| Dear Friends of Reasonable Faith,
As we slip into May, we here in the United States are enjoying the beauties of springtime along with the warmer weather. With the azaleas and dogwoods blooming, it’s such a beautiful time of year!
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| During April I continued to be active through social media appearances. On April 6 I sat for an interview on Scottish television with a hostess named Angela MacKenzie, during which I was able to share both my personal testimony and a Gospel presentation. On the 9th and the 16th I had the unusual opportunity to join students in the philosophy program at Talbot School of Theology for a pair of scholarly sessions. In each case we pre-recorded a video lecture, which our media director Gabe Jones then outfitted with wonderful graphics, that the students watched in advance of our meeting, the first on “What Is Systematic Philosophical Theology?” and the second on “Does Saving Faith Imply Belief?” You may have guessed that both of these talks came out of my current project of writing a systematic philosophical theology. Each lecture was then the basis for a one and a half hour Q&A session with the students. Because of the pandemic I was not able to teach at Talbot this year for the first time in 25 years, so the sessions were a good opportunity to connect.
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| On the 20th I recorded two 40-minute interviews for a podcast out of the UK called “The Panpsycast,” a secular show whose hosts Jack and Ollie immediately announced that they were atheists. Nevertheless, they were almost effusive in their expressions of appreciation for my work and went on and on about what a difference it has made in commending the Christian faith as a reasonable option for people today. They were so friendly, and I really enjoyed interacting with the tough questions and objections they posed! I’m so glad to have had the opportunity to do an interview like this for a secular British audience. And it doesn’t end here! They plan to publish a book called Philosophers on God in a series with Bloomsbury Press, a first-rate publisher. So there I’ll be, in with all the atheist and agnostic philosophers they also interview. What a great opportunity!
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| Finally, on the 27th I did an interview for a podcast out of India with Rajat Dhiman, a Christian convert from Hinduism who is working to start a local Reasonable Faith chapter. He wrote, “I have a burden for the Apologetic Ministry for Hindi speaking Christians. Here in India, there are no such ministries that are focusing on providing and encouraging believers to answer for the hope they have in Christ.” Wow! He said that our podcast will be translated into Hindi, so of course I jumped at the chance.
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| Meanwhile, Kevin Harris and I recorded some interesting Reasonable Faith podcasts this past month. Jan and I not only recorded the Talbot lectures mentioned above but also continued to record my weekly Defenders lessons in my home office.
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This month as part of my study of the Doctrine of God, I continued to read on divine simplicity. While I think that the divine attributes of necessary existence and aseity are both biblically consistent and philosophically defensible, it seems to me that the doctrine of divine simplicity—the view that in God there are absolutely no distinctions whatsoever—is both unbiblical and incoherent. Reformed theologians have a watchword: “As God reveals Himself to be, so is He.” The Bible reveals God to have a multiplicity of attributes and to subsist in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That is incompatible with a simple being, in which no distinctions exist.
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Gregory of Nyssa by Theophan the Greek, in Anapausas Meteora, Greece.
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| What one commentator has aptly called the “twisted roots” of the doctrine of divine simplicity are to be found, not in Scripture, but in the ancient Neoplatonic philosophy of Plotinus and Proclus, which held that ultimate reality is an undifferentiated One. Many church fathers such as Augustine and John Damascene absorbed this Neoplatonic emphasis on divine simplicity into their theology, which then became mainstreamed into medieval theology. I hate to admit it, but even the post-Reformation Protestant theologians, both Lutheran and Reformed, came to embrace this doctrine as well. So the doctrine of divine simplicity really does characterize mainstream Christian theology. I take comfort in the fact that some church fathers like Gregory of Nyssa did not fully embrace the doctrine, holding merely that God has no separable parts, and that the Protestant Reformers themselves like Calvin and Luther did not teach this doctrine. Thank God for that at least!
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The pernicious implication of the doctrine of divine simplicity is that we have no positive knowledge of God’s nature, since we can form no conception of a being devoid of properties. Moreover, I have to agree with Arian (Eunomias), Muslim (ibn Sīnā), and Jewish (Maimonides) critics that the doctrine of divine simplicity is clearly incompatible with the doctrine of the Trinity, which implies that the mainstream Christian doctrine of God is just incoherent.
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Robert Preus, a contemporary Lutheran theologian, has written that “The doctrine of God is the most difficult locus in Christian dogmatics.” But one has to admit that Christian theology’s wounds are largely self-inflicted. Had the Neoplatonic vision of ultimate reality as an undifferentiated Monad been rejected by Christian theologians, most of the problems would have never arisen. The doctrine of divine simplicity is probably the best illustration there is of the poisonous influence of secular philosophy upon Christian theology. But not to despair! Through the renaissance of Christian philosophy in our day, the traditional doctrine of divine simplicity is being challenged and a more biblically faithful doctrine of God is being formulated. So what philosophy once took away with the one hand it is giving back with the other. I hope to be part of that new reformation.
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We’ve now launched our annual spring campaign to enlist sustaining donors for Reasonable Faith. We have several attractive premiums to offer at three tiers of giving. We hope that you’ll join our team of donors who commit to giving on a regular basis.
Thank you!
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| For Christ and His Kingdom,
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Dr Craig and Reasonable Faith ministry have been a huge help to me. I didn't even know how to ask the questions I had in my faith journey - a friend suggested I borrow the copy. of Reasonable Faith the church library = mind blown. I had to renew the library-loan many times, because I could only get through a page or two before I had to stop and do R&D, read scripture, think long and hard before moving on (not that I'm saying "I got it all"!). This got me to the RF site, and to Defenders. ...which is faith-life affirming. Defenders has helped me understand just how solid a rock I'm standing on, has helped me mature in my thinking, and has inspired my thirst for more of God and knowledge about Him.
-Robert
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