I’m thinking about which cases for the existence of God to focus in on, for my evaluation of Christianity.  Right now, I’m thinking about examining the cases of four well-known Christian apologists:

• Norman Geisler
• William Craig
• Peter Kreeft
• Richard Swinburne

I just realized that two of these philosophers are Thomists, and two are not Thomists.

Geisler is a conservative Evangelical Christian, but his favorite argument for God is a Thomist cosmological argument, and his concept of God is clearly shaped by the thinking of Aquinas (see his Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics entry “God, Nature of”, especially the sections on “Simplicity” and on “Immutability”).

Kreeft is a Catholic philosopher of religion, and his favorite arguments for God are the “Five Ways” of Aquinas (which reflects a complete misunderstaning of Aquinas, since the “Five Ways” are NOT arguments for the existence of God), and Kreeft has written a commentary on selected sections of Summa Theologica by Aquinas (called Summa of the Summa).  The commentary is an attempt to make the thinking of Aquinas about God and theology more accessible to the general public, because Kreeft admires Aquinas and believes most of what Aquinas has to say about God.  So, Geisler and Kreeft are both Thomists.

Craig, however, rejects the key Thomist notion of God’s “simplicity”:

According to the doctrine of divine simplicity God has no distinct attributes, he stands in no real relations, his essence is not distinct from his existence, he just is the pure act of being subsisting.  All such distinctions exist only in our minds, since we can form no conception of the absolutely simple divine being.  While we can say what God is not like, we cannot say what he is like, except in an analogical sense.  But these predications must in the end fail, since there is no univocal element we assign to God, leaving us in a state of genuine agnosticism about the nature of God.  Indeed on this view, God really has no nature; he is simply the inconceivable act of being.

[…]

The doctine [of divine simplicity] is open, moreover, to powerful objections.  For example, to say that God does not have distinct properties seems patently false: omnipotence is not the same property as goodness, for a being may have one and not the other. … (Philosophical Foundations For a Christian Worldview by J.P. Moreland and William Craig, p.524)

It’s wonderful to have Craig’s help to destroy the cases for God by Geisler and Kreeft, since Craig provides some powerful reasons for rejecting the Thomist concept of God as incoherent and as logically implying “agnosticism about the nature of God”.  I’m starting to like Craig a bit more now.

Swinburne clearly rejects the immutability and timelessness of God, which are key aspects of the Thomist concept of God, so Swinburne also provides some very good reasons for rejecting the Thomist concept of God, and thus one of the brightest and best modern Christian philosophers will also help me to destroy the cases for God by Geisler and Kreeft.

My work is already half done, and I have not even begun!

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UPDATE on 10/12/16

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William Craig made a podcast earlier this year in which he criticized the Thomist concept of God:

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/is-it-possible-god-is-not-personal

“Is it Possible God is Not Personal?”

Dr. Craig takes on two interesting questions on the personhood and nature of God.

[Transcript of a podcast with Kevin Harris and William Craig. Date: 04-09-2016]

Edward Feser replied to Craig’s criticisms (in the above podcast) of the Thomist concept of God :

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/04/craig-on-divine-simplicity-and-theistic.html

FRIDAY, APRIL 15, 2016

“Craig on divine simplicity and theistic personalism”

[blog post by Edward Feser]