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January 28 - March 5, 2020
He points out that without a traditional doctrine of divine simplicity, the three divine persons become understood as “three discrete beings”
The chief problem I address in this work is the abandonment of God’s simplicity and of the infinite pure actuality of His being.
I am convinced it cannot. And the reason is that, because He is simple and purely actual, God is not capable of receiving new determinations or features of being—not even if He sovereignly chooses to.
I readily affirm that biblical theology has been a profound catalyst for improving and enriching our understanding of the progress of redemption. But it seems to me that biblical theology, with its unique focus on historical development and progress, is not best suited for the study of theology proper.
The reason for this is because God is not a historical individual, and neither does His intrinsic activity undergo development or change.
This places God beyond the proper focus of biblical theology. God is not changed by what He does—though what He does certainly brings about progress in history, creatures, and salvation. In an attempt to understand God as one of the historical characters in the narrative of redemption, ...
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Suffice it to say, while biblical theology tells us many true things about God, its proper focus on development and progress is not methodologically suitable ...
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God does not derive any aspect of His being from outside Himself and is not in any way caused to be.
In an effort to portray God as more relatable, theistic mutualists insist that God is involved in a genuine give-and-take relationship with His creatures.
This ontological openness to being changed by creatures, whether initiated by God or by creatures themselves, is the common denominator in all forms of theistic mutualism. Theistic mutualists may disagree among themselves on precisely how much process and development to allow in God or even over what the ultimate source or cause of such development might be. But all hold to a divine ontology that allows for God to acquire and shed actuality of being.
Theistic mutualists recognize that classical Christian theists believe such things. They are not convinced, however, that the traditional emphasis upon a wholly unchanging, simple, and purely actual God is sufficient to deliver such blessings to us.
They think that if God cannot change or be affected by the world in any way, then our relationship to Him seems overly one-sided and thus rather impersonal and nondynamic.
The concern from the classical perspective is that theistic mutualists have made human personal relations, which are irreducibly correlative, the paradigm for understanding all meaningful relations. To the extent that theistic mutualists believe God to exist in such a relationship with the world, they appear to undermine His perfection and fullness of being. In short, God has been reconceived as deriving some aspects of His being in correlation with the world, and this can be nothing less than a depredation of His fullness of life and existential absoluteness.
regard the mutualist account of the God-world relation as advancing an idolatrous form of theism
Part of the reason many evangelical theistic mutualists do not recognize that they have already adopted a form of ontological becoming in God is because they have lost sight of what “being” means.
If God should not be all that He is in and of Himself infinitely and eternally, then He would no longer be pure and simple being but rather becoming, and thus dependent on that which supplies new actuality to Him.
The thinking is that ability to change is better than being unable to change.
God’s glory is not actually increased when we glorify Him. His perfect fullness of love is not intensified by our acts of obedience. His intrinsic, infinite hatred for sin is not made a little hotter by our transgressions.
Man is not the agent by which these actualities are produced in God. Human actions are simply the occasions for the unfolding of God’s ad extra display of these unchanging and unacquired virtues.
Far from suggesting some sort of impoverished isolationism, divine aseity and independence, as functions of God’s pure actuality, actually speak of God’s perfect blessedness, to which nothing can be added.
#allthatisinGod #PureAct
One would also have to say that the agent who gave to God what He lacked had somehow “gotten out in front of God” (per the language of Job 41:11) and that God was now indebted or obligated to that agent.
“No one can add to or subtract anything from his being, neither can anyone increase or decrease His felicity.”
The plain sense appears to be that God’s unwavering covenant faithfulness is worthy of our hope precisely because it is rooted in His unwavering and unchangeable being.
One reason that change in God, no matter how small, is theologically devastating is that it would signify some alteration in His being or life and thus, to the extent that such change occur, destabilize human confidence in His covenant promises.
“Scripture does not contain a few scattered anthropomorphisms but is anthropomorphic through and through.”
God alters the revelation of Himself without altering Himself ontologically. He unchangingly wills changes in His ad extra dealings with creatures without willing or experiencing a corresponding change of agency in His own intrinsic actuality.
mouthful #allthatisinGod
“When repentance is attributed to God,” à Brakel writes, “this does not suggest a change in God Himself, but rather a change in activity (in comparison to a prior moment) towards the objects of that activity, this change being according to His immutable decree.”
The older metaphysically-minded theologians might have accurately described this distinction Ware makes as a real distinction between substance (i.e., substantial form or nature) and accidents.
God actually enters into relationship with his people, while knowing from eternity all that they will face.
First, it is incoherent to say that God is ontologically immutable while denying that He is absolutely immutable, unless one believes there are changes in God that are not alterations of actuality or being (which is de facto ontological).
Freewill theism, which Ware rejects, offers a different explanation regarding the source of ontological change in God.
Calvinistic theistic mutualists tend to provide the answer that, although God can undergo relational and emotive changes, He only undergoes those changes that He has so willed for Himself.
Though God does indeed experience change in Himself, Calvinistic theistic mutualists assure us that all is well since God is in control of those changes. This is what primarily distinguishes their version of theistic mutualism from that of open and process theism.
Packer explains that “God’s experiences do not come upon him as ours come upon us, for his are foreknown, willed, and chosen by himself, and are not involuntary surprises forced on him from outside, apart from his own decision, in the way that ours regularly are.”
Packer’s point is clearly that God has emotions He acquires by virtue of His choice and in correlation to creaturely actions of which He feels the effects.
This is also Packer’s point—God does not suffer action upon Himself from creatures unless He so chooses.
then it turns out that a man can be profitable to God, a righteous man can produce pleasure in Him that He would otherwise be lacking, and it is gain to God if we make our ways perfect.
In opposition, the traditional notion of divine aseity is captured well when Arthur W. Pink states that God “gives to all and is enriched by none.”
Rather, they must concede that God gives to all and in turn freely chooses to be enriched by some of His creatures.
Theistic mutualism, when consistently developed, is like an acid that cannot but burn through a whole host of divine attributes traditionally confessed of God.
When its work is done, the result looks rather unlike a variation or refinement of the classical model and much more like a demolition and wholesale replacement.
