Theistic Personalism versus Classical Theism: Response to Roger Pouivet

Professor Roger Pouivet (Université de Lorraine, France) recently subscribed to my Substack series. I wrote to thank him and to request a copy of his Against Theistic Personalism: What Modern Epistemology Does to Classical Theism. He replied promptly and I dove into his article. It proved to be stimulating and I thank him for writing it. Herewith, some comments and questions.

1) Theistic personalism is the view that God is a person and that therefore the relations between God and human creatures are interpersonal. Pouivet argues against this view, taking the classical line of Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, Maimonides, and Thomas  according to which God is ontologically simple and thus identical to his attributes. (See my Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry, Divine Simplicity, for details, motivation, criticisms, and references to current literature.*) The simple God of classical theism is wholly devoid of complexity and composition. The distinctions that apply to creatures do not apply to God. Among them: form-matter, act-potency, essence-existence, and individual-attribute. I would add to the list contingency-necessity as standardly understood.  Aquinas held that some necessary beings have their necessity ab alio, i.e., from God, whereas God has his necessity in se. The former are creatures because they depend on God for their existence.  (A creature is simply anything created by God.) The contingency-necessity ab alio distinction does not apply to God. God is therefore uniquely necessary as he is uniquely unique: he is not a necessary being among necessary beings. This is why, on classical theism, the divine necessity is not properly represented, or fully captured, if you say merely that God exists in all metaphysically possible worlds as theistic personalists such as Alvin Plantinga will say. They think of God as a necessary being among necessary beings.

2) The main question, however, is whether the classical God, the simple God, could be a person. That depends on what a person is taken to be. For Pouivet, no person can be simple: no person is identical to its attributes. It follows straightaway that the simple God cannot be a person.  That's one argument.  Second, no person is immutable: people change mentally and physically. Whatever changes is in time. To put the point precisely, it is metaphysically impossible that anything undergo intrinsic (non-relational) change unless it is in time. (The eternal God, outside of time, could presumably 'undergo' relational change as when I start and stop thinking about him and his attributes.) So persons are mutable and in time and are thus non-eternal). But the simple God is both intrinsically immutable and eternal. It follows that the simple God cannot be a person.

c) For Pouivet, "A person is a being with an essentially mental life made up of mental states such as thoughts (mental representations) or desires." (p. 3) It seems to follow from this definition that if God is not and cannot be a person, then he cannot have a mental life with thoughts, desires and intentions. But then I will ask Professor Pouivet how, on his view, we can makes sense of the divine omniscience. Classical theism does not exclude omniscience as a divine attribute. But to know is to be in a mental state. So it would seem that God must either possess mental states or something analogous to mental states. Granted, the archetypal intellect's knowing is very different from our ectypal knowing: God knows the object by creating it; we do not. There cannot, however, be an equivocation on 'knows' in 'God knows' and 'Socrates knows' even if there is no univocity of sense. But I found no mention of analogy in Pouivet's article.

The problem also arises with respect to the divine will. Pouivet rightly points out that for Aquinas the simplicity doctrine entails that there is nothing potential in God, that God is actus purus.  (7) He then takes aim at Swinburne's view that God is a "superlative person" who is perfectly free, all-powerful, and omniscient. Pouivet objects to Swinburne:

But this has nothing to do with God as pure act . . . . In this [Thomist] tradition, God is not described as a being with intentional power . . . . For theistic personalists, the notion of intentional power is however directly linked to the idea of conscious experience which is also characteristic of human beings. The result is a deeply anthropomorphic account of God. (7-8)

A question for Professor Pouivet: can classical theism do justice to the notion that God freely created the world? It seems to me that there is a tension between divine simplicity (upheld by classical theists) and divine freedom (upheld by theistic personalists) and that Judeo-Christian theism is committed to both. 

1) If God is simple, then he is purely actual (actus purus) and thus devoid of unexercised powers and unrealized potentialities. He is, from all eternity, all that he can be. This is true in every possible world because God exists in every possible world, and is pure act in every possible world.  As a necessary being, God exists in every possible world, and as a simple being, he is devoid of act-potency composition in every world in which he exists. 

2) As it is, God freely created our universe from nothing; but he might have created a different universe, or no universe at all. This implies that any universe God creates contingently exists.

The dyad seems logically inconsistent.   If (1) is true, then there is no possible world in which God has unexercised powers. But if (2) is true, there is at least one possible world in which God has unexercised powers. Had God created no universe, then his power to create would have gone unexercised.  Had God created a different universe than the one he did create, then his power to create our universe would also have gone unexercised. So if God is both simple and (libertarianly) free, then we get a logical contradiction.

In nuce, the problem is to explain how it can be true both that God is simple and that the universe which God created ex nihilo is contingent.  Clearly, the classical theist wants to uphold both. What is unclear, however, is whether he can uphold both.

There are two main ways to solve an aporetic polyad. One is to show that the inconsistency alleged is at best apparent, but not real.  The other way is by rejection of one of the limbs. 

Many if not most theists, and almost all Protestants, will simply (pun intended) deny the divine simplicity.  I myself think there are good reasons for embracing the latter.  But how then avoid modal collapse?

Modal Collapse

We have modal collapse just when the following proposition is true: For any x, x is possible iff x is actual iff x is necessary.  This implies that nothing is merely possible; nothing is contingent; nothing is impossible.  If nothing is merely possible, then there are no merely possible worlds, which implies that there is exactly one possible world, the actual world, which cannot fail to be actual, and is therefore necessary.  Modal collapse ushers in what I call call modal Spinozism. 

(The collapse is on the extensional, not the intensional or notional plane: the modal words retain their distinctive senses.)

Suppose divine simplicity entails modal collapse (modal Spinozism). So what? What is so bad about the latter?  Well, it comports none too well with God's sovereignty. If God is absolutely sovereign, then he cannot be under a metaphysical necessity to create. Connected with this is the fact that if God must create, then his aseity would be compromised. He cannot be wholly from himself, a se, if his existence necessarily requires a realm of creatures.  Finally, creaturely (libertarian) freedom would go by the boards if reality is one big block of Spinozistic necessity.

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*Curiously, just yesterday the SEP editors informed me that an updated version is due from me by the end of February, 2023. Readers apprised of the latest literature are encouraged to contact me with their references.) 

Comments

[Kevin Kim]

"In this [Thomist] tradition, God is not described as a being with intentional power...."

I guess I need to go back and read up more on classical theism. I didn't think that classical theism completely ignored biblical testimony as to the personalistic nature of God. God is definitely a person, a "who," in the divine drama of the sacred scriptures, not merely some cold, abstracted entity. He wills, acts, reacts, intends, emotes, etc. The God of the Bible is a Who who is active in human and cosmic history, creating a series of covenants with people—covenants that, taken together, indicate an evolving relationship with humanity. Since I know laughably little about St. Thomas's thought, I can't imagine how Thomas could take the position he took. I suspect I'm misunderstanding something or several somethings, but I read this blog to be enlightened (or to "get schooled" as the kids say).

[Vito B. Caiati]

Hi Bill,

As someone not trained in philosophy, I am struggling to understand this difficult question. After reading your post, I found and read this recent article by Daniel J. Peterson and Christopher Lilly, "Divine Simplicity, God's Freedom and the Supposed Problem of Modal Collapse," which appeared in the Journal of Reformed Theology in April of this year. It is available on line (https://brill.com/view/journals/jrt/16/1-2/article-p127_8.xml), and it may interest you both because of your post and your upcoming revision of your article on divine simplicity in the SEP. It argues against the notion that modal collapse results in the abandonment of God's simplicity or God's freedom. I lack the intellectual resources to evaluate the article's merit, but you certainly possess them, so I call it to your attention.
Regards, Vito

[BV]

Hi Vito,

When I clicked on the above link I got Page Not Found. But thanks for the reference. I should be able to track it down. Ah yes, here it is: file:///C:/Users/Owner/Downloads/[15697312%20-%20Journal%20of%20Reformed%20Theology]%20Divine%20Simplicity,%20God%E2%80%99s%20Freedom,%20and%20the%20Supposed%20Problem%20of%20Modal%20Collapse.pdf

I downloaded it and printed it out. Will read it before long and 'blog it.' Stay tuned.

DDS is a hot topic theses days with a lot of philosophers and theologians writing about it. It's as if we are back in the Middle Ages. The logical positivists must be rolling over in their graves.

[NigelPJ]

I tried the link you give Bill, that didn't work for me. I found the following link did work:https://brill.com/view/journals/jrt/16/1-2/article-p127_8.xml?rskey=Jqy7iY&result=9

[BV]

Thanks, Nigel. Your link is good!

[BV]

Kevin,

I just found your comment in the spam corral. I need to check that place more often. If past comments of yours did not appear, no you know why.