I agree with D B Hart that William L. Craig (and other "theistic personalists") is, in fact, a mono-polytheist. Craig really does believe in something very similar to tri-theism ("three gods"). The Father, Son and HS are each individual centers of consciousness. Each one is a "person" in the modern sense of that word. This is not only idolatrous, but also gravely mistaken about the 381 Creed.
bayreuth79 Hi, I have a protestant upbringing, and have recently read books by Craig & Feser. My knowledge of the trinity is very underdeveloped, and I was wondering if you could flesh out a little on the difference between the riff you see in Trinitarian understanding and the tension that arises from divine simplicity? would it be correct to say that Catholics tend to take a latin Trinitarian view, which i believe is that there is only really one consciouess in God? as opposed to the social Trinitarian view, more common in evangelical Protestantism, which emphasises God's love being a relational quality within the Godhead of three consciouess centres.
Bay, it seems more quasi modalist to me. One entity that is the Trinity. But right his understanding of "persons" is modern. The apostolic teaching is that the Son is the Logos of the father and the divine intellect, energies, and will are shared between the members of the Trinity. He also seems to mangle the creedal structure of the Trinity where the Father is the one uncaused cause and eternally causes his Son and spirit by generation and procession. He seems to have the trinity arising out of the divine being rather than the divine being and persons in the Trinity pouring out of the Father. His Christology is also Apollinarian! but if the human intellect is not assumed by Christ then the human intellect is not saved. That said I agree with his arguments against simplicity here.
Dont you think that if we separate Godhood into 3 centers of consciousness then it would make it untenable? Let's just compare it with us. We have one consciousness. We dont know how we operate if we have three centers of consciousness. And so why God need to have 3 centers? Why not just say that God as being separated into 3 persons but the 3 persons collectively acknowledge that they come from one source.
Univocal language about God arises from human experience within the human story, a story within which God is always and already really present in Christ. Divine simplicity seems to arise out of a need to limit what we can say about God from our experience. It seems like both ways of speaking about God are necessary.
I see Bob Barron and in absentia cover as profile I wonder who you are? Funny before I wrote this comment I just received In Absentia on vinyl and then listened to a Bob Barron homily on the prodigal son, the irony of it all.
The problem with the prism analogy is that it shows that white light IS just a combination of the other colors. The prism only shows that to be the case by separating them. Thus, the analogy is really in favor of WLC: he'd say "Exactly! Our minds can distinguish the different facets of the same one Entity."
The white light and a prism analogy is rather problematic, and I wish he would not use it. White light is a composite of multiple spectra, and the prism merely separates the various colors. If he's trying to make divine simplicity easy to understand, he could hardly choose a worse illustration.
Analogies are just that analogies of course they aren't perfect. Analogies are used to describe something hard to comprehend. As analogies aren't the thing that is being described of course it won't be perfect.
@@clowney28 Sure, analogies are imperfect. But they should at least serve to clarify the point to which they refer, and not indicate the opposite of that very point. When trying to clarify the meaning of simplicity, it is not apropos to describe the _composite_ nature of white light as the device by which simplicity is to be described. Barron's philosophic contention is that strength and will and goodness and knowledge (etc.) are all merely _modes_ or _perceptions_ of the same fullness of indivisible, simple being. The whole point of this view is that 'properties' are emphatically _not_ portions of a whole, but each is simultaneously and _coextensively_ the very same as each other: strength _is_ goodness _is_ will _is_ knowledge. On this view of Aquinas, what we call 'properties' of God are merely different, human naming conventions for the selfsame, one, simple, "divine" nature. But Barron's philosophical position is roughly the opposite of the analogy he proposes. In the analogy, red is not blue is not yellow. In regard to white, the spectral colors are but portions of the whole, not the fullness of each other. Red is not the fullness of white. Neither is blue nor yellow. It's just a bad analogy... regardless whether absolute, divine simplicity is true, or not. And it's not. Absolute divine simplicity is false. Gregory Palamas tried to help open the eyes of the Catholics on this point, but their tradition developed after the philosophy of Barlaam the Calabrian, not the church fathers.
Barron's response regarding the most important objection - the Biblical objection - doesn't actually answer the objection. It's just a hand-wave. All he says is, basically, "well, Thomas was a really Biblically based guy..." Uh...yeah? Tell us more. Like, where in the Bible is Divine Simplicity even remotely hinted at? Even on a systematic level, if you put together all the Biblical statements about "what God is like," you wouldn't come away and say, "Oh, there it is, Divine Simplicity explains all the data." Not even close, in fact, the exact opposite would be the case.
I can think of two instances where the Bible points to the suchness of God. In the old Testament, when God says his name is I AM THAT I AM, and when Christ said that before Abraham was, he IS. So we know that God is being in itself and that the Logos, the Word, his prolongation into creation, is eternal, thus outside space and time. To me the idea of divine simplicity is just a way of stating that God is absolute, which implies he is devoid of contingent elements, of "parts", distinctions, or anything of a composite or quantitative nature.
@@sophiaperennis2360 Divine simplicity, or Absolute Divine Simplicity, throws all kinds of theological errors into Christian theology. It makes the incarnation incoherent. If God is pure essence and absolutely one with no parts (Divine Simplicity) what to make of the Trinity? How is God one if Jesus really came into material time and space through the incarnation? It goes on and on and on. There's no reconciling the Platonic "Monad" with the God of the Bible. This issue is the cause, or one of the causes, of many ancient heresies (Arianism, Nestorianism, Unitarianism, etc).
I wouldn't call Plantinga an evangelical philosopher. His theological beliefs don't really come into play that much, he's a philosopher and he defends God as a philosopher; he takes very specific arguments and against very specific claims about God and refutes them with very specific arguments. One imagines he's evangelical personally, but his personal spiritually is emphatically absent from his philosophical work
Here's what I don't understand about Divine Simplicity. If God's omniscient Knowing-ness is synonymous with his Being-ness, but as you say He is not related to the world: doesn't this create an essential division between what God knows about the world and what God is? For instance if God's love-power-knowledge knows that I am going to eat a banana for breakfast, yet I am free to make the choice about what I eat, how is my choice to eat a banana not determining part of the Being-ness of God, given that He knows ahead of time, and His Knowledge is undivided with all of His essence/being in the idea of Divine simplicity. God must be able to use omniscience to know things and to store that knowledge separately from the rest of His faculties .... otherwise God becomes the product of our free choices (as our free choices determine what He has always known)
You're not free to make a choice in what you eat like you think. You're allowed the choice to eat whatever God makes possible for you to eat. God's knowledge of your eating is based on His decree to provide you with 🍌. How's that work out exactly? Haven't a clue
@@anahata3478 Okay. I dont actually hold to any concept of free will, I think life is deterministic based on physical, machinic activity. I was just doing a play through in this post. God's omniscience erases this too.
You can know what’s going to happen without affecting the free will of the being. Experiential free will is different from you actually changing the fabric of being. I can know the decisions someone I’ll freely make before they freely make that decision.
@@aisthpaoitht Consciousness is a material process like digestion For God to be consciousness, sounds exactly like "God is immaterial, timeless digestion" it makes no sense Consciousness is only made distinct by having 1) things that are not perceived, 2) things that are not know. An omniscient consciousness can have no motivation because it perceives no difference... its mind is whole, can never be added to. God cannot want... because that describes a state in which the omniscient perfect mind is deprived of a desired state.
@@bobpolo2964 🤔 divine simplicity is a failure of composition. You can’t have the same nature to deliver justice and give punitive amnesty under grace. Justice is getting what you deserve.
There's more to theology than a plain reading of the biblical texts, and there's no good reason to stick exclusively to biblical terms. Christians have always engaged in philosophical theology and speculative metaphysics, including long before the finalization of the New Testament canon. The church fathers, Eastern and Western, agreed that divine transcendence necessitates divine simplicity -- non-composite essential divinity.
Oh but the bible teaches that God's energeia is in the believer energizing them and acting in them. This is true. If God is absolutely simple then the saints are infused with God's essence because His essence is His energy. If that is so then the Saints become persons within the Godhead. But the saints do not become members of the Godhead so Divine Simplicity is false.
@Prasanth Thomas No the energies are not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a Hypostasis. A person. God's energies flow from the Father through the Son in the Spirit.
@Prasanth Thomas I'm taking my name from an Arab bishop who i venerate as a Saint. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Abu_Qurrah He defended christian orthodoxy, wrote polemics against Islam, monophysitism and nestorianism. An intellectual giant and devout Christian monk and bishop.
@Prasanth Thomas No Antiochian Orthodox is chalcedonian and in communion with Russia Greece Jerusalem and so on. Our church was founded by St. Peter. Our most famous bishops have been Peter the Apostle and Ignatius of Antioch.
The Catholic Church is wrong on this issue. The Orthodox view is correct. Warmed over Platonism and Aristotelianism in Augustine and Aquinas is Hellenism, not Hebraic revelation.
@@paradoxo9111 Not at all, by the Christian Era the philosophy of Aristotle was largely regarded to be self-evidently absurd even by the pagans, so most the Church Fathers, from the Cappadocians to St. Maximos the Confessor spent most of their time arguing against Platonism, in general, and Neo-Platonism, in particular (well, that and Judaism); most of the heresies from Gnosticism to Monophysitism are derived from Platonic thought, even Origin was anathematized for allowing excessive Platonic influences in his thought, though he openly condemned and fought against Platonism. As for the theory of predication, if the concept of 'forms' is to have any meaning at all, they must have their source and existence in the Divine and, thus, our only means of knowing them must be Divine revelation, which is the sole source and fount of all knowledge.
Why other than personal insecurity and tribal reasons does anyone hold god beliefs that force you to lie to yourself? Has it really escaped the notice of adult Christians that they are lying to themselves?
Open Mind - your first question lacks a grammatical subject, but we know what you mean. Still, why ask such empty questions? You hold "god beliefs" too, if (presumably) atheistic ones, and I see no reason to think you hold them for any reasons other than personal insecurity and "tribal" thinking.
So you claim... I'm a theist and I'll happily claim (and provide) valid argumentation and reasoning too. I know that comments sections are not good places for arguments, but that makes them equally bad places for platitudes. Why not make a specific remark on something addressed in the video?
Erich Groat don’t be a idiot. Do you believe in....... Adam & Eve Global floods Fallen state Exodus Moses Virgin Birth Nativity narrative Water into wine 🍷 Walking on water Bodily resurrection Seriously? We are talking about adults here.
![Megan Thee Stallion - Mamushi (Remix) [feat. TWICE] [Official Audio]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/5c0_u9PsrsQ/mqdefault.jpg)
I agree with D B Hart that William L. Craig (and other "theistic personalists") is, in fact, a mono-polytheist. Craig really does believe in something very similar to tri-theism ("three gods"). The Father, Son and HS are each individual centers of consciousness. Each one is a "person" in the modern sense of that word. This is not only idolatrous, but also gravely mistaken about the 381 Creed.
absolutely. and the unfortunate result of that widespread idolatrous god of popular (particularly American) Evangelicalism is a rise in atheism.
bayreuth79 Hi, I have a protestant upbringing, and have recently read books by Craig & Feser. My knowledge of the trinity is very underdeveloped, and I was wondering if you could flesh out a little on the difference between the riff you see in Trinitarian understanding and the tension that arises from divine simplicity? would it be correct to say that Catholics tend to take a latin Trinitarian view, which i believe is that there is only really one consciouess in God? as opposed to the social Trinitarian view, more common in evangelical Protestantism, which emphasises God's love being a relational quality within the Godhead of three consciouess centres.
Bay, it seems more quasi modalist to me. One entity that is the Trinity. But right his understanding of "persons" is modern. The apostolic teaching is that the Son is the Logos of the father and the divine intellect, energies, and will are shared between the members of the Trinity.
He also seems to mangle the creedal structure of the Trinity where the Father is the one uncaused cause and eternally causes his Son and spirit by generation and procession. He seems to have the trinity arising out of the divine being rather than the divine being and persons in the Trinity pouring out of the Father.
His Christology is also Apollinarian! but if the human intellect is not assumed by Christ then the human intellect is not saved.
That said I agree with his arguments against simplicity here.
Dont you think that if we separate Godhood into 3 centers of consciousness then it would make it untenable? Let's just compare it with us. We have one consciousness. We dont know how we operate if we have three centers of consciousness. And so why God need to have 3 centers? Why not just say that God as being separated into 3 persons but the 3 persons collectively acknowledge that they come from one source.
So Jesus wass praying to Himself and God the father and God the Holy Spirit had human consciousness while Jesus walked the earth?
Univocal language about God arises from human experience within the human story, a story within which God is always and already really present in Christ. Divine simplicity seems to arise out of a need to limit what we can say about God from our experience. It seems like both ways of speaking about God are necessary.
I see Bob Barron and in absentia cover as profile I wonder who you are? Funny before I wrote this comment I just received In Absentia on vinyl and then listened to a Bob Barron homily on the prodigal son, the irony of it all.
The problem with the prism analogy is that it shows that white light IS just a combination of the other colors. The prism only shows that to be the case by separating them. Thus, the analogy is really in favor of WLC: he'd say "Exactly! Our minds can distinguish the different facets of the same one Entity."
But before the separation it's just a white light.
@@Lerian_V What is white light?
@@11kravitzn Color of the light before passing through the prism.
@@Lerian_V How does a prism make it colorful?
@@11kravitzn The same way time makes God's attributes "colorful."
The white light and a prism analogy is rather problematic, and I wish he would not use it.
White light is a composite of multiple spectra, and the prism merely separates the various colors. If he's trying to make divine simplicity easy to understand, he could hardly choose a worse illustration.
Analogies are just that analogies of course they aren't perfect. Analogies are used to describe something hard to comprehend. As analogies aren't the thing that is being described of course it won't be perfect.
@@clowney28 Sure, analogies are imperfect. But they should at least serve to clarify the point to which they refer, and not indicate the opposite of that very point. When trying to clarify the meaning of simplicity, it is not apropos to describe the _composite_ nature of white light as the device by which simplicity is to be described.
Barron's philosophic contention is that strength and will and goodness and knowledge (etc.) are all merely _modes_ or _perceptions_ of the same fullness of indivisible, simple being. The whole point of this view is that 'properties' are emphatically _not_ portions of a whole, but each is simultaneously and _coextensively_ the very same as each other: strength _is_ goodness _is_ will _is_ knowledge. On this view of Aquinas, what we call 'properties' of God are merely different, human naming conventions for the selfsame, one, simple, "divine" nature.
But Barron's philosophical position is roughly the opposite of the analogy he proposes. In the analogy, red is not blue is not yellow. In regard to white, the spectral colors are but portions of the whole, not the fullness of each other. Red is not the fullness of white. Neither is blue nor yellow. It's just a bad analogy... regardless whether absolute, divine simplicity is true, or not.
And it's not. Absolute divine simplicity is false. Gregory Palamas tried to help open the eyes of the Catholics on this point, but their tradition developed after the philosophy of Barlaam the Calabrian, not the church fathers.
Why does it sound like Barron is eating chicken fingers in the beginning?
Barron's response regarding the most important objection - the Biblical objection - doesn't actually answer the objection. It's just a hand-wave. All he says is, basically, "well, Thomas was a really Biblically based guy..." Uh...yeah? Tell us more. Like, where in the Bible is Divine Simplicity even remotely hinted at? Even on a systematic level, if you put together all the Biblical statements about "what God is like," you wouldn't come away and say, "Oh, there it is, Divine Simplicity explains all the data." Not even close, in fact, the exact opposite would be the case.
I can think of two instances where the Bible points to the suchness of God. In the old Testament, when God says his name is I AM THAT I AM, and when Christ said that before Abraham was, he IS.
So we know that God is being in itself and that the Logos, the Word, his prolongation into creation, is eternal, thus outside space and time. To me the idea of divine simplicity is just a way of stating that God is absolute, which implies he is devoid of contingent elements, of "parts", distinctions, or anything of a composite or quantitative nature.
Do you believe God is a material being? Not including the incarnate Son
@@sophiaperennis2360 Divine simplicity, or Absolute Divine Simplicity, throws all kinds of theological errors into Christian theology. It makes the incarnation incoherent. If God is pure essence and absolutely one with no parts (Divine Simplicity) what to make of the Trinity? How is God one if Jesus really came into material time and space through the incarnation? It goes on and on and on. There's no reconciling the Platonic "Monad" with the God of the Bible. This issue is the cause, or one of the causes, of many ancient heresies (Arianism, Nestorianism, Unitarianism, etc).
@@Nnamwerd Oh so how many Gods do you believe in then?
Yeah, it's really poor... He basically says "Aquinas was a Bible teacher he must have been biblical!" LOL
I wouldn't call Plantinga an evangelical philosopher. His theological beliefs don't really come into play that much, he's a philosopher and he defends God as a philosopher; he takes very specific arguments and against very specific claims about God and refutes them with very specific arguments. One imagines he's evangelical personally, but his personal spiritually is emphatically absent from his philosophical work
This is a test to see if my comments are showing up. They seem to disappear unless they are a reply to someone else's comments.
Erich Groat I see yours
Thank you!
Here's what I don't understand about Divine Simplicity. If God's omniscient Knowing-ness is synonymous with his Being-ness, but as you say He is not related to the world: doesn't this create an essential division between what God knows about the world and what God is?
For instance if God's love-power-knowledge knows that I am going to eat a banana for breakfast, yet I am free to make the choice about what I eat, how is my choice to eat a banana not determining part of the Being-ness of God, given that He knows ahead of time, and His Knowledge is undivided with all of His essence/being in the idea of Divine simplicity. God must be able to use omniscience to know things and to store that knowledge separately from the rest of His faculties .... otherwise God becomes the product of our free choices (as our free choices determine what He has always known)
You're not free to make a choice in what you eat like you think. You're allowed the choice to eat whatever God makes possible for you to eat. God's knowledge of your eating is based on His decree to provide you with 🍌. How's that work out exactly? Haven't a clue
@@anahata3478 Okay. I dont actually hold to any concept of free will, I think life is deterministic based on physical, machinic activity. I was just doing a play through in this post.
God's omniscience erases this too.
You can know what’s going to happen without affecting the free will of the being. Experiential free will is different from you actually changing the fabric of being. I can know the decisions someone I’ll freely make before they freely make that decision.
God is consciousness. Reality is an idea in God's mind.
@@aisthpaoitht Consciousness is a material process like digestion
For God to be consciousness, sounds exactly like "God is immaterial, timeless digestion" it makes no sense
Consciousness is only made distinct by having 1) things that are not perceived, 2) things that are not know. An omniscient consciousness can have no motivation because it perceives no difference... its mind is whole, can never be added to. God cannot want... because that describes a state in which the omniscient perfect mind is deprived of a desired state.
Divine simplicity is grounded in speculative assumptions and claims.
not completely
@@bobpolo2964 🤮 divine simplicity is based on reasons only; pure speculative assumptions and not supported by scripture
@@chosenskeptic5319 What is your understanding of divine simplicity? The definition
@@bobpolo2964 🤔 divine simplicity is a failure of composition. You can’t have the same nature to deliver justice and give punitive amnesty under grace. Justice is getting what you deserve.
@@chosenskeptic5319 You're saying God is in an eternal state of tension between his justice and his grace?
Biblical theology does not talk AT ALL in these terms so why should we?! It's imposing categories foreign to Scripture onto the Bible.
See Church Fathers
@@et6729 Why do you think they're necessarily right?
M85 not gonna argue this
There's more to theology than a plain reading of the biblical texts, and there's no good reason to stick exclusively to biblical terms. Christians have always engaged in philosophical theology and speculative metaphysics, including long before the finalization of the New Testament canon. The church fathers, Eastern and Western, agreed that divine transcendence necessitates divine simplicity -- non-composite essential divinity.
@@et6729 Why not? Are we just supposed to fideistically accept the so-called "Church Fathers"? When did their writings become part of the Canon?
Oh but the bible teaches that God's energeia is in the believer energizing them and acting in them. This is true. If God is absolutely simple then the saints are infused with God's essence because His essence is His energy. If that is so then the Saints become persons within the Godhead. But the saints do not become members of the Godhead so Divine Simplicity is false.
Abu Qurrah palm
@Prasanth Thomas No the energies are not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a Hypostasis. A person. God's energies flow from the Father through the Son in the Spirit.
@Prasanth Thomas I'm Antiochian Orthodox. Mostly Arab worldwide but mostly converts in the US. I'm a convert and not an Arab
@Prasanth Thomas I'm taking my name from an Arab bishop who i venerate as a Saint.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Abu_Qurrah
He defended christian orthodoxy, wrote polemics against Islam, monophysitism and nestorianism. An intellectual giant and devout Christian monk and bishop.
@Prasanth Thomas No Antiochian Orthodox is chalcedonian and in communion with Russia Greece Jerusalem and so on. Our church was founded by St. Peter. Our most famous bishops have been Peter the Apostle and Ignatius of Antioch.
The Catholic Church is wrong on this issue. The Orthodox view is correct. Warmed over Platonism and Aristotelianism in Augustine and Aquinas is Hellenism, not Hebraic revelation.
Don't the "Orthodox" employ Platonic philosophy, such as Plato's theory of predication?
Goose and gander...
@@paradoxo9111 Not at all, by the Christian Era the philosophy of Aristotle was largely regarded to be self-evidently absurd even by the pagans, so most the Church Fathers, from the Cappadocians to St. Maximos the Confessor spent most of their time arguing against Platonism, in general, and Neo-Platonism, in particular (well, that and Judaism); most of the heresies from Gnosticism to Monophysitism are derived from Platonic thought, even Origin was anathematized for allowing excessive Platonic influences in his thought, though he openly condemned and fought against Platonism. As for the theory of predication, if the concept of 'forms' is to have any meaning at all, they must have their source and existence in the Divine and, thus, our only means of knowing them must be Divine revelation, which is the sole source and fount of all knowledge.
RedSkaal ok jay.. smh
I think David Bentley Hart is an advocate of divine simplicity.
We are both correct. Let us reunite.
Why other than personal insecurity and tribal reasons does anyone hold god beliefs that force you to lie to yourself?
Has it really escaped the notice of adult Christians that they are lying to themselves?
Open Mind - your first question lacks a grammatical subject, but we know what you mean. Still, why ask such empty questions? You hold "god beliefs" too, if (presumably) atheistic ones, and I see no reason to think you hold them for any reasons other than personal insecurity and "tribal" thinking.
other than personal insecurity? I guess valid argumentation and reasoning probably...
So you claim... I'm a theist and I'll happily claim (and provide) valid argumentation and reasoning too. I know that comments sections are not good places for arguments, but that makes them equally bad places for platitudes. Why not make a specific remark on something addressed in the video?
Erich Groat don’t be a idiot. Do you believe in.......
Adam & Eve
Global floods
Fallen state
Exodus
Moses
Virgin Birth
Nativity narrative
Water into wine 🍷
Walking on water
Bodily resurrection
Seriously?
We are talking about adults here.
athfuhshgh lol, hardly a fundamentalist to not believe in nonsense. Why do you tell lies to yourself?