Notes on Muller, PRRD
3
Simplicity in pre-Reformation
The scholastic
understanding of “identity” assumes various levels of identity
(essential and formal), so the term “identity” does not indicate
radical equation in every sense posssible (40 n. 63).
The goal is “to
argue a certain manner of distinction (for the sake of manifesting
the three) while at the very same time denying other kinds of
distinction (for the sake of confessing the one)” (41).
Normally speaking
essence and existence are not identified. The essence “humanity”
is not synonymous with any one human (52).
Simplicity and
Predication
Many critique absolute divine simplicity as eliminating the
possibility of any real predication (on our part) of the divine
essence. But when medievals used this term, all they meant was
that God is not composite (54-55)
Plurality
in God is secundum
rationem, not secundum
re (55).
Development and
Decline of late orthodoxy
Interestingly, the medievals viewed “space” and time,” not as
things but as relations (148).
Existence and
knowledge of God
The orthodox followed three ways of approach to the problem of the
knowledge of God (166):
- via causationes (a cause can be known in some manner from its effects)
- via emimentiae(we attribute to God all the perfections known to creataures)
- via negationis (we remove from God the imperfections known to creatures)
Rules of
predication
“Predication is the logical act of attribution by which a subject
is united with a predicate” (197).
Disproportionality between finite and infinite.
How does natura apply to God? Some qualities are considered
“natural” in him (208).
The attributes of God are his perfections (213).
attribute: a characteristic or quality attributed to or predicated
of an object, where as a property
is a characteristic that belongs to an object (215). God can only
have essential properties.
The Divine Essence
ens
a se:
self-grounded essence (237)
numerical unity: threeness of person does not contradict numerical
unity of essence—there is no class of beings (whether genus or
species) identifiable as “god” to which the divine persons belong
and the divine unity is not a composite unity such as belongs to the
several members of a genus or species (242).
genus: a universal or form, incompletely expressing essence, that can
be predicated of specifically distinct subjects in species.
Species: a universal or form completely expressing essence, that can
be predicated of a series of subjects distinct in number
Divine Names
The Reformed interest in the divine names is primarily exegetical and
not nominalist (246).
see the note on Gillespie in PRRD II, 7.3B
Back to Simplicity
The point is to deny in God only those distinctions that imply
composition and to point toward the proper distinctions that do
subsist among the attributes and between the attributes and essence
(278).
Persons are not distinct in essence, degree, condition, or dignity
but they are distinct in order, number, manner of working, etc (281).
“three persons applied to the Godhead indicate the communicability
of the sole, infinite, individual and singular divine essence to
these three without division (283).”
transcendentals: the properties of being can be identified as
“transcendentals.” These are properties which must be predicated
of all and, therefore, also of each and every being. Being is
transcendent: it is the ultimate principle and/or category of all
beings. Being is not a “thing” and so there cannot be a “real”
distinction between being and things (284-285).
- ens
- res
- aliud; other
- aliquid; being something
- unum; a being is one in itself
- verum; it is true in that it corresponds with its goal
- bonum; it is good because it moves toward its goal
This
allows the Reformed to work through the problem of realiter
predication:
all of these “transcendentals” reduce to one another without
becoming synonymous with one another. Yet they do allow
distinctions—a being is other than not-being; a being is other than
not-itself.
A
realiter
distinction
is a distinction between two things.
Being, though, is not a thing and so is not reduced to realiter
distinctions.
A virtualiter
distinction
…
Epistemology, Distinctions, and the Divine Decree
(The
Reformed structure this discussion) “Around the epistemological
problem of the finitum
no capax infiniti
and its resolution in the explication of the eternal decree and its
execution of the sovereign will of God in and for the temporal
economy. Here we see both a statement of the non
capax
and an approach to the divine relatedness: the mind cannot conceive
of the way in which the attributes belong to the utter simplicity of
the divine essence; nonetheless, the distinct attributes are
coorectly distinguished by reason in the effects and operations of
God in the world—and these effects and operations rightly and
genuinely reveal the identity of God, indeed, the invisible essence
of the utterly simple Godhead. The effect of this distinction, like
the effet of the distinction between the decree and the execution, is
to direct attention away from the divine essence toward the divine
economy” (298).
Immutability
Does not imply that God is inactive, but that God has not been moved
from potency to actuality (309). It is an absence of negative
passions.
God and Time
“The denial of change and
succession is made for affirming a specific relationship between God
and the creatures—indeed, of affirming that both God and creatures
have duration,
the divine duration being non-successive, the creaturely duration,
successive (355).
Divine Foreknowledge
Divine willing establishes freedom and contingency (402).
Foreknowledge itself is not causal. Knowledge is related to
causality by means of the divine will.
Necessary and Free knowledge in God
Necessary: the knowledge that God has of himself and all
possibilities ad extra (407).
Free knowledge: knowledge of all those possibilities that God freely
wills to actualize.
Problem of Middle Knowledge
definition: a divine knowledge lying between God's indeterminate
knowledge of all possibilities and his determinate foreknowledge of
the necessary and certain effects of his decree (417-418). God is
reacting to the result of a finite contingency.
Reformed
critique:
the notion of a certain divine foreknowledge of future conditionals
is a rather unstable concept: in order for God to know the
conditional conditionally, he would have to be ignorant of its
resolution in actuality. In short, there can be no being independent
of the divine decree (421). The problem for such a view appears when
the question is asked, “How shall such a thing exist?”
Will and Freedom
necessity and freedom are neither contraries nor contradictories:
the contrary of necessity is impossibility; the contrary of freedom
is coercion (434n. 360).
When God wills, the contrary remains possible—a resident possiblity
in the divine scientia necessaria. God cannot equally will and not
will a certain object; he can, however, will a certain object and
know the possiblity of not-willing it (448).
The divine will is not determined by its objects. It was not
necessary that God will object-a since the possibility of object
non-a existed in God's mind (449).
Even God's necessary willing is free in a sense: it is not subject
to external compulsion (455).
