More from the philo class. On the potential problem for classical theism and its doctrine of divine simplicity. How can God be Simple and yet still have attributes? That’s the question I’m responding to w/ ref to our reading of Maimonides.
I overlooked responding to the question: “Can this claim be held together with the claim that God has attributes?” I think this can portend of a weakness for the pure being view of Maimonides et al. I think it is important to say that God is non-composite. But on the other hand, God comes to us by way of names (in the Bible), personal perfections etc.–by revelation. The fact that the Aristotelian view of Maim. et al. requires that a qualification be put in place with reference to the attributes vis a vis God’s non-composite being shows an incoherence built into the negating approach at its base. I think this because to attempt to construct a notion of godness without reference to God’s Self-revelation, which is personal for the Christian, in particular, ends up requiring that the philosopher turn human discussions about divine attributes into a mere heuristic device whereby we can hang our wondering hats vis a vis God, so to speak. But then when we acknowledge, along with Maim. et al. that ultimately these devices cannot really penetrate into the inner-life of God’s life, then in what sense is this a valuable exercise? At the end, this philosophical Monad does not correlate or comport well with a God, in the Christian frame, who has Self-revealed as Father of the Son. The best illustration of this, for me, is that if we follow Maim, or Aquinas , or any number of Muslim thinkers, we can all find a common ground set out for us, ostensibly, by the God of a so-called classical theism. And yet, the point of departure between a God who is triune and a God who is necessarily unitary (unitarian), does not allow for this type of easy fellowship between the disparate doctrines of God embedded in each of the so-called Abrahamic faiths. If God is three in one/one in three for the Christian, from the get go, and the God of Judaism and Islam is not, then just on a purely logical scale we have an inchoate contradiction.