Touching the question of God's simpliciity, whatever is perfectly infinite in being cannot be built up from that which is finite in being. But parts of a thing must necessarily be finite. (James E. Dolezal, All that is in God, 48)
If God should be composed of parts, then these parts would be before Him in being, even if not in time, and He would rightly conceived of as existing from them, or of them. (Dolezal, 49)
In response to the first argument, it is not true that parts of a thing must necessarily be finite. It is mathematically possible to create a composite equation consisting of both finite and infinite components (And yes, parts CAN be infinite). In response to the second argument, why can it not be that the whole is prior logically, and the parts are discerned only when the whole is dissected? For example, a multi-dimensional tesseract is prior to the cube, since a cube is a 3-dimensional face of a n-dimensional tessarect. The tessarect is primary, yet we can break it down into 3-dimensional cubes for viewing, or even 2 dimensional squares. Therefore, this argument of priority is not sound.
May I suggest that Dolezal might benefit from actually learning mathematics (at the higher level) and science (also at the higher level), before making such arguments?
3 comments:
Not sure if this helps but it's a quote from his phd dissertation God Without Parts page 72.
"The basic logic is that if God were composed of parts he would, in a sense, depend upon those parts inasmuch as those parts would be indispensible to the explanation of his existence and essence. If God were not identical with all those things ascribed to him (i.e., simple) something less than the Godhead would be necessary to explain and account for Gods being and nature. It will not do to reverse the order and simply insist that God is prior to the parts of which he is essentially
and existentially composed, for then one would fall into the notion of divine ontological self-causation. Moreover, one cannot deny simplicity and still preserve aseity by insisting that the various parts in God are, after all, divine parts so that his dependence upon them is not injurious to his absolute self-sufficiency. Unless these divine attributes are themselves identical with the Godhead they are something less than and other than God himself and cannot, per aseity, be the reason for God's essence and existence."
In the same chapter he also discusses how something composed of parts cannot be infinity.
Hi Armen,
the first part of Dolezal's argument you have listed here is sound, and is part of how I myself will argue for simplicity. The issue here is not that I reject simplicity or aseity, or that Dolezal is wrong all the time, but that he makes bad arguments in an attempt to prop up certain biblical doctrines (and certain questionable or wrong ones too)
But the second part is where I would reject his argument. As I have said, I do not see how claiming simplicity rejects aseity because the parts are prior to the whole actually proves sinmplicity. Most certainly, in many case, the parts are prior to the whole. Atoms are prior to humans and stars and trees, and quarks are prior to atoms. But, as I have stated, the tessarect is prior to the cube or the square. Or, to give another example, time is prior to a moment in time.
So unless Dolezal gives a better argument than what is in his book or what you have quoted from his dissertation, I'm afraid my point stands.
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