Clark's confused groupies

Drake Shelton has attempted to respond to me on his own blog. Unfortunately, he reads his own assumptions back into what I say.

Wrong. Being outside of space and time simply proves God’s spirituality, transcendence, and eternality.  I remember bringing this up to my Pastor in the Free Church of Scotland (cont). Robert Shaw in The Reformed Faith only mentioned that God is without the metaphysical constitution of matter and form and he mentions nothing about the scholastic doctrine of divine simplicity (Essence = Existence). I told my Pastor that this what I believed as well, however, I had done too much reading up to that point to be deceived into thinking that was all there was to it. We shall get into more here in a moment.

Two basic problems:

i) Drake assumes that I was trying to establish the scholastic doctrine of divine simplicity. Yet, as I explained to Robinson, that’s not my objective.

Rather, I’m just discussing the sense in which God is ontologically simple. That doesn’t mean I defining simplicity in the same way Medieval theologians do. Shelton’s objection reflects his chronic confusion.

ii) Moreover, he doesn’t consider the implications of subsisting outside of time and space. In that event, God has no spatial or temporal parts or spatiotemporal subdivisions. In that respect, God is incomposite.

That certainly makes him “simpler” than concrete entities that have a spatially, temporally, or spatiotemporally composite mode of being.

iii) We also need to distinguish between complexity and composition. The Mandelbrot set is infinitely complex, yet incomposite.

iv) Finally, not only is there a debate over the truth of divine simplicity, but also a debate over what divine simplicity (in the scholastic sense) actually means. As one scholar says:

The major problem with the contemporary debate is that almost all participants misunderstand the classic doctrine of simplicity. The medieval view, spelled out most clearly by Aquinas…is that, strictly speaking God neither has properties nor is He a property…God is simply act…something which is absolutely perfect is something which is fully actualized K. Rogers, Perfect Being Theology (27-28).

Continuing with Drake:

Really Steve? We’ll see if you will remain consistent with that because other premises have historically been used to support the doctrine of epistemic analogy of proportionality, i.e. the crux of the debate between Clark and Van Til.

Yet another example of how Drake imputes positions to his opponents rather than bothering to find out what they actually believe. He’s assuming that I side with Van Til over Clark on the incomprehensibility of God, whereas I’m on record as saying I thought both protagonists were confused and simplistic.

For some odd reason, Drake imagines he can critique someone’s position without having to first acquaint himself with that person’s position.

Steve’s whole Van Tilian view of analogy of proportionality currently referred to as archetypal ectypal is based on a premise that he admits is in philosophical theology and therefore not dogma.

Confusion worse confounded:

i) I didn’t say the archetype/ectype distinction is an artifact of philosophical theology. Rather, I said the scholastic doctrine of divine simplicity is an artifact of philosophical theology. Drake needs to brush up on remedial reading skills.

ii) There’s nothing uniquely Van Tilian about the archetype/ectype distinction. For instance, you can find that in Bavinck.

iii) I used that terminology in response to Craig French because that seemed to be how he was implicitly framing the issue. It was an attempt to state Craig’s position.

iv) I don’t have to begin with a theory of analogy. This got started when Craig responded to something I wrote about Waldron, and Drake jumped into the fray.

I pointed out that Scripture uses theological analogies and/or theological metaphors for God. Metaphors are analogies (although not all analogies are metaphors). On a related note, I pointed out that God reveals himself in human language.

I can therefore legitimate analogical predication in theology on the authority of Scripture, without having to back that up with a theory of analogy.

You don’t have to start with a theory of analogy, then reason from your theory of analogy to the fact of analogy. Rather, you can start with the fact of analogy, then reason from the fact of analogy to a theory of analogy.

v) Drake seems to think an analogy is equivocal unless both analogues are the same type of thing. Belong to the same ontological domain, or rang along the same ontological continuum. Therein lies the appeal of idealism. Make both subject and object of a kind.

vi) Apropos (v), I asked him if a description, such as a verbal description, must ontologically resemble the thing it describes. He played into my trap. It was easy to cite counterexamples from Scripture. As a “Scripturalist,” that put him in a bind.

In response to Perry Robinson, I said “This assumes that we’re committed to the doctrine of Platonic simplicity.”

To which Drake replies, “But Steve, that is what Divine Simplicity is.”

Irrelevant, since I’m not defending Platonic simplicity.