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.
In this fifth excerpt, Drew continues his response to Johnson’s claims about divine simplicity, which he began in the previous piece. 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.
Having considered the divine will, three components may now be considered that help preserve divine freedom and prevent a modal collapse. First, creation depends upon the will of God as a consequence. Creation is not and cannot be the sufficient reason for its existence. It is contingent upon the divine will for its existence as an effect depends upon its cause.
Second, God does not need creation. As Turretin writes:
God wills all created things not to make himself perfect (as if he stood in need of them), but to communicate himself and to manifest his goodness and glory in them. Hence because he could be without them without any detriment to his happiness, he is said to will them freely.[1]
Turretin’s use of the terms “communicate” and “manifest” demonstrate that a finite creation cannot add to God’s infinite glory and goodness. For this reason, Turretin argues God creates with freedom of indifference.[2] Duby says that indifference is “not a careless or flippant bearing but a freedom to create or not to create without any consequences for his own preveniently abundant and blessed triune life.”[3] God creates “other things” freely “since no created thing is necessary regarding God but contingent (as he could do without them), so he wills all things as that he could not will them (i.e., by the liberty not only of spontaneity, but also of indifference).”[4] God wills his own perfect and necessary fullness of life as his perfect delight. He is his own satisfaction. A finite and contingent creation cannot modify, enhance, or add to God’s infinite existence or bliss. Thus, God is free with respect to creation’s existence, since creation is unnecessary to God.
Third, the act of creation does not constitute a real relation in God.[5] Johnson speaks of “real relations” throughout his book, but it is difficult to discern what he understands the phrase to mean. He wants to preserve a relationship between God and creatures in an existential sense and criticizes Thomas for labeling God’s relationship with creatures as a mere metaphor (187). Since PCT denies real distinctions within God’s thinking, God cannot be relational (187). Johnson imports existential significance when describing “relation.” However, a father and son are still related to each other as father and son if they are estranged from one another or do not know each other. A real relation exists independent of the mind that knows the relationship.[6]
A real relation occurs when distinctions arise between things that either mutually possess the same thing (e.g., quantity or quality) or are determinative of one another (e.g., a father/son relation).[7] Aquinas explains why God cannot be really related to something, when he writes:
Now that which is essentially referred to another depends in some way on it, since it can neither exist nor be understood without it. Hence it would follow that God’s substance is dependent on something else outside it: thus it would not be of itself necessary being.[8]
A real relation differs from a rational relation, which only exists in the mind.[9] A mixed relation is a real and a rational relation, which is how Aquinas and the Reformed described God’s relation to the world. Creatures have a real relation to God, but God’s relation to the world is one of reason. One should not suppose, as Johnson seems to, that God is distant because he is not really related to creation. Rather, as Duby writes:
To say that God is only “rationally” related to the creature is to say not only that he is not necessarily ordered to us but also that he lives in the most intimate and unobstructed relation to us. While creatures relate to one another by various kinds of media and by the acquisition of various accidents and determinations of being, the triune God in his completeness creates and sustains us by his own essential actus without using any instruments to do so. In his immutable plentitude, then, he is immediately connected and present to each one of his creatures.[10]
The lack of a real relation between God and creation explains how God is infinitely present to creation as God is neither constituted nor changed by what occurs in creation. Creatures, on the other hand, are constituted by their relation to God. As Aquinas writes:
Since therefore God is outside of the whole order of creation, and all creatures are ordered to Him, and not conversely, it is manifest that creatures are really related to God Himself; whereas in God there is no real relation to creatures, but a relation only in idea, inasmuch as creatures are referred to Him. Thus there is nothing to prevent these names which import relation to the creature from being predicated of God temporally, not by reason of any change in Him, but by reason of the change of the creature; as a column is on the right of an animal, without change in itself, but by change in the animal.[11]
The mutable and contingent effects witnessed in and by the created order allow creatures to predicate relative terms to God, such as Creator, Lord, and Savior, on account of God’s essence or action.[12] As Aquinas writes:
Therefore, it is also evident that the aforesaid relations are not in God in the same way as other things predicated of God. For all other things—like wisdom and will—predicate his essence, whereas the aforesaid relations predicate minimally, but solely according to our way of understanding. And yet our understanding is not false. For from the very fact that our intellect understands that the relations of the divine effects terminate in God himself, it predicates certain things of him relatively: even so we understand and express the knowable relatively from the fact that our knowledge is referred to it.[13]
The relative names do not inhere in the simple divine essence, although they truly and properly refer to the one God since a real relation exists in the created order.
These three components enable one to withstand Johnson’s charges.[14] Creation is necessary by a hypothetical necessity rather than an absolute necessity. As such, it depends upon the will of God and what depends upon the will of God for its existence cannot be absolutely necessary. Although God’s will and willing are eternal, immutable, and simple, the thing willed is temporal, mutable, and complex. God is absolutely necessary and possesses contra-causal power, whereas creation is contingent and is what could be otherwise when considered in and of itself.[15] Dolezal rightfully emphasizes that contingency resides in the effect willed.
The world is dependent upon God and not vice versa. Thus, it is the contingency of the world that is the primary focus when affirming divine contra-causal power. Moreover, it is important to recognize that contra-causal power is not to be equated with contra-causal openness in God’s volition.[16]
Dolezal’s point is no different than Turretin, who writes, “This liberty of the divine will about created things must be understood absolutely and a priori and with respect to the things considered in themselves.”[17] God wills himself with an absolute necessity. Thus, God has no “untapped potency,” as Johnson suggests, for he wills himself. He wills creation with a hypothetical necessity. God does not need creation for his existence or satisfaction as aseity and pure act preserve God’s independence. The relationship of dependence is asymmetrical; creation depends upon God, but God does not depend upon creation. For this reason, a mixed relation best describes God’s relation to the world.
Johnson may want to reconsider how he develops his argument against PCT. The accusations against Aquinas implicate Owen, Turretin, and Gill as well. Johnson employs these Reformed theologians solely to criticize pagan philosophy, but they fail to appear as he discusses simplicity, eternality, immutability, and divine freedom. I suggest that Johnson disregards their views of simplicity and divine freedom because he cannot substantiate his doctrine of God from their writings. Instead, Johnson turns to Mullins. For this reason, I found Johnson’s presentation of these theologians uncharitable.
[1] Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, III.xiv.8.
[2] Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, III.xiv.8. Duby, Divine Simplicity, 197.
[3] Duby, Divine Simplicity, 197.
[4] Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, III.xiv.5. Liberty of spontaneity consists in acting without compulsion. It is an act that arises from one’s own will without the compulsion of another will.
[5] For a helpful treatment of relations, see Steven Duby, God in Himself: Scripture, Metaphysics, and the Task of Christian Theology (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press), 223–25.
[6] See, Bernard Wuellner, “Real Relation” in Dictionary of Scholastic Philosophy (Fitzwilliam, NH: Loreto Publications, 2012), 108.
[7] Duby, God in Himself, 225; Muller, PRRD, III.286.
[8] Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 2 vols. trans. Laurence Shapcote (Green Bay, WI: Aquinas Institute, 2018), I.12. Henceforth, SCG.
[9] Aquinas provides the following example, “For reason apprehending one thing twice regards it as two; thus it apprehends a certain habitude of a thing to itself.” Aquinas, ST, Ia. Q.13. A6.
[10] Duby, God in Himself, 224–25.
[11] Aquinas, ST Ia. Q.13. A6.
[12] Names, such as Lord, presuppose God’s power. Other names, such as Savior, signify God’s action. See, Aquinas, ST Ia. Q.13. A6.
[13] Aquinas, SCG, I.13.
[14] Much more could be said. Readers are encouraged to examine the following helpful treatments, Dolezal, God without Parts; Dolezal, All That Is in God, Duby, Divine Simplicity; Duby, God in Himself.
[15] Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, III.xiv.2.
[16] Dolezal, God Without Parts, 209.
[17] Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, III.xiv.2.