Is God like us?

Here's a highly intelligent discussion of a recondite topic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQyEO7cOExc&t=5174s

1. I agree with classical theism that God is timeless and impassable. Mullins has a nice definition of timelessness, but I'll quote his definition of impassibility, which makes three related claims bundled into one:

(i) Impossible for God to suffer.

(ii) Impossible for God to be caused or influenced by anything external to God.

(iii) Impossible for God to have an emotion that is inconsistent with his perfect happiness, his perfect rationality, and his perfect moral goodness.

Among other things, they define Thomstic simplicity to mean all God's attributes are identical to each other. All divine acts are identical to each other and to God's essence. God has no potentialities. God can't react.

2. I'm a classical theist but not a Thomist. I have almost no use for the Thomistic metaphysical categories. I concede that Classical theism is a combination of revelation and reason, special and general revelation. 

3. A big problem with Thomism is that it superimposes onto scripture an interpretive grid or philosophical hermeneutic that's imported entirely from the outside. It has no footing in scripture, and often overrides what the text says. 

4. Another problem with Thomism is that it leads to a very skeptical view of what we can know about God.

5. A basic appeal of non-classical theism is that it looks more biblical, more Protestant, than classical theism. 

6. On the issue of God-talk, I think Nemesh makes a good point that when God is "angry" in scripture, that's not a depiction of his mental state but an expression of his punitive actions. God's anger takes place in the world, not in himself. 

7. Because Thomistic simplicity is a bundle of distinct claims, it's not an all-or-nothing package. I agree with Aquinas that God is not an exemplification of properties over and above himself, but the exemplar. God is simple in the sense that he has no spatiotemporal parts or subdivisions. 

8. A problem with non-classical theism is that if in fact God is timeless and impassable, then how else can God relate to us except in ways that operate within what we are able to experience?

9. Scripture isn't uniform in how it depicts God. So it's not as though the non-classical theist consistently has scripture on his side while the classical theism must go outside of scripture. For instance, the predestinarian passages are much more consistent with classical theism than non-classical theism. God has an antemudane plan for the world. 

And that in itself suggests which set of passages we should use to interpret the other set of passages. The predestinarian passages go behind-the-scenes, showing us that the descriptions of God's activity in history are the outworking of his antemundane plan. So those enjoy interpretive priority. And it's not coincidental that the predestinarian passages of Scripture occur in the didactic genres (e.g. NT letters). 

10. It's not coincidental that the prooftexts for non-classical theism cluster around the narrative and poetic genres of scripture. But we'd expect the language of poetry to be more performative than propositional. 

11. Then there's God's relation to time. The world comes into being but God does not. Indeed, God brings the world into being. That raises the question of whether God subsists outside of time. Although it doesn't quite answer the question, I'd say that it's not only consistent with God subsisting outside of time but a more natural implication of the claim than the view that God was always temporal. Some non-classical theists split the difference by saying God entered time when he made the world. But the texts about creation don't say that.

12. Likewise, the predestinarian passages raise questions about God's relation to time. If time is an artifact of creation, and if time is part of God's plan for the world, then that suggests that his plan is timeless, in which case he is timeless. 

13. Among other things, biblical theism is supposed to be a corrective to pagan conceptions of God. But if we just went with certain poetic and narrative descriptions, Yahweh sometimes acts like the very humanoid heathen deities that scripture is designed to oppose. It blurs a critical point of contrast. 

All told, I think classical theism has a varied footing in text of scripture, unlike Thomism. 

14. When scripture records a conversation between Moses or Abraham and God, I don't think that's just a representation of God, where the narrator writes a story that doesn't correspond to what really happened. This is God's accommodation to our human limitations, but it's not a literary accommodation. 

As a matter of fact, Abraham hears God say something, then Abraham says something, then he hears God say something, then he says something. So the record of the conversation is true to Abraham's experience. 

However, the purpose of the conversation is not to peel back the curtain to show the metaphysical machinery behind the conversation. The fact that Abraham hears God in a temporal sequence doesn't entail that God is speaking to him directly. That God himself must enter time to have this conversation. Rather, God can use natural means to effect a script. 

15. Mullins objects that classical theism must explain away too much scripture. I agree with him in the case of Thomism. There is, however, nothing inherently wrong with having a unified hermeneutic which interprets the same kinds of passages the same way. 

16. Regarding the question of whether divine love is reducible to self-love, I say God can love us the way a fiction writer loves one of his characters. 

Why does an omniscient God test people?

My answer to a question from a friend:

What’s your thoughts on why an omniscient God gives people tests throughout the whole Bible already knowing what they’ll do?

i) Although he knows what they will do, they don't know what they will do, and the very test may influence what they will do. There's a sense in which the exercise can make a contribution to its own outcome. Having to actually through the ordeal or experience may change the individual in the process. He ends up in a different place than where he started. The challenge is transformative. 

ii) In addition, there's a reason these events are recorded. They are not primarily for the benefit of the test-subject but the reader. It's a way for readers to learn about God's M.O. The reader is learning about God's character through the experience of the Patriarchs (among others). 

iii) People like Abraham had a pagan background. So they didn't know if Yahweh was trustworthy. They had to learn from experience what kind of God Yahweh was. Is he like the fickle, malicious gods of the pagan pantheon, or is he different? 

The Doctrine of Divine Simplicity

https://theopolisinstitute.com/conversations/the-doctrine-of-divine-simplicity/

Divine Condescension and the Attributes of God

WTS theology/systematics prof. Scott Oliphint is facing a heresy trial:

https://www.theaquilareport.com/a-charge-brought-against-dr-scott-oliphint-professor-of-apologetics-at-westminster-seminary/

A few brief observations:

i) I lack in-depth knowledge of Oliphint's theology. It's one of those situations where you read enough of somebody to make a preliminary judgment about whether it's worthwhile to read more of their stuff. From what I've read of him, Oliphint doesn't strike me as a high-level thinker, so I haven't bothered to deepen and broaden my familiarity with his writings. It's my impression, from what I've read, that he's out of his depth. So my knowledge of his theology is admittedly cursory. Life is short, so we make investment decisions about where to put our time. He has a son (Jared Oliphint) who strikes me as having a sharper mind than his old man. 

ii) Ironically, WTS has made it very impractical to have a detailed knowledge of Oliphint's position by withdrawing his controversial book from circulation, which makes remaining copies prohibitively expensive. Not that I don't buy expensive books, but for the price of that one book I could buy several different books that actually interest me. 

Parenthetically, I question the ethics of WTS buying the rights to the book from the publisher, like a product recall. Is that an appropriate use of seminary funds? Likewise, is it appropriate to conceal his position from public view and scrutiny by making the evidence inaccessible? 

iii) Here's an excerpt from his controversial book:

When Scripture says that God changes his mind, or that he is moved, or angered by our behavior, we should see that as literal. It refers us to God and to his dealings with us. It is as literal or as real as God being the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Scott Oliphiint, God with Us: Divine Condescension and the Attributes of God (Crossway 2011), 123-24.

In a way this seems to be readjudicating the Clark controversy. To judge by the excerpt, Oliphint is adopting Murray's position, but taking it to a logical extreme. It becomes similar to open theist hermeneutics. Assuming that's a representative sample, he's staking out a position more characteristic of freewill theism than Calvinism. Calvinism and freewill theism are competing theological paradigms. A position that rejects divine aseity, immutability, and impassibility is on the opposing side of the spectrum.  

Now Oliphint tries to nuance that, but the question is whether he's attempting to have it both ways. Can you have it both ways? I don't think so. 

iv) In fairness to Oliphint, this goes back to perennial debates about the relationship between exegetical theology and philosophical theology. The role of anthropomorphism and all that. Certainly there's a danger, and not just a hypothetical danger, of filtering biblical theism through an extraneous interpretive grid. Take debates over divine simplicity, or the way Aquinas glosses Exod 3:14. 

v) This becomes, in part, an issue of theological method. Do we interpret narrative theology in terms of what Scripture says about the divine attributes in more didactic genres? If there are passages which teach divine aseity, omnipotence, omniscience, and impassibility, then those are logically and literally irreconcilable with narrative or poetic passages that depict God as shortsighted, short-tempered, blindsided, reactionary, &c. Take passages about absolute predestination. Well, that can't be true if God is surprised by the turn of events or angered by the outcome.    

By the same token, the OT indictment of pagan polytheism loses most of its force if Yahweh is typical of the high gods in the pagan pantheon, the primary difference being that there's just one deity of that kind rather than many–who happens to be the God of Israel. 

To be the absolute Creator, God had to exist apart from time and space if time and space are modes of creation. If everything unfolds according to a master plan, then there's an asymmetrical relation between God and creation, where the world has no effect on God. The influence goes one way. That's not philosophical theology. Rather, that's exegetical theology. That's biblical creation, predestination, and providence. Of course, freewill theists demur, but that illustrates the competition between two incompatible approaches. Different reading strategies, divergent theological paradigms. 

The alternative is to say that Scripture is inconsistent. But if we affirm inerrancy, then it's necessary to make allowance for anthropomorphism. And if, indeed, the God of classical theism is approximately correct, then we'd expect God to relate to us on our level. That's not special pleading. Admittedly, appeals to anthropomorphism can be too facile and reflexive. We need to be circumspect about that principle. But it's not imported from philosophical theology. 

vi) That said, the resurgence of Reformed Thomism and Nicene subordination is animated by tribal loyalties and crowd psychology rather than fidelity to the witness of Scripture. Perfunctory profession of sola Scriptura while chauvinistic tradition carries the day. There's blame to go around in this controversy. It's not one-sided. 

Is God incoherent?

The NYT recently published an attack on Christian theism by a secular philosopher:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/opinion/-philosophy-god-omniscience.html

Before considering the specifics, there's a general flaw running through Peter Atterton's attack. He appears to be making words like "omniscience," "omnipotence," and "all powerful," "all-knowing" his his frame of reference. He seems to think that because the words have unlimited connotations, if he can show that there are in fact some codicils on God's knowledge and power, it follows that the concepts of divine omniscience and omnipotence are self-contradictory. But that's semantically jejune. 

Words like "omniscience," "omnipotence," and "all-powerful" are merely shorthand labels. You can't derive the concept from the label. The label is just a convenient designation for ease of reference. So even if it turns out that the concepts of omniscience and omnipotence are inconsistent with the surface-level meaning of the words, that doesn't begin to demonstrate conceptual incoherence. 

First consider the attribute of omnipotence. You’ve probably heard the paradox of the stone before: Can God create a stone that cannot be lifted? If God can create such a stone, then He is not all powerful, since He Himself cannot lift it. On the other hand, if He cannot create a stone that cannot be lifted, then He is not all powerful, since He cannot create the unliftable stone. Either way, God is not all powerful.

i) For reasons I've discussed elsewhere, I think the stone paradox is a pseudotask. The alleged paradox is incoherent. For instance:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-stone-paradox.html

ii) It is, however, true, that there are some things God can't do. But that doesn't make the concept of divine omnipotence incoherent inasmuch as the concept of divine omnipotence in philosophical theology is routinely qualified in certain respects. So, yes, there are limitations on divine omnipotence, but since the concept of divine omnipotence isn't standardly defined as absolutely unlimited, giving examples in which God's ability might be limited in some respect doesn't ipso facto contradict the nature of the attribute. 

Can God create a world in which evil does not exist? This does appear to be logically possible. Presumably God could have created such a world without contradiction. It evidently would be a world very different from the one we currently inhabit, but a possible world all the same. Indeed, if God is morally perfect, it is difficult to see why he wouldn’t have created such a world. So why didn’t He?

The standard defense is that evil is necessary for free will... However, this does not explain so-called physical evil (suffering) caused by nonhuman causes (famines, earthquakes, etc.). Nor does it explain, as Charles Darwin noticed, why there should be so much pain and suffering among the animal kingdom.

Is Atterton simply uninformed about the range of theodicies? Moreover, it's not as if any one theodicy has to be a silver bullet. It's not as if there has to be a single explanation. We can combine several theodicies.  

What about God’s infinite knowledge — His omniscience? …If God knows all there is to know, then He knows at least as much as we know. But if He knows what we know, then this would appear to detract from His perfection. Why?

There are some things that we know that, if they were also known to God, would automatically make Him a sinner, which of course is in contradiction with the concept of God. As the late American philosopher Michael Martin has already pointed out, if God knows all that is knowable, then God must know things that we do, like lust and envy. But one cannot know lust and envy unless one has experienced them. But to have had feelings of lust and envy is to have sinned, in which case God cannot be morally perfect... But if God doesn’t know what we know, God is not all knowing, and the concept of God is contradictory. God cannot be both omniscient and morally perfect. Hence, God could not exist.

Here Atterton repeats the same schoolboy error. Since God is a categorically different kind of being than human creatures, that means God's knowledge is not absolutely unlimited, in the sense that God's mode of knowledge is necessarily different from creatures. And since, by the same token, God is not a creature, he can't directly experience what it's like to be a creature. However, that's not contradictory inasmuch as the concept of divine omniscience makes allowances for those divergences. 

God in time

According to classical theism, God is timeless. In Reformed circles, a modern proponent is Paul Helm, who's presented a detailed model of divine timelessness. There are many  permutations to that issue in terms of hermeneutics and theological method:

1. W. L. Craig prooftexts divine timelessness from 1 Cor 2:7, 2 Tim 1:9; Tit 1:2-3, & Jude 25. But that runs the risk of infusing those passages with a more technical sense than they may intend or imply. There's the danger of posing more specialized questions than they were meant to answer. 

2. It can also be argued that Gen 1 implies the creation of time. 

God in the coma

Classical theists believe God subsists outside of time and space. So how does God interface with embodied, timebound agents? Take a comparison: suppose a young man suffers severe brain damage from a traffic accident. He's in a coma. 

His mind is still intact. He can dream, remember, imagine, but he's cut off from the outside world. He can't register what people say to him, he can't register when they stroke his hair or hold his hand. He's sealed away in his own mind. (I'm not saying if that's actually true for comatose patients. It's just a thought-experiment.)  

But suppose his best friend is a telepath. Up until now his best friend didn't have to tap into telepathy to communicate with the comatose patient. But they have many shared memories of stuff they did together. Hiking. Jet-skiing. Boating up and down a nearby river. And so on.

The best friend is able to bypass the brain damage and broken sensory relays to contact the comatose patient directly. When the comatose patient dreams, his best friend inserts himself into the dream. They enjoy the same kind of fellowship they did before the accident. The telepath needn't be physically present to be psychologically present. And psychological presence can simulate the five senses. 

Thomistic classical theism

http://jbtsonline.org/review-of-all-that-is-in-god-evangelical-theology-and-the-challenge-of-classical-christian-theism-by-james-e-dolezal/

https://medium.com/@jaredoliphint/a-delayed-take-on-dolezals-all-that-is-in-god-a1e6dde1f8b9

God without parts

As Dolezal explains, the church has always understood that anything composed of parts depends on those parts for its being. The parts of a composite entity are ontologically prior to that which is composed of those parts. The bricks and mortar are prior to the wall...The doctrine of divine simplicity denied that God is composed of parts because there is nothing that is ontologically prior to God. 

https://tabletalkmagazine.com/posts/2017/11/book-review-all-that-is-in-god-by-james-dolezal/

i) I should say at the outset that I haven't read Dolezal's books. I've read lots of sympathetic expositions of classical theism generally, as well as Thomistic simplicity in particular. To judge by sympathetic reviews, I don't get the impression that Dolezal has anything original or ingenious to contribute to the traditional position. So I don't see any duty to read his books. 

ii) Although I think God is timeless and spaceless, I don't regard God as fundamentally simple. Rather, I regard God as fundamentally symmetrical. The Trinity is the archetypal mirror symmetry. And symmetries are far more interesting than an undifferentiated unity. 

iii) I'd add that symmetries are indivisible. Symmetries don't come in parts. Symmetries are irreducibly complex. 

iv) An acute irony in this debate is that the very people who champion Thomistic simplicity are typically the same people who champion eternal generation and procession. They regard the Father as the fons deitas. But that makes the Father "ontologically prior" to the Son and Spirit. The Son and Spirit are ontologically dependent on the Father for their existence. It's an asymmetrical dynamic. 

Of course, they don't call that composition, because tradition forbids it, but that's what their position amounts to. They just camouflage it with different language.

v) His classic argument for Thomistic simplicity shows how easily some people are bewitched by the power of a seductive illustration. Now there's nothing wrong with using examples to illustrate a principle. But we have to be wary of master metaphors, because that can myopically fixate on one all-controlling illustration while overlooking different metaphors. If you began with a different kind of metaphor, you might wind up with a different conclusion. I'll get to that in a moment.

vi) One basic problem with this comparison is that it gives the reader an argument from analogy minus the supporting argument. The comparison just assumes (or posits or stipulates) that concrete complexity is analogous in that regard to abstract complexity. Now maybe in his books, Dolezal provides a supporting argument. But as it stands, all we have here is the assertion that if God has distinct attributes, then that's like a bigger, more complicated thing that's made of smaller parts.

But if God is timeless and spaceless, then the question is whether the analogy breaks down at the critical point of comparison. Consider complex abstract objects like possible worlds, the number Pi, Euler's number, or the Mandelbrot set. Those are conceptually complex, but they're not "put together" like something made of legos. We can isolate a particular sequence in the decimal expansion of Pi, but that's inseparable from the whole. And it's not as if the whole is physically bigger than constitutive elements. Abstract objects like Pi, Euler's number, and the Mandelbrot set are complex yet indivisible. 

vii) In addition, the illustration is one-sided. Even with respect to physical objects, while there's a sense in which the whole is dependent on the constituent parts that compose it, there's another sense in which parts can be dependent on the whole. Take classical car buffs. Car parts wear out, and it's increasingly difficult to find vintage, original replacement parts. Eventually you must resort to new duplicate parts.

Suppose, over the course of time, you must replace every part of a classic Mustang or Jaguar, Packard or Duesenberg (take your pick). Is it the same car? It's the same car, not in the sense of having the same parts, but having the same pattern. The parts change, but the whole remains the same. 

In that respect, the whole can be ontologically prior to the parts. The whole is an abstract pattern that's multiply-instantiable. Different parts can replicate the same arrangement. 

A more dramatic example is the human body. As a living organism, the body is composed of parts. At one level, body organs are dependent on smaller "parts" that compose them.

However, the human body is factory that makes replacement parts. Stem cells create cells. New blood cells replace old blood cells. Or take the endocrine system, where glands secrete hormones. The brain produces chemicals. Or the production of seminal fluid.  

So there's top-down dependence as well as bottom-up dependence. Some parts depend on the whole. 

Or take a piece of music. You could say it's composed of notes. But the arrangement is unique, and that's recreated overtime there's a live musical performance. The score is an abstract structure that's indefinitely exemplifiable. A music score is complex, but more "ultimate" than any particular, temporary performance. Different players with different instruments who recreate the pattern. A violinist might use a Stradivarius or Guarneri.  

That's a problem with simplistic analogies, where a proponent is captivated by a particular illustration, which blinds him to alternate conceptions. Philosophical theologians need to have a wide variety of models and metaphors at their disposal, to avoid becoming entranced by one narrow comparison. If that's Dolezal's primary argument, then it's terribly simple-minded. 

I'm not saying that's how we should conceive the relation between God and his attributes. I'm just demonstrating the severe limitations of a particular nearsighted illustration. 

Parsing classical theism

In the dispute between John Frame and James Dolezal, I find many of Dolezal's supporters equivocating. In this post I'd like to do a bit of sifting and sorting. 

1. First of all, there's the question of what classical theism is. Classical theism is a package of tenets. Some of them are interrelated, others less so. At the bottom of my post I quote two expositions of classical theism to provide a comparative frame of reference. 

2. Apropos (1), one issue is whether it's necessary to affirm every item of the traditional package. Some items rise and fall together, but is the entire package that tightknit? 

If, for instance, you affirm Thomistic simplicity, then that implicates some other items of the package. If, however, you reject Thomistic simplicity, you might still affirm other items. These might be consistent with Thomistic simplicity, but not be entailed by Thomistic simplicity. So there's an asymmetrical relation between some items and other items. Some tenets are interdependent while others may be independent, stand-alone tenets. 

Is the entire package a take-it-or-leave it proposition, or is it possible to pick and choose, mix and match? That's not possible in the case of internally related items, but are all the tenets of classical theism mutually implicative? 

Likewise, there's the question of whether there's even a single agreed-upon package. That's why I quote two examples at the bottom of the post. Their content overlaps, but they are not identical. If classical theism has fuzzy boundaries, then it may not be possible to affirm the whole package even if you want to, because even theologians who specialize on this issue disagree on the precise scope or content of the package.

3. In addition, we might draw a distinction between generic classical theism and Thomistic classical theism. To affirm classical theism, must you adhere to the Thomistic metaphysical apparatus that underpins that particular version? Or is classical theism detachable from Thomistic metaphysics?

4. I'd call myself as classical theist*. I'm a classical theist with an asterisk because I don't subscribe in Thomistic metaphysics in general, and I'm quite dubious about Thomistic simplicity in particular. 

Making a deal with the devil

1. The current debate over James Dolezal's "classical theism" reflects some perennial disagreements. It has both methodological and substantive dimensions. 

By "methodological" I mean theological method and hermeneutics. Is there a golden mean between open theist hermeneutics and classical theist hermeneutics? Are biblical representations of God consistently literal, consistently anthropomorphic, or sometimes one and sometimes the other? 

If they're literal all the way down, then Yahweh is a highly humanoid God who's pretty indistinguishable from heathen deities. If they're anthropomorphic all the way down, then God disappears behind an impenetrable, ineffable screen because we have no revelation of what God is really like in comparison to anthropomorphic representations. 

But if some Biblical representations are anthropomorphic while others are literal, are there principled criteria to distinguish them, or is our classification of any particular passage ad hoc? I'd like to outline some basic criteria:

i) Attributes

If, according to Scripture, God is a se, omniscient, omnipotent, impassible, timeless, and spaceless, then certain representations, if taken literally, are incompatible with his revealed attributes. In cases like that, the default setting is to classify them as anthropomorphic.

ii) An open theist would object that my demarcation is circular and question-begging because it privileges certain representations at the expense of others. The very question at issue is which representations furnish the standard of comparison. There are classical theist prooftexts as well as open theist prooftexts. What's the deal-breaker? 

iii) However, even in that event, if we espouse the inerrancy of Scripture, then we recognize that both sets of passages can't be literally true, so some harmonization in one direction or another is in order–unless we're stuck with irreconcilable paradox. 

That would give us two incompatible representations of God. But we can't have two masters. 

iv) Which is more plausible? That a God like classical theism would sometimes accommodate himself to human understanding by sometimes assuming a more humanoid depiction, or that a god like open theism would sometimes represent himself along the lines of classical theism?

I think it's fairly easy to see that even if classical theism is true, God will sometimes depict himself in more humanoid terms to make his self-revelation more accessible to a popular audience. By contrast, it's unclear what would motivate the reverse.

v) Even if we grant for discussion purposes that God is finite in knowledge and power, finitude ranges along a vast spectrum. That doesn't mean he's finite in anything like the degree to which human agents are finite. He will still be vastly greater in knowledge and power than human agents. But in that case, it's implausible that he'd back himself into some of the dilemmas that open theist prooftexts depict. 

vi) Genre

Some literary genres are more disposed to anthropomorphisms than others. Poetry resorts to metaphor and hyperbole. Narratives are phenomenological. 

By contrast, the Bible often makes more prosaic statements about God. They take precedence.

vii) A major theme in Scripture is the contrast between the one true God and paganism. That distinction is qualitative as well as quantitative. It's not that there's only one god who's a Zeus-like deity, in contrast to a plethora of Zeus-like deities. Rather, it's that Yahweh is categorically different from the highly humanoid gods of paganism. Not a physical being with the limitations of a physical being.

viii) It's arguable that Gen 1 implies the absolute origin of time. In that case, God is independent of time. God subsists apart from time.

It may be objected that the origin of the diurnal cycle doesn't entail the origin of time. That's true from a philosophical and scientific standpoint. But we must ask ourselves how a narrator would express the idea of a timeless, spaceless God using popular language rather than scientific and philosophical jargon. 

Assuming that Gen 1 describes the absolute origin of the world, then the first day is a token of time's origin. 

ix) According to Israel's aniconic piety, it is forbidden to represent Yahweh in humanoid terms (much less bestial terms). The implication is that such representations are unsuitable inasmuch as Yahweh is not a humanoid deity.

x) By the same token, aniconic piety presumes the essential invisibility of God. And that in turn suggests that God is not a physical being. Not an object of sensory perception.

It may be objected that something can be invisible yet physical. And that's true from a scientific standpoint. But the Pentateuch isn't written with atomic microscopes in mind. If God is incorporeal or spaceless, the invisibility is a token of that fact. A way of expressing that fact for a prescientific audience. 

xi) Finally, there are some Bible verses (1 Cor 2:7; 2 Tim 1:9; Titus 1:2-3; Jude 25) which suggest that God exists apart from time, although we need to be careful not to assume that these speak with philosophically technical precision.

In sum, I think the broad contours of classical theism are exegetically justifiable. 

2. That said, classical theism is often expounded in terms of Thomistic metaphysics, and to that degree, demands a commitment to Thomistic metaphysics. But that's philosophical rather than revelatory. 

3. Moreover, classical theism is a set of propositions. Some individual elements are more defensible than others. 

Furthermore, a constituent element like Thomistic simplicity is, in itself, subdivisible into a set of propositions. Take the especially contentious claim that all God's attributes are mutually identical.

4. Classical theism is sometimes represented as a common denominator of monotheistic religions: 

Classical theism’s ancestry includes Plato, Aristotle, Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism. It entered Judaism through Philo of Alexandria (§4), reaching its apogee there in Maimonides (§3). 

https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/god-concepts-of/v-1/sections/classical-theism

Classical theism is the conception of God that has prevailed historically within Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Western philosophical theism generally.  Its religious roots are biblical, and its philosophical roots are to be found in the Neoplatonic and Aristotelian traditions.  Among philosophers it is represented by the likes of Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Maimonides, and Avicenna. 

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/07/classical-theism-roundup.html

I believe we could add Ibn Rushd to the roster. 

Likewise:

Maimonides follows the Islamic Neoplatonic tradition of envisioning God as the purest of unlimited being, a kind of pure being so utterly unified that it transcends any internal divisions. This theme can be clearly found in the Theology of Aristotle and in the Kalâm fî maḥd al-khair in the identification of God as “Pure Being” or “Being Only,” as well as in Almohad (see Stroumsa 2009) and Mu‘tazilite theology of the time. It is this radical sense of unity that accounts for Maimonides' strong negative theology (about which we will say more below): since God is utterly and absolutely unified, He is a subject about whom we can predicate nothing (since, after all, predication implies of a subject that he is one thing or another, thus suggesting some limitation). As such, God, as subject, transcends the normal parameters of language and conceptualization.

On the theme of divine unity, Maimonides stresses:

He, may He be exalted, is one in all respects; no multiplicity should be posited in Him; there is no notion that is superadded to His essence (G 1.52, P 378)

Completely different from all other existents, Maimonides' God is one in all respects, an idea mirroring the God of the Neoplatonic Islamic philosophers before him. Turning to al-Farabi, we find:

…[God's] distinction from all the others is due to a oneness which is its essence (al-dhāt)…Thus the First…deserves more than any other one the name and meaning (of “the one” ) (PS, 68-69)

In this same spirit of emphasizing the divine oneness, and developing too an idea of God as the unique necessary existent, Avicenna explains of God that, 

…it is not possible that the true nature which that whose existence is necessary be composed of a multitude at all… (see HM, H 241)

Avicenna concludes further along these lines that God, the being whose existence is necessary, is “a unity, while everything else is a composite duality” (see HM, H 247). 

Following on the theme of God's unity, Maimonides emerges as a strong proponent of apophatic discourse, sometimes referred to as “negative theology,” which is a mode of talking about God with the sensitivity that, since God admits of no multiplicity, we cannot meaningfully (at least not in any straightforward or literal sense) ascribe any traits to Him. The very act of predication involved in attributions (formulas of the form “God is… ”) are doomed to failure in the light of God's utter unity. To approach God apophatically is, hence, to approach God with a heightened sensitivity to the failures of language to say very much about Him at all. 

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/maimonides-islamic/#SimpUnEss

5. In addition, divine simplicity is often regarded as a lynchpin of classical theism. For instance:

Indeed, divine simplicity is near the conceptual core of classical theism; it is one chief reason classical theists think God immutable, impassible, timeless and wholly distinct from the universe. 

https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/simplicity-divine/v-1https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/simplicity-divine/v-1

6. However, this should raise some red flags for Christians. To begin with, Platonism, Philonic Platonism, and Aristotelianism are pre-Christian. Therefore, they don't have the same ontological requirements as Christian metaphysics. In addition, Medieval Judaism and Kalam/Mutazilite Islam are anti-Christian. They developed in explicit opposition to Christian theism. So these are militantly unitarian traditions. It's natural for them to stress radical divine simplicity, because they don't need to accommodate a Triune deity. Indeed, radical divine simplicity is a selling point for unitarianism. So Christians ought to be very wary of building on that philosophical platform. Are we making a deal with the devil?

I've seen Thomists struggle to wedge the Trinity into divine simplicity. If, however, we took the Trinity as a starting-point, and developed systematic theology from that starting-point, would divine simplicity still be the end-point? 

7. In addition, it conduces to apophatic theology, which is little more than pious agnosticism. 

Is Jerry Walls a classical theist?

Five years ago, Arminian philosopher Jerry Walls published an article with the combative title "Why No Classical Theist, Let Alone Orthodox Christian, Should Ever be a Compatibilist."

This implies that Jerry classifies himself as a classical theist. The point of my post is not to assess classical theism on the merits, but to assess whether Jerry measures up to his own yardstick. 

In An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford, 2004, 3rd. ed.), Brian Davies provides an exposition of classical theism, sometimes using theistic personalism as a foil. Let's begin by listing the tenets he cites to define classical theism. These defining tenets function as criteria to determine whether or not someone adheres to classical theism:

1. Creation ex nihilo (2-3).

2. Continuous providence:

God is both the initiating and the constantly sustaining cause of the universe and all it contains…Everything other than God is totally dependent on God for its existing and for its being as it is (3).

3. Divine impassibility:

Nothing created can cause God to change or be modified in any way. In terms of classical theism, there is no causality from creatures to God since creatures are wholly God's effects….God cannot be altered by anything a creature does, and God is intrinsically unchangeable (5).

4. God is outside time (5-7)

5. Divine simplicity (8-9; chap. 8).

6. God causes everything and permits nothing:

While classical theists typically hold that all history is God's doing, theistic personalists more commonly see it only as partly this. Some events, they often say, are not so much caused by God as permitted by him (11).

7. God knows the future (12).

8. God's knowledge is inderivative:

While classical theists typically say that God knows all history by being its maker, theistic personalists are more likely to assert that God's knowledge of history may partly be acquired by him as history unfolds. On their picture, God's knowledge of the world, especially the world of human affairs, is capable of increase…God's knowledge is caused by things other than himself (12). 

Of these 8 criteria, I'm guessing that Jerry only affirms the first (creation ex nihilo) tenet. Keep in mind that (1) is not a classical theist distinctive, but only a classical theist essential. Both classical and nonclassical theists can affirm creation ex nihilo. 

I suspect he denies 2-8. If so, he only affirms 1 out of 8 criteria for classical theism. But surely someone who rejects 7 out of 8 tenets of classical theism isn't remotely a classical theism.

Let's briefly explain my interpretation: Since Jerry believes human volitions are independent of God, which means the immediate effects of human volitions would likewise be independent of God, he can't affirm (2). 

By the same token, he believes many events are caused by our volitions, which are independent of God. So he can't affirm (6). 

He's on record stating his sympathies for open theism, so he can't affirm (7). 

Freewill theists like Jerry typically reject 3-5 and 8. 

If my interpretation is correct, then Jerry doesn't begin to qualify as a classical theist. To the contrary, he is almost systematically opposed to classical theism. 

Perhaps he could try to deflect this conclusion by rejecting the exposition of classical theism by Brian Davies. But on the face of it, Jerry is using himself to define classical theism, rather than using classical theism to define himself.