TylerRay
Puritan Board Graduate
Augustus H. Strong writes:
Does Strong's use of the idea of complexity in the nature of God preclude the doctrine of divine simplicity?
The Doctrine of the Trinity is not self-contradictory.
This it would be, only if it declared God to be three in the same numerical sense in which he is said to be one. This we do not assert. We assert simply that the same God who is one with respect to his essence is three with respect to the internal distinctions of that essence, or with respect to the modes of his being. The possibility of this cannot be denied, except by assuming that the human mind is in all respects the measure of the divine.
The fact that the ascending scale of life is marked by increasing differentiation of faculty and function should rather lead us to expect in the highest of all beings a nature more complex than our own. In man many faculties are united in one intelligent being, and the more intelligent man is, the more distinct from each other these faculties become; until intellect and affection, conscience and will assume a relative independence, and there arises even the possibility of conflict between them. There is nothing irrational or self-contradictory in the doctrine that in God the leading functions are yet more markedly differentiated, so that they become personal, while at the same time these personalities are united by the fact that they each and equally manifest the one indivisible essence.
Does Strong's use of the idea of complexity in the nature of God preclude the doctrine of divine simplicity?