In The Perfectly Simple Triune God, D. Stephen Long offers a broad and sweeping defense of the doctrine of divine simplicity—what he refers to as Christianity’s “traditional answer” to the question of God—against its critics. In part 1 of this book, Long provides an introduction of divine simplicity in the work of Thomas, offering careful and nuanced exegesis of how the doctrine of God develops in the Summa and how Thomas himself is making use of his sources. In part 2, Long skips ahead to the Reformation to show that even during this time of upheaval, the doctrine of divine simplicity was recognized by the majority of the reformers to be an integral part of the Christian message. Part 3 consists of chapters each on the criticism of divine simplicity from the perspective of process theism, open theism, analytic theology, political and liberation theologies, and varied critiques of metaphysics of substance, before Long concludes by identifying the work of Kathryn Tanner, Katherine Sonderegger, and Sarah Coakley as creatively interpreting the doctrine of divine simplicity for today.

The result is a panoramic view of the doctrine of simplicity from its biblical sources, through Thomas, and on to today. Long moves comfortably through centuries of Christian thought, leading the reader through complicated arguments always with a nod to what is at stake for the Christian life. Of particular note is Long’s exegesis of Thomas, which provides a clear and persuasive presentation of the doctrine itself and the way in which Thomas develops it. As Long defines it, “simplicity is another way of saying ‘God is’ where God’s essence or quid does not differ from God’s existence” (21). God does not have parts; God is not a member of a category; one cannot attribute predicates of God. From this idea of simplicity, Thomas’ understanding of God’s “perfection, immutability, infinity, eternity, [and] unity” (21) all follow.

As Long explains, this doctrine has particular implications for understanding the Trinity, the Incarnation, and Creation. Within Trinitarian thought, the doctrine of divine simplicity protects against the idea that the divine essence is separate from or prior to the Trinitarian relationships: “Trinitarian agency does not operate with an essence working behind or before the persons; as we saw above, there is no such space or time, no temporal differentiation in divinis” (53). And while Christians must proclaim the identity between the immanent and economic Trinity, simplicity prevents a misreading of this doctrine as creation having an effect on God’s own divine life (54–55). Further, divine simplicity entails on the one hand that what happens in the incarnation is an expression of God’s freedom—which it could not be if God already had a real relationship to creation (55)—and also that in the incarnation the second person does not change into some “tertium quid” (56). Finally, in its declaration that God does not exist in real relation to creation, the doctrine of simplicity entails that God is not in competition with it: “By real, he [Thomas] means sharing in a common essence or something ontologically necessary for something else. If he stated that God has real relations to creation, then he would either divinize creation or mythologize God by turning God into a creature” (57). In other words, God is not a part of the world, nor is the world an essential part of God.

Holy Fire

Central to Long’s defense of the doctrine of simplicity is that it preserves, rather than departs from, the biblical claim that God is love. While it may seem counterintuitive, the fact that the God-world relationships is not a real relationship, and that therefore the two are not in competition, is what secures the possibility of God’s real love for the world: “real relations imply ontological similarity and dependence,” in which “one could act only at the expense of the other” (57). Thus a doctrine of creation ex nihilo, where both God’s creation and love for the world are seen to emanate from God’s own self love, “is the only way to maintain a nonviolent ontology in which something other than strife and agonism forms the fundament of being. With creation ex nihilo, no such violent fundament exists” (59). Far from an “abstract, static God who cannot love” (61), the doctrine of simplicity thus provides us with a God who loves us precisely because God is not dependent or affected by us.

Long speaks powerfully of this understanding of the love of God in his chapter on open theism. Contra those who see God described as a temporal being in the scriptures, Long urges us to see God as their author (214). In addition to being described as a character in the scriptures—one who Moses or Abraham argue with, for instance—God is also present as a “simple, eternal perfection” speaking through the veils of the material world and of scripture itself (216). Tracing theophanies throughout scripture, Long demonstrates that God’s communication is often accompanied by a blinding light (214–15). The frequent pairing of words like “light” and “overshadow” with the exercise of divine agency points to “a blazing light that descends upon something—a bush, a mountain, the skin of Moses’ face, and the tabernacle, and finally manifested through Jesus—that is a condition for divine communication” (216). Thus in addition to seeing God as a character with whom Moses and Abraham argue, God as author appears in “divine invisibility manifest in the blazing fire of theophany” (217). This understanding of God in a non-competitive relationship with the world is therefore biblically warranted and not merely an imposition of metaphysical principles upon the narrative.

It is this understanding of God’s love as holy fire that Long offers in response to many of the criticisms he examines in part 3 of the book. They see the doctrine of divine simplicity as offering a static and aloof God who does not love and is not concerned with human affairs; a God who is responsible, either through action or negligence, for evil in the world; a God who as the great sovereign justifies other sovereignties and so secures the quest for power—particularly white, male, colonial power. These criticisms, per Long, miss the fact that divine simplicity entails that God is not a thing like other things—thus God’s freedom does not compete with human beings; God is not a cause like other causes; and divine transcendence and immanence are not opposed.

Theodicies & Theophanies

This book offers a careful and provocative defense of divine simplicity against many of its critics from the twentieth and twenty-first century. But the structure of this text—from its broad approach, to a chapter each spent on each of these critiques—leaves little attention to advancing the doctrine of divine simplicity for today. In many ways it reads like a preamble or clearing for a revitalized understanding of the doctrine of God. Long even suggests that it could serve as such for Sonderegger’s work (378). Thus I would like to take the opportunity of this symposium to ask him to speak more constructively about the perfectly simple Triune God, particularly with respect to the problems of evil and injustice that haunt much of the book.

In his chapter on process theology, Long faults it for treating God as a cause like other causes. Process theology sees the traditional answer as inadequate because it either directly or indirectly posits God as the cause of evil. Long’s explanation of the doctrine of divine simplicity shows how this criticism does not stand: “God is not the cause of evil. God is not a ‘cause’ at all in the sense process theology sets forth, turning God into an actual entity among other entities, entangling God in a Greek cosmology of an eternal creation. But God is culpable for evil and thus can be called on to remedy it. God can be argued with; Moses can stand in the breach” (192). Long does not attempt to solve the problem of evil here, indeed he argues Christian theology should not attempt to “make evil intelligible” (392). For his purposes he needs only to show that the move process theologians make in jettisoning the traditional doctrine is not necessary. But I wonder how we resolve the tension of God being both simple and one with whom we can argue. In what way can God be called upon to remedy a situation if God does not act upon the world as a cause? Does God intervene in the world, and if so, how? In other words, for what can we pray and hope?

These questions become crucial as we think through how divine simplicity might answer what Long refers to as “the cultural and political questions” being raised by feminist, liberation, and post-colonial theologies. In the chapter dedicated to them, Long defends the doctrine of divine impassibility against those who would answer the world’s suffering by having God suffer with us. While divine simplicity prevents God from suffering as we suffer, Long cites Herbert McCabe approvingly in saying that “far from making God indifferent to our suffering, God is more intimate to it than we are to ourselves” (301). Long closes the chapter by lifting up theologians like Gustavo Gutierrez, James Cone, J. Kameron Carter, and Willie James Jennings as thinkers who hold both concern for the oppressed and divine impassibility in a paradoxical tension (302–4).

In the book’s conclusion Long admits that “the traditional answer has not adequately addressed the questions raised by liberation and/or postcolonial theology” and raises concern that it do so without reducing the doctrine of God to God’s relationship to us and so make God an “instrumental good” (386). As Long quotes Gutierrez, “God is always more than our experience of him” (387). This excess corrects any theology that reduces God to its relationship to creation: “God is not there to secure our politics, our nation, our future, our knowledge, our religion, our economy, our family, our souls, or our way of life. God is not a foundation for anything, for there is nothing that can be built on an infinite, perfectly simple God. God is there to be enjoyed, to become enraptured with, to take us out of ourselves (ekstasis) and into that which is other than us solely because God is beautiful perfection, good, wise, and holy” (388).

It is this relationship between who God is and who God is for us that I am interested in. Surely the former exceeds the latter in the holy fire of the burning bush. Moses must take off his shoes and face bewilderment at the God whose name is “I am.” God is not just a character like any other character but also the text’s author. But this appearance is framed by a narrative. It plays a particular role in the salvation of the Hebrew slaves out of Exodus. God does not appear to Moses in order to be enjoyed, but to tell him to go back to Egypt and face the Pharaoh. Between the burning bush and the pillar of fire is a dramatic story of political liberation. How do these two things—divine transcendence and human liberation—relate? Do we see the holy fire of the transcendent God in the liberation of people as well as in the bush and the pillar?

Stephen Long’s latest book, The Perfectly Simple Triune God: Aquinas and His Legacy is a valuable contribution to scholarly efforts to overcome the standard contemporary interpretation of Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine of God while also revising Thomas’s theology where necessary. I am grateful for the opportunity to converse about Thomas with Dr. Long and unite our resources to engage in the important work of bringing Thomas’s contributions to bear upon contemporary issues.

Long’s exposition of Thomas’s synthesis of the traditional answer to the question, “Who is God?” focuses on the integrity of Thomas’s answer in the first forty-three questions of the Summa theologiae, namely, “God is the perfectly simple Triune God” (p. xx). Stating Thomas’s answer this way discloses that dividing these questions of the Summa into “two treatises”—de deo uno and de deo trino—is historically foreign to the text itself (pp. xxi, 4), and also overlooks the continuity and interrelationship of Thomas’s consideration “de deo.”1 Long’s work stands out not only because it challenges these standard (mis)readings of Thomas, but also for its broad yet erudite engagement with contemporary theological schools of thought that critique the traditional answer, particularly with regard to its relevance, intelligibility, or its connectedness to scripture. Especially insightful is Long’s attentiveness to the relationship between a question and an answer, and the relevance of this relationship for assessing the intelligibility of the traditional answer. As he writes, “Like all answers [the traditional] answer makes good sense within the context of some questions and less so in the context of others” (p. xx). Long insists that when interpreting Thomas’s first forty-three questions, we ought to do so in the context of the question, “How do we speak well of the mystery of the Holy Trinity?” Only in that context does Thomas’s affirmation of the perfectly simple Triune God maintain its full significance and meaningfulness. If the question changes to, for example, “What can be known of God by nature and reason, and what by faith and grace?” and we still respond in terms of the perfectly simple (known by reason) Triune God (known by faith), we lose the integrity of the traditional answer.

With Long, I agree that separating Questions 2–26 from Questions 27–43 misinterprets Thomas’s doctrine of God. I also agree with his position that the perfectly simple Triune God should continue to be affirmed today (p. xiv). In what follows, I would like to engage in a conversation with Long in which my intention is to express agreement with his position while also raising two questions about his interpretation of the relationship between Thomas’s understanding of divine simplicity and his trinitarian theology in order to further contribute to advancing Thomas’s theology in the twenty-first century.2 The underlying theme of my two concerns is methodological. Coming to terms with Thomas’s theological method is central to interpreting his theology, and especially to what Thomas is doing in the Summa theologiae. My first concern is Long’s assessment of the relationship of faith and reason in Thomas’s work and how it functions in his mature doctrine of God (see chapter 1). My second concern is Long’s repeated thesis that divine simplicity is what renders the Trinity intelligible (e.g., pp. 22–23, 32–33, 46, 92, 99, 119, 162), which he claims would then make sense of Thomas’s organization of the first forty-three questions.

Faith and Reason

In the opening prologue to the Summa, Thomas explains that he has organized sacra doctrina according to the ordo disciplinae. He does so because his goal is to help students understand. For example, in one of his Quodlibetales, Thomas explains that the theological teacher must help his “hearers understand how what is said is true. Otherwise, if a teacher settles a question simply by an appeal to authorities, the students will have their certainty that the facts are indeed as stated, but they will acquire no knowledge or understanding, and they will go away with empty.”3 Notice that understanding is concerned with intelligibility while reliance on authorities is concerned with certainty. Such understanding gives rise to concepts (rationes)—like simplicity and perfection—according to which the student can (analogically) consider and name God. Thus, we see Thomas help the student develop a true concept of the true God in Questions 3–11, and come to terms with the limits of their knowledge and how to name God in Questions 12–13.4

The conclusions of Questions 2–26 are ones that human reason can know apart from revelation—that is, they correspond to a knowledge of God that is natural to human beings on account of the natural likeness of their intellect to God.5 The reason we say such knowledge is natural is because it is proportionate to the human mode of knowing.6 However, while the knowledge, itself, is natural, it does not follow that in this life, we arrive at knowledge of God apart from grace.7 Why? Because concretely, as Lonergan explains, natural knowledge of God is not attained without moral judgments and existential decisions, neither of which occur concretely without God’s grace.8 Further, Thomas is not concerned with conclusions, i.e., with certainty. Rather, because he is motivated by faith seeking understanding, Thomas is concerned to help his students understand so they may form a true concept of the true God as simple, infinite, understanding, and loving. Beginning with developing a concept of God is a pedagogically expedient place to start for a beginner on the way to the triune God. Thomas is also concerned to teach his students the possibilities and limits of human knowing, and so it is an important exercise to (a) differentiate what can be known naturally and what can only be known by the supernatural light of faith, and (b) to understand that even when human intelligence is enlightened by faith, we cannot provide necessary reasons for revealed truths because the reason for these divine mysteries is the divine essence, which in this life is unknown.9

The first point is this: Thomas’s consideration of things that can be known of God naturally before engaging things that we can only know by faith is in no way a value judgment upon naturally versus supernaturally known truths. We can comfortably recognize that Questions 2–26 do develop a concept of God that philosophers could also develop because human reason is proportionate to such knowledge, and that Thomas is clear about the difference between natural and supernatural knowledge of God (see 5). Yet, we need not also conclude that these questions are a separate treatise on the one God or that Thomas privileges the divine essence (i.e., the one God) or natural knowledge over the divine persons or supernatural knowledge because of a methodological distinction between natural and supernatural knowledge. The first series of questions works out in detail the concept of God that will help students appreciate and engage the problem for understanding raised by the belief that this perfectly simple God is Triune. In other words, the student needs to work out a clear and rigorous answer to the question, What do we mean by “God”? in order to understand the questions motivating the Trinitarian questions of the Summa. In this way, the two sets of questions are mutually dependent and the first set flows organically into the second. Thomas’s organizational decision in Questions 2–43 and throughout the remainder of the Summa is primarily based on a pedagogical judgment about how to help beginners seek an ever-deepening and synthetic understanding of their faith. Furthermore, as we proceed to Questions 27–43, we can also recognize that Thomas continues to seek only understanding—not certain knowledge—because the sole sufficient and necessary reason for the Trinity is the divine essence, which in this life remains unknown.10 In other words, he does not seek a necessary reason for the Trinity—he does not seek to prove the Trinity—which is in part why he came to reject the analogy of the self-diffusiveness of the Good for the Trinity—it explained too much.11 Now, reason is operating still as reason, but enlightened by faith, and it knows a truth it otherwise could not. Thus, it seeks an analogy to understand how what is believed—that this perfectly simple God is a Trinity—can be true. This leads to my second concern.

The Triune God

Again, my second concern is Long’s repeated thesis that divine simplicity is what renders the Trinity intelligible, which would then make sense of Thomas’s organization of the first forty-three questions (e.g., pp. 22–23, 46, 92, 99, 119, 162). I agree that there is a relationship between divine simplicity and trinitarian theology, and that correctly understanding this relationship illuminates the unity of Thomas’s doctrine of God. However, I take issue with the idea that divine simplicity makes the Trinity intelligible. Instead, I maintain that coming to terms with divine simplicity helps one grasp the fundamental trinitarian problem for understanding, i.e., how can the perfectly simple God be triune? Thomas certainly affirms divine simplicity, but what illuminates the mystery of the Trinity for Thomas is the psychological analogy, not simplicity. Simplicity along with the other attributes Thomas works out in the initial questions specify the fundamental problem and set the parameters for the Trinitarian discussion—rules, so to speak, that cannot be violated when attempting to understand the Trinity. The fundamental problem is fixing the meaning of what everyone calls “God,” which occurs during the demonstrations in Question 2.12 On the basis of this fixed meaning, Thomas then deduces God’s attributes, which further determine the meaning of “God,” the meaning which governs the Trinitarian questions and the shape they take.

This point raises what I believe is a methodological difference between the way Long reads these questions and the way I came to read them under the influence of Bernard Lonergan.13 While I admire the serious engagement Long undertakes with a variety of contemporary challenges to the traditional answer, I find that Long does not sufficiently explain the traditional answer. Long does acknowledge that in the objections to Article 1 of the first trinitarian question, Question 27, “the very terms [Thomas] used to identify God stand in the way of affirming divine processions” (44–45). He also rightly argues that in these questions, “Thomas’s earlier terms norm trinitarian language to avoid speaking poorly of God” (47). However, where Thomas’s goal is to help his “hearers understand how what is said is true,”14 I find that on multiple occasions, Long’s explanation remains on the level of theological grammar. That is, rather than explain how the God that is perfectly simple can be Triune, Long repeats the trinitarian doctrine, e.g., because God is perfectly simple, belief in the Trinity is not belief in three Gods. The question remains, why? Again, I believe our difference is methodological. Recall Thomas’s distinction in the Quodlibet between giving authorities and giving reasons. Authorities settle matters of belief whereas reasons “confirm an already established principle, by showing the congruity of its results.”15 That is, reasons present a hypothetical, analogical, but fruitful understanding of the truths held in faith, which help the student understand how what is believed is true, i.e., by seeking the possible intelligibility of these truths. I do not find that Long makes this differentiation, and I think his retrieval of Thomas’s traditional answer falls short in addressing contemporary concerns because of this lack, as many of those concerns challenge the intelligibility of Thomas’s theology.

Ultimately, Thomas’s decision to handle the questions on the divine being and operations prior to the distinction of persons is pedagogical. Unless the student has clarified the meaning of “God,” she cannot come to terms with the fundamental trinitarian problem. Neither can she understand why an analogy for the two processions (rather than, e.g., the three persons) is the key to the problem nor grasp the significance of opposed relations of origin for personal identity in God.16 Thus, just as Thomas indicated in the opening prologue that he would proceed according to the order of teaching and learning, so in the prologue to the trinitarian questions, he restates this intention as his reason for beginning with the processions—in the orderly development of our concepts, the processions ground the relations, and the relations ground the persons. Thus, contrary to Rahner’s assessment (see 310–13 and 319–30), Thomas does not privilege the processions over the missions (nor does he privilege the essence over the persons). Rather, he is simply proceeding as a wise pedagogue, attempting to hand on the material to beginners.

Briefly, it is the hypothesis of what Thomas came to call “intellectual emanations” (“emanationes intelligibiles”) of word and love that provides an analogy for the divine processions, which in turn illuminates in a limited way how there can be three persons yet one perfectly simple God. For example, with respect to the first procession, as in us an inner word proceeds because of and in accord with an act of understanding known to be the sufficient ground for speaking, so in God the divine Word proceeds because of and in accord with the divine act of Understanding known to be the sufficient ground for Speaking.17 In the Trinitarian analogy the Father is the one speaking (dicens). Dicere (to speak) denotes intelligere’s (the act of understanding’s) specific ordination to the verbum (word) as the ground and origin of the verbum.18 Thomas’s distinction between these two aspects of intelligere (understanding and speaking) is significant because the Father is really identical with the divine essence, which is really identical with the divine act of understanding19 (as are all the divine persons), and at the same time he is really distinct from the divine Word. The Son is the Word spoken, which denotes the relation of dependence of the verbum on intelligere dicens (the act of understanding speaking), and also that the Son is really distinct from the Father. At the same time, the Word is also really identical with the divine essence and thus, the divine act of understanding.20 (This identity is something divine simplicity helps us understand, and so here perhaps is an instance in which Long’s thesis and my approach overlap.) Thomas states the analogy concisely in the question on the imago Dei in which he emphasizes the importance of the dynamic state of actually knowing and loving something in the intellectual emanations of word and love:

[EXT]Now the Divine Persons are distinct from each other by reason of the procession of the Word from the Speaker, and the procession of Love connecting Both. But in our soul word “cannot exist without actual thought,” as Augustine says (De Trin. xiv, 7). Therefore, first and chiefly, the image of the Trinity is to be found in the acts of the soul, that is, inasmuch as from the knowledge which we possess, by actual thought we form an inner word; and thence break forth into love.21

Ultimately, it is Thomas’s hypothesis of intellectual emanations (which he learned from Augustine and advanced) that makes Thomas’s Trinitarian theology relevant to the cultural and political concerns Long outlines. I share Long’s concern for relating Thomas’s achievement to contemporary problems. However, I feel that a more thorough penetration of that achievement with respect to Trinitarian theology will make its contemporary relevance all the more compelling. The reason the intellectual emanations of word and love at the heart of the psychological analogy are relevant is because they illuminate the “conversational” structure of human subjectivity, divine intersubjectivity, and the divine missions. Like the Triune God (Speaking, Word, Listening), we are constituted in conversation. Christian conversion can then be understood as a conversation between our Spirit-enlightened questions and the divine meanings and values incarnate in Christ’s life.22 It is by this conversion-as-conversation that the Christian community resists the world’s urge to reduce the socio-political conversation to questions of self-interest or power. Instead, Christianity keeps in focus the practical socio-political question about the best way to live together. It elevates the conversation by focusing on the life of conversion that pursues freedom and justice through radical self-honesty within the context of love and forgiveness.23 Finally, Christianity speaks in the new language it learns by listening to the Word with ears given it by the Spirit. Beginning with Question 43 and unfolding throughout the remainder of the Summa theologiae, Thomas’s work provides a model for understanding how the missions of the Word and the Spirit are coordinated to inaugurate a new divine-human interpersonal situation as well as new interpersonal situation among humanity.

Since I think it goes without saying that this is a very fine book, and since the basic thesis of the book is one with which I am, on the whole, in agreement, I will proceed immediately to a few questions and concerns. If I seem, in what follows, to seize upon a couple of small issues that aren’t really the main point of the book, it’s precisely because I don’t have a bone to pick with the vast majority of what is argued therein. I apologize in advance, then, if these seem overly tangential.

First, I wonder if the emphasis in the first chapter on the many errors of reason in its attempt to know God through philosophy alone does not distort the overall tone of Thomas’s thought. It must be recalled that this question only has to be asked because there were people at the time who found Aristotle to be so, well, right about everything, including God, that revealed theology seemed to be superfluous. Thomas could have argued, with the “radical Augustinians” of his day, that Aristotle was not only not sufficient but even unnecessary given the fact of revelation. If we keep this context in mind, Thomas’s first question is not intended so much to call philosophy into question or even to make it a subspecies of theology, as it is to say that philosophy is not sufficient. What philosophy can do in certain cases, e.g., when it is taken up by persons like Aristotle who have the smarts, leisure and virtue to pursue it as it should be pursued, is not called into question by Thomas. Not only do many of the things that Thomas says about God, including the “five ways,” come from Aristotle with little change, Thomas wrote painstakingly attentive and large commentaries on several of Aristotle’s works, and even wrote an entire treatise defending Aristotle’s notion that the universe could very well be eternal without, for all of that, being uncaused.

I often got the impression from the first chapter of the book that philosophy needs to be hobbled in order to make room for theology, or even that reason was so frail that it couldn’t judge philosophical claims on philosophical grounds. But I don’t think this does justice to Thomas, and it may be the reason that Long finds it relatively easy to distance Thomas from Vatican I. For Thomas, what we’ve come to call “natural theology” is not first a question of reason’s relative merits or demerits. Philosophy, which includes “first philosophy” and thereby theology, arises because the finite world does not account for itself. It is unnecessary, contingent, in a state of becoming or potentiality, etc., and yet it exists and can be known. For Aristotle, the realm of potency evokes the realm of Pure Act, for potency wouldn’t exist if there were only potency. Thomas, it seems to me, accepts all of this.

If I were to state the foregoing more positively, I would say that the realm of potency is something like a moving picture of the realm of Act because Act precedes potency and accounts for it. Pure Act can be known, of course imperfectly and under various limitations, through the world of potency, that is, the world of matter and change. Philosophy, in such a view, is not first an activity of a thinker. Indeed, for Plato, Aristotle, and Thomas philosophy doesn’t begin in thinking, as it does for almost all modern and even postmodern philosophers, but in wonder. Philosophy’s first act is an act of humility/receptivity. The philosopher is first struck by Being’s appearance in beings (as Balthasar says, “Being appears, and Being appears.”) and only then begins to reflect on this. Even the philosopher’s thinking, then, is more an act of contemplation or ascesis: a refusal to get stuck on the surface of things and an effort to encounter, in that which is changing, that which is unchanging.

The reason, it seems to me, that the early and medieval Christians so easily incorporated this approach into theirs had to do with their own decisions, in following Christ, to exchange “the cares of this world” for “the pearl of great price.” In this, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were seen as kindred spirits, something like proto-monastics, even if ultimately it was Christianity that was the true philosophy. Philosophy, in short, was not first a method or a grammar for clarifying thinking; it was first a way of life, a natural way of “setting one’s mind on things above,” which found its fulfillment in Christ, the philosopher par excellence.

The second, and related, question I have regards Long’s understanding of causality and, by implication, the five ways. On at least two occasions in the book Long refers to David Bentley Hart’s concerns about speaking of God as efficient cause. This builds on my first question, insofar as speaking of God as cause of the world didn’t just affect the way the ancients thought about “God,” but also the way they thought about the world. When I discuss the five ways with my undergraduates I find that the thing that most perplexes them is the fact that Thomas begins, not with God, but with the ordinary world of change. Thomas sees the world of matter and change, the world that has long since been turned over to modern science, as intrinsically related to God. We often mistakenly think that modern science maintained efficient, but abandoned formal and final causality. But as D. C. Schindler has recently shown, neither Galileo nor Hume successfully avoided talking about all three, nor did they get efficient causality right. Aristotle’s favorite example of efficient causality is not, as in Hume, one billiard ball hitting and moving another; it is, rather, a parent causing a child. When we think of efficient cause in this fashion it becomes not only impossible to separate it from formal and final causality, it also becomes impossible to reduce it to mechanistic motion or force. The efficient cause gives a share of its being to that which it causes; it doesn’t set it into motion. To speak of God as efficient cause of the universe, then, is simply a way of accounting for the universe’s being (which it doesn’t give to itself) and its order (which it also doesn’t give to itself). “A cause is that from whose being another being follows,” says Thomas (De principiis naturae). Far from being a threat, therefore, to human freedom, speaking of God as efficient cause actually supports Long’s view that God’s freedom is not in competition with ours, but is, rather, the very thing that causes and therefore secures it.

It’s not so much that Long denies anything of what I’ve said to this point. Indeed, I suspect he might agree with some or even most of it. It’s just that not making these things explicit gives the book a certain tune that doesn’t always fit with its words. I also think there is a danger of diminishing the important role of philosophy, as understood above, in our various dialogues with modernity/postmodernity. Something happens in Descartes and his progeny that marks a break with, and not a development of, the medieval synthesis which cannot simply be bypassed in theology’s engagement with disciplines like science, social “science,” gender theory, politics, and the like. These disciplines are neither philosophically nor theologically neutral.

I think that the foregoing concerns may be relevant to Long’s recommendations for going forward. His goal is to hold onto Thomas’s perfectly simple, triune God—in the face of all manner of recent rejections—but to do so in a way that addresses the legitimate concerns of these rejections. In this he holds up three contemporary theologians—Kathryn Tanner, Katherine Sonderegger, and Sarah Coakley—who, in various ways, defend both God’s simplicity and God’s tri-unity, all the while showing why, in fact, this is the only way properly to address the legitimate concerns of the naysayers in the second part of the book. With much of what he says here I am in agreement. It is with Coakley’s approach, whose influence can be felt throughout the book, that the above questions might come to bear. In God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay On the Trinity, Coakley argues in favor of a theologie totale, which avoids the pitfalls of three other approaches: a traditionalist approach that avoids serious engagement with modernity/postmodernity by hiding behind ecclesial authority and posing traditionalist critiques of modernity (John Paul II, Benedict XVI, et al.); an orthodoxy combined with postmodernism which call for a forceful theological critique of modernity, but which also seems to exempt itself from serious engagement with the legitimate concerns of the Enlightenment and questions of justice (John Milbank); and classical Liberation/Feminist theologies, which reduce theology to experience and to various political programs established extra-theologically.

It is Coakley’s critique of the first two movements above—and the point here is not of course that they are above criticism—that gets to the root of my concerns. In both ressourcement Catholicism and Radical Orthodoxy we see an attempt to reclaim the world of nature/creation as gift, which in part means reclaiming the philosophical approach of Plato, Aristotle and Thomas, although not without development. Seeing creation as gift, a move which is affirmed forcefully in Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’, cuts against the grain of the Enlightenment’s “two waves”: the “conservative” wave that denies teleology in order to give the subject mastery over nature, and the “liberal” wave that denies the intrinsic meaning of human nature in order to liberate the self from the burdens of its body. I wonder, and this is a question not a charge, if Coakley’s mystical/contemplative turn doesn’t have the effect of bypassing this much-needed critique?

Something Steve Long said to me at Duke University in the early 1990s changed how I thought, not only about the Trinity, but about doctrine in general. I don’t now remember what had preceded or what followed in the conversation, but he said simply, “The doctrine of the Trinity is important not because it is useful, but because it is true.” In the midst of graduate studies, propelled by the conviction that our generation had discovered this neglected doctrine anew and eager to apply it to all sorts of pressing issues of the day—from creating an ontology of peace to rethinking gender to offering an alternative to liberal or conservative social ethics—Steve’s remark, probably said at the cafeteria at Duke Hospital (where the cheapest lunch on campus could be had), brought all of this to a screeching halt for me. His statement was tantamount to heresy to us who were so eager to prove the utility of the doctrine of the Trinity. It used that uncomfortable, unfashionable word “true” and had about it the putrid whiff of metaphysics, whose cadaver we thought long-buried. But once he said it, it was for me undeniable and there was no going back. In what follows, everything I say about Steve’s The Perfectly Simple Triune God should be read as the words of a debtor trying to make payment on his debt.

In writing this book, Steve has now put all of us in his debt. Not only has he offered an account of what he describes as the “traditional answer” to the question “who is God?” but he has saved some of us (for others it is, alas, too late) from having to read a lot of other books by summarizing the positions of a wide array of critics of this traditional answer. Steve, being a Methodist and therefore nice by nature, is generous to these critics, taking seriously their criticisms and seeking to honor and address their valid concerns. I am not sure that I, being a Catholic and therefore inquisitorial by nature, could have mustered such generosity. But Steve’s readers and, I hope, the critics of the “traditional answer” he engages, will benefit from his generosity. This is not to say that I am without questions and criticisms regarding Steve’s generous book and I hope it will not seem churlish and ungrateful to air some of these.

Speculative and Practical

Throughout the book, Steve deploys a distinction between “speculative” and “practical” theology, terms he draws from Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I q. 1 a. 4. As Steve describes it, “Sacred doctrine as a speculative science concerns God’s self-knowledge. Sacred doctrine as a practical science concerns God’s work. The former focuses on God in God’s self. The latter on God’s relations to creatures” (9). He further subdivides practical theology into “Practical theology 1,” which deals with God’s relationship to creatures, and “Practical theology 2,” which deals with creatures’ relationship to God. At least as I read Thomas, however, he does not really make the distinction Steve is making here. In particular, Thomas does not identify the “speculative” dimension of theology or, as he calls it, sacra doctrina with God’s knowledge of himself in se nor does he identify the “practical” dimension of theology with God’s works. Rather, for Thomas theology is “speculative” when it is concerned with God who, as true, is the object of human knowing, and is “practical” when it is concerned with God who, as good, is the object of human action. True, Thomas does mention in this article God’s knowledge of himself and of his works, but this is simply to make the point that a single scientia can have two objects; that is, just as God can know himself and his works with one simple act of knowledge, so sacra doctrina also knows God under the aspect of the true and under the aspect of the good within the same scientia.

In pointing this out, I hope (though who of us ever knows his or her own true motives?) I am not simply engaging in the Thomist one-upmanship that inevitably raises its head whenever someone says anything about Thomas. It seems to me that in his use of the terms “speculative” and “practical” Steve is ceding ground unnecessarily to critics of the “traditional answer” by presenting a form of speculative knowledge of God that is in fact unattainable by human reason (God’s own self-knowledge), which then must somehow be accessed by a form of practical knowledge (“Practical theology 1”). Steve surely agrees with Thomas that no creature can ever possess God’s own self-knowledge, not least because “the thing known is in the knower according to the mode of the knower” (Summa theologiae I q. 14 a. 1 ad 3). So this speculative theology that Steve posits—God’s self-knowledge—is really not theology at all, not a human discourse about God, but only a kind of Ding an sich that plays a regulative role in theology. In this sense, Steve’s speculative-practical distinction remains within the strictures of post-Kantian thought, such that all human thinking and speaking of God is really within the realm of practical theology. This is clearly contrary to what Steve intends. He writes, “Theology attends to God as God is in himself and not only God as God is related to creatures” (31). In other words, he wants to assert the point that was implicit in what he said to me all those years ago: the doctrine of the Trinity says something true about God, not simply about how God relates to us. But the way he sets up the speculative-practical distinction ends up reinforcing precisely the problem he wishes to escape and does not fully alleviate the anxiety that speculative theology is somehow trespassing on God’s territory.

For Thomas, all knowledge of God had by human beings in this life is based on God’s effects in creatures, whether of nature or of grace (see Summa theologiae I q. 1 a. 7 ad 1).1 This is no less true of speculative knowledge than it is of practical knowledge. In other words, for Thomas the speculative-practical distinction has nothing to do with the distinction between knowledge of God and knowledge of God’s works; rather it has to do with God as the object of the intellect and God as the object of the will. Thomas’s point is not that theology reaches beyond God’s effects to attain God himself, but rather that theology is both an intellectual and affective discipline. Yet while our theological knowledge is restricted to what can be known from God’s effects (whether of nature or of grace), this does not for Thomas turn God into an unknown Ding an sich about which we can only speculate. For God’s effects are analogically related to God as cause, such that we do not simply know the effects but actually know the cause, albeit imperfectly. So Thomas, like Steve, claims that our theology is actually about God and not simply about our experience of God’s effects, but he does so without setting up the problematic separation between God in se and God pro nobis, which the theologian must then strain to reunite.

God as Predestining Cause

I am similarly puzzled by Steve’s uneasy conscience over the category of “cause” with regard to God. One of Steve’s reasons for asserting our access to God’s self-knowledge is that without this, he claims, we can only know God as cause of his effect and not in himself, as “the donating source of being” (212). The language of causality, however, so saturates Thomas’s theology that I do not understand how one can work in this idiom without employing it. Indeed, Thomas modifies the understanding of God as cause found in Aristotle by giving it even wider scope, to include both efficient and exemplary causality as well as final causality. Thomas certainly sees God as “the donating source of being,” writing that, “it is necessary that esse be the proper effect of the first and most universal cause, which is God” (Summa theologiae I q. 45 a. 5; cf. De potentia q. 3 a. 4). But while Thomas sees God as the only donating source of being, he does not think that esse is the only effect of God. As indicated by the fourth way he gives in the Summa of demonstrating God’s existence, God guides the cosmos to its end not only in the way that a goal orients our action, but also in the way that an archer directs an arrow. This is not to say that God acts as a puppet-master, pulling the strings of creatures. But it does mean that God causes free creatures to act freely and that no free human act is self-originating. In part I think Steve’s argument remains haunted by a certain modern impoverishment of the notion of causality, such that the claim that “God causes x,” where x = the act of a creature, necessarily implies that x is an unfree action on the part of the creature. I feel confident that Steve would reject this implication, yet he remains troubled by divine causality.

The real source of Steve’s trouble seems to be the idea that God predestines some to glory and others to reprobation. Indeed, he seems so troubled over this issue that his interpretive skills seem temporarily suspended. In particular, he seems to misconstrue Thomas’s remarks concerning how divine simplicity is related to the possibility of damnation. It is simply not true that Thomas holds, as Steve characterizes it, “that divine simplicity requires a hierarchy of multiplicity including the damnation of God’s creatures” (39).

First, it is not the simplicity of God that demands a hierarchy of beings, but rather the non-simplicity of creatures. That is to say, if God is to create a finite cosmos that reflects the infinite divine glory as perfectly as possible, then there must be multiplicity in that cosmos: a world consisting of multiple instantiations of all 118 (and counting) elements on the periodic table is more perfect than a world consisting of a single hydrogen atom. But such a world of diversity brings with it, as something permitted by God for the sake of the greater good of multiplicity, elements of loss, destruction, and evil. A world of lions and lambs is a better, richer world than a world just of lambs. But a world of lions and lambs is, given the nature of lions, going to result in some dead lambs. This, however, is not an entailment of uncreated simplicity but of created multiplicity.

Second, Thomas does not claim that this multiplicity requires that we hold that some rational creatures be damned; it is rather, he would say, Scripture that requires this. We may think him wrong in holding that this is in fact what Scripture teaches (Balthasar goes to some effort to make this case), but what is clear is that he does not present the hierarchy of created goods as necessarily entailing the reprobation of some creatures. Rather, he thinks the evil of the damnation of some is simply a fact of the scriptural world no less than the evil of the destruction of lambs by lions is a fact of the natural world. Thomas invokes hierarchically ordered multiplicity as a post facto account of why what he sees as a fact of Scripture can be conveniens (fitting), given what we believe about God as the cause of goodness. If it is the case that some are called to glory and others not, then clearly the will of God is the cause/reason (Aristotle’s aitia) of this, and the goodness of the gradations found in creation give us some dim insight into how this act of divine willing might be compatible with the good God wills for creation as a whole.

Third, Steve briefly makes common cause with the critics to say that Thomas violates the principle of divine simplicity in positing a distinction between God’s antecedent will and consequent will in the attempt to acquit God of willing the evil of reprobation (40). But Thomas clearly does not mean by this that God has two distinct wills; rather, God wills some things absolutely (antecedently) and other things as taking into account the total context (consequently). This no more involves God having two wills than does the case of a surgeon who wills as a matter of principle to preserve an organ, but upon it becoming diseased wills that it should be removed.

If Thomas is wrong about God’s reprobation of sinners, it is not a failure of his doctrine of God, but of his scriptural hermeneutics. And whether or not sinners are reprobated, it is not because God’s simplicity either requires or forbids this; it is because God does or doesn’t will it, and this will is revealed in Scripture. This should, I think, come as good news to Steve and others who hold to the traditional answer to the question “Who is God?” and yet wish also to hold onto a hope of universal salvation. Because it means that we do not need to resort to such strategies as Open or Process Theism in order to acquit God from the charge of predestining some to damnation. Rather, we must wrestle with the Scriptures as we seek to reread and reconcile those passages that speak of a universal hope for salvation with those that speak of God’s reprobation of sinners.

The Elusive God and the Translucent World

Because I find the traditional answer to the question “Who is God?” that Steve exposits and defends so deeply resonant with my own beliefs, I make this final inquiry as much to myself as to Steve. A persistent feature of the critics of the traditional answer is their tendency to treat God as one more item in the universe, albeit often a more powerful or more loving or more durable item. This can be seen in the subjection of both God and creatures to a universal process of becoming by Process Theists, and in the limitations placed on divine immutability and impassibility by Open Theists, and in the insistence on the univocal use of terms for both God and creatures by some analytic philosophers of religion, and in the rejection of the logic of “mixed relations” (i.e., the asymmetry of logical and real relations between God and the world) by almost all of the critics. In these and other ways, God and creatures are subjected to a common regime, making God a fellow-citizen with us of a larger cosmological republic.

Against such divine subjection, Steve holds to the difficult and elusive God implied by the traditional answer. This is a God of whom we can speak truly, knowing that our words apply to him, but without knowing how our words apply to him, except to know that the perfections that we name apply more truly to God than they do to creature. This is a God who non est in genera—who not only does not share a common genus with creatures, but who is contained in no genus whatsoever. This is the God who is unchanged by my prayers, unmoved by my struggles, unworried about my fate. This is the God whom the critics identify as cold, unloving, incredible, and difficult to reconcile with the picture of God found in Scripture.

In all honestly, there is a part of me that wishes that I believed in the God who was a fellow-citizen of the cosmos. The God who struggles with becoming, who suffers with creation, to whom we can refer like any other thing seems a much more vivid God, a God who stands out in bold relief against the backdrop of the cosmos. And I must ask myself if the God of the traditional answer, the perfectly simple triune God, is not simply a manifestation of my own attenuated faith. The God who suffers and changes and worries and repents seems not only more “biblical,” but also in a general sense more real, more of a fully-fleshed-out character in the world’s story. Do I resort to metaphysical attributes such as eternity and impassibility and eternity—categories that I do not need to understand because they are not understandable—as a way of evading God?

I will freely admit to a lack of belief. I find the idea of a God who suffers and changes and worries and repents quite literally incredible. Or rather, I think belief in such a being would not be belief in God, but in a god, analogous to belief in alien life forms somewhere in the universe. Not that I am against belief in gods or aliens. After all, I believe in angels as part of the depositum fidei, and they are not really all that different from gods or aliens. But belief in God is something different. It is different from believing that there are gods on Mount Olympus or aliens on TRAPPIST 4 or a place in Illinois called Peoria. All of these are things that I believe, but God is one in whom I believe, one about whom there is no “fact” of existence that might be falsified, one who is not so much a character in the story of the cosmos as the invisible author of that story.2 For Thomas, the demonstration of this God’s existence has a necessary indirectness that plays on a speculative surplus of the world that presents itself to us with such solidity, making the solid world translucent by revealing its radical contingency. For the traditional answer to the question “Who is God?” really amounts to the answer “no one”—no solid image but only a light that shines through the world grown translucent to its source, a light that is glimpsed fleetingly in a moment of speculative insight, or that sears us and leaves us sightless in the darkness of faith.

Of course, this is not all that is involved in the traditional answer to the question “Who is God?” The other, equally traditional way to answer the question is “Jesus Christ of Nazareth,” in whose sacred humanity God truly (and not merely analogically or metaphorically) suffers and changes and worries and repents, in whom God becomes a fellow citizen of the cosmos. Though Steve hints at this aspect of the answer, I suspect that he has more to say, perhaps in a future book that will put us further in his debt.

The Perfectly Simple Triune God is an impressive, wide-ranging, insightful, and stimulating book. For some time, I’ve wanted someone to write such a book. More specifically, I’ve wanted Steve Long to write such a book! I’m now happy to see it in print and even happier to benefit from it, and I’m honored to respond to it. I think that, in general, Long is on the side of the angels (as well, of course, as on the side of the angelic doctor). I find much that cheers me in his exposition of Aquinas, and I find much to cheer in his sharp criticisms of process theology and in his critical appreciation of various movements in “political” and “contextual” theology. But rather than merely offering amens and alleluias, in what follows I shall point out areas that need further clarification, defense, or correction. In Long’s eloquent defense of being a “generalist,” he very humbly says: “I invite correction” (xiii). As one who is overall in sympathy with his project, I offer just a little of that correction here. I also ask him to further address some issues that continue to present stumbling blocks to critics both sympathetic and hostile.

Some Historical-Theological Concerns

I begin with some concerns about the theological history that is told (or assumed).1 In general, my biggest concern has to do with the tendency to over-generalize about the doctrine of divine simplicity. Long correctly notes at the outset (3n1, cf. 227) that “simplicity is not a single teaching,” but the vast majority of the work proceeds as if there is only one thing called “the traditional Christian answer” (e.g., xi, xix, xxv, xxvi, 119, 175, 225–26, 227). Long would be entirely right to claim that some version or another of the doctrine is all over the Christian tradition, for it is nearly ubiquitous and can easily be seen in patristic, medieval, and (early) modern theology (both Greek and Latin, and Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant). But it is not safe to assume (as I interpret Long) that all such affirmations of the doctrine are committed to the same formulation of it, and it is unhelpful and indeed potentially misleading to ignore the differences between various formulations of the doctrine. While there is significant concord, there are also important differences within the Christian tradition.

More specifically, Long’s approach not only tends to refer to “the traditional” Christian doctrine but also to conflate it with Thomas Aquinas’s articulation and defense of the doctrine of simplicity. But Long has not demonstrated that Aquinas’s doctrine is the standard bearer for the tradition. Nor has he shown that, say, either patristic theology (in whole or even in part) is committed to Aquinas’s formulation, nor further has he shown that the Protestant confessions to which he (quite helpfully) points are beholden to it. Long simply refers to Aquinas as “the great synthesizer” (3), and while this is true in some sense(s), in point of fact it is also true that not everyone agreed with Aquinas on the doctrine. As an example, we see how this impacts Long’s work of historical description when we come to his treatment of Arminius. Long is right to point out that Arminius held to the doctrine of simplicity, and he is also right to insist that the doctrine of simplicity was important in Arminius’s departure from other Reformed views on predestination. But the tendency toward over-generalization is seen in Long’s claim that “Arminius may be the most Thomist of the Reformers” (165). This may be true in some senses, but it clearly isn’t the case with respect to the doctrine of divine simplicity. For (as I have argued elsewhere) while Arminius clearly holds to the doctrine of simplicity, he just as clearly holds to a decidedly Scotist (rather than Thomist) account of it.2

A Few Conceptual Clarifications

Long also exhibits a few unfortunate misunderstandings of some contemporary discussions in analytic theology. Again, there is a tendency to over-generalize. For instance, he says that “the analytic method finds real difficulties with Thomas Aquinas’s resolution to the problem of divine knowledge and will” (198). But this is overstated and simply mistaken—the analytic method doesn’t do so, and some analytic theologians actually rally to a defense of Aquinas. Beyond the over-generalizations, however, on some important points Long says things that seem to me to be questionable or, in a few instances, simply mistaken. For instance, he claims that analytic theologians often try to “disenchant the world” by making God “nonmysterious” and that analytic theology “only works with a strong doctrine of univocity” (271), and he claims further that this understanding of theology views “apophasis, like analogy, [as] a threat to the theological task” (272). But on the contrary, many analytic theologians deny that they either want to or could make God nonmysterious, and some even deploy rigorous analytic defenses of apophaticism.3

More substantively, Long’s discussion of the metaphysics of freedom could be improved. He describes “compatibilism” as the view that “something being willed or determined by God (or nature) does not rule out human freedom” (198). But this is simply too broad a brush for the higher-resolution detail required here. For this definition could cover decidedly indeterminist and libertarian doctrines, too (e.g., Molinism, Ockhamism, and—at least arguably—some forms of Thomism), while compatibilism, on the other hand, is the view that freedom and determinism (not freedom and foreknowledge or freedom and providence or freedom and the divine will) are compatible. Meanwhile, Long seems to restrict “libertarianism” to one version of it and ignores “virtue libertarianism” (which is, ironically enough, likely close to Aquinas’s own understanding).4 He further claims that “divine libertarianism requires a rejection of classical theism”—but surely this would have been a surprise to such classical theists as Thomas Aquinas (who, as we shall see, insisted upon the reality and importance of divine freedom between options). Moreover, he labels the concern for divine and human freedom a “modern” problem (207). But not only is this of dubious relevance, it is easy to produce counterexamples—surely Augustine isn’t a “modern” theologian, yet he pays much attention to the issue and even defends a “libertarian” view late in his anti-Pelagian career.5 Beyond this, Long seems to think that concurrence and secondary causality are inconsistent with libertarianism. Such missteps are both unnecessary and unfortunate, for they detract from Long’s primary concern (which is, completely commendably, to show how the doctrine of simplicity relates to concerns about freedom), and they muddy the waters.

The “Perfectly Simply Triune God”?

The title of this book teases with the relation of the doctrine of simplicity to the doctrine of the Trinity. And Long’s exposition of Aquinas is intriguing and insightful in this respect. But I am surprised that there isn’t more about the doctrine of the Trinity in the more elenctic sections. More specifically, I am surprised that there is not more about the incompatibility—either alleged or real—of the doctrines. So, at the risk of being pedantic, I shall spell out one such charge with which he might have dealt. Long states unequivocally that “the Father is the essence” and “the Son is the essence” (e.g., 53). Surely, on Thomistic grounds, the is here is not the is of mere predication. So is it the is of identity? If so, then we immediately encounter this problem. Consider:

(1) The Father is not identical to the Son.

(1) is basic to Christian orthodoxy. But taking the is as the is of identity clearly gives us both

(2) The Father is identical to the divine essence; and

(3) The Son is identical to the divine essence.

But given the fact that identity is both transitive and symmetrical, this yields

(4) The Father is identical to the Son.

The challenge should be obvious. It is not a problem for other accounts of simplicity (at least not so obviously), but it surely appears to be a challenge for Long’s Thomist account (at least on an interpretation of it that is not implausible).6

It will not suffice merely to charge the worry with the importation of univocity into the doctrine, for nothing here depends on univocal understandings of personhood (nor does it assume that the divine persons are “modern individuals”). The problem seems obvious enough, and surely would be serious enough, that there must be some better way of understanding the crucial claims. Beyond this, Long claims that the doctrines are mutually entailing, but this seems plainly false. For while it might not be possible to have Aquinas’s doctrine of the Trinity without his doctrine of simplicity, this wouldn’t mean that one couldn’t have his doctrine of simplicity without his doctrine of the Trinity. Issues of mutual entailment aside, however, it would be good if Long could do more to show the contemporary critics that Thomas’s doctrine of simplicity is consistent with the doctrine of the Trinity.

Divine Simplicity and Divine Action

Long makes the striking claim that to “make God a character in a story is to misread Scripture,” and he concludes that “a better way is to speak and think of God not as a character in a story but as its Author” (214). Setting aside the concern that he employs a false dilemma here, such a claim strikes me as very unfortunate. It gives ammunition to the critics of the doctrine and might serve to confirm their suspicions about it. It also appears unmotivated, and at any rate raises other worries.7

One of those worries has to do with the doctrine of creation, and especially with the affirmation of a robust doctrine of divine freedom along with the doctrine of divine simplicity.8 Here is one way to understand the worry. If we take a possible world to be a maximally consistent state of affairs, and if we understand God to exist necessarily (that is, in all possible worlds), and if we take A to stand for God’s action of creating this possible world, then we are faced with an argument such as the following:9

(5) If God is simple, then there is no liberty of alternatives for God.

(6) If there is no liberty of alternatives for God, then God is not free to refrain from A.

(7) Therefore, if God is simple, then God is not free to refrain from A (from 5, 6).

(8) If God is not able to refrain from A, then it is not possible that this possible world not be actualized.

(9) Therefore, if God is simple, then it is not possible that this world not be actualized (from 7, 8).

(10) God is simple.

(11) Therefore, it is not possible that this possible world not be actualized (from 9, 10).

(12) If it is not possible that this possible world not be actualized, then this possible world is necessary.

(13) Therefore, this possible world is both possible and necessary (from 11, 12).

But (13) just is modal collapse—it is nothing short of fatalism.

Unfortunately, it seems that Long might find (5) acceptable (e.g., 169); he consistently criticizes “libertarian freedom” (e.g., 169–70, 206–7). But this is unfortunate for at least two reasons. The first reason is that Thomas Aquinas himself is sure that God has liberty of choice between genuine alternatives: “We must simply say that God can do other things than he has done.”10 As Stump says, “It is abundantly clear that Aquinas takes God to be possessed of choice or liberum arbitrium . . . it is also clear that for Aquinas, liberum arbitrium is the power of choosing among alternative possibilities . . . In particular, Aquinas holds that God was free to create or not to create.”11 The second reason is that the conclusion of this argument is odious both philosophically (modal collapse) and theologically (fatalism)—and Long himself recognizes this (e.g, 240, 244). So it seems to me that Long should want to find some way to deny (5) (without, of course, resorting to a denial of the doctrine of simplicity). Long very helpfully includes discussion of recent work by analytic theologians (e.g., Alexander Pruss, Jeffrey E. Brower, and Eleonore Stump) in defense of simplicity, but he does not finally decide in favor of any of their strategies. Nor does he show that the strategies finally work—even very sympathetic interpreters (such as Brian Leftow) continue to worry that (5) might be implied by the doctrine itself (e.g., the claim that God’s existence is identical with God’s essence).12 So while his work is helpful, there is yet more to be done.

Other concerns come with the doctrine of the incarnation. If God isn’t “a character in a story,” then it is hard indeed to know what to do with the traditional Christian doctrine of the incarnation. Moreover, it isn’t obvious how Thomas’s doctrine of divine simplicity coheres with his compositionalist Christology. It may be that Thomist Christology has the resources to address such concerns, but Long needs to say more about this (more than the page or so it gets, e.g., 55–56).

Conclusion

We should now be in a position to see how the historical worries with which I began actually matter for a constructive theology of divine simplicity. For even if the criticisms (with respect to the Trinity and divine action) turn out to be insuperable for Aquinas’s version of the doctrine of simplicity, that would not mean that the doctrine itself were flawed. It would only mean that more work remains. Or perhaps Long’s stellar efforts will show that Aquinas’s doctrine escapes these criticisms. If so, however, again more work remains—this much, if nothing else, should be plain. Accordingly, Steve Long’s long book needs to be a little longer. Despite such qualms and criticisms, however, I remain very grateful for this book. It is insightful and forceful, and I’ve learned much from it.13 I’m sure that I will return to it often, and I will continue to learn from Steve Long’s excellent work.