From January 14th to February 7th, 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.
Drew began his review of Johnson’s work with a two-part analysis (see part 1 and part 2) followed by minor critiques of The Revealed God. The response to Johnson’s work began with a treatment of divine simplicity (simplicity part 1, simplicity part 2), the principle of analogy, and is continued in this seventh excerpt, which discusses participation and concludes the article.
Third, and finally, I wish to address Johnson’s comments about the chain of being indirectly by constructing an account of participation that avoids several of his concerns. To do so, I contend that analogical language is not merely about language, but the nature of being. Analogical language reflects the analogy of being. Thomas Joseph White asserts, “Let us be clear: we are speaking here of univocity and equivocity as something that pertains not only to our logical designations about reality (how we name reality), but also as something proper to the reality itself, characterizing the being of things.”[1] Nature teaches us this when we speak of health, as discussed earlier. Scripture drives us to these conclusions when we reflect upon Christ’s teaching of God’s exclusive goodness (Matt. 19:7) combined with the affirmation that everything made by God is good (1 Tim. 4:4). Readers should follow Turretin’s interpretation. God’s goodness is original, independent, and essential, whereas the creature possesses goodness secondarily, accidentally, and participatively.[2] The creature’s derivative goodness is similar to but different from the Creator’s underived goodness. For these reasons, we must speak of the analogy of being, not merely analogical language.
The analogy of being allows Christians to affirm with Turretin that creatures participate in God’s essence. Consider that the creature’s life and goodness do not altogether differ from God’s, otherwise, it would be equivocal. Nor does the creature participate in the same life and goodness of God as if God and creatures were living and good in the same way, univocally. God and creatures do not together participate in life and goodness, as if these existed independently of God. Creatures participate in God’s life and goodness because he communicates it to them as creatures that they might finitely possess and reflect God. Duby writes, “God does genuinely communicate what he has. Creatures have in a partial and relative way what he is wholly and absolutely.”[3] Thus, we do not say that God has life and goodness, and the creature has life and goodness as if God and the creature participate together. Dolezal argues that God and the creature do not share in some third thing, such as life or goodness. Instead, the creature just is an analogue of God. He writes:
...there is an analogy between God’s esse and the world’s esse in such a way that God is not an analogue of the world even though the world is an analogue of him. The world, as effect, participates [in] God’s esse, but God does not mutually participate in the world’s essesince the analogy flows in only one direction and God is the prime analogate.[4]
The creature’s life and goodness are the effect of the one who is life and goodness subsisting.
The concept of participation does not violate the Creator-creature distinction. God is not merely on the highest rung of being, a concept implied by univocity, but is the fount of all being as the One who is being itself. As Duby contends, “There is no essebeyond himself in which God participates in order to be.”[5] The identity account of simplicity secures God’s transcendence since the attributes of God are identical with the divine essence and each other.
There is no distinction between God’s existence and his essence. His underived existence does not depend upon any parts; he is the simple and infinite God. Duby correctly reasons, “He does not participate in perfections that extend beyond himself but is himself the infinite fullness of wisdom, love, and so on. He transcends the system of created being altogether.”[6] In this way, nothing can be compared with God (Isa. 40:18). The creature’s derived and dependent existence ensures the distinction between its existence and its essence. Duby explains this difference well when he says:
Accordingly, the biblical authors point out that whatever perfection belongs to the created order must ultimately come from God. He has granted hearing and sight to creatures, so he too possesses understanding and sees what happens in the world (Ps 94:9). He is the archetypal Father, “from whom all fatherhood in the heavens and on earth is named” (Eph 3:15).[7]
The creature has existence, goodness, wisdom, etc.; therefore, the creature is finite and possesses its existence and essence according to its finite mode of existence, as Duby argues:
The creature is not really identical with its own esse and therefore must “have” or participate in esse according to the generous will of God. Furthermore, unlike God, for whom to be just is to be wise, good, and so on, creatures’ have their various perfections (e.g., wisdom, justice, mercy) as qualities added to essence. In this regard, all of God’s attributes are incommunicable in that their absoluteness and real identity with essence cannot be replicated in anything other than God. In this sense, creatures do not share God’s perfections and are always inadequate to the power of God, their efficient cause. At the same time, whatever perfection or goodness creatures do have can come from God alone (Rom 11:38; 1 Cor 8:6). There is no other fount of perfection or goodness.[8]
Wisdom and power properly belong to God because God is the wisdom by which he is wise and the power by which he is powerful. He freely and generously bestows wisdom and power such that creatures possess these attributes derivatively (Dan. 2:20–23). Claunch reasons:
The term wise is true of God in himself even when there is nothing else in existence that can be called wise. When God creates men and angels and gives them the capacity for wisdom, the term wise can be predicated of such creatures by way of participation. Divine wisdom precedes creaturely wisdom, and divine wisdom is the infinite perfection of which creaturely wisdom is but a shadow. Because wisdom is in God originally and in creatures derivatively, the term wise is predicated of God properly. The analogy runs from God to creatures.[9]
The nature of the creature entails a finite mode of existence whereby essence and existence are distinguished, but this is not true of God because his existence is his essence.
Unlike God, the creature’s existence and essence are distinct. That the creature is and what the creature is differ, and that assures us that the creature can never be the Creator. As Duby writes:
In his work of creation, God gives being to that which is other than God, that which “receives partially” what he is “without restriction.” The being and perfections of creatures are derived. Their being and perfections are finite. Limited in degree and restricted under various genera. Created effects are, after all, necessarily finite since finite is requisite to being other than the infinite God in the first place.[10]
The distinctions creatures possess by virtue of their mode of existence preserve the Creator-creature distinction. Duby succinctly states the creaturely mode of existence as follows: “Creatures have in a partial and relative way what he is wholly and absolutely.”[11] The participation is asymmetrical because creatures participate in the life of God, but God does not participate in the life of creatures. The life of the creature is constituted by God, but God’s life is not constituted by creatures. There is no life to participate in other than the life freely given by God in creation, and God does not give a life that is other than himself. As Duby explains:
For to be a creature, a caused being, is to participate in a restricted manner in the life of God and thus to be finite and in this way decidedly other than the Creator. But the perfections granted to creatures are present in God, the one from whom all things exist (Ps 94:8–11; Rom 11:36; 1 Cor 8:6), without limit and in an undivided manner. The infinity of God thus secures his distinction from creatures and yet, given that God is not in the same order of being as creatures, does so in such a way that he need not mitigate his presence or economic condescension in order to uphold that distinction. God therefore has no gap to bridge in order to draw near to us, and in fact, we can exist only where he is: “in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).[12]
The creature’s existence may only be explained in light of God’s communication of his own life to the creature, which can only be a caused and derived existence received by a finite being who has existence by the free will of God.
The analogy of being requires analogical language. The creature’s existence and language will always be finite. Aquinas argues that our language and knowledge always fits our mode of existence. He reasons:
Our knowledge of God is derived from the perfections which flow from Him to creatures, which perfections are in God in a more eminent way than in creatures. How our intellect apprehends them as they are in creatures, and as it apprehends them it signifies them by names. Therefore as to the names applied to God—viz. the perfections which they signify, such as goodness, life and the like, and their mode of signification. As regards what is signified by these names, they belong properly to God, and more properly than they belong to creatures, and are applied primarily to Him. But as regards their mode of signification, they do not properly and strictly apply to God; for their mode of signification applies to creatures.[13]
Analogy preserves the Creator-creature distinction because it distinguishes the Creator’s mode of existence from the creature’s. No metaphysical proportional chain exists between God and creatures because one is caused by and dependent upon the other in a secondary and derivative manner.
Conclusion
The Revealed God levies weighty charges against PCT. This article criticized Johnson’s work and sought to answer objections pertaining to divine simplicity, analogical language, and participation. Neither the identity account of simplicity nor analogical language render God unknowable. Creatures speak truthfully of the whole being of God with finite and complex language that is literal or metaphorical, but always analogical. The world is not absolutely necessary because God creates freely. His indifferent and non-constitutive relation to the world renders it unnecessary to the God who, by his power, is able to freely bring about the contingent order of being. This contingent order participates in the life and goodness of God as he freely and generously communicates himself. The creature possesses life and goodness in a finite manner, according to its mode of existence.
I attempted to answer what I perceived to be Johnson’s gravest concerns about PCT as they overlap with the Reformed tradition. Johnson’s haste to criticize Aquinas reveals misunderstandings of key concepts and their presence in his own tradition. I hope that Johnson and those who hold to BCT would reevaluate their arguments against PCT as they consider their tradition and Holy Scripture. The pursuit of “biblicism,” as described by Johnson, often fails to consider how much contemporary philosophy is imbibed, which manifests itself in the confused and underdeveloped philosophy of The Revealed God.
[1] Thomas Joseph White, Wisdom in the Face of Modernity: A Study in Thomistic Natural Theology (Ave Maria, FL: Sapienta Press, 2016), 324.
[2] Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, III.vi.4.
[3] Duby, God In Himself, 42.
[4] Dolezal, God Without Parts, 121–22 n88.
[5] Duby, God In Himself, 226.
[6] Duby, God In Himself, 117.
[7] Duby, God In Himself, 234.
[8] Duby, God In Himself, 240–41.
[9] Claunch, “Theological Language and the Fatherhood of God.”
[10] Duby, God In Himself, 239.
[11] Duby, God In Himself, 242.
[12] Duby, God In Himself, 227.
[13] Aquinas, ST Ia. Q.13. A3.