Over the next several weeks, we will publish excerpts from Drew Sparks’ recent article, “In Defense of Classical Theism: A Review Article of Jeffrey Johnson’s The Revealed God.” This article was originally published in the 2024 Journal of International Reformed Baptist Seminary (JIRBS). The editor and Broken Wharfe graciously granted Baptist Dogmatics permission to publish the article on our site.
This second excerpt continues the analysis of Jeffrey Johnson’s book. You may read the first excerpt here.
In Part II, Johnson aims to show that the God of pagan philosophy is impersonal and that all pagan philosophical systems are inconsistent. Early in Part II, he introduces the “chain of being” (63). Building from Arthur Lovejoy’s work, Johnson argues that pagan philosophy argues that God is the same substance as the universe, aspects of which rest on a particular level of the chain. Pagan philosophers reject divine revelation and must work from within the created order to God as they climb a ladder from within the cosmos that extends to God. They climb the ladder of being through rationalism, empiricism, and existentialism. These “isms” lead to inconsistencies since they cannot arrive at a God who is both transcendent and immanent.
Part III argues that syncretism between Christian philosophy and pagan philosophy fails. Johnson writes, “It is impossible to mix opposing worldviews without introducing contradictions and confusion. The confusion of syncretism, moreover, can be traced throughout church history” (112). Platonism and rationalism plagued the early and medieval church, so Johnson balks at those who claim that “Christian Platonism is a part of the great tradition” (135). Johnson cites Craig Carter who depends upon the work of Lloyd Gerson.[1] Nevertheless, Johnson does not specify which tenets of Platonism he rejects. Gerson describes Platonism as antimaterialism, antimechanism, antinominalism, antirelativism, and antiskepticism.[2] Johnson missed an opportunity to engage the ideas of the interlocutors he criticizes and explain how these ideas contradict the Christian tradition.
Mysticism also threatened the medieval church. Like other inconsistent philosophies, mysticism relies on the chain of being, but it also attacks Scripture’s sufficiency by “reducing divine revelation to an analogical language” (139). Thomas Aquinas, who takes a more central role in the book, falls prey to mysticism as he follows Pseudo-Dionysius and incorporates the chain of being from Plato and Aristotle. Johnson highlights Aquinas’ 1,700 quotations of Pseudo-Dionysius and contrasts this with 120 verbal references to Paul. Johnson’s citation counting struck this reviewer as odd for two reasons. First, Aquinas wrote a commentary on every letter Paul wrote. Clearly, he believed in the importance of engaging Paul. Second, one should be measured by their fidelity to Paul, and Scripture more broadly, rather than their verbal references to Paul. For example, Johnson writes, “In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas arranged his material in the circular framework of Neoplatonism—the out-birth and rebirth back into God” (145). Is it possible that Aquinas follows the theological pattern prescribed by Paul in Romans 11:36? Johnson fears that Aquinas’s philosophy leads to symbolic and metaphorical depictions of God and ultimately “subjugated theology (and the interpretation of the Scriptures) to philosophy in a functional sense” (159). Before moving to a more critical appraisal of PCT, Johnson also addresses existentialism. Oddly, he leaps over hundreds of years of theological and philosophical history, bypasses Reformation and Enlightenment thinkers, and lands in the 1800s to argue that Christian existentialism also depends wrongly on the chain of being.
Johnson offers two chapters near the end of Part III that present a focused critique of PCT and the doctrine of simplicity. Two primary versions of simplicity emerge, one that is philosophical and the other that is biblical (176). PCT states that God’s essence includes his free operational distinctions. BCT denies that God’s essence includes his free operational distinctions (174). These two models are further divided. PCT can be trinitarian or non-trinitarian. BCT can affirm that God’s attributes are identical to each other or deny that they are identical to each other. All in all, Johnson offers 13 different ways to conceive of God without parts (177). Johnson’s method implicitly assumes that disagreements over these distinctions weaken one’s ability to discern the correct version of simplicity, as if they are all plausible.
Regardless of the different versions, a strong dividing line remains. Both models of BCT deny that simplicity refers to God’s essence and free operations. Johnson claims:
Unlike the God of pagan philosophy, however, the simplicity, immutability, and impassibility of God’s essence do not extend to include God’s free operational distinctions. For God’s free operational distinctions are not identical to God’s essence. (173)
He also writes, “These free operations, moreover, are diverse and distinct from each other. For instance, God’s free act of creating the universe is not identical to God’s free act of destroying the universe” (173). PCT, according to Johnson, confuses God’s essence with God’s actions, which “is the heart of the problem of [PCT]” (184). PCT affirms that God’s essence and free operations are simple because of its indebtedness to pagan philosophy.
Johnson believes PCT is inconsistent on eight counts, all of which are presented in Chapter 15. First, PCT suffers from a trinitarian contradiction. Aquinas affirmed that God’s wisdom and love are identical, but also affirmed that the Son is the wisdom of God and the Spirit is the love of God, which is a contradiction. Johnson’s claim suffers for multiple reasons. First, he does not differentiate between an inconsistency in Aquinas and an inconsistency in PCT. Second, he uncharitably interprets Aquinas’s trinitarian theology.[3] John Gill, for example, identifies the Son as the Wisdom of God.[4] When we speak of the God who is holy and the Holy Spirit, Scripture helps us to distinguish between common predications that refer to the divine essence and proper predications that refer to the persons.[5] Second, the identity account of simplicity renders God unknowable. This objection implicates the BCT identity account as well, although Johnson does not explicitly condemn BCT. Third, since God does not have a real relation to the world, he cannot be personal. Fourth, the act of creation is necessary for God because he is the eternal Creator. It is unclear whether Johnson levels this charge against all adherents of timelessness, biblical or philosophical, or whether a commitment to timelessness entails PCT. Unfortunately, Johnson’s commitment to God and time is not found in his work. Fifth, if willing and power are the same in God, then God cannot be free. Sixth, God must fully exercise his power on PCT, therefore, no more or less things could exist in creation than what God has made. Further, God could not have done otherwise. Seventh, Johnson raises the modal collapse objection against PCT. Leaning on the work of R. T. Mullins, Johnson argues that God’s work of creation becomes a necessary operation, rendering creation necessary rather than contingent. As a result, God is not free, and creation is necessary. Eighth, and finally, PCT cannot account for the Creator-creature distinction because of its dependence upon the chain of being. On the one hand, PCT argues God is unknowable, but, on the other hand, it also argues that God can be known by studying the cosmos. PCT is untenable because of these inconsistencies.
Part IV concludes the work. Johnson argues Scripture is sufficient for metaphysics. The equivocal language of Ockham and the univocal language of Scotus fail to adequately map onto Scripture. Analogical language is required, but not PCT’s version. Johnson advocates for biblical analogical language, which presents God’s incomprehensibility as a doctrine for devotion rather than philosophy.
He pulls Turretin and Gill off the bench to show how they rejected pagan philosophy, using Colossians 2:8 as a supporting text. His use of these theologians gives the false impression that they agree with him. Johnson associates certain views with PCT, labels them “philosophy,” and then argues that Turretin and Gill disparage philosophy. However, Johnson fails to show that men like Gill agree with his own description of philosophy and PCT. Johnson’s truncated quotation of Gill leaves readers with the impression that philosophy, as defined by Johnson, has brought great harm. Admittedly, it is difficult to discern how Johnson understands Gill since he provides a quotation without commenting on the text.
However, Gill clearly states that philosophy may be “right,” leading to “true wisdom” and “the knowledge of God.” Philosophy may yield knowledge regarding “the things of nature, of things natural, moral, and civil: which may be attained unto by the use of reasoning and light of nature.”[6] “Natural philosophy” as well as various other branches, including “ethics, logic,” and “rhetoric” provide true insight when “kept within due bounds, and in their proper place and sphere.”[7] Gill interprets Paul as one criticizing “false notions” such as “the eternity of matter, and of this world, the mortality of souls, the worshipping of demons and angels.”[8] Philosophy errs in these matters and when it wrongly applies truths of nature to certain doctrines. For example, Gill denies that something can come from nothing but asserts that this principle is wrongly applied to God’s creation of all things from nothing. He affirms a true philosophical principle but denies its application to God’s work of creation. Where philosophy serves as a handmade, rather than a judge, Gill gladly accepts it. Philosophy reaches its boundary when discussing mysteries of the faith, such as the “Trinity of Persons,” because mysteries are beyond the “sphere” of philosophy.[9] When utilized within its proper bounds, philosophy may rightly rule and judge matters.
Besides criticizing the false notions of the philosophers, Gill attacks the syncretism of philosophy with “the worship and service of God.”[10] He has in mind the use of “hieroglyphics of natural things” employed in worship along with “sacrifices and ceremonies of worship, given to demons and angels.”[11] When philosophy interferes in these ways, it corrupts the pure gospel. When it remains unmixed with the gospel, respects its boundaries, and serves theology as a handmaid, philosophy and philosophers may be employed by theologians. Thus, Gill does not reject the epistemology of pagan philosophy as Johnson would lead readers to believe (238). He respects the division of the sciences and knows that philosophy may rightly render judgment in matters of nature, but must receive the mysteries of the faith humbly and without mixing them. Gill’s specific and nuanced understanding of philosophy’s role does not render the philosophical project “fatally flawed” and in need of “demolishing” (237).
Johnson, however, calls Christians away from pagan philosophy. Christians need an account of the Trinity that can solve the problem of the one and the many, explain simplicity and diversity in God, account for God’s immutability and mobility, render creation ex nihilo intelligible, ground transcendence and immanence, clarify God’s absoluteness and relations, and maintain ethical distinctions in God. Johnson concludes the work by arguing that only BCT can account for a God who is transcendent in his essence and immanent in his operations.
[1] Craig A. Carter, Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition: Recovering the Genesis of Premodern Exegesis (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2021. Lloyd P. Gerson, From Plato to Platonism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013).
[2] Gerson, From Plato to Platonism, 10.
[3] Readers are encouraged to consult Giles Emery, The Trinitarian Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Francesca Aran Murphy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
[4] John Gill, A Body of Divinity (Grand Rapids, MI: Sovereign Grace Publishers, 1971), 252.
[5] For the basic grammar of divine naming, see Scott R. Swain, The Trinity: An Introduction (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 25–35.
[6] John Gill, An Exposition of the New Testament, 2 vols. (London: William Hill Collingridge, 1852), 2:519.
[7] Gill, An Exposition of the New Testament, 2:519.
[8] Gill, An Exposition of the New Testament, 2:519.
[9] Gill, An Exposition of the New Testament, 2:519.
[10] Gill, An Exposition of the New Testament, 2:519.
[11] Gill, An Exposition of the New Testament, 2:519.