attribution comes from Cajetan. Because, as we have seen, Cajetan’s interpretation of Thomas has become highly suspect in the new view of Thomas, so also are these two aspects of Thomas’s view of analogy. See, for example, James F. Anderson, Reflections on the Analogy of Being (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1967).
50. Aquinas, ST, I q.13 a.5 ad 1 (emphases added).
51. Such is the case because the creature’s relationship to God must be the foundation for his relationship to other beings, the latter of which is the concern of analogy of proper proportionality. Whether or not one agrees with Aquinas’s second “analogy,” i.e., that of intrinsic attribution, one must still meet the demand of explaining to some extent the creature’s relationship to God.
52. Hart, Thomistic Metaphysics, 42.
53. Ibid., 39.
54. Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2003), 92.
55. Aquinas, ST, I q.3.
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid., I q.3 a.4.
58. Ibid., I q.3 a.5 resp.
59. Ibid.
60. Ibid.
61. What follows is my summary of ST, I q.3 a.6 resp.
62. See below for Eleonore Stump’s assessment of Thomas’s view of “accident.”
63. We should note, in this regard, that Richard Muller’s assessment of the “five ways,” which has some affinity with the new view of Thomas discussed in chapter 2, cannot be sustained. According to Muller, “The medieval approaches to the proofs, moreover, virtually never accord with the modern understanding of demonstrations as a matter of apologetics and/or as . . . a prelude or prolegomenon to ‘revealed theology’ resting on ‘natural theology.’ Thus, by way of example, Aquinas’ ‘five ways’ belong to theology, specifically, to the faithful exercise of reason rather than to the realm of a purely rational apologetic.” Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, vol. 3, The Divine Essence and Attributes (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 48. But Thomas does not attribute his apologetic to Scripture (though he does quote Exodus 3:14, as we have seen). Nor is it a modern view that regards Thomas’s five ways as a “prelude to revealed theology.” Instead, as we have seen, the notion of philosophical—i.e., “pure nature”—preambles of the faith is the historic view, in Thomism and in the Roman church. As we have seen, Thomas argues that all people can reach the truth of God’s existence, simplicity, etc. by exercising natural reason alone, because Aristotle has shown that to be the case. This takes the five ways out of the realm of theology and, as McInerny shows, locates them in the preambles to the faith. See also Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1, Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 108.
64. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 1:282 (emphases added).
65. Thomas Aquinas, ST, I q.2 a.3 resp.
66. Stephen T. Davis, God, Reason and Theistic Proofs (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 60–78. Davis applies this distinction specifically to Thomas’s third way, which argues from contingency to necessity, but it applies as well to the second way, in that Thomas refers to the second way in his assertion, in the third way, that an infinite series of causes is impossible.
67. Ibid., 70.
68. Davis lays out his argument, in 27 propositions, ibid., 70–73.
69. Both interlocutors would affirm these ascriptions. The Christian in this dialogue is a committed Thomist.
70. This dialogue is an edited version of “Secular Humanism,” The John Ankerberg Show, Complete Program Transcripts (Chattanooga, TN: John Ankerberg Evangelistic Ministries, 1986), 3–7. The names of the two interlocutors are not important here, and will remain anonymous, in order to highlight the method itself.
71. Note, for example, Graham Oppy’s assessment of final causality: “If we suppose that there is a first cause, then there are two options: either it is contingent or it is necessary. If we are theists, the first cause is God; if we are naturalists, the first cause is the initial state of natural reality. . . . Some naturalists suppose that the initial state of natural reality is necessary; other naturalists suppose that it is contingent. If pushed to choose, I would say—albeit with no great confidence—that if there is an initial state of natural reality, then it is necessary.” See K. Scott Oliphint, “Covenant Model,” in Four Views on Christianity and Philosophy, ed. Paul M. Gould and Richard Brian Davis (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016), 101.
72. For an example of how a revelational cosmological argument might proceed, see K. Scott Oliphint, Covenantal Apologetics: Principles and Practice in Defense of Our Faith (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), 107–16.
73. Cornelius Van Til, Defense of the Faith, 4th ed., ed. K. Scott Oliphint (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2008), 110.
74. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 1:516 (emphasis added).
75. Thomas Aquinas, “On Being and Essence,” in Selected Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Robert P. Goodwin (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), 33. The original: “Quia parvus error in principio magnus est in fine.”
76. Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 3:39. We should also note that, at least according to Gavin Ortlund, there is no consensus fidelium with respect to divine simplicity. See Gavin Ortlund, “Divine Simplicity in Historical Perspective: Resourcing a Contemporary Discussion,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 16, 4 (2014): 436–53.
77. It was the view of Cardinal Cajetan that Thomas’s proofs only demonstrated properties that could apply to a god, but not to God himself. See, for example, Igor Agostini, “Descartes’s Proofs of God and the Crisis of Thomas Aquinas’s Five Ways in Early Modern Thomism: Scholastic and Cartesian Debates,” Harvard Theological Review 108, 2 (2015): 236.
78. For a detailed analysis and critique of Plantinga’s view of simplicity, see F. G. Immink, Divine Simplicity (Kampen: Kok, 1987).
79. Alvin Plantinga, “Does God Have a Nature?,” in The Analytic Theist: An Alvin Plantinga Reader, ed. James F. Sennett (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 228.
80. Ibid., 229.
81. We should remember here that the rejection of simplicity is common among evangelical theologians. If, as many of them affirm, God gives up his sovereignty in order for us to be truly free, then it is a very short step to a dependent (open?) God. Plantinga, generally, falls into this category. His free-will defense is basically Arminian, so he should have no problem rejecting simplicity on the same grounds. For a summary and analysis of Plantinga’s free-will defense, see K. Scott Oliphint, Reasons for Faith: Philosophy in the Service of Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2006), part 4.
82. A crucial point related to this, which cannot be developed here, is that this modal distinction also helps us see how there are distinct attributes in a simple God. According to Charles Hodge, “The divine attributes differ . . . virtualiter. If this be understood to mean that the divine perfections are really what the Bible declares them to be; that God truly thinks, feels, and acts; that He is truly wise, just, and good; that He is truly omnipotent, and voluntary, acting or not acting, as He sees fit; that He can hear and answer prayer; it may be admitted. But we are not to give up the conviction that God is really in Himself what He reveals Himself to be, to satisfy any metaphysical speculations as to the difference between essence and attribute in an infinite Being. The attributes of God, therefore, are not merely different conceptions in our minds, but different modes in which God reveals Himself to his creatures (or to Himself ).” Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, 1997), 1:373–74 (emphases added).
83. Thomas V. Morris, “Problems with Divine Simplicity,” in Philosophy of Religion: A Guide and Anthology, ed. Brian Davies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 548.
84. Stump, Aquinas, 100.
85. Ibid., 108–9.
86. Ibid., 97.
87. Ibid., 111.
88. Ibid.
89. Ibid., 113. Stump references ST, 1a.19.3 obj. 4 and ad 4 for support.
90. Ibid., 115.
91. The necessity of the present recognizes that if it is the case now that I am sitting here, then there is no possibility that I could be running now or standing now.
92. Stump, Aquinas, 123.
93. Ibid., 125.
94. Ibid., 126.
95. Ibid., 198.
96. Ibid., 199.
97. Brian Leftow, “Aquinas, Divine Simplicity and Divine Freedom,” in Metaphysics and God: Essays in Honor of Eleonore Stump, ed. Kevin Timpe (London: Routledge, 2009), 32.
98. Ibid., 32–33.
99. Ibid., 33.
100. Ibid., 36.
101. Eleonore Stump, “God’s Simplicity,” in The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas, ed. Brian Davies and Eleonore Stump (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 135–46. There is no indication in this article that Stump is responding specifically to Leftow’s analysis of divine simplicity. Her response does, however, apply to that analysis, even if inadvertently.
102. Because Stump chooses, in the interest of maximal clarity, to use the Latin phrases, we will do so as well. See ibid., 137.
103. Ibid., 138. It is worth noting that Stump sees striking parallels between this understanding of God’s simplicity as esse only and Plantinga’s construal of Thomas’s doctrine of divine simplicity, in that Plantinga denies Thomistic simplicity because it cannot allow for God as personal.
104. Ibid., 139.
105. Ibid., 140, quoting Thomas’s commentary on Boethius’s De hebdomanibus.
106. Ibid.
107. Ibid.
108. Ibid., 141.
109. Ibid., 142. This “impression” is not without its advocates in Thomism. In a current book on divine simplicity, for example, Paul Hinlicky sees this “frozen” view of God’s simplicity—“protological simplicity” as he calls it—as originating from a Thomistic understanding of God. Hinlicky’s analysis of at least some Thomists is accurate, though his solutions are seriously wanting. See Paul R. Hinlicky, Divine Simplicity: Christ the Crisis of Metaphysics (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016).
110. Stump, “God’s Simplicity,” 142 (emphases added).
111. Ibid., 141.
112. Ibid., 143.
113. Ibid., 139. Despite mentioning “a person,” Stump does not address the question of unipersonality, i.e., the question whether God is one person.
114. The pactum salutis refers to the eternal covenant of redemption that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit enacted prior to the creation of the world.
115. For an elaboration of this point, see K. Scott Oliphint, The Majesty of Mystery: Celebrating the Glory of an Incomprehensible God (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016), ch. 6.
116. Geerhardus Vos, “The Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, ed. Richard B. Gaffin Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1980), 246 (emphasis added).
117. John Owen, An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in The Works of John Owen, ed. W. H. Goold (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1862), 19:87–88 (emphases added).
118. See, for example, Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 3:279–93: “In this, the Reformed rejected any notion of ‘absolute simplicity’ in God, if that simplicity required the lack of real (though not substantial) distinctions in God.”
119. We should mention here Stump’s enlightening and helpful chapter 14 on “The Metaphysics of the Incarnation,” in Stump, Aquinas, 407–26.
120. For a fuller development of this, see K. Scott Oliphint, God with Us, rev. ed. (forthcoming).
121. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 3, Sin and Salvation in Christ, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 275. Note the original: “Van belang is het daarom ook vast te houden, dat niet de Goddelijke natuur als zoodanig, maar bepaald—de Persoon des Zoons mensch is geworden.” Herman Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1967), 3:254 (emphasis added). The translation from the Dutch should have read, not that the Son “became a human,” as in the published translation, but that he “became man.” Theologically speaking, “becoming a human” negates, as it does not adequately reference, the necessary, biblical parallels between the man Adam and the man Christ.
122. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:259 (emphases added).
123. Charles Hodge, An Exposition of the First Epistle to the Corinthians (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1857), 175 (emphasis added).
124. Taken from the discussion of the “Angel of the Lord” in Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology, Old and New Testaments (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948), 72, 74 (emphasis added). For more on the importance of the Son’s activity throughout redemptive history, see K. Scott Oliphint, God with Us, rev. ed. (forthcoming).
125. But note Muller: “The Reformers tended not only to defend the traditional doctrine of the Trinity as biblical but also to deemphasize the authority of the traditional trinitarian terminology—particularly the more speculative language of the medieval scholastics concerning the character of the trinitarian emanations in the Godhead.” Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, vol. 4, The Triunity of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 151 (emphasis added).
126. Aquinas, “On Being and Essence,” 33.
127. For more on the relationship of Thomas’s principium to his theology, see K. Scott Oliphint, “Aquinas: A Shaky Foundation,” Nov. 7, 2012, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/aquinas-a-shaky-foundation.