RamistThomist
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Dolezal, James. All That is in God: Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Christian Theism. Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2017.
All that is in God is God. That’s the argument of the book. It is short but rhetorically powerful. What Dolezal means is that by God’s simplicity, he is not composed of “parts,” whether physical or material. If what we call God’s attributes weren’t identical to the divine essence, then those attributes would constitute God. That means God would be God by virtue of something which itself isn’t God. That means God would get actuality from something that isn’t God. This is clearly impossible if we view God as the cause of all things. How could something caused by God constitute part of God?
That’s the argument of the book in a nutshell. From that powerful platform, Dolezal examines what he calls “theistic mutualism,” which can be anything from process theology to open theism to otherwise good Calvinists who deny God’s simplicity. Regardless of which variant is under discussion, Dolezal demonstrates that their lack of a robust grammar of divine simplicity ultimately cannot succeed.
Dolezal explores the standard problems with divine simplicity. We’ll look at one. Simplicity says that God is his attributes. By contrast, if I say “James is wise and powerful,” I have stated a subject with two predicates. If I say “God is wise and powerful,” I have not stated two separate things about God. God’s attributes do not add up to be God. He is not the sum of his parts. The difficulty is that if God is identical with his attributes, then each attribute is identical to each other. That seems counterintuitive. However, denying this claim ultimately reduces to the unacceptable conclusion that God is composed of parts (e.g., justice, love, etc). How do we solve this problem? We have to commit ourselves to some view of analogical language. We are discussing a reality that far transcends human categories, but is nonetheless analogical to them.
This book functions as a theological grammar. It is definitely recommended reading not only for the doctrine of God, but also for theological method.
All that is in God is God. That’s the argument of the book. It is short but rhetorically powerful. What Dolezal means is that by God’s simplicity, he is not composed of “parts,” whether physical or material. If what we call God’s attributes weren’t identical to the divine essence, then those attributes would constitute God. That means God would be God by virtue of something which itself isn’t God. That means God would get actuality from something that isn’t God. This is clearly impossible if we view God as the cause of all things. How could something caused by God constitute part of God?
That’s the argument of the book in a nutshell. From that powerful platform, Dolezal examines what he calls “theistic mutualism,” which can be anything from process theology to open theism to otherwise good Calvinists who deny God’s simplicity. Regardless of which variant is under discussion, Dolezal demonstrates that their lack of a robust grammar of divine simplicity ultimately cannot succeed.
Dolezal explores the standard problems with divine simplicity. We’ll look at one. Simplicity says that God is his attributes. By contrast, if I say “James is wise and powerful,” I have stated a subject with two predicates. If I say “God is wise and powerful,” I have not stated two separate things about God. God’s attributes do not add up to be God. He is not the sum of his parts. The difficulty is that if God is identical with his attributes, then each attribute is identical to each other. That seems counterintuitive. However, denying this claim ultimately reduces to the unacceptable conclusion that God is composed of parts (e.g., justice, love, etc). How do we solve this problem? We have to commit ourselves to some view of analogical language. We are discussing a reality that far transcends human categories, but is nonetheless analogical to them.
This book functions as a theological grammar. It is definitely recommended reading not only for the doctrine of God, but also for theological method.
It is sad Barth is associated with the words wholly other to explain God because that is orthodox.
but some folks really get passionate about this subject. I like pizza with or without pineapple.
