The Theistic Personalists have en masse launched a full frontal attack upon the traditional doctrine of DDS. Paula even had a brief encounter with Ryan Mullins (author of The End of the Timeless God), though Paula wasn't really addressing him primarily.
The DDS is the de facto Orthodox Doctrine for Catholic and Orthodox scholars as it has been proclaimed by the vast amount of Church theologians since the very foundation of the Church. While it may not be official doctrine of the Protestant Churches, it should give them pause that the vast majority of Christian Theologians throughout history held this doctrine.
In fact, the vast majority of criticism toward the doctrine comes from Protestant philosophers and Theologians, though some Protestant Scholars have stepped in to defend the traditional doctrine.
A Brief Introduction to the DDS
In order to properly understand this, we must understand what DDS entails. Simply speaking, the DDS entails that in God there exists no metaphysical diversity. I should note that my particular understanding is linked with Scholasticism in particular and thus a Neo-Platonist might explain this a bit differently. Furthermore, I should say that these are not assumptions but argued for in various different places within Catholic Philosophy. So that even though Scotists will not argue for DDS the way I do, they still accept it.
In the first place, we must start with God being Pure Actuality which is the conclusion of the argument from the First Way. If God is pure Act then God is not possibly any other way. That is, God cannot possibly change for in order for something to change it has to go from potentiality and actuality. Thus since God contains no potentiality, God cannot change.
The next portion is understanding that God's essence is in his existence. The way to understand this is by observing that things have essences which are non-identical to the fact they exist. For example, it is not the same for there to be an essence for that essence to exist. Consider a cat, there is such a thing as a cat but it is not necessary that a cat exists merely contingent. Thus his act of being is not necessary from the definition of cat.
The fact that God's essence is in his existence implies many things, but it means (first and foremost) that God is utterly simple for if God had parts then he would be composite which means that he would need to rely on something to put together the Essence and Existence composite. Further he is the first efficient cause(Second Way) thus there could be nothing to unite his essence and his existence. Thus God's essence must be in his existence which means he must be simple. See De Ente et Essentia by Aquinas and Gaven Kerr's excellent book "Aquina's Way to God".
Furthermore, God must be timeless for given the definition of Time (at least according to Aristotle) which is intrinsically a measure of change. That is, since God cannot possibly change, he is 'outside' of temporal change and thus time itself. Be careful when saying this because modern Analytic philosophers often rely upon assumptions based on John McTaggart's work which a scholastic philosopher would not agree. In fact, until I read The Reality of Time and the Existence of God by David Braine (Requiescat in pace), I never realized I made such assumptions about what time is. Remember for Scholastic Philosophers Time is not an object nor an illusion but the measure of the manifestation of change.
The Core Issue of Naming
For the present time, I am not going to talk about the false worries of modal collapse nor talk about the ideas of active potencies which are clearly appealed to and understood by St.Thomas nor even will I appeal to the difference between necessitas consequentiae versus necessitas consequentiis. No, the topic which I want to provide an introduction to today has been discussed many times within the modern critiques of DDS particularly with respect to Mullin's book.
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(5) God cannot undergo any extrinsic or intrinsic change....
(7) God cannot have any intrinsic accidental properties
...
I have put off discussing (7) until now so that a particular deficiency can be seen in this proposition as well. (7) would appear to allow God to undergo extrinsic change, but as noted in (5), classical theologians have already denied this possibility in the doctrine of divine timelessness and immutability... This is completely contrary to the doctrine of God as spelled out by classical theologians. Augustine, Boethius, Lombard, and Aquinas all deny extrinsic accidental properties of God. Standard examples are things like Creator, Redeemer, and Lord. James Arminius adds Judge of all men to the list as well.
" The End of the Timeless God, Page 57
Obviously if this is correct then we have a huge problem with DDS since The Bible would imply DDS is false which cannot be true. Either DDS is true or the Bible is true, given these assumptions. Thus what Mullins is posing is a coherency issue not a logical problem with DDS itself. His criticism revolves around that Christianity and DDS do not cohere.
In fact, if you go through his book you will find that the vast majority of his problems with DDS are coherency issues rather than logical problems with the doctrine itself. However, the coherency issue is very pertinent to practicing Catholics themselves since we believe that Church's teachings on both the Bible and Theology. Thus we must examine the claim and find the falsehoods.
The idea that these changes are genuine seem to be true, prima facie, since if I become your Savior it seems that something has changed. Namely that I was once not your savior and now I am your savior. It also seems to be flatly the case that The Word became our Savior.
Furthermore it does seem like that there are is a requirement that God doesn't undergo any change according to DDS. Simply looking at the brief introduction I have provided has shown that DDS contradicts any type of genuine change. So where is the problem with this argument?
The Resolution
So this is a very common line of argument with regards to the DDS and criticism of it and Divine timelessness as well. In fact(besides the emotionally driven arguments), it is the most common objection to divine simplicity I hear.
One of the major problems with this line of argument is that it is completely incorrect to say that Aquinas would not of known of this type of critique and would have said we cannot call God these things for Aquinas actually addresses this type of objection in the Summa Theologiae in the thirteenth question of the Prima Pars.
"Since therefore God is outside the whole order of creation, and all creatures are ordered to Him, and not conversely, it is manifest that creatures are really related to God Himself; whereas in God there is no real relation to creatures, but a relation only in idea, inasmuch as creatures are referred to Him. Thus there is nothing to prevent these names which import relation to the creature from being predicated of God temporally, not by reason of any change in Him, but by reason of the change of the creature; as a column is on the right of an animal, without change in itself, but by change in the animal.
Relations signified by these names which are applied to God temporally, are in God only in idea; but the opposite relations in creatures are real. Nor is it incongruous that God should be denominated from relations really existing in the thing, yet so that the opposite relations in God should also be understood by us at the same time; in the sense that God is spoken of relatively to the creature, inasmuch as the creature is related to Him: thus the Philosopher says (Metaph. v) that the object is said to be knowable relatively because knowledge relates to it."
What is nice here is that Aquinas pretty much anticipates the objection perfectly and addresses it perfectly as well. He even refers Saint Augustine as saying the names apply temporally, thus also going contra Mullins' idea that no Classical theologian would allow names like Lord to apply to God which clearly shows that Augustine thinks they do.
Now it may not be clear exactly what Aquinas is arguing if one is not familiar with Philosophy and Cambridge Changes. While we review this it may be helpful to review the DDS as noted above. Cambridge Changes are simply changes which are relational, for example, you are taller than me rather than I am five foot two inches. Consider that you may get shorter and I might not change however inexplicably you become shorter than me. Now I would have the 'property' of being taller than you. However notice how I didn't change whatsoever. Rather you changed which modified the relationship between us.
This clearly easily sidesteps the problem since God doesn't change even if we do with respect to him. Thus calling God it is justified to call God things like Creator, Redeemer, and Lord even though these temporally gained. Mullins is arguing that God has to undergo change to become these things but clearly we have demonstrated that God does not need to change.
Sometimes my interlocutors against the DDS try and defeat the doctrine on their terms, rather than on the Scholastic(or Neo-Platonic) terms. However the way to defeat Divine Simplicity is to show the inferences made to it's validity are incorrect not by questioning coherency issues. Most of the reason why they will not attack DDS logically is because most (if not all)of the inferences leading to it are agreeable to them.
The only other way is to show that Metaphysical diversity needs to be included within God and that way is going to be ultimately fruitless given the vast avenues we have to reply and the lack of understanding that many have of Scholasticism. It is almost as bad as when Atheist philosopher simply point to the outdated nature of Aristotelian Physics as somehow proof Aquina's Five Ways don't work. It is a huge misunderstanding and confusion in terms.
The Conclusion
Now Mullins raises a lot of objections in his book and clearly has a journeyman's understanding of Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy. However, you can tell in a lot of places that he bases his understandings of Aristotelianism/Thomism on philosophers like John Philoponus which is not a Thomist and who has some issues with Aristotle. When Paula tried to point this out, apparently she clearly rustled some jimmies and clearly there was some misunderstandings about this side remark made within the context of a post which wasn't primarily directed at him. Hopefully this post provides a more complete critique of one of the more common attacks.
Ultimately this is not the only critique that the anti-DDS scholars make and I could spend a series of posts just addressing this argument(or perhaps a book) but it does reveal a commonality of the anti-DDS crowd. Often they will make a critique that is based on the coherency of the DDS with some aspect of Christian Theology/Biblical teaching. And then claim that the Scholastics never addressed it.
However, often if you dig a little deeper you will find that they did address it and perhaps old Aquinas wasn't so dumb after all.
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