The Orthodox Doctrine of God is Not Infinitely Elastic
Is Peckham’s Theistic Personalism Really Just Modified Classical Theism?
Feathers have been ruffled and toes have been stepped on! Tom McCall and Joel Chopp are very upset that I do not think that modern, relational theism is compatible with the orthodox doctrine of God. Specifically, they are not happy that I dared criticize the recent book by John C. Peckham, Divine Attributes: Knowing the Covenantal God of Scripture.
Here is what I said about it:
This book fails to engage the deep logic of the trinitarian and Christological dogmas of the early church with understanding. As a result, it argues that the entire church, (including Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism and Protestantism), totally misunderstood the fundamental doctrine of God for over 1500 years until the Enlightenment.
Now Joel Chopp and Tom McCall have written a piece in which they contradict my claim. They write:
Contrary to Carter’s charges, there is nothing in Peckham’s work, at least so far as we can see, that commits him to the view that “the church has totally misunderstood the doctrine of God for the first 1500 years of its existence”
Most of the article is an ad hominum attack on me, rather than a discussion of the actual teaching of Peckham’s book. It is a rhetorical slight-of-hand that is all too common today and as old as the sophists who opposed Plato. Here is how it works. They assume I’m wrong on the facts and then wax eloquent about how bad a person must be to say something so obviously wrong. They accuse me of being “uncharitable.”
Having barely acknowledged my claim, they flatly contradict it:
Carter claims that Peckham “rejects the catholic doctrine of God as the one, simple, immutable, eternal, self-existent, perfect, First Cause of the universe.” But Peckham does no such thing.
Remember that categorical statement: “Peckham does no such thing.” They complain that I offer no arguments, just assertions. But they don’t offer any arguments against my claim either, just assertions. They assert that classical theism doesn’t mean what I say it means and that it is elastic enough to be “modified” in the way Peckham does without departing from it. (I wonder if they even read the book!)
All right then, here is what I will do. First, I will clarify exactly what I mean by the “orthodox, Christian doctrine of God” and how it relates to classical theism by discussing the definitions of “classical theism” and “theistic personalism” provided by Brian Davies. I will show that the catholic orthodoxy, which underlies the Protestant confessions requires classical theism. This is what makes Protestants catholic Christians and not sectarians. Then I will list five points Peckham makes in the book about God and I will provide documentation in his own words and give you my reasons for saying why each point departs from the orthodox doctrine of God. Then you, the reader, can decide who is misrepresenting whom.
Before I begin, it is worth noting that John C. Peckham is not just some graduate student with a blog. His Amazon page lists five monographs in theology (mostly on the doctrine of God) with respectable publishers like Baker and T. & T. Clark. So, he presumably knows what he means to say about this subject and should be prepared for criticism from those who disagree. I have absolutely nothing negative to say about Peckham personally or his character. What concerns me is his ideas – his teaching on the doctrine of God – and how it affects the church today.
The Orthodox Doctrine of God and Classical Theism
Brian Davies is a leading, Catholic philosopher of religion and his book, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion(3rd ed. Oxford UP) is a standard textbook. He says that classical theism is “what all Jews, Christians and Muslims believed in for many centuries” and that “From the time of St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) to that of G. W. Leibniz (1646-1716), philosophers almost always worked on the assumption that belief in God is belief in classical theism.” (2) In this opening chapter, Davies contrasts classical theism with a new view of theism being promoted by a number of analytic philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne and shows how their views are rooted in modern philosophy from Descartes on. Davies is far from the only scholarly source I could cite here, but he will do because he is representative and clear.
He defines “classical theism” this way: “central to it is a particular approach to the doctrine of creation.” (2) By this he means not just that God created the universe out of nothing in the past, but also that God preserves it in existence at every moment of every day. In upholding it in existence, God is simultaneously everywhere present to it at all times. Thus, the universe does not exist on its own or by its own power; it is dependent on God. Like Aristotle, Thomas begins his proof of God’s existence from the reality of change that we observe all around us and works back to God.
Nothing caused or created God. God is simple, perfect, one, eternal, immutable and impassible. His existence is part of his essence. By “impassible” Davies means “not able to be causally modified by an external agent.” (5) This traditionally has been understood as a perfection not a limitation. God does not change as all creatures do and God is outside of (or not constrained by) time. Davies quotes Anselm of Canterbury: “You are. Indeed You exist neither yesterday nor today nor tomorrow but are absolutely outside all time.” (6) Davies also quotes the famous passage from Thomas Aquinas (ST, Ia, 13, 7) about “real relations”:
Since God is altogether outside the order of creatures, since they are ordered to him but not he to them, it is clear that being related to God is a reality in creatures, but being related to creatures is not a reality in God. We say it about him because of the real relation in creatures. So it is that, when we speak of his relation to creatures, we can apply words implying temporal sequence and change, not because of any change in him but because of a change in the creatures; just as we can say that a pillar has changed from being on my left to being on my right, not through any alteration in the pillar but simply because I have turned round. (6)
Davies stresses that for classical theists “we must sharply distinguish between God and everything else.” (6) Even though we can use created analogies to speak of God and although we can characterize him in negative terms, classical theists insist that we never comprehend God or make univocal statements about him. God’s willing and loving, he writes, “must further differ from ours, since, unlike ours, it cannot involve him in reacting to anything.” (7) God is not an individual like us because “he belongs to no kind or sort.” (9)
It should be pointed out that classical Protestantism affirms all this in its confessional documents without believing that any of it contradicts the biblical teaching that God speaks and acts in history to judge and to save. The Westminster Confession of Faith and the Second London Confession (just to give two examples out of many) both famously speak of God as being “without body, parts or passions” in the same article (Of God and the Holy Trinity) as they speak of God as “most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth . . .”. Both confessions speak of God in the very terms Davies uses to define classical theism: simplicity, immutability, eternity, incomprehensible, etc. Now you are free to think that they were just muddled and confused to believe that the God of classical theism can speak and act in history to judge and save if you wish. But I beg you to consider the possibility that it might be you who is muddled and confused rather than the entire orthodox tradition of Christianity.
When he turns to “theistic personalism” he says we get “a very different picture.” (9) Alvin Plantinga leads off by denying God’s simplicity. Richard Swinburne writes that God is like “a person without a body.” (9) Both, says Davies, count as theistic personalists because they see God as a person (not just as “personal” as classical theism does).
Theistic personalists believe God caused things to exist, but they think of God as “standing to the created order as an onlooker who is able to step in and modify how things are.” (11) Classical theists see God as causing things by creating things with natures capable of action, but theistic personalists see God as permitting things rather than causing them. God “distances” himself from the creation in order to give creatures freedom to be moral agents. Since they think of God as being in time, they often say that God’s knowledge of history “is acquired by him as history unfolds.” (12)
Theistic personalism rejects God’s timelessness and simplicity as incompatible with the biblical picture of God as a distinct individual with attributes or properties. (13) God being in time allows him to change and be changed by others. God is therefore not immutable or impassible, but like us growing and reacting to what others do and say. Although theistic personalists always concede that God is a mystery in some sense, they deny that the category of mystery should be used to describe the way in which the God of classical theism could also be the God of Scripture.
Davies admits that individual theologians are not always described perfectly by labels and there is “significant diversity” between them. (16) The value of the theistic personalist v. classical theist heuristic is that it clarifies what is at stake in revising or dropping individual attributes such as simplicity or timelessness. Many of the classical theist attributes are mutually implicating. For example, denying impassibility logically is a denial of immutability and denying immutability implies change, which denies timeless eternity and also unity. So, little alterations here and there can have vast, unforeseen consequences.
Peckham’s Doctrine of God
This is what Peckham teaches about God.
1. God is in time with us.
After listing texts such as Exodus 3:14, John 8:58 and Psalm 90:2, which he admits could be interpreted as teaching that God is timeless, Peckham writes:
“. . . while these texts in isolation might be read as consistent with the claim that God is timeless, none of these texts (or any others of which I am aware) provide biblical warrant for the claim that God is timeless.” (94-95)
He then clarifies his view:
Contrasting the transience of created things with the permanence of God the passage portrays God as enduring through time and creating ‘long ago’. (95)
He also says:
“Numerous other passages depict God as performing responsive and successive actions, otherwise acting temporally, and having a future.” (95)
His selective biblicism is on display here as he assumes that no interpretation of anthropomorphic texts is needed, although when it comes to ones depicting God as having a body, he suddenly discovers the need for interpretation. He quotes Terrance Fretheim as saying that “we may even speak of a history of God.” (96)
For Peckham, then God’s eternity is not timelessness in the sense of being outside of time, but everlastingness in the sense of always existing.
2. God changes.
Peckham writes:
“Strict immutability also follows from the Aristotelian-Thomist conception of God as pure act (actus purus), which affirms that there can be no possibility of change (potentiality) and that ‘God exists independently of all causal influence from his creatures’ (pure aseity).”
However, numerous Christian theists affirm a qualified kind of divine immutability, meaning God’s essential nature and character are changeless, yet God voluntarily enters into real relationship with creatures and thus changes relationally . . . While denying that God is pure act, qualified immutability affirms divine aseity and self-sufficiency, meaning God does not depend on anything with respect to his existence or essential nature.” (45-46)
By distinguishing between “strict immutability” and “qualified immutability” Peckham effectively denies what the classical tradition has meant by immutability. Immutability is not a matter of degree; it is an absolute. Something is either immutable or it is not. If is partially mutable then it is not immutable. Peckham thinks he gets around this by distinguishing further between God’s “nature” and his “essential nature” the former of which is mutable and the latter of which is immutable. But this just kicks the problem down the road.
The only way to understand this as not self-contradictory is to see “nature” as distinct from “essential nature,” that is, as two parts within God, one of which is mutable and the other not. As soon as one does that one has denied simplicity, which again is an absolute. (Something cannot be partly simple or mostly simple. It either is or it isn’t simple.) For Peckham, part of God is now mutable, so to say that God is immutable is no longer possible. Only part of God can be said to be immutable. Peckham thinks it is necessary to say this in order to be able to say that God enters into covenant with us, but the entire classical tradition did not think that way and for good reason.
To be subject to time is to be subject to change and Peckham says that at least part of God changes. In order to change, a being must be comprised of parts and whatever is comprised of parts must have a cause. So, Richard Dawkins’ question becomes pressing: “What caused God?” (For an extended, lucid discussion of the implications of a composite God, see Edward Feser, Five Proofs for the Existence of God, chap. 2).
3. God is changed by the creature.
Peckham writes:
This chapter has made a case that the God of Scripture is self-existent (aseity) and needs nothing (self-sufficiency), changeless with respect to his essential nature and character (qualified immutability), but experiences relational changes, including changing emotions because he freely created the world and voluntarily engages in back-and-forth covenantal relationship with creatures. As such, God is passible in a qualified sense, meaning God is voluntarily passible in relation to the world; God freely created and freely opened himself up to being affected by this world in such a way that does not diminish or collapse the Creator-creature distinction. (70-71) (The bolding is my addition.)
Here we have it directly from Peckham himself: Divine impassibility means God is passible. This is a blatant contradiction, which, ironically, is introduced into theology to avoid what Peckham and so many others today mistakenly think is a contradiction in traditional theology between the impassible God of the philosophers and the personal God of the Bible.
4. The eternal generation of the Son and the eternal procession of the Spirit are denied.
Peckham writes:
“I see no biblical warrant for confidently interpreting monogenes or other language of Scripture as evidence for eternal generation. Likewise, I see no biblical warrant for the eternal procession of the Spirit. . . I am not claiming that eternal generation and eternal procession could not possibly be true, but I see no biblical warrant for such claims.
Peckham’s reasons for why he interprets texts the tradition has viewed as teaching eternal generation and eternal procession differently is revealing:
“. . . while one might attempt to coherently affirm eternal relations of origin while denying divine timelessness, insofar as eternal relations of origin require strict timelessness (as most suppose), affirming such relations conflicts with what I believe is the biblically warranted conclusion that god is not timeless.” (237)
Clearly, the denial of divine timelessness is exerting pressure on Peckham’s interpretation of Scripture in such a way as to deny the eternal relations of origin, which the pro-Nicene theologians of the fourth century saw as the sole biblical way of differentiating between the three divine hypostases. Peckham’s denial of the relations of origin leads him to search for some other way of distinguishing between the persons. This leads us to the last point.
5. God is not simple.
Peckham writes:
If one denies or doubts eternal relations of origins, however, what might one say regarding how the trinitarian persons are both distinguished and related as one in se – that is, apart from the world? In my view, God’s oneness and the distinctness of the trinitarian persons might be consistently affirmed in terms of eternal relations of love. From all eternity, the trinitarian persons have been united in essential love relationship and distinguished by love relationship in that each person of the Trinity loves the other two persons as an other person. (238) (Italics original.)
There is no room in this doctrine for the pro-Nicene teaching that there is one will and one power in God or for the view that we should limit how we distinguish the hypostases by the relations of origin and nothing else. Here, Peckham consistently affirms that the persons are persons as we are persons, who enter into love relationships with others.
He thus affirms what Gregory of Nyssa was at pains to deny in Ad Abladium: On Not Three Gods. In his discussion of this text in chapter 15 of his magisterial Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Theology, Lewis Ayres notes that in this letter Gregory shows that: “the action of the three divine persons is shown to be one action not three distinct but similar actions and that, hence, the power that originates them must also be one.” (348) Ayres notes that this means that “all divine attributes should be spoken of in the singular and that the persons may be differentiated by us only according to their causal relationships.” (348) This is why eternal generation and eternal procession are critical: the relations between the Three are compatible with monotheism only if they occur outside of time. These relations are not things that God does to become God, but what God eternally is.
Peckham also writes:
“. . . this chapter made a case for the view that God is the Trinity of love wherein the Father, the Son, and the Spirit each possess a distinct faculty of reason, will and self-consciousness whereby from all eternity each trinitarian person loves the other two persons as other than himself (eternal relations of love). This departs from strict simplicity but affirms the unity of God and that there is nothing more basic than God.” (248)
Even Peckham admits that he departs from “strict simplicity.” Yet there logically is no other kind. Here we see how the various attributes of classical theism are mutually implicating and so when you begin to modify one it has a chain reaction down the line. Timelessness, aseity, simplicity, immutability and impassibility all end up getting denied, and for what? It is all done in order to articulate a non-Nicene doctrine of the Trinity. Substituting theistic personalism for classical theism leads to a social Trinitarianism that is incompatible with the Nicene Creed.
Conclusion
So, is Peckham teaching classical theism? I would say no. Can a doctrine of God be orthodox without affirming classical theism? Again, I would have to say no.
I would affirm classical theism as a necessary but not sufficient component of the classically orthodox, Christian doctrine of God. This is why I prefer to speak of “Trinitarian classical theism.” This term means classical theism as supplemented and corrected by the special revelation given in Scripture and expressed in the orthodox Christian tradition, especially the Trinitarian and Christological dogmas of Nicaea and Chalcedon and the Protestant confessions such as the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Augsburg Confession, the Westminster Confession. I hold that tradition to be the true interpretation of what Holy Scripture teaches about the doctrine of God. I also believe with the church catholic that the attributes central to classical theism such as simplicity, unity, eternity, aseity and immutability are in no way contradictory to Scripture; but rather, are taught in Scripture or can be deduced from what Scripture teaches.
If you want more detail on these issues see my recent book: Contemplating God with the Great Tradition: Recovering Trinitarian Classical Theism. Chapter 2 spells out what I mean by Trinitarian Classical Theism in 25 theses. Chapters 3-6 seek to demonstrate that this doctrine of God arises out of Isaiah 40-48 and chapter 7 shows how the patristic doctrine of God is the same as that found in Isaiah (and the rest of Scripture). Both the Bible and Nicene theology understand the Christian God to be the transcendent Creator and sovereign Lord of history who alone is worthy of worship. Chapters 1 and 9 compare this doctrine of God to modern relational theism and call us back to the tradition and away from modern departures from that traditional understanding of Scripture. Evangelical revisionism is not what we need today; what we need is to recover the riches of the orthodox Christian tradition, which can help the church engage in rational worship of the God of the Bible.