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.
This fourth excerpt responds to Johnsons’s comments about the doctrine of simplicity. If you are new to this series, be sure to read part 1 and part 2 of Drew’s analysis as well his minor critiques of The Revealed God.
A Response to Johnson’s Arguments
Now, I offer a more thorough response to three key arguments put forth by Johnson. My review of Johnson revealed his primary criticisms of PCT include its doctrine of simplicity, how it employs analogical language, and its dependence upon a chain of being. In response, I develop a doctrine of divine simplicity from the writings of John Owen, Francis Turretin, and John Gill, theologians Johnson declined to engage when writing on simplicity even though he employed them to criticize pagan philosophy. Then, I explain how analogical language works and why it does not undermine the sufficiency of Scripture, as Johnson fears. Finally, I address Johnson’s concerns of a chain of being by arguing that a proper doctrine of divine simplicity, when combined with analogical language that reflects the analogy of being, leads to a doctrine of participation that preserves the Creator-creature distinction and differs from Johnson’s understanding of a chain of being.
1. Simplicity
Johnson criticizes the identity account of divine simplicity. He desires to develop a doctrine of the Trinity consistent with simplicity that avoids conflating God’s essence and operations, an approach he believes avoids modal collapse. To answer these charges, I begin with a brief explanation of the identity account. Then, I explain why the identity account need not be softened to accommodate for the doctrine of the Trinity. Finally, I argue God is free and creation is not absolutely necessary.
The “heart” of the problem with the identity account, according to Johnson, resides in the confusion of God’s essence and God’s actions (184). Despite this claim, his criticisms often extend to the BCT identity account of simplicity. Johnson’s unique terminology and lack of definitions make it difficult to discern which view he intends to critique. Unfortunately, his criticisms of PCT and the identity account do not interact with Reformed thinkers. Johnson does not see the need to either substantiate his claims with the Reformed tradition or levy his criticisms against those within the tradition.
When critiquing PCT, he writes:
For some Philosophical Classical Theists, not only are the free operations of God identical to God’s simple essence, but all of God’s operations are also identical with each other. Just as God only has one attribute (or a simplicity of attributes), God only has one act. God’s one act is identical to all the other acts of God as it is one with his one attribute. (185)
Those who hold the identity account do not believe that God has one attribute. No distinct attributes exist in God because all that is in God is God. The identity account rejects that God’s attributes are “one attribute” or a “simplicity of attributes” because this claim contradicts the thesis that all that is in God is in God. Further, if Johnson is correct, he implicates Owen and Gill along with Dolezal. Owen writes, “The attributes of God, which alone seem to be distinct things in the essence of God, are all of them essentially the same with one another, and every one of the same with the essence of God itself.”[1] To substantiate his point, Owen argues that all the attributes of God are infinitely perfect or not. These infinitely perfect attributes are just God or there is another infinite perfection that exists in addition to God, which leads to polytheism. If these attributes are not infinite, then they are not God.[2]
Owen would rightly reject Johnson’s view, which renders God’s attributes finite. Each attribute is limited by the fact that it is not another attribute since it lacks something found in the other attribute. If the attribute lacks something, it is finite. His omnipotence, omniscience, and goodness are limited since they are not each other. Thus, God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and goodness are finite. If these attributes are finite, then God is the sum or possessor of finite attributes and not infinite.
Johnson claims that the attributes are meaningless on the identity account. He also criticizes those who claim that love and mercy “are identical in God” (227). But these charges assume univocism, a claim rejected by classical theists. If mercy and love were distinct attributes existing in God and classical theists claimed these attributes were identical, then Johnson’s charge of meaninglessness would stand. However, classical theists deny that love and mercy exist in God as distinct attributes. They affirm that all that is in God is God. Love and mercy are not attributes in God but analogical predications of the divine essence. As Steven J. Duby writes, “Each of God’s perfections, then, is a representation of his whole being under some aspect and is therefore not a quality inhering in him.”[3]
These predications refer to God and are true but the thing predicated does not exist in God as a distinct thing from another predication. God’s essence grounds the distinctions without the distinctions existing in God as distinctions. Dolezal helpfully writes, “The diversity in our ascription of attributes to God does not arise from a corresponding diversity in him even though those diverse attributes are all named from his simple essence.”[4] He continues and addresses the charge that the names we attribute to God are all synonymous, saying, “The sense of each name still differs meaningfully from every other, though the referent, God, does not bear some corresponding internal complex of principles or formalities.”[5] Love and mercy signify different things, but do not indicate diversity in the One to whom these terms refer. We speak dividedly and finitely of the One in whom there is no division or finitude. Yet, our speech is true even if it imperfectly and partially names God because God is the foundation of the distinctions that we predicate of him upon observing created effects.[6]
Second, the doctrine of the Trinity does not require a softer version of simplicity. Johnson asserts that strict forms of simplicity are inconsistent with the complexity of the Trinity (174). Here, Johnson misunderstands the arguments put forth by classical theists. No competition exists between the doctrine of simplicity and the doctrine of the Trinity. The undivided divine essence subsists in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is important to note that the persons of the Trinity are really distinct from each other, albeit only conceptually distinct from the divine essence. The persons are not really distinct from the divine essence. Dolezal captures this point well.
We must first note that classical trinitarians insist that the real distinction is not between the persons and the divine essence, but only among the persons themselves. The one God just is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If the persons were really distinct from the essence, which would be the case if any persons failed to possess the whole divine essence, then we would be left with a quaternity: Father, Son, Spirit, and essence.[7]
Since no real distinction exists between the essence and the persons, the identity account of simplicity and the Trinity are not in competition. Simplicity does not need to be weakened to accommodate the persons of the godhead.
Third, the view of divine simplicity presented in this review-article does not entail a modal collapse. As we noted, confusing God’s essential and operational simplicity is the “heart” of the problem for PCT, according to Johnson. PCT jeopardizes divine freedom since willing and power are identical in God (195). God wills all that he could, since he has “no untapped potency” (196). Relying on Mullins, Johnson states that PCT renders creation necessary rather than contingent (196–98). Because God is simple, his essence and willing are identical. God willed to create the universe. Therefore, it is of the essence of God to create the universe. God’s willing of the universe is as necessary to the being of God as the eternal relations of origin because God cannot be other than his act.
Although Johnson criticizes PCT for collapsing God’s essential and operational simplicity throughout the book, he provides little by way of substantive argument. He argues that God is not free, God fully exercises his power, and PCT suffers from a modal collapse within three pages. These three pages primarily consist of quotes and Johnson’s assertions that these consequences are problematic. However, he hardly argues his point (195–98). Johnson neglects to articulate his view of divine freedom or address the implications of separating essential and operational simplicity. What implications might Johnson’s view have for simplicity, eternality, and immutability? Johnson omits discussion of absolute necessity, hypothetical necessity, and contingency as they relate to the divine will and created order.
For these reasons, little exists to rebut. However, I present a brief case that a commitment to the doctrine of simplicity does not entail a modal collapse. Turretin, Owen, and Gill explicitly deny a distinction between God’s power and act. Turretin denies a metaphysical distinction in God between act and power. He argues, “...he is pure act and incapable of changing properly so called, to whom nothing new can happen or be received by him.”[8] Owen writes:
Whatever is, and is not a simple act, hath a possibility to be perfected by act; if this be in God, he is not perfect, nor all-sufficient. Every composition whatever is of power and act; which if it be, or might have been in God, he could not be said to be immutable, which the Scripture plentifully witnesseth that he is.[9]
Likewise, Gill denies metaphysical distinctions in God, such “as of essence and existence, of act and power.”[10] Therefore, they also deny Johnson’s distinction between essence and operation. The Reformed argued that the decree was nothing other than the divine essence, so one cannot divide the essence and operation of God. They maintained that the decree of God is immanent and internal, terminating ad extra. As an immanent and internal act, the attributes of God are attributed to the decree. Consider Owen, who writes, “It hath been always believed among Christians, and that upon infallible grounds, as I shall show hereafter, that all the decrees of God, as they are internal, so they are eternal, acts of his will; and therefore unchangeable and irrevocable.”[11] He also writes:
The decrees of God, being conformable to his nature and essence, do require eternity and immutability as their inseparable properties. God, and he only, never was, nor ever can be, what now he is not. Passive possibility to any thing, which is the fountain of all change, can have no place in him who is “actus simplex,” and purely free from all composition… The eternal acts of his will not really differing from his unchangeable essence, must needs be immutable.[12]
Owen develops these arguments with reference to Aquinas. Likewise, Gill favorably cites Plato. In his treatment on divine simplicity, he refers to Plato twice. First, he uses Plato to argue that God’s spirituality entails simplicity. Second, Gill employs Plato when he denies that the decree undermines divine simplicity. Speaking of God’s decree, Gill argues, “Whatever is in God, is God, and so are no other than God himself, as to the act of decreeing, though not with respect to the things decreed.”[13] Although the decree of God is one and is none other than God himself, the things decreed are many and not to be identified with the essence of God. In these two instances, Gill disagrees with Johnson’s own formulations of simplicity and explicitly employs Plato to do so. Neither Owen nor Gill support Johnson’s claims. In fact, they directly contradict core tenets of Johnson’s position while relying on philosophers Johnson frequently criticizes.
Turretin, who also explicitly depends upon Aquinas, distinguishes between two objects of God’s will.[14] One object is the infinite and uncreated good, God.[15] God’s existence is with his faculty and act of willing, understood analogically.[16] God’s existence could not be without his will or willing. For these reasons, Turretin says that God wills himself necessarily “by complacency,” which differs from God willing to obtain that which he lacks.[17] Aquinas explains the difference well, when he writes:
Will in us belongs to the appetitive part, which, although named from the appetite, has not for its only act the seeking what it does not possess; but also the loving and delighting in what it does possess. In this respect, will is said to be in God, as having always good which is the object, since, as already said, it is not distinct from His essence.[18]
The other object is the finite and created good. God wills his existence with an absolute necessity. God wills finite and created objects with a hypothetical necessity. They depend upon the supposition of God’s will as an effect. The effect is contingent upon the divine will and, as an effect, it could be otherwise than it is. Since the primary object of God’s will is his existence and his existence cannot be otherwise, he wills his existence necessarily.
[1] John Owen, Vindicæ Evangelicæ, vol. 12, The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2009), 72.
[2] Owen, Vindicæ Evangelicæ, 72. For a similar argument from Gill, see, A Body of Divinity, 35–36. Turretin held to the identity account as well, evidenced in his reasoning but particularly seen in his dependence upon Augustine. See, Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, III.v.5–16, III.vii.17.
[3] Steven J. Duby, Divine Simplicity: A Dogmatic Account (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 127.
[4] James E. Dolezal, God Without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God’s Absoluteness (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2011), 135.
[5] Dolezal, God Without Parts, 135.
[6] Dolezal, God without Parts, 134–35.
[7] Dolezal, All That Is in God, 119.
[8] Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, III.vii.5.
[9] Owen, Vindicæ Evangelicæ, 72.
[10] Gill, A Body of Divinity, 34.
[11] John Owen, A Display of Arminianism, vol. 10, The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2000), 14. Similar points are made by Turretin (Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, III.vii.10–12; IV.i.3–4) and Gill (A Body of Divinity,175–76).
[12] Owen, A Display of Arminianism, 19–20.
[13] Gill, A Body of Divinity, 34.
[14] Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, III.xiv.1.
[15] Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, III.xiv.1.
[16] Duby clarifies these distinctions well in Duby, Divine Simplicity, 196.
[17] Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, III.xiv.1.
[18] Aquinas, ST Ia. Q.19. A1.