The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation
Christ is the One in Whom in all things consist and humanity is not the measure of all things. If a defining characteristic of the modern world is disorder then the most fundamental act of resistance is to discover and life according to the deep, divine order of the heavens and the earth.
In this podcast we want to look at the big model of the universe that the Bible and Christian history provides.
It is a mind and heart expanding vision of reality.
It is not confined to the limits of our bodily senses - but tries to embrace levels fo reality that are not normally accessible or tangible to our exiled life on earth.
We live on this side of the cosmic curtain - and therefore the highest and greatest dimensions of reality are hidden to us… yet these dimensions exist and are the most fundamental framework for the whole of the heavens and the earth.
Throughout this series we want to pick away at all the threads of reality to see how they all join together - how they all find common meaning and reason in the great divine logic - the One who is the Logos, the LORD Jesus Christ - the greatest that both heaven and earth has to offer.
Colossians 1:15-23
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The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation
Episode 128 - Divine Simplicity: Tracing the Ancient Roots of God's Immutability
What does it mean when we say God doesn't change? Behind this seemingly straightforward theological statement lies centuries of philosophical speculation that many Christians have never examined.
In this thought-provoking exploration of divine immutability, we uncover the ancient philosophical roots of the doctrine that God cannot change. While many assume this teaching comes directly from Scripture, we trace its development through Platonic philosophy and medieval scholasticism. At the heart of this discussion is the concept of "divine simplicity" – the notion that God is not composed of parts or separate attributes, but is rather one unified essence.
This idea, far from being uniquely Christian, emerged from Plato's observations about decomposition and change in the physical world. Plato reasoned that things decay because they break down into constituent parts, therefore anything that doesn't change must be made of only one substance. This philosophical framework was later adopted by Christian theologians like Thomas Aquinas, becoming dogma in Roman Catholicism while generating significant debate in Protestant traditions and outright rejection in Eastern Orthodoxy.
The philosophical implications are staggering. If God's essence is truly simple, then all divine attributes must be identical – love must be the same as wisdom, which must be the same as power. This creates apparent contradictions that many find problematic. More fundamentally, we must ask whether Scripture itself presents change as resulting from decomposition, as Plato suggested, or whether it offers an entirely different understanding of God's unchanging nature.
Join us as we disentangle biblical truth from philosophical speculation and seek a more faithful understanding of what it means to worship an unchanging God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore
Well, welcome to the Christ-centered cosmic civilization as we continue to examine what it means to say that the Lord does not change, the immutability of God. And we're in the section where we're looking at this third category of thinking, philosophical speculations. We've already examined this. The first idea, that god does not change because the father, son and spirit are, have no consecutive moments, and that that everything they do think, will or feel is all done in this eternal, in the single moment, so that there is no development, no before and after, no progression, there's just this total, like single moment of total action, thought, will, feeling, and that's it in all eternity. So of course there's no variation of any kind there. So it is a kind of metaphysical solution to the question of does God change? But I feel the cost is astronomically high to attain that. Cost is astronomically high to attain that and if you'll remember what we felt, is the Bible ever thinking about that kind of metaphysical absolute changelessness in that way? And we couldn't find any scriptures that seem to be quite going in that direction, but nevertheless we've examined that to be quite going in that direction, but nevertheless we've examined that. Now our second philosophical idea is God is simple and, as you know, we've sometimes touched on this subject before in this podcast and, as we often say, the philosophical claim that God is simple is not at all simple. It's one of the most complex and possibly incoherent. Some people think it's an incoherent idea that it cannot actually be resolved into very clear, examinable and articulable doctrine of God. But here's the idea. Let's just first of all try and lay it out and then we'll explore it a bit and then we'll show how it leads people to say that God cannot change, and to do that we have to go right back to the origins of this idea, and to do that we have to go right back to the origins of this idea.
Speaker 1:So there is a philosophical tradition that goes right back to the ancient Greek philosophers of Athens that divinity kind of thinking and um uh speech were not taught. People don't say the father, son and holy spirit or jesus or anything. It's an attempt to talk about quote god without talking about the actual people, persons that are the only living God there is. Because you would imagine like, if you wanted to know I don't know what a horse is you would go and examine an actual horse and then, as you examine and observe an actual horse, you could come up with a very good description of what a horse was. You could come up with a very good description of what a horse was, but if you were to say, well, let's not get into any actual examples of horses, but let us think about the idea of a horse and come up with a definition of what a perfect horse will be, but we're not going to examine any actual horses, I don't know whether we come up with a very good definition of a horse.
Speaker 1:And so, similarly, when we step into this world, what we're doing and it's this tradition of religious philosophy about the work like god, or divinity, or absolute being, or, uh, the perfect being, or just the one different ways without examining the actual, uh, living god, the father who sends the son in the power of the spirit, because what you would think the only safe procedure to do is is to focus all our attention on the actual three persons who are the one living god, the only god that we have. But that isn't the procedure. Let's just get that clear. The procedure is to say, no, let's forget, don't, don't examine the actual, real god. What we are going to do is examine the idea, what we think a God could be like or should be like. What's the best God we can imagine? Let us imagine the best possible philosophical concept, human philosophical concept, of a god in general, and then, when we've done that, we can take that to an actual example of a god and see how we can connect those two together. Anyway.
Speaker 1:So the point is there's this tradition from ancient Greek philosophy that divinity, the supreme being, the one, is simple, which is here means non composite. If God is an ultimate being, if this supreme one, then this God must be made of a single substance, that is, god must have no composition of any kind and therefore cannot decompose or change. So well, that's the summary of this whole argument. There is that if, if there are no components, god cannot decompose because there are no components to break apart and therefore can't change. This philosophical tradition of claiming that God is simple and even bringing that into Christian theology it's been very strong in Roman Catholicism, especially through Thomas Aquinas. Thomas Aquinas has become like he took this idea to a very, very high, strong some would say extreme position and that view became part of Roman Catholic dogma.
Speaker 1:It's never attained that status in Protestantism and it's much more debated there, though many Reformed theologians do believe in divine simplicity, though I find I was just reading Charles Hodge and he gets quite nervous of it because of the philosophical problems that it brings with it. But so in Protestantism it never attains that level of certainty, or it's never something that is universally acclaimed as part of the very core of Christian doctrine, although some speak about it as if it's that strong, but as we so if we move from the West to the East. The Eastern Orthodox Church formally rejected divine simplicity in a synod in 1368. So the Eastern Orthodox don't believe in it in that way. They don't think of it as a dogma or anything, although you find individual Orthodox theologians are more sympathetic to it and then keep going east. And then you go to the Oriental Orthodox Church tradition and they're even more opposed to this idea of divine simplicity.
Speaker 1:Anyway, let's get into it. So to say that the divine essence is simple is to say that the divine essence is one thing rather than many things. Now that sounds really simple. If you say I mean, it might sound absurd. You might be saying how could we be getting into what is God made of? Who on earth thought that that was a useful question, or even a possible question to ask. Yeah, I get that, but here we are, this is where we are. But look, it is a philosophical speculation. Let's be honest. It is a philosophical speculation about what the members of the Trinity are made of or how they are constructed. I know even to say that I can't stop smiling at the absurdity of such a thing.
Speaker 1:But the idea, then, is that the Father, son and Spirit are made of, or or a divine substance or a divine essence, and that this divine substance that they are made of or that, well, I can't think of another way to say it other than that they are made of this or that they share this divine substance. But this divine substance is one single thing. Now, if the divine essence is simple in this way, made of just one substance or essence, right, god is not composed of different things. That is, god doesn't have separate modules let's put it that way modules or components. Because if you think of, like, the computer that I'm using now has many different components, and many years ago, like 20 years ago, I actually would buy the different components and assemble them into a computer, and so I kind of knew what all the different components were and how they connected together, and then those components themselves were made of even smaller components, like little chips and boards and wires and things like that.
Speaker 1:So the idea here is that God, or the one or the absolute being, does not have separate modules or components, but he is just a single thing, one single thing. So again, a person might say, well, god has power, God has wisdom, god has love, god has, you know, all these different things, righteousness, god has these attributes, holiness. But this is saying no, no, no, god doesn't have those separate things like separate components. He has a power component, he has a wisdom component, he has a love component, and then these are all joined together onto a circuit board and then that produces God. And the idea is no, that's not true.
Speaker 1:Anyway, this divine essence, this absolute being, the platonic, the neoplatonic one or whatever, or you might even want to say the Father, son, holy Spirit, are not composed of different modules like that. Rather, the divine essence is one thing, and that one thing is love, wisdom, power, righteousness, holiness, everything else that God is. That one thing is all those things. The one divine substance, the one stuff that God is made of, or God is, is all those things at the same time. Now let's just put a footnote here. That does lead to a logical problem and that one thing is all those things that God is described as love and power and wisdom and so on.
Speaker 1:If that's true, then, um, we end up saying that they're all the same thing. I mean, obviously, if the one divine substance is, the is love and power and wisdom, so they are all the same thing. So love and power and wisdom are the same thing. Love is the same as wisdom and wisdom is the same as power, and power is the same as holiness, and holiness is the difference between love and power and righteousness and will and personality or whatever. What is the difference between those things in the divine substance? If they're all the same thing, so they like sometimes people go well, they are all the same. But we limited human beings, we might think of god as having a range of different qualities. We will do that and use different words to describe God in different ways, different aspects of this one thing. But the philosophical claim is that God is just one thing and all those things love, power, wisdom, holiness, righteousness, will personality, righteousness will personality all of that, they're all the same thing.
Speaker 1:And philosophers this is why some philosophers just won't buy into this whole divine simplicity thing just on that basis alone. And Charles Hodge in his systematic theology gets a bit stressed about just that, because it does feel like you're ending up with something getting close to almost irrational, um, and I know that some worry about that, um, but look, let's not get, let's not worry about that too much. Or if that just all sounds too weird, it's a side debate really and it didn't even concern us in this, because we're really just trying to understand the idea that God cannot change, or what is immutability, what is the right way to confess that? So let's go back to were this idea of divine simplicity, the idea or just the idea of simplicity in this sense, of what is a thing made of and how does that relate to whether it can change or not? Let's just clarify that. Let's go back to that.
Speaker 1:We find this kind of analysis back in Plato. So Plato lived something like 425 BC through to about 348 BC and obviously one of these powerful foundational thinkers in the pagan culture of ancient Greece. It is interesting to follow this original argument in Plato's work so that we can see the philosophical foundation for this way of thinking of divine simplicity, because I think sometimes people treat it as something very obvious, that's like if you've never heard of it before. When I, you know, when I explain it to someone who's never heard of this idea before, they nearly always find it absurd or ridiculous or incomprehensible. And it takes quite a lot of effort to get them to even see why it's interesting or important or whatever. But the problem is partly because it is something that comes from this platonic pagan thought and then has been kind of adapted and adopted into Christian thinking by many down through these like two and a half thousand years, so that it's been kind of dressed up with a kind of respectability and even devotion that isn't as obvious when you strip all that away and just go back to the original thing itself. So the argument about simplicity doesn't come from the Bible or from the ancient prophets, it comes from Plato. So let's get into it and I'll give you quite an extended quotation from Plato in a moment moment.
Speaker 1:So Plato draws an analogy between the way we see things in the world changing by decomposition and what must be true of eternal spiritual things. So he says as we observe the changing physical world, we see that change and decay leads to composite things falling apart into the components. So that's what he says. If you look at the world around you, change and decay happens because things are made up of smaller parts and through the passage of time, the thing breaks up into its smaller components. And that's how things change and decay. He says that's the problem with the world. That's why there is decay in the world, because things are made up of other smaller components. So if that's how things change and decay in everything that we see in the world, then is this a general rule that works for all beings, including a God or the absolute being? And the conclusion is that if God does not change, that is because God must not be composed of separate parts, because everything we see in the world changes because it's made up of separate parts which end up falling apart. Things fall apart because they're made of parts. God doesn't fall apart because he isn't made of parts or the absolute being or whatever Plato's got in mind. Really, he doesn't really say God in that way. He tends to say something like absolute being or true being and things like that. Here's the quote. I'm going to give you the whole quotation.
Speaker 1:He's in a discussion with a guy called Kebes, in English C-E-B-E-S like that. So Socrates asked what kind of thing naturally suffers decomposition? That which is compounded and composite is naturally liable to be decomposed in the same way in which it was compounded. And if anything is uncompounded, not made up of separate parts, is not that, if anything, naturally unlikely to be decomposed? So then Cebes replies I think that's true. Then it is most probable that things which are always the same and unchanging are the uncompounded things, and the things that are changing and never the same are the composite things. And then Kebez says yes, I think so.
Speaker 1:So then back to Socrates. He says let us then turn to what we were discussing before. Is the absolute essence, which we call true being, always the same or is it liable to change? Absolute equality, absolute beauty, any absolute existence, true being, do they change in any way whatsoever? Do they change in any way whatsoever? Or does each absolute essence, since it is uniform and exists by itself, no-transcript. So then Kebez says it must necessarily remain the same.
Speaker 1:Back to Socrates. But how about the many things, for example humans or horses, or cloaks or any other such things? Are they always the same or are they constantly changing in themselves and never the same? And then Kebez says the latter, they are never the same. Ok, that'll do, we don't need to carry on with the conversation.
Speaker 1:We've got the the flavor of how it works, of how it works so, and interestingly, as this conversation progresses, they conclude that the human soul carries on existence after the death of the human body. Because the human soul is simple, made of one single substance, whereas the human body is composed of many different parts, components, and therefore it dies and decays and ages. So that's kind of well, of course we might say well, how do you know that the human soul is made of, is a simple thing, made of a single substance? How do you know that? How do you know it isn't composed of many different components? But he seems to just know that, that the soul is of a single substance, that the soul is of a single substance. But again, just a footnote point.
Speaker 1:But for the immortality of the soul, for Plato it's got nothing to do with God as such and certainly nothing to do with the resurrection of Jesus. Immortality has kind of nothing to do with resurrection or anything like that. Immortality of the soul, if you think about it, there cannot be any immortality of the human body, because for Plato, the human body is composite, made up of components, so it cannot be immortal. But the immortality of the soul is definite because of the basic quote, physics or the mechanics of what the soul is made of. Once you know what the soul is made of one thing, you know that it cannot decompose, it cannot change. In that sense, the observation of the natural world around them that up into not just unseen aspects of human existence, but Plato is projecting observations of what we might call created existence and projecting that up onto the creator. So they look at the world, notice that everything in this world changes because everything falls into decay and decomposition. Their explanation for this is that everything is made up of separate things, modular components, and therefore everything has a up of separate things, modular components, and therefore everything has a tendency to fall apart, to break up into the components they are formed from. And so they wonder together if there is a different class of existence, things that are not made up of several different components but rather just one thing. And they argue that if something is made of only one material or one substance, then it cannot fall apart or change in any way. And notice they play socrates and it's plato who it's plato is, records the conversations of socrates and and so on. So we call it plato's philosophy, but it's always through the mouth of socrates.
Speaker 1:But, um, when, sometimes, when I describe, when I'm trying to explain divine simplicity, and I'll say it's really about what is God made of? Sometimes people say no, no, it's not about that. It's about how to classify the attributes of God, or something like that, as if it was something quite more sophisticated. But no, it isn't.
Speaker 1:When we go back to where this whole way of thinking comes from, it really is quite specifically about what things are made of and the mechanics of how things are made. And really, if things are made of several different things, they can fall apart into those several things. But if they're made of one thing, they can't fall apart because they are just the one thing. And you could argue that there is a kind of another level to that discussion, which is that if, like, the components are of a more fundamental character than the thing made of the components, and so with that, if we the idea that, well, I'll tell you what, let's leave that and we'll, we'll, we'll touch on that in our next episode where we'll just follow through and try to ask does the Bible have that view of decomposition, decay and change? Is the biblical explanation for the changing, for the reason things change? Is it that things are made of different components?
