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The Untamed God: A Philosophical Exploration of Divine Perfection, Simplicity, and Immutability
The essential tenets of classical theism regarding the doctrine of God can be stated fairly easily. However, questions have been raised regarding the coherence of these beliefs taken as a whole. Some have seen fit to abandon classical theism. Others have acknowledged tensions in the traditional concept of God and have sought to resolve them by means of making significant concessions. Jay Wesley Richards believes that classical theism with its biblical norm can and ought to be maintained. He shows how a philosophical defense, using the analytical tools of modal logic, can be mounted that preserves traditional Christian beliefs. Richards astutely defends essentialism, arguing that it is both intrinsic to the Christian understanding of God and preserves the contingency of creation and the God-world relation. To further clarify and defend his proposal he engages appreciatively and critically the thought of Karl Barth and Charles Hartshorne as well as addressing the related and currently debated matters of divine simplicity and immutability.
- GenresTheologyPhilosophy
267 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2003
4 people are currently reading
59 people want to read
About the author
Jay W. Richards
27 books65 followersJay W. Richards has served in leadership positions at the Discovery Institute and the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion & Liberty, and is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
He has written many academic articles, books, and popular essays on a wide variety of subjects, from culture, economics, and public policy, to natural science, technology, and the environment. His previous books include The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery, with Guillermo Gonzalez (Washington DC: Regnery Publishers, 2004); The Untamed God: A Philosophical Exploration of Divine Perfection, Immutability and Simplicity (InterVarsity Press, 2003); Are We Spiritual Machines?: Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong Artificial Intelligence, as editor and contributor (Discovery Institute Press, May 2002); and Unapologetic Apologetics: Meeting the Challenges of Theological Studies, as editor and multiple contributor, with William Dembski (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, February 2001).
Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem (HarperOne, May 2009), seeks to explain the market economy to people who don’t like economics, and defend it against its religious critics.
Richards is also executive producer of several documentaries, including The Call of the Entrepreneur, The Birth of Freedom, and The Effective Stewardship Curriculum (Acton Media and Zondervan, 2009). He has been featured in several television-broadcast documentaries, including The Call of the Entrepreneur, The Case for a Creator, The Wonder of Soil, and The Privileged Planet, based on his book with astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez.
A self-described “shameless generalist,” he has academic specialties in philosophy, theology, and political science, including extensive research in formal logic.
He has a B.A. with majors in Political Science and Religion, an M.Div. (Master of Divinity) and a Th.M. (Master of Theology), with a thesis on social philosopher Michael Polanyi (from whom F.A. Hayek got his concept of “spontaneous order”). He also has a Ph.D. (with honors) in philosophy and theology from Princeton Theological Seminary. While at Princeton, he helped restart and edit the Princeton Theological Review, and led extracurricular apologetics seminars during his four years there.
His work has been covered (and sometimes harshly criticized) in The New York Times (front page news, science news, and editorial), The Washington Post (news and editorial), The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, Nature, Science, Astronomy, Sky and Telescope, The Scientist, Physics Today, California Wild (California Academy of Science), New Scientist, The Chronicle of Higher Education, American Enterprise, Congressional Quarterly Researcher, Human Events, American Spectator, First Things, Science & Spirit, Science & Theology News, Christianity Today, Crisis, National Catholic Register, World, Breakpoint, American Atheist, World Socialist of the International Committee of the Fourth International, and many other academic and popular outlets.
He has been interviewed for stories in print publications not just in the U.S., but also in Germany, Switzerland, France, New Zealand, Canada, Spain, and the UK.
Jay Richards has lectured at scores of academic conferences as diverse as the Evangelical Theological Society and the Western Economic Association, on scores of college and university campuses, at many public policy meetings, and on several occasions has lectured to members of the U.S. Congress and U.S. congressional staff.
He has written many academic articles, books, and popular essays on a wide variety of subjects, from culture, economics, and public policy, to natural science, technology, and the environment. His previous books include The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery, with Guillermo Gonzalez (Washington DC: Regnery Publishers, 2004); The Untamed God: A Philosophical Exploration of Divine Perfection, Immutability and Simplicity (InterVarsity Press, 2003); Are We Spiritual Machines?: Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong Artificial Intelligence, as editor and contributor (Discovery Institute Press, May 2002); and Unapologetic Apologetics: Meeting the Challenges of Theological Studies, as editor and multiple contributor, with William Dembski (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, February 2001).
Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem (HarperOne, May 2009), seeks to explain the market economy to people who don’t like economics, and defend it against its religious critics.
Richards is also executive producer of several documentaries, including The Call of the Entrepreneur, The Birth of Freedom, and The Effective Stewardship Curriculum (Acton Media and Zondervan, 2009). He has been featured in several television-broadcast documentaries, including The Call of the Entrepreneur, The Case for a Creator, The Wonder of Soil, and The Privileged Planet, based on his book with astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez.
A self-described “shameless generalist,” he has academic specialties in philosophy, theology, and political science, including extensive research in formal logic.
He has a B.A. with majors in Political Science and Religion, an M.Div. (Master of Divinity) and a Th.M. (Master of Theology), with a thesis on social philosopher Michael Polanyi (from whom F.A. Hayek got his concept of “spontaneous order”). He also has a Ph.D. (with honors) in philosophy and theology from Princeton Theological Seminary. While at Princeton, he helped restart and edit the Princeton Theological Review, and led extracurricular apologetics seminars during his four years there.
His work has been covered (and sometimes harshly criticized) in The New York Times (front page news, science news, and editorial), The Washington Post (news and editorial), The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, Nature, Science, Astronomy, Sky and Telescope, The Scientist, Physics Today, California Wild (California Academy of Science), New Scientist, The Chronicle of Higher Education, American Enterprise, Congressional Quarterly Researcher, Human Events, American Spectator, First Things, Science & Spirit, Science & Theology News, Christianity Today, Crisis, National Catholic Register, World, Breakpoint, American Atheist, World Socialist of the International Committee of the Fourth International, and many other academic and popular outlets.
He has been interviewed for stories in print publications not just in the U.S., but also in Germany, Switzerland, France, New Zealand, Canada, Spain, and the UK.
Jay Richards has lectured at scores of academic conferences as diverse as the Evangelical Theological Society and the Western Economic Association, on scores of college and university campuses, at many public policy meetings, and on several occasions has lectured to members of the U.S. Congress and U.S. congressional staff.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 18, 2017
This is a magnificently fine book. Richards seeks to offer a robust defense of classical theism, yet he is sensitive to the challenges. He mostly succeeds.
Thesis: “Christians should affirm that God has an essence, which includes his perfections and essential properties, and should attribute to God essential and contingent properties” (Richards 17).
Essentialism: belief that so-called ‘de re’ modality is relevant to our understanding of God. It is appropriate to speak of a cluster of properties which God necessarily exemplifies and without which he would not be God, and contingent properties which he only has in some possible worlds (18 n1).
In chapter 2 he gives a dizzying, yet helpful account of modal logic. He presents the S5 system, in which all possible propositions are necessarily possible. This allows him to draw upon Plantinga’s account of possible worlds as “maximally consistent states of affairs.”
Therefore, The essentialist argues that there is a distinction between essential divine properties and accidental (contingent) divine properties (90). Property: a state of affairs concerning entities of different types. While saying there are contingent properties in God seems to depart from the tradition, it really doesn’t. God’s deciding to create the world is a contingent divine property. God has P in every world. God’s essence is concretely instantiated in every possible world (95). God’s essential attributes, those he has in every possible world, are divine ‘perfections’ (96). “They include all those properties susceptible to perfection.”
Richards has several chapters on Barth and Hartshorne, noting some promising moves in the former and rebutting the latter. The chapter on Barth traded on an unresolved question: Did Barth hold to strong actualism? I think he did. Richards isn’t so sure.
He ends the book with a fine chapter on divine simplicity, noting the numerous ways it has been employed in the Tradition:
(1) all divine properties are possessed by the same self-identical God.
(2) God is not composite, in the sense that he is not made up of elements or forms more fundamental than he is.
(3) God’s essence is identical with his act of existing.
(4) All God’s essential properties are coextensive.
(5) All God’s perfections are identical.
(6) All God’s properties are coextensive
(7) God’s essential properties and essence are strictly identical with himself.
(8) All God’s properties are strictly identical with himself.
Question: when the medieval denied God has accidents, is he denying what the essentialist is affirming, that God has contingent properties (225)? Maybe not. The essentialist, for example, says contingent relations are divine accidents, but Thomas calls these external relations ad extra.
The medievals denied that “goodness” and the like were accidental to God, because they (rightly) wanted to deny that God participates in the form of Goodness. But this isn’t what the essentialist is claiming.
Therefore, the essentialist accepts (1)-(4), noting that “existence” today doesn’t have quite the same connotations as existence did for Thomas. (5) is tricky. (6) seems unproblematic. (7)-(8) are deeply problematic.
Thesis: “Christians should affirm that God has an essence, which includes his perfections and essential properties, and should attribute to God essential and contingent properties” (Richards 17).
Essentialism: belief that so-called ‘de re’ modality is relevant to our understanding of God. It is appropriate to speak of a cluster of properties which God necessarily exemplifies and without which he would not be God, and contingent properties which he only has in some possible worlds (18 n1).
In chapter 2 he gives a dizzying, yet helpful account of modal logic. He presents the S5 system, in which all possible propositions are necessarily possible. This allows him to draw upon Plantinga’s account of possible worlds as “maximally consistent states of affairs.”
Therefore, The essentialist argues that there is a distinction between essential divine properties and accidental (contingent) divine properties (90). Property: a state of affairs concerning entities of different types. While saying there are contingent properties in God seems to depart from the tradition, it really doesn’t. God’s deciding to create the world is a contingent divine property. God has P in every world. God’s essence is concretely instantiated in every possible world (95). God’s essential attributes, those he has in every possible world, are divine ‘perfections’ (96). “They include all those properties susceptible to perfection.”
Richards has several chapters on Barth and Hartshorne, noting some promising moves in the former and rebutting the latter. The chapter on Barth traded on an unresolved question: Did Barth hold to strong actualism? I think he did. Richards isn’t so sure.
He ends the book with a fine chapter on divine simplicity, noting the numerous ways it has been employed in the Tradition:
(1) all divine properties are possessed by the same self-identical God.
(2) God is not composite, in the sense that he is not made up of elements or forms more fundamental than he is.
(3) God’s essence is identical with his act of existing.
(4) All God’s essential properties are coextensive.
(5) All God’s perfections are identical.
(6) All God’s properties are coextensive
(7) God’s essential properties and essence are strictly identical with himself.
(8) All God’s properties are strictly identical with himself.
Question: when the medieval denied God has accidents, is he denying what the essentialist is affirming, that God has contingent properties (225)? Maybe not. The essentialist, for example, says contingent relations are divine accidents, but Thomas calls these external relations ad extra.
The medievals denied that “goodness” and the like were accidental to God, because they (rightly) wanted to deny that God participates in the form of Goodness. But this isn’t what the essentialist is claiming.
Therefore, the essentialist accepts (1)-(4), noting that “existence” today doesn’t have quite the same connotations as existence did for Thomas. (5) is tricky. (6) seems unproblematic. (7)-(8) are deeply problematic.
June 16, 2016
Richards argues for a form of essentialism that avoids incoherence in a classical conception of God. Richards advocates adopting three regulative principles familiar to classical theists: biblical normatively, the "principle of divine perfection," and the "Sovereignty-Aseity Conviction." However, in order to avoid charges of incoherence, Richards suggests that classical theists should soften their commitments to strong forms of divine simplicity and immutability. The solution, Richards argues, lies in adopting a view of properties that allows for God having some of his properties necessarily and some contingently. Doing so will avoid apparent inconsistencies when considering other Christian commitments such as the incarnation. In order to achieve this aim, Richards suggests we adopt S5 modal logic, according to which the modal status of propositions is invariable across possible worlds.
Richard's best work lies in explanation. Clearly, he writes as a teacher first and a proponent of a view second. Consequently, the chapters that bear the most fruit are his expositions of Thomistic classical theism (ch 1) and modal logic (ch 2). His argument for his view is born by chapters 3, 8, and 9 in which he argues for his form of essentialism and shows how it solves the problems of immutability and simplicity.
Betwixt these chapters Richards tackles the views of Karl Barth and Charles Hartshorne. Barth's actualism is contrasted with Hartshorne's process theism to great effect. However, though the discussion is relevant to the overall argument of the book, the chapters form somewhat of an excursus.
Richard's best work lies in explanation. Clearly, he writes as a teacher first and a proponent of a view second. Consequently, the chapters that bear the most fruit are his expositions of Thomistic classical theism (ch 1) and modal logic (ch 2). His argument for his view is born by chapters 3, 8, and 9 in which he argues for his form of essentialism and shows how it solves the problems of immutability and simplicity.
Betwixt these chapters Richards tackles the views of Karl Barth and Charles Hartshorne. Barth's actualism is contrasted with Hartshorne's process theism to great effect. However, though the discussion is relevant to the overall argument of the book, the chapters form somewhat of an excursus.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews