Pundit
Puritan Board Freshman
Brethren,
This is an excerpt from today's "Dividing Line" from Dr. James White in response to this from Dr. William Lane Craig's "Reasonable Faith" podcast. The key points are as follows:
Would anyone else care to comment?
This is an excerpt from today's "Dividing Line" from Dr. James White in response to this from Dr. William Lane Craig's "Reasonable Faith" podcast. The key points are as follows:
- White endorses Craig's rebuttal to two brothers' discussion of White sees as a Thomistic understanding of divine simplicity
- White defines simplicity as follows: "God is not composed of parts ... that are more basic than the being of God"; "God's being is not made up of lesser parts"
- White affirms this, thinks that Craig would also affirm this, and thinks that "historic theologians" would too
- White goes on to claim that on Thomism, "you cannot discuss the attributes of God in a way that would make them different from one another" as if making distinctions between different attributes/perfections such as omniscience and omnipresence would constitute parts such that simplicity is violated
- White proceeds to link this definition of Thomistic simplicity to the resurgence of "classical theism" among some Reformed students and thinkers such that he sees an imbalanced emphasis on Aquinas by some
- White thinks some "Reformed guys" are "overwhelmed" by Aquinas' brilliance such that they forget about foundational problems within Aquinas (e.g., epistemology, anthropology, and the gospel in that order)
- White then postulates that it does not follow from absolute monotheism that any attribution or predication of God necessarily divides the divine essence such that simplicity is violated
Would anyone else care to comment?