Simplicity is complicated

Alexander Pruss has been commenting on a post of mine. I'll reproduce our exchange, then respond to his latest comment, as well as a follow-up post of his:

http://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/2014/05/simplicity-and-divine-decisions.html

Alexander R Pruss
Even on Calvinism we have the problem of how God knows what he decided to do. God's decisions are contingent. Do they affect God? Then we seem to get a violation of immutability or at least simplicity. An extrinsic model of divine beliefs, on which his beliefs about contingent things are partly constituted by the contingent truths, solves all the problems.

steve

If those contingent truths are dependent on what humans will freely do (in the libertarian sense), then isn't God's knowledge (of those contingent truths) affected by our choices (pace impassibility)? 

Seems to me that you're now resorting to an idiosyncratic definition of impassibility. That's why I quoted from Brian Davies (the 3rd ed. of his intro to the philosophy of religion, p5).
So you're shifting ground from your original argument.
The fact that God's knowledge of his own decisions is "contingent" on his own decisions is entirely consistent with God being unaffected by the *world*.
And in what sense would he be *affected* by knowing what he decided to do? It's not as if there's a shift between prior ignorance and subsequent knowledge. If God is timeless, it's not even that he knew what he was going to decide before he made his decision. Rather, there was no prior state or prior moment of indecision in the first place. So God hasn't undergone any change by that relation.
How is a violation of simplicity equivalent to a violation of impassibility?
On the face of it, doesn't your statement that God's decisions are contingent violate divine simplicity? Given divine simplicity, aren't God's decisions as essential or necessary as God in himself?

• Alexander R Pruss

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• It's true that those who are Calvinists in the strongest sense of thinking that we have no alternate possibilities ever (one could be a Calvinist in a weaker sense of thinking that we have no alternate possibilities with respect to salvation, but we have alternate possibilities with respect to less significant actions) don't have the impassibility problem. But Calvinists still have the problem that they have to admit that there is an order of explanation in God, even if not of time: first in the order of explanation comes a contingent divine decision (unless one takes Edwards' view that God's own actions are determined--which leads to trouble for omnipotence and God's sovereignty over his own actions) and then comes his belief that he has so decided.

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• Likewise, Calvinists who, like Calvin and Turretin, believe in divine simplicity -- and there is certainly good reason for them to do so -- will still have the problem.

steve

I disagree with Edwards on that point. However, doesn't simplicity have the same consequences?
If God is actus purus, if there's no unrealized potentialities in God, then aren't all divine decisions and actions necessary/necessitated?
Likewise, if even divine decisions or actions are identical with God's essence, then God has no contingent relations, but only essential relations. So, once again, aren't all divine decisions and actions necessary/necessitated?

Alexander R Pruss5/12/2014 10:09 AM
It's true that those who are Calvinists in the strongest sense of thinking that we have no alternate possibilities ever (one could be a Calvinist in a weaker sense of thinking that we have no alternate possibilities with respect to salvation, but we have alternate possibilities with respect to less significant actions) don't have the impassibility problem.

i) Pruss has now conceded that his original argument, based on impassibility, fails against Calvinism.

ii) BTW, what he calls "strong Calvinism" just is Calvinism. That every event is predestined is normative, mainstream Calvinism.

There are some scholars like Muller and Crisp who are trying to broaden the definition of Calvinism.  But I think their personal sympathies betray them into historical revisionism.

iii) Just to be clear, Calvinism doesn't deny alternate possibilities. What it denies is that humans can access alternate possibilities. That's not to deny that there are alternative possibilities which inhere in God, possibilities which God could access, had he so chosen.

But Calvinists still have the problem that they have to admit that there is an order of explanation in God, even if not of time: first in the order of explanation comes a contingent divine decision (unless one takes Edwards' view that God's own actions are determined--which leads to trouble for omnipotence and God's sovereignty over his own actions) and then comes his belief that he has so decided. 

I don't see how that's a problem. There's a sense in which some divine beliefs are logically dependent on other divine beliefs. It's a necessary truth that every blue object is a colored object. Is that timeless order of explanation theologically problematic? If that's not a problem of necessary truths, why is that a problem for contingent truths? 

iv) In your post, moreover, you admit that "Thomists, and presumably some Calvinists as well, can reduce (3) to (2): God's decision is identical with his knowledge of his decision." So doesn't that dissolve the (allegedly) problematic distinction?

v) There are some philosophers who deny that God even has beliefs. They have a specialized conception of what it means to have beliefs. 

Likewise, Calvinists who, like Calvin and Turretin, believe in divine simplicity -- and there is certainly good reason for them to do so -- will still have the problem.

We need to unpack simplicity:

i) God has no spatiotemporal parts.

ii) There is no essence/existence distinction in God.

iii) God is not an instance of his attributes. God is the exemplar. He doesn't exemplify abstract properties.

iv) There is no potential/actual distinction in God.

v) There is no metaphysical complexity in God. Each attribute is identical with every other attribute. 

Speaking for myself, I grant (i-iii). 

(iv) needs to be finessed to preserve divine freedom. For instance, God is actually omnipotent, but the exercise of divine omniscience is selective. Hence, there are unrealized potentials. Unexemplified possibilities. 

I'm dubious about (v). For one thing, the distinction between justice and mercy is essential to Calvinism. 

(v) is in prima facie tension with divine freedom, and with the Trinity. There's also the question of whether it's even coherent. 

The appeal of (v) is that it automatically yields other values like divine timelessness. However, one can have divine timelessness without the baggage of simplicity.  

Moreover, that raises the question of whether simplicity really makes a distinctive contribution to the discussion. Is it something over and above the attributes it conglomerates? Or is it just an umbrella term? 

Even if we make both of these controversial moves, we still have the distinction between God's essential nature and his contingent decisions (which are then identical with his knowledge of the decisions and his knowledge of creatures' responses thereto).

Isn't that distinction necessary to maintain divine freedom? 

For those Christians who are unimpressed by the strength of the traditional commitments (in the pre-Reformation tradition, but also in people like Calvin and Turretin) to divine simplicity, and the arguments for divine simplicity, the natural solution will appear to be to deny divine simplicity, and then not worry about the problem.

Several issues: 

i) We need to distinguish between Reformed distinctive and Reformed essentials on the one hand, and Reformed traditions which are a carryover from the pre-Reformation church. Because Calvinism is historically conditioned, like every theological tradition, some elements of the traditional Reformed package are "historical accidents." They are not essential (much less unique) to Calvinism.

ii) So it's a question of theological priorities. If, say, simplicity is in tension with divine freedom, what gives? In the web of Calvinism, what is central and what is peripheral? In my opinion, divine freedom is more important than divine simplicity. If a Calvinist were to sacrifice divine simplicity (i.e. God is devoid of metaphysical complexity), I don't think he's lost anything essential to Calvinism. Divine simplicity is not, from what I can tell, a revealed truth. And it's not a sine qua non of Calvinism. 

Calvinism largely overlaps with classical theism, but that package isn't logically tight in every respect. 

They should still worry about the problem. For if one denies divine simplicity and holds that God has at least the two distinct constituents: his essential nature, N, and his contingent decisions, D, then one has to say something about the relationship between these two. Clearly, D is in some way explained by N: God acts as he does in part because of his essentially perfectly good character. The explanation is not a grounding-type explanation—to make it be a grounding-type explanation would be to hold on to a version of a divine simplicity explanation. In creatures, the corresponding explanation of decisions would be causal: the character causes (deterministically or not) the decision. So it seems that we have something very much like a causal relationship between N and D. And this in turn makes D be very much like a creature, indeed perhaps literally a creature. Since D is a constituent of God, it follows that a constituent of God is very much like a creature, perhaps literally a creature. But this surely contradicts transcendence!
Now perhaps one can insist that the relationship between N and D while being akin to causation is sufficiently different from it that D is sufficiently different from a creature that we have no violation of transcendence. Maybe, but I am still worried.
So if I am right, even if one denies divine simplicity, a version of the problem remains. And so the problem may not be a problem specifically for divine simplicity. 

i) I think this analysis has it backwards. If simplicity is true, God's decision is identical with his knowledge of his decision. However, even if simplicity is false, it can still be the case that God's decision is identical with his knowledge of his decision. I don't see that particular claim requires simplicity in general. 

ii) There's a difference between God acting consistent with his goodness and his goodness necessitating his action. To say God can't act contrary to his goodness is not to say his goodness singles out one particular course of action. 

iii) Must a dependence relation be cashed out in terms of causation? A triangle is dependent on its three-sideness. But it would be eccentric to claim the three sides cause a triangle. Although a triangle is constituted by its three-sideness, that's not a causal relation, that I can see. 

Same thing with logical implication. The conclusion is dependent on the premises. But that's not a causal relation. 

Pruss might object that I'm using abstract objects to illustrate my point, whereas he's referring to truth of fact rather than truths of reason.

To begin with, since contingent relations are the point in dispute, I'm using abstract objects in contrast to contingent relations because we need a different kind of comparison to avoid the issue in contention. And I'm using that to make the point that a dependence relation is not inherently causal. 

iv) One issue is whether causation involves time. Even if the cause is timeless, the effect is temporal. If, however, the relation is timeless, is it still meaningful to define it as causal?

v) Take the teleology of the divine decree. If vicarious atonement is a precondition of divine forgiveness, then you have a means-ends explanatory order. Forgiveness is contingent on vicarious atonement. A dependence relation. Specifically, a teleological relation. But the teleological order isn't, itself, causal, even if it will be implemented in a cause/effect relation. 

vi) Take the Father's knowledge of the Son? Isn't that dependent on there being a Son to know? Does the object of the Father's knowledge cause the Father's knowledge? 

vii) Finally, as a friend of mine pointed out, faithful Catholics are committed to the eternal generation of the Son and the eternal procession of the Spirit. But by Pruss's argument, doesn't that dependence relation make the Son and Spirit "creatures" of the Father? 

BTW, there are Calvinists (e.g. Warfield, Helm, Frame) who reject the monarchy of the Father.