BONUS|A Brief Review of the Conversation with Mullins

Summary

I play several clips of my conversation with Dr. Ryan Mullins and respond with some brief commentary. In particular, I aim to clarify some of the disagreements and distinctions related to:

• Whether Classical Theists can or should talk about ‘Cambridge properties’ or ‘extrinsic changes’
• A quote from Aquinas on how we should speak of God as “Lord”
• On how to understand the claim that all of God’s actions are identical to his one divine act with Nemes’ causal/effectual distinction
• How we might affirm a mysterian Trinitarian simplicity

A Clarification on “Extrinsic Change” and “Cambridge Change”

Mullins points out that several classical theistic thinkers say that God cannot undergo extrinsic change, and that Paul Helm has said God cannot undergo mere Cambridge change. The key question is: what is meant by ‘extrinsic change’ and ‘mere Cambridge change’ and can the meaning of the terms be extended to incorporate what the classical theist is saying. I think they can and should.

It’s true that some classical theist thinkers deny that God undergoes extrinsic change or Cambridge change. But this is specifically when such changes are taken to entail that the subject “undergoing” the change is in time (or “in space” with the other item) and/or really-related (in the metaphysical sense) to the other term of the relation.

For example, Paul Helm writes, “An individual is immutable in the required sense if no temporal or spatial changes apply to that thing, not even temporal or spatial ‘mere Cambridge’ changes. A real temporal change occurs when the duration of an object is extended, its life prolonged, just as a real spatial change occurs when an object comes into fresh spatial relations with other things . . . The creator is immutable to the extent that he does not have even ‘merely Cambridge’ temporal and spatial relations with any other substances much less real changes” (2010, pp. 19-20, online source). So, Helm seems to have in mind what I refer to as the “problematic sort of extrinsic change.”

If that’s the only acceptable usage of the term “extrinsic change” and “Cambridge change” then I too would deny that God undergoes such changes. But, I think that’s an unnecessarily narrow reading of the idea of a Cambridge change. And because this amounts to a disagreement about acceptable usage, I think the dispute at this level is merely verbal.

I find it acceptable to use the description that God undergoes “Cambridge change” or has a “Cambridge property” when speaking of things like God “becoming” the creator, Lord, Savior, and judge of all men.

Mullins is correct that Aquinas does not think God “becomes” these things by acquiring accidental properties, but he nonetheless does truly become them in that it becomes true to say, based on something in created reality, that he is the creator, Lord, Savior, and so on. This benign sort of extrinsic change or Cambridge change is what Aquinas talks about in ST 1.13.7 (quoted below).

Fr. Bernard Lonergan called these “extrinsic denominations” and if some still find them an illegitimate use of “Cambridge change” or “extrinsic change” then we could (perhaps) stick to the following labels instead:

• Extrinsic denomination
• Extrinsic predication
• Cambridge predication

Another contemporary Thomistic philosopher who recognizes these subtleties is W. Matthews Grant. He writes

[W]hen x is only rationally, and not really, related to y, there is no foundation in x for x‘s relation to y. As a consequence, x‘s rational relation to y is not anything intrinsic to x as it is when x is really related to y with x‘s relation to y being constituted by the foundation in x under requisite conditions. In a case where x is rationally related to y, statements that predicate a relation of x to y are true simply in virtue of x, y, and whatever foundation in y constitutes, in the conditions, y‘s relation to x.

W. Matthews Grant, Free Will and God’s Universal Causality, pg. 89. [emphasis mine]

This is, in a more analytic style, what Fr. Michael Dodds O.P. is describing with Aquinas’ teaching on mixed relations. And it is on this basis that we properly predicate (i.e. they are not “pious fictions”) that God is creator, Lord, Savior, and so on.

The Quote from T.J. Mawson

Mullins sometimes cites a quote from philosopher T.J. Mawson which says the following:

The second idea that is sometimes in play when philosophers talk about the notion of divine simplicity is that simplicity entails having no intrinsic accidental attributes. But, as already mentioned, theists should say God intrinsically holds the attribute of having created this universe (it’s not some pseudo/’Cambridge’ property of His that He is creator of the universe), but that He has the attributed is accidental — dependent as it is on a free choice He made.

T.J. Mawson, The Divine Attributes, pg. 54. [emphasis mine]

While what Mawson says is one possible way of describing God’s becoming creator, it’s not the only possible way of describing the situation. Since Mawson only asserts that “God intrinsically holds the attribute” rather than arguing that this must be the case, it would beg the question against the classical theist deploying the Thomistic account sketched above (and in Dwight Stanislaw’s master’s thesis in more detail) to insist that Mawson’s description is the only possible construal.

In other words, I deny that God needs to “intrinsically hold” an accidental attribute or property in order to rightly be called the creator.

Quote from the Stanford Encyclopedia

“Thus a Cambridge change in a thing is a change in the descriptions (truly) borne by the thing. The phrase “Cambridge change” seems to be due to Geach (1969, 71–2)…it also includes changes in the relational predicates of a thing, such as when I change from having “non-brother” true of me to having “brother” true of me, just when my mother gives birth to a second son.”

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on “Change and Inconsistency”

I submit that predicates “Creator”, “Lord”, “Savior”, and so on are (truly) borne by God because of changes on the side of creation. So, the phrase “Cambridge change” or “Cambridge property” is appropriately applied to God in the broader sense explained in this episode.

The Quote from St. Thomas Aquinas

Again, sometimes a relation in one extreme may be a reality, while in the other extreme it is an idea only; and this happens whenever two extremes are not of one order; as sense and science refer respectively to sensible things and to intellectual things; which, inasmuch as they are realities existing in nature, are outside the order of sensible and intellectual existence. Therefore in science and in sense a real relation exists, because they are ordered either to the knowledge or to the sensible perception of things; whereas the things looked at in themselves are outside this order, and hence in them there is no real relation to science and sense, but only in idea, inasmuch as the intellect apprehends them as terms of the relations of science and sense. Hence the Philosopher says (Metaph. v) that they are called relative, not forasmuch as they are related to other things, but as others are related to them. Likewise for instance, “on the right” is not applied to a column, unless it stands as regards an animal on the right side; which relation is not really in the column, but in the animal.

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. . .

Since God is related to the creature for the reason that the creature is related to Him: and since the relation of subjection is real in the creature, it follows that God is Lord not in idea only, but in reality; for He is called Lord according to the manner in which the creature is subject to Him.

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.13 (source)

• In the episode, I also read a paraphrase from page 100 of The One Creator God by Fr. Michael Dodds O.P.

The Quote from Fr. Thomas Joseph White O.P.

[T]he notion of simplicity as a divine attribute for Aquinas is strongly characterized by apophatic qualifications. Here some nuance is important. Against Maimonides, Aquinas clearly does think that the attribution of simplicity denotes positively something that is true of God’s very being. However, we do not perceive directly the reality that we denote positively. We can only craft notions of divine simplicity by comparisons made with created realities. The qualified notion of simplicity that we formulate to speak of God, then, stems in large part from negations of compositions found in creatures that must be made when we speak of the mystery of God. Such thinking entails assignations of unity or identity in God of what is distinct in creatures (for example the idea that God just is his existence or is esse in God’s very essence or id quod est). Such thinking, while ultimately always positive in ascription, is also always partially apophatic in method, since we ascribe to God in his incomprehensibility and transcendence a way of being that is unlike that of any composite reality we experience directly.

Fr. Thomas Joseph White O.P., Divine Simplicity and the Holy Trinity, 72-73, International Journal of Systematic Theology, 2016 (Footnotes removed from this quotation but available in the original article).

Resources

Divine Simplicity and the Holy Trinity (2016 paper) by Fr. Thomas Joseph White O.P.

Ep. #101 – Does the Trinity entail Simplicity? w/ Tomaszewski

Dwight Stanislaw’s master’s thesis on a Thomistic Account of Creation

Ep. #100 – Divine Simplicity & the Holy Trinity w/ Fr. Thomas Joseph White

John’s appearance on the Reason and Theology YouTube show (this is where the clip on the Trinity came from)

Related Episodes

Ep. #132 – Answering Five Objections to Classical Theism

Ep. #117 – A Biblical Case for Divine Simplicity w/ Dr. Steven Duby

Ep. #116 – The One Creator God w/ Fr. Michael Dodds O.P.