William Lane Craig Again, and the Radical Reading Program Demanded by Thomas's Simplicity

Simplicity Isn't a Product of, but a Problem for Holy Scripture

Last week I spoke to a short clip from William Lane Craig, and underlined what Craig got right about (Thomist) simplicity: it is much harder to square with holy Scripture than even e.g., Arianism–strange as that is to say, as Craig hastily adds. Here again is a transcription of the soundbite:

“And it does seem to me that you’re right in saying that this Thomistic doctrine of divine simplicity contradicts more biblical teaching than does Arianism or Unitarianism or any of these other heresies, because at least Arianism or Unitarianism would admit that God could have a plurality of attributes and that God is not identical to his attributes or his existence [is not identical] with his essence. And so I think that you’re right, as odd as that sounds, that it’s more difficult to square the Thomistic doctrine of divine simplicity with the Bible than these other trinitarian or Christological heresies.”

To my mind, many critics of Craig have refused to listen charitably and understand Craig as adverting to the surface or ad litteram sense of holy Scripture. In case there is still doubt about this, Craig says the same thing in his recent Systematic Philosophical Theology, vol. 2a (as I have found subsequent to seeing the clip!). After showing (contra Steven Duby) that holy Scripture does not give warrant for God being simple, but that it is (if true) a product of philosophical reasoning, Craig notes that (Thomas’s) God being simple “is not merely unbiblical in the sense of not being taught by Scripture,” as just noted, but beyond this:

“actually contrary, at least prima facie, to scriptural teaching and therefore ruled out for any biblically adequate systematic theology.” (pg 114, emphasis added)

Note that the prima facie reading is the same as the ad litteram sense of holy Scripture.

But beyond not listening charitably, many critics are fundamentally missing the point. And indeed it is a very important point, often missed (or denied). Namely, you either accept or reject (Thomist) simplicity, but then ultimately you either have to run against or get to run along with the letters of holy Scripture.

Now in alerting to this, it would be wrong of course to overlook the likewise important point which critics of Craig are making. Viz., granted that God being simple contradicts the very letters themselves of holy Scripture; still, it certainly does not contradict holy Scripture itself, in the sense that any judgments yielded by the letters are not in tension with this judgment God being simple (or vice versa). Most notably, among the former are the true judgments which compose our creaturely simple perfections to God, true judgments like God being wise, him being good, etc. And the plurality involved with these judgments, as one critic has rightly noted, does not at all conflict with God being simple, for (roughly speaking) the distinct concepts result from our reason being reasoned, as Thomas explains in e.g., I Sent d 2 q 1 a 3 resp.

Fair enough. Yet I wonder if this too has not come to grips with how severe is the issue here. Thomas’s God being simple, far from being a product of holy Scripture, is actually a problem for it.

You must pick your poison: either a radical rehabilitation program of reinterpreting holy Scripture, given (Thomist) simplicity; or a more natural reading program, given no (Thomist) simplicity.

Let me explain. And, stick with me; the issue is difficult, but extremely important. (We will return again to Craig and his critics at the end.)

One Half of the Story

The letters of holy Scripture make a difference between God being rock, and him being wise. We deduce from the letters that the former is a metaphor: it occurs e.g., in poetry, and its interpretation is e.g., that we are supported. By contrast, we deduce that the latter is intended properly, deducing this also from the letters.

Yet this name wise signifies our concept wisdom which we have abstracted from creaturely wisdom, e.g., that accident there in Socrates how he is wise. As a result (and for other reasons), when we usurp this name into divinis, we inherently include the accidentality enclosed within this concept, for only ever an accident generates our concept. What is more, the scriptural saying that God is wise is identical to anyone saying that some man e.g., Socrates is wise: the propositions have the same form. The former therefore occasions an identical judgment as the latter does: we compose this concept to God same as we do to Socrates–albeit perhaps we immediately quality and say that God is wiser than even Socrates himself.

However, what we have just done is adopted the errant position of the Attributists, whom Maimonides combats throughout his Guide, and whom Thomas also combats in many places. The same position is in view in Lombard’s I Sent d 8, where the main authority is Augustine’s “God is good without quality, great without quantity.” The errant position holds instead that God is good with goodness, great with greatness, etc. (to use Maimonides’s phrasing of the position). In other words, it has not stripped accidentality from our concepts composed to God, and the (supposed) reality “out there” which (supposedly) verifies these (in fact false) judgments are thus certain “intentions added on to divine substance,” to quote from Thomas (variously, but e.g., De ver q 2 a 1 resp). To use contemporary lingo, there is a bundle of properties which God eternally has and which are (for lack of better terms) reflected in our bundle of concepts wisdom, goodness, etc., and which are ultimately signified when holy Scripture says that God is wise, is good, etc. “Yes, and in other words,” the Thomist retorts, “‘God’ is not one thing.”

The fathers–and especially the Greek fathers–were very worried about the above position; and Maimonides and Avicenna were extremely worried about it, given that there were real live professional and powerful theologians who held this (in fact errant) position, given how “natural” it is philosophically. But what is more to the point, they were also worried about how natural this position is to holy Scripture. Part and parcel to this errant position, or rather a primary motivation thereof, is understanding secundum litteram. I include this quotation again from Maimonides:

“The reasons that led those who believe in the existence of attributes belonging to the Creator to this belief are akin to those that led those who believe in the doctrine of His corporeality to that belief. For he who believes in this doctrine was not led to it by intellectual speculation; he merely followed the external sense of the texts of the Scriptures. This is also the case with regard to the attributes. For inasmuch as the books of the prophets and the revealed books existed, which predicate attributive qualifications of Him, may He be exalted, these were taken in their literal sense; and He was believed to possess attributes.” (Guide 1, 53; Pines’ translation)

As a result, fathers like Augustine and later theologians like Maimonides came together in facing these scriptural propositions and immediately doing two things.

First, they would make clear protestations like that God is not wise, not good, etc. (Maimonides: God is wise without wisdom, i.e., not some wisdom verifies him being wise; Augustine: God is good without quality: i.e., not some inherent quality verifies him being good). These propositions notably contradict the scriptural ones, secundum faciem. But they were intending with them the true judgments that God is not accidentally wise, not accidentally good–judgments which are the opposites of the false ones above noted, false judgments but to which the surface sense of holy Scripture positively inclines.

Then second, given how dangerous and pernicious is the Attributist position, how easy it is to lapse into, how difficult it is to root out, they therefore would not advert to more difficult true judgments which can be made (on this, more in a moment), but instead easier ones, like negative judgments, e.g., that God is not foolish, and “causal” ones, like the creaturely universe is filled with good things by God. They then taught these easier judgments as the stock interpretations of such scriptural propositions.

All of this formed part of the radical program of reinterpreting holy Scripture, on the one hand flagging that the ad litteram sense is false and the opposite in fact is true (God actually is not wise), and on the other giving a true judgment (e.g., God is not foolish) which alone one ought to think whenever one reads e.g. that God is wise.

“The fathers were dumb and way undershot the text.” No, they were its most careful readers. Mark that both these interpretations, often called the negative and causal interpretation (although the latter name has caused some confusion) are arguably also the ad litteram sense of holy Scripture, and therefore the actual intellectual content within the scriptural propositions in question (at least in the vast majority of cases).

Consider this most carefully. Regarding first the negative interpretation, such scriptural sayings were especially used to distinguish others (e.g., the gods) from God–distinguish namely by way of negative differences (e.g., Thomas, SCG I c 14): although the gods are cruel, God is merciful; although the gods are dead, he is alive; etc. If one actually attends to the whole letter (the entire statement), rather than just the isolated propositions God being merciful, being living, etc. (these together with two others, namely God being powerful and being wise, formed the four main propositions of dispute between Attributists and e.g., Maimonides/Thomas)--if one actually attends to the whole letter, then one will easily see that although one can confuse these for the false propositions (signifying the false judgments noted above), they are in fact obviously negative in force and only affirmative in form. When someone says that although one person is cruel, another is merciful, the latter proposition has affirmative form, but its force is only the negation of the contrary formality—although it may indeed be the case that the person actually has the contrary formality.

Regarding then the causal interpretation, Maimonides points out, especially informed by Arabic grammarians analyzing the same phenomenon in Arabic and the Quran, that Semitic languages have a strange (to Latin and English speakers) idiomatic syntax called affirmations of names from works worked (see e.g., Guide 1, 54). That is to say, merely on the basis of someone having done something, these languages tend to fall into “reporting” or “praising” mode and (1) invent a name akin to the something done and then (2) affirm, propositionally, such a name of the subject agent. We do this in English when we say of someone who has done us a kindness, that you are kind: although this latter proposition is easily confused for the proposition which posits kindness in someone (viz., that you are kind), it in fact has the force only of positing a relation to the work done, together with the aspect of praise (thanks) or acknowledgement of such relation’s truth: the intellectual content is “you, I acknowledge, are the one who did this kindness.” Once again, if you actually attend to the whole letter e.g., throughout the Psalms, you will find that these sorts of propositions abound: if a justice is done, then God is said just; if a lovingkindness is done, then God is said lovingly-kind, etc.

This further reinforces the two stock interpretations of the scriptural propositions in question: this is just what holy Scripture is saying. Remarkably, it means that following the letter, one actually gets negative and “causal” judgments from holy Scripture, which although its very very surface occasions false judgments, nonetheless upon careful examination even of slightly below that surface (or I suppose the rest of the letter) causes true ones.

That’s the first half of the story.

The Other Half of the Story

The second half goes like this.

Let’s start over and forget holy Scripture: we will return to it when we have further (!) true judgments ready in mind to interpret its propositions otherwise than the above negative and “causal” interpretations.

When we consider the creaturely universe, as we explain it through and through, we find that everything which is of perfection and actuality reduces to God as its ultimate cause, and that it so reduces that we must conclude that God precontains the whole of it (albeit in a more eminent mode)--i.e., the basic teaching in ST I q 4 a 2.

But what is more, after we perform this reduction, we re-survey the creaturely landscape. We then find that there are certain concrete accidents among us creatures, like wisdom, goodness, etc., that are special. These, after we have abstracted even from the accidentality involved, result in concepts which include only perfection and actuality, nothing more. Anselm called these simple perfections (perfectiones simpliciter simplices), and they are always the most important in any system of theology.

Thomas will often distinguish the whole concept abstracted from the concrete accident into its “parts,” speaking first of its genus, which is the accidentality, and then second of its specific difference, which is the simple perfection (e.g., I Sent d 8 q 4 a 3). And indeed, whenever he handles these names wise, good, etc.—which he does most frequently, culminating in his De pot q 7 aa 4ff—you know that he has already performed the further abstraction and prepared the precisioned concept. As an aside, us readers must beware that we too have done this, whether or not Thomas reminds us to do so.

Most importantly, many theologians, especially earlier (including scholastic) ones who did not work with this level of abstraction, advert to the whole concept and therefore truly negate such from God, then saying that God e.g., is not wise. However, we could say that although this negative judgment indeed is true (and important, especially in the context of an opposite error!), it “threw out the baby with the bathwater” and swept something needlessly away which can and ought to be preserved. That something is the “partial” concept just obtained: once one has made the higher abstraction and is considering only what remains, then one can truly affirm just this of God, and indeed such a judgment then supports a proper-formal proposition that God e.g., is wise. For the record, this abstraction somewhat bears upon, but is not really the same as, the also and additionally necessary move which Thomas often refers to as “saying the name properly with respect to the reality signified, but not with respect to the mode of signifying.” Thus Thomas will distinguish the abstraction from this latter move, but also run both of them alongside together (e.g., I Sent d 35 q 1 a 1 ad 2).

The affirmative judgments which we are talking about are extremely difficult to make. They require beforehand exact acts of understanding resulting in certain concepts (to be thereafter composed), and all this involving a much higher degree of intellectual abstraction than many are accustomed to perform. Maimonides, e.g., never performed it–as Thomas flags (e.g., I Sent d 2 q 1 a 3 resp, the third point). And indeed if a still-good theologian is not performing it, then his system of theology will “feel” very negative (on account of verifying propositions like God being wise through negative judgments like him not being foolish). This is why the Greek fathers, who often did not operate at this level (although they could/will at times), feel so much more apophatic than e.g., Thomas Aquinas’s system. They don’t have more negative judgments; Thomas only has more affirmative ones.

But besides the difficulty in making such affirmative judgments, these judgments are also very easy to confuse with the other and false judgments (noted in our first part) which happen to be the same sort of ones which we always make when we say with our mouths that someone is wise, is good, etc. One example of this confusion (and a side comment) is how people today frequently suppose that when Dionysius says that God is not wise, he is at loggerheads with saying that God is wise, or else “pulling a Hegel.” Thomas can and does alert all day long to the fact that the former is with respect to the mode of signifying (involving also the accidentality, by extension), and the latter is with respect to the “purified” concept which is the simple perfection; but the fact remains that people remain confused on this point–attesting to how easy it is to confuse judgments looming behind propositions having the same form (God is wise, and God is wise).

All this in mind, we can now return to holy Scripture and interpreting its propositions. Most importantly, when one has managed (1) to additionally abstract and eventually conceptualize, and then (2) compose such concepts truly to God, then these true judgments can form the other part of the radical program of reinterpreting holy Scripture. We must still flag that the ad litteram sense is false and that the opposite is in fact true (God is not wise); but now, instead of just giving e.g., a negative judgment (God not being foolish) as the interpretation of the scriptural proposition God being wise, we can go on and give this affirmative judgment God being wise (not that false, Attributist one!; the true, Thomist one) as the “stronger” interpretation. In doing this, the program as a whole will feel less radical, because we have affirmative judgments in play; but it really includes just as much intellectual work as the first part noted above.

Concluding: Craig and His Critics

What then finally of Craig and his critics, by way of conclusion?

Craig is worried that Thomas’s God being simple is a nuclear bomb for theology. And as we have seen, not only does it falsify (the false) judgments God being wise, being good, etc., it also historically has inclined theologians to reinterpret scriptural propositions in “minimalist” ways. Indeed at first, it seems that God being simple just leaves us with only negative judgments like God being foolish, not being evil, etc., to verify any affirmative proposition. Such propositions might have the same form as “normal” ones, but they in fact secretly have the force of only negative judgments. As a result, when said of e.g., Socrates and God himself, our names like wise, good, etc. would be entirely equivocal–for in the case of Socrates, it signifies his wisdom how he really is wise, but in the case of God, it only signifies the absence of foolishness.

This, for Craig, seems to be a hard pill to swallow–given (besides philosophical reasons) the actual affirmative propositions throughout holy Scripture, and which in some cases (like perhaps 1 John’s “God is love”) certainly seem to have more than just negative force. (We are sidelining the “causal” interpretation.) Indeed, such affirmative propositions do seem to require affirmative judgments and ones which involve, at least somehow, these same concepts wisdom, goodness, etc. How then can we keep these, but also keep Thomas’s God being simple?

As for Craig’s critics, as we already mentioned above, they rightly alert that it is not impossible to make affirmative judgments which compose e.g., wisdom not as an accident, but only as the purified concept of the perfection content (for lack of better terms) of the accident. And more to the point, these judgments admit plurality of concepts as a result of our reason being reasoned, for God’s all-surpassing perfection, just as it is “plurified” among many different creaturely perfections, so also it is “plurified” among many different creaturely concepts usurped from such.

Moreover, these same judgments can also verify the correspondent scriptural propositions God being wise, being good, etc.--even if these propositions do occasion false judgments which divine simplicity notifies us as false. Indeed, when we read in holy Scripture e.g., that unlike the gods who are hateful and cruel, God is loving, although this technically only has negative force secundum litteram, still our affirmative judgment that God is loving can also verify this, and does. We thus can and ought to include these judgments in our stock of interpretations–besides negative ones like God not being hateful, or “causal” ones like all our providential goods above and beyond God’s creative works have also arisen from him (for the record, this last is Maimonides’s interpretation).

Finally, insofar as these judgments do not conflict with God being altogether simple, neither do the scriptural propositions conflict–which is why it is perhaps poor phrasing on Craig’s part to say that Thomas’s doctrine contradicts more biblical teaching, rather than just e.g., more biblical texts.

“All right,” I admit, “say it contradicts the texts, not the teaching. That is indeed better phrasing. But I still stand by my meme.”