A Response to Peter Leithart’s "Creator," Part 1

No, God Is Not Super Rocky

Introduction

Quite frequently, I encounter a position which has become quite popular today–perhaps due to Barth or more proximately Jenson, I don’t know.

The position takes advantage of the fact that every creaturely perfection is found in God, and indeed super-eminently–the traditional line (cf e.g., Thomas, ST I q 4 a 2). But the position then turns to propositions like God being a rock, which are traditionally understood as just metaphors; and argues from God having all perfections to the claim that these propositions are thereby “lifted” above mere metaphor, at least to some degree. Accordingly, when we say that God is a rock (granted that he is not one, properly speaking), the affirmation is somehow strengthened due to the fact of the (for lack of better terms) prior root in God–that prior root being the result of the principle every creaturely perfection is found and super-eminently in God. The real rock is somehow similar to this prior root and participates the super-eminent form (call it) Divine Rockness–whereof the real rock is only a “chip off the ol’ block.”

The above is a gesture, and needs to be filled out in order to represent this position well and fairly. But it manifests an entire system or mode of doing theology. Again, the concern here is delimited to a certain set of propositions or rather their predicates–ones like rock, lion, etc., or and more importantly, ones like angered, saddened, etc. (our passions/emotions). Seeing that these predicates form the vast majority of holy Scripture’s propositions about God, one of the purported pay-offs of this position is that we can take holy Scripture seriously when it proclaims, e.g., “God the rock,” as Moses in his song (Deut. 32:4); or “he is angered with the wicked,” as the psalmist (Ps. 7:11). We do not have to fudge things, nor do we lapse to just metaphor; and in fact we ought not to be lording ourselves over holy Scripture anyway, imagining our corrections (e.g., God has zero rockness) to ever be such.

In fact, many people who hold this position today are motivated by just that. For them, taking holy Scripture seriously is the primary reason for holding this (I will call it) contemporary position. It is not so much that they hold the position and then, happily and surprise, find that it does better justice to the explicit propositions in holy Scripture; but rather, feeling the need to reverence the Sacred Pages, they also feel that this position enables this and best aligns with the scriptural data, which is rather unabashed about saying that God is a rock or that he is angered. Last I checked, there are no asterisks in the original Hebrew!

As for myself, I flatly reject this contemporary position and am anxious to counter with the traditional one, which dictates both very strict but also quite obvious rules about which predicates can be said properly, and which can only result in metaphorical propositions. More, that traditional position holds that rock and angered (inter alia) are and necessarily are among the latter, not the former; and that their propositions are certainly not raised to a higher plane given the fact that (in truth) God does have all perfection super-eminently together and united in himself (to quote Dionysius). What is more, the traditional position holds that this principle itself does not really support any propositions about God; and thus the super-eminent “perfections soup” in God has nothing really to do with realizing or verifying our propositions, whether their predicates be wise and good, or rock and angered. In other words,

the fact that real rockness is super-eminently pre-had by God doesn’t get you squat when it comes to predicating the name rock of God.

So no, God is not super rocky.

Notwithstanding my anxieties (and they are, I confess, quite high), I did come across a really laudable expression of this contemporary position, in Peter Leithart’s somewhat recent volume Creator–which simultaneously gives me the chance to say something about the book by way of (belated) review. Here in this first post, I just want to identify the position clearly and I trust fairly; and then contrast it to the traditional position (represented by Thomas Aquinas). The goal is only to show that they are at odds with each other, and I don’t expect e.g., Leithart to disagree with this. But then, in a subsequent post, I will give an argument which manifests that this contemporary position has gone wrong (I will not be arguing against it ad nauseam); and then in a third and final post, I will expand the traditional position and the “strict and obvious” rules about our propositions and what predicates get you what, by way of (you guessed it) Thomas Aquinas.

My Read of Leithart’s Position

Beginning then, let me identify the position held by Leithart (not to mention by many others: Leithart is certainly not alone here). An adequate impression initially requires a lengthy quotation, but its length really is worth it given that Leithart articulates the position quite well. We are diving into his discussion about accommodation, the worthiness (or otherwise) of certain predicates, and so on:

“...the obvious thing to say is what Thomas Aquinas says: Every created thing resembles God in some specific fashion simply because God created it that way. Its resemblance is its essence. In naming God from creation, we are naming him by the created resemblances he made, resemblances he presumably made just so we might speak of him. Conversely, God possesses every perfection of creation as Creator, in the way of eminence. God is not [=Leithart’s emphasis] a rock–not because he bears no resemblance to a rock, but because his rockiness is so infinitely realized that no created rock or collection of rocks can fully express his eternal rockiness. He is not an idol, because he does not have malfunctioning eyes, ears, nose, hands, and feet (Ps. 115:1–8). God has no physical hands as idols do, but he has infinite manuality [=handness]. He has no physical eyes, but he has the eternal original power of which our capacity for sight is a shadow and symbol. The biblical logic is: He who created the eye, does he not see? He who created the ear, does he not hear? He who created the tongue, can he not speak? The one who created arms and hands acts with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm (Ps. 94:9). The heavenly Father is the father by whom every early fatherhood (patria) is named (Eph. 3:14–15). And then we can also say: The one who created passionate creatures, does he not love, have compassion, show wrath toward sin? If we can say this, why the wobble [viz., in citing “accommodation” and “unfittingness”]. Why the pseudohumble confession of inadequacy?

Anthropomorphism is not projection from finite to infinite. In the order of knowing, it seems so. In the order of being, it is the opposite: It is authorized from top down. Scripture uses anthropomorphic and cosmorphic language of God because God created man in his image and the cosmos as a manifestation of his glory. It is not accommodation. The Bible uses anthropopathic language of God because our human capacity for emotion is a reflex of God’s emotional life. We can speak of God using the categories of creation because he created them to be used in our speaking of and to him.” (Leithart, Creator, pp. 25–26.)

At first, Leithart exhibits a good (may I say?) Thomist commitment, which is that God is to be named only from with us and among creatures. “God,” Thomas reminds in one of his more basic treatments (ST I q 13 a 1 resp), “in this life cannot be seen by us through his essence,” as this remains for the heavenly Fatherland; “but still he is known by us from creatures….and thus he can also be named by us from creatures.” In fact,

every name is usurped from with us and among creatures, whether it ultimately is to be affirmed or negated (that is, intellectually composed to or divided from God) in order to truth.

But Leithart then begins to unpack the contemporary position which is at hand, citing admittedly the best scriptural authority in its favor, Psalm 94: He who created the eye, has beforehand its perfection and thus also like the eye has the power to see. And indeed, Anselm reminds (Pros c 6), God supremely i.e., super-eminently does have the power to see, for all creaturely perfections are in God priorly and in a higher mode (=more eminently) than they are found among creatures. So far, so good.

Yet here we begin to depart from Anselm–as Anselm immediately adds that saying that God has the bodily power to see was just a metaphor (although a fitting one!) for him having the intellectual power to know; and that God super-eminently knows, yes, but not as if he had eyesight (which he properly lacks). Instead of following this, Leithart pivots to the contemporary position: God’s eyesight (I exchange for Leithart’s rockness) is so infinitely realized that no created eye or any eye altogether expresses his eternal eyesight. And importantly, this reality in God founds the (also scriptural) propositions that God has an eye and can/does see, which thus is no mere metaphor on account of this (for lack of better terms) eternal root in God whereof our eyesight is only a dim vision. Or to put it otherwise, this is not just language anthropomorphic, because the eye first and fundamentally is theomorphic.

In my quiet opinion, Leithart has actually been burying the lede. I suspect that for him, the real issue is not to “divinely realize” scriptural propositions like God being a rock. Rather, he feels pressure regarding scriptural propositions whose predicates are our passions or emotions, like God being angered. Indeed, Leithart continues and highlights this explicitly: “The Bible uses anthropopathic language of God because our human capacity for emotion is a reflex of God’s emotional life” (admittedly, a lovely phrase). I expect that both Leithart and most others are primarily concerned about these propositions, and only forcing the logic of their position back upon others (like God being a rock or having a hand) in order to maintain consistency.

At least to my mind, it would be preferable for the sake of the debate to restrict the question to the propositions one is actually worried about. More, there surely is greater scriptural plausibility to elevate propositions like God being angered, rather than ones like him being a rock, to “more than metaphor” status. Indeed, a number of theologians today have been making hay with our being made in the image of God, which purportedly burrows the image of God even down into our human bodies and (say) our passions/emotions. On the other hand, it is the case that also traditionally, God being angered and him being a rock do fall into the same class of proposition, and we can give thanks that Leithart has drawn our attention so abundantly and clearly to this:

what goes for one, goes for the other; either God being angered and him being a rock are both just metaphors, or they both are more than that.

But I digress.

Let me recast this position into other terms, to ensure that I have it–and Leithart will have to tell me if I have got him right. Nobody here holds that God properly and formally is e.g., a rock. This concept rockness is found properly and formally only in (you guessed it) actual rocks. Yet when we usurp this concept in divinis and say that God is a rock, neither do we entirely remove this concept by saying something like God has zero rockness. If we were to do this, then this ipso facto would have reduced God being a rock to just a metaphor–as a metaphor does not overlap one and another, but puts the one for an another which is something entirely else, say, e.g., for God supports (note there is no conceptual overlap between rock and supports). Rather, for Leithart, there is a third, sort of middle option and one which follows from all perfections being in God. At the bottom of a rock lies some kernel perfection which reflects God its maker, and which is in God albeit in a higher mode. Accordingly, if we were to in fact do away with rock entirely, this would be tantamount to holding that he who created the rock does not have its perfection. Instead, when we say that God is a rock, this affirmation is somehow and slightly stronger than just a metaphor, precisely on account of the opposite being the case: he who created it does have its perfection. And one way of trying to articulate this is by saying something like, God is infinitely a rock, so that the jarring conjunct of infinite and rock tries to get at the above described facts. Thus (I quote again from Leithart), “God is not [=Leithart’s emphasis] a rock–not because he bears no resemblance to a rock, but because his rockiness [=rockness?] is so infinitely realized that no created rock or collection of rocks can fully express his eternal rockiness.”

Thus for (my read of) Leithart’s position.

By Contrast, the Traditional Position

Presuming I understand it, I myself utterly reject Leithart’s position. From my vantage, attractive as it might be at first glance, his position is flatly wrong, as well as (and really by consequence) out of line with the traditional one. As mentioned however, my goal here is to prove the latter claim–a subsequent post will address the former one.

For showing that this position is simply not the traditional one (something which I expect Leithart would readily concede), I will just appeal to Thomas Aquinas as a representative thereof. Many quotations can be supplied (as e.g., the longer and much more technical treatment in I Sent d 22 q 1 a 2 resp), but a short and simpler one comes immediately to mind, from SCG I c 31:

“God being wise is said not only insofar as he effects wisdom, but because, insofar as we are wise, that very virtue how he makes us wise we are somewhat imitating. Notably, not so is God being a rock said–although he also made rocks. The reason is because in this name rock is understood that determined mode of being according to which a rock is distinguished from God. Now granted, a rock imitates God as its cause, but according to its being, according to its goodness, and according to something of this sort–just as likewise do other creatures.”

Obviously Thomas is contrasting here between propositions like God being wise, and those like him being a rock–and this is the central point which differentiates this from Leithart’s position. But some further background to this quotation is needed, and we must approach this contrast slowly.

As seen from his opening line (“insofar as God effects wisdom”), Thomas is combatting a certain position, usually identified as Maimonides’s, but actually belonging to Avicenna (as well as others). The position downplays the propositions whose predicates are our simple perfections–wisdom, goodness, love, etc. Thus, rather than understand e.g., God being wise properly and formally (Thomas’s position), Avicenna interprets them as having a causal force (causaliter). For Avicenna, one wrongly supposes that the proposition puts wisdom into God, for in fact it is only founded upon the judgment that God caused wisdom.

Importantly, this holds globally for each and every creature. And as a result, this position would explain God being wise and him being a rock and him being *insert any name usurped from any creature here* the exact same way: that God caused these. But continuing along this line, one could then also squeeze whatever one can out of that simple fact, i.e., squeeze something out from the attendant principle that every created perfection is found pre-eminently in God. But if so, this does not get you wisdom or rockness being in God in a higher way, but only the perfection content enveloped within wisdom and within rockness being in God in a higher way. This does not nor can it support propositions which then deploy these as their predicates, and it does not strengthen God being wise or him being a rock. In fact, it is exactly common between them and any other propositions which one could make by usurping a creaturely name. One might say that it is the absolutely lowest bar and pre-assumed by anything else, including proper and metaphorical propositions.

Thomas, again, wants to contrast these latter two sorts of propositions, whose chief representatives are God being wise and him being a rock. He wants to argue that despite God making both wisdom and a rock, and so despite him having super-eminently and equally both’s perfection content, nonetheless God being wise is a stronger proposition than him being a rock. Or and importantly,

God being wise is not just a stronger proposition than him being a rock, but a proposition of a qualitatively different sort.

Accordingly, Thomas rejects the merely causal interpretation of God being wise (inter alia), in that it undershoots its positivity. And then he contrasts with that of propositions like God being a rock. To belabor it again, although God made both wisdom and rocks, the former generates a higher proposition, namely one proper and formal; the latter, by contrast, generates a lower proposition, namely one only metaphorical–both, in addition to the causal interpretation, which applies across the board.

Thomas then supplies the reason for this contrast, and here is where things get interesting.

Certain names like wise, Thomas says, are usurped from only creaturely perfection without any admixture of imperfection or creaturely limit enclosed within their scope: traditionally, these names are from our simple or pure perfections (perfectiones simpliciter simplices), made famous especially by Anselm. For these propositions, their predicates designate our creaturely simple perfections which are altogether and only certain assimilations or resemblances to something in God:

“insofar as we are wise,” Thomas says, “we are somewhat imitating that virtue how God made us wise.”

We might call these perfect mirrors of the Divine Light, and the faces of these mirrors are altogether clean of creaturely grime, full of all and only light. These thus generate affirmations which are proper, although they still predicate e.g., wisdom super-eminently, as our creaturley wisdom, although it mirrors Divine Wisdom, is still but the offscouring thereof.

There are also certain other names which are worth mentioning here, but which Thomas leaves aside from the current text. These are usurped from not our simple, but our mixed perfections (perfectiones secundum quid)--like scientia, knowledge (cf De ver q 2 a 1). Unlike the first sort which come from pure and only perfection, these names come from perfection-imperfection combinations. Accordingly, one will need to remove the aspect of imperfection and retain the aspect of perfection. Yet most importantly, in so doing, one still has (for these names) the same or enough the same concept (Thomas: the species, rather than the genus of scientia) that one can still say that name of God properly and formally according to such (i.e., after we have removed the imperfection aspect). To continue our metaphor from above,

these creaturely mixed perfections (whence our names) are also mirrors, but ones which are dirty and so only partially reflecting Divine Light.

Accordingly, provided that we intellectually clear the dirt, we can also apprehend the light; and therefore, e.g., God having scientia, knowledge will amount to the same as him being wise. Names from both our simple and our mixed perfections ultimately generate the same sort of proposition.

But and by strong contrast–and here is what Leithart never factors–there are finally still other names which are usurped from creatures and enclose some perfection, yes, but perfection as contracted so that it is thus and such. Importantly, that contraction or determined limit is inseparable and cannot be intellectually prescinded while still retaining that formality or concept signified by the predicated name. This is in direct contrast to the second sort of name just mentioned, where one can (for lack of better terms) still do something with their perfection: insofar as someone has knowledge, he does imitate God according to that little bit!; whereupon we say (and properly and formally!) that God knows.

But one cannot do this with the names which Thomas is handling–names like rock (his current example), or and which would be identical, names like angered.

These names designate contracted perfections, whose limits are inseparable in that if one were to remove it and (so to speak) then access the underlying perfection, you would no longer have, say, the rockness of a rock, what makes a rock such and not something else. This is why Thomas speaks of a determined or contracted mode of being: everything which makes a rock a rock and not some other created being. These then are not mirrors clean or even dirty, but lights under a bushel: if you remove the bushel, the light no longer is under that basket shape.

Most importantly, if you indeed grab hold of this light (which Leithart wants to do), then you can no longer speak at all of God being a rock, for you have precisely removed what makes a rock a rock. Rather, Thomas explains, you would speak of God having the good which a rock has, same as God has the good which each and every creature has.

A rock does not imitate God insofar as it is a rock, but insofar as it is a being or has some goodness-just as likewise do all other creatures.

And contra Leithart, that good certainly does not enable you to generate an individual proposition with each and every creature’s name! That would be ridiculous!

Thomas’s current example is a rock; but in I Sent d 22 q 1 a 2 resp, he includes “sensing, seeing, and others of this sort”; and then “rock, lion, and others of this sort.” He explains things the same way, but in different words: “all these [names] are imposed to signify corporeal forms according to a determined mode of participating being or living or some other of divine perfections.” Again, one can usurp these names and make propositions, saying that God is a rock, a lion, sees, hears, etc., but these could only be metaphors in order to truth. “Those [names] which are imposed for signifying some perfection exemplated from God, but such that they enclose in their meaning the imperfect mode of participating, are said of God in no mode properly, but nevertheless on the strength of their perfection they can be said of God metaphorically,” Thomas concludes in I Sent d 22 q 1 a 2 resp.

Conclusion

I need to draw this first part of my review to a close, and will continue it in a second.

My objective here has been to fairly and accurately identify the contemporary position, one which Leithart has articulated well and also holds consistently (as far as I can tell) across all names. For him, God being wise and him being angered (again, an example proposition of what I suspect is his main worry) are the same sort of propositions or at best only different according to some sort of sliding scale. It is wrong to reduce the latter to just a metaphor, given the principle every creaturely perfection is pre-had by God. And this furthermore reflects the actual use of such propositions in holy Scripture, which does not treat them as just metaphors.

Besides trying to identify this position fairly, I have shown at least initially that this is not the traditional position, represented by Thomas. Again, I expect that Leithart would simply and rather stoically concede the fact of this difference, and only then differ from myself as to which is the right position—a small choice at the beginning, but which generates radically different systems of theology by the end. Thomas, whom I follow, holds that God being wise and him being a rock are qualitatively different propositions: one is proper, the other metaphorical. And this stands immobile no matter how hard you squeeze, and no matter what holy Scripture seems to do or not do with these propositions. The basic reason for this difference is (to borrow again my image) that wisdom is a pure and clean creaturely mirror of Divine Wisdom, whereas a rock is light under the bushel.

In a second post, I will actually argue against Leithart’s position, before more fully expanding (in a third and final post) Thomas’s rules for identifying “how strong” a proposition can be, and how one “classes” or sorts different propositions throughout the system of theology.