Clark, Dolezal, and Divine Simplicity: A Conversation

A month or so ago, I interacted with a Scripturalist named Charlie Ray on the subject of Gordon Clark, James Dolezal, and divine simplicity. You can find the video and my comments here (for some reason, you have to sort by "Newest first" to see all my replies. At some point, youtube stopped publishing my further attempts to comment. Perhaps that's just as well, as the conversation didn't seem to be going anywhere.

Since then, I see that Ray posted a blog and another video in which he further responds to me. In this post, then, I'll post our original conversation, my reply youtube failed to publish, and a few other thoughts on Ray's newer material. First, the initial comment chain. His comments will be indented, whereas mine will not. I'll highlight the portions that Ray did not and does not seem to grasp:

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In outlining Dolezal's position, you said: "God is not composed of parts or composite parts." 

Clark believed: "...we shall define person as a composite of truths. A bit more exactly, since all men make mistakes and believe some falsehoods, the definition must be a composite of propositions. As a man thinketh in his (figurative) heart, so is he. A man is what he thinks. 

Since technical terms are used to avoid ambiguity, and since the Trinity consists of Three Persons, the definition will fail if it does not apply to God. That it does apply appears more or less clearly in verses that call God the Truth." (Gordon Clark, The Incarnation). 

Clearly, Dolezal's position is different from that of [elder] Clark.

I do not think the difference is as clear as you say. First of all, Clark was referring to the three Persons, who are all equally God. You took the quote out of context. Since all three of the Persons of the Godhead are equally omniscient, and all three Persons are the same God, it logically follows that all three Persons know exactly the same propositions, and they know those propositions intuitively. That is, they do not think one thought or one proposition after another. They know the entire system of propositions as one complete and intuitive system, not in partial or discursive thoughts. The only difference between the three Persons is when those three Persons think propositions that pertain only to their own identity within the Godhead. The Father cannot think, "I am the Son," or "I am the Holy Spirit." The Athanasian Creed makes this plain enough. The Athanasian Creed is included in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, by the way. 

Dolezal did his doctoral work under the supervision of his advisor, Scott Oliphint. Oliphint has had his own theological contradictions in recent years, including a book where he said that God changes according to "covenantal properties" in order to relate to humans. 

The Bible says that God is Truth. Since all three Persons are equally God, does it mean that the Father is Truth, but the Son and the Holy Spirit is not Truth? Gordon H. Clark stated clearly that God thinks in propositions. If not, how could God communicate special revelation to humanity in the written propositions in the Bible? God is Logic. That's divine simplicity. 

You quoted Clark's book out of context. 

The entire quote says: >>>Therefore, since God is Truth, we shall define person, not as a composite of sensory impressions, as Hume did, but, rejecting with him the meaningless term substance, we shall define person as a composite of truths. A bit more exactly, since all men make mistakes and believe some falsehoods, the definition must be a composite of propositions. As a man thinketh in his (figurative) heart, so is he. A man is what he thinks. 

Since technical terms are used to avoid ambiguity, and since the Trinity consists of Three Persons, the definition will fail if it does not apply to God. That it does apply appears more or less clearly in verses that call God the Truth. 

Deuteronomy 32:4, “a God of truth.” Psalm 25:5, 10, “Lead me in Thy truth…. All the paths of the LORD are mercy and truth.” Psalm 31:5, “O LORD God of truth.” Psalm 108:4, “Thy truth reacheth unto the clouds.” Isaiah 25:1, “Thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth.” Isaiah 65:16, “the God of truth…the God of truth.” John 1:14, “the Word…full of grace and truth.” John 4:23-24, “…worship the Father in spirit and in truth…must worship him in spirit and in truth.” John 14:6, “I am…the truth.” John 15:26, “The Spirit of truth.” John 16:13, “The Spirit of truth.” First John 5:6, “The Spirit is truth.” 

Aside from whatever objections will be immediately raised against this uncommon conclusion, theologians will complain that this reduces the Trinity to one Person because, being omniscient, they all have, or are, the same complex. This objection is based on a blindness toward certain definite Scriptural information. I am not at the moment referring only to the eternal generation of the Son and the eternal procession of the Spirit. I am referring to the complex of truths that form the Three Persons. Though they are equally omniscient, they do not know all of the same truths. Neither the complex of truths we call the Father nor those we call the Spirit, has the proposition, “I was incarnated.” This proposition occurs only in the Son’s complex. Other examples are implied. The Father cannot say, “I walked from Jerusalem to Jericho.” Nor can the Spirit say, “I begot the Son.” Hence the Godhead consists of three Persons, each omniscient without having precisely the same content. If this be so, no difficulty can arise as to the distinctiveness of human persons. Each one is an individual complex. Each one is his mind or soul. Whether the propositions be true or false, a person is the propositions he thinks. I hope that some think substance to be a subterfuge.<<< 

Gordon H. Clark. The Incarnation (Kindle Locations 802-822). The Trinity Foundation. Kindle Edition.

Thank you for commenting. It's been a while ago, but I have read both of Dolezal's books on divine simplicity. I do recall that he criticized Clark at one point in the book. Dolezal is a graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary, and his doctoral advisor was Scott Oliphint. Oliphint was a student of Cornelius Van Til, so it is not surprising that there would be some disagreement with Clark at certain points. Oliphint himself caused a controversy awhile back by saying that God has a third category of "covenantal properties", whatever that is, that allows God to be immanent and communicate to humans on an ectypal level. But even the men at the Reformed Center podcast said that Oliphint had gone too far. Dolezal himself criticized Oliphint on this. I have the original version of Oliphint's book, which was pulled from publication. I read it and critiqued it in part on my blog. There has been radio silence on this ever since and Oliphint is still on the faculty of WTS.

https://reasonablechristian.blogspot.com/2019/04/scott-oliphints-covenantal-properties.html

A few corrections: 

1. You cite more of the context of Clark's statement, but you don't show how I took the quote out of context. I have also read both of Dolezal's books, and Dolezal thinks there is no real distinction between the divine persons and the divine essence (cf. All That Is In God, pgs. 118-123). Thus, Dolezal would not agree with Clark that the persons just are a composite of propositions. But this is exactly what [elder] Clark thought. 

In fact, you quote Clark as saying, "Each one is an individual complex." This is precisely what Dolezal denies on pg. 164 of God Without Parts when he rhetorically asks, "How can a simple God have a proper knowledge of many different things *without thereby possessing a complex intellect composed of many different ideas?*" Contra Dolezal, Clark affirmed that that the Trinity each have a complex intellect composed of many different ideas. Clark and Dolezal clearly do not have the same understanding of divine simplicity. 

By the way, Clark's view means that the Son knows some propositions the Father and Spirit do not. He says: "they do no know all of the same truths." That's a rejection of their omniscience, despite his protestations to the contrary. Clark shouldn't have said that indexical language entails different propositions. Joel Parkinson at least tried to distinguish between subjective (first-person) and objective (third-person) propositions. Clark should have said that while the Trinity do know the same truths, the mode of expression of these truths will differ. 

2. You are incorrect about Oliphint being on the faculty of Westminster. He retired from Westminster at the end of 2024. By the way, Lane Tipton has recommended Adam Ostella's book (The Developing Deity) written specifically against Oliphint. The book came out last month. I've read it in its entirety.

Does the Father not know tha He is not the Son of God or the Holy Spirit? How does denying that the Father and the Son are the same Person deny God's omniscience? 

Obviously, the quote is out of context on your part because you failed to mention that Clark does not say that truth is a composite. The quotes from the Bible show that all three Persons know exactly the same truth as one intuitive truth. The differentiation between the three Persons only exist at the points where the three Persons are distinguished. Other than that all three Persons are all equally omniscient because all three Persons are one and the same God. God is one in essence, being, and Godhead. Yet in another sense, God is three Persons. Persons are defined by the propositions that they think. Since all three Persons share all the same propositions that God knows in His omnisicience, and all three Persons are equally God, it follows that none of the three Persons is ignorant of anything else that the other two Persons know. The difference is in the fact that each Person has self-identity. The Father cannot identify as the Son or the Holy Spirit. There is no contradiction here. All three Persons share the same divine will. God has only one eternal will that is immutable. All three Persons are eternally self-existent as one and the same God. Deuteronomy 6:4; Matthew 28:18-20; 2 Corinthians 13:14; Matthew 3:16-17; John 1:32; Mark 1:10; Luke 3:21-22; Mark 12:36; John 1:1-3, 18.

The Father does not know "I am the Son." But contra Clark, He does know the same truths as the Son. The Son just has a mode of expressing the same truth that the Father does not (by using the indexical "I"). 

To say the Father doesn't know what the Son knows is a denial of omniscience.

Does Dolezal deny the Trinity? I don't think so. But I would like to see how Dolezal defines a person. Proverbs 23:1 says that man is what he thinks. Does the Father think that He is the Son or the Holy Spirit? https://www.eskimo.com/~lhowell/bcp1662/daily/athanasian.html

I read both of Dolezal's books when they first came out. I also have listened to most of Dolezal's lectures on YouTube. If there are differences, which I did clearly acknowledge in my video above, it is because of Dolezal's Van Tilian apologetics and theology, not because Gordon H. Clark was some sort of heretic. Everyone makes mistakes in logic at some point or another. Dolezal is no exception and neither was Cornelius Van Til. In fact, even Camden Bucey is complaining that Van Til's views are not as popular as they once were. 

I seem to recall that you caused lots of problems for me on Facebook, even getting me banned from a Facebook group that claimed to be Clarkian but was really a Van Til group critiquing Clark. I'm no longer on Facebook due to the government censorship that took place during Covid and the 2024 presidential campaign. I deleted my account. 

You are welcome to comment here. I do not see any need to censor anyone. Although I do reserve the right to hold you accountable for equivocation and dissimulation. As I have shown above, you did quote Clark out of context. There is one God who is univocally the Truth. None of the three Persons of the Godhead is ignorant of anything the other two Persons knows. The accusation is therefore wrong. The difference is not a difference of ignorance but a difference in definition. The definition of each Person is a difference in propositions each knows about Himself and the other two Persons. Does the Holy Spirit know that He is not the Father or the Son? Yet, the Holy Spirit knows that the the Father is the Father and the Son is the Son. So how does that make the Holy Spirit ignorant?

Firstly, you mean Proverbs 23:7, not 23:1. Secondly, that verse does not talk about God. It isn't valid to extrapolate that the verse applies to God as well as man. Thirdly, it isn't clear that the verse is speaking ontologically, as if a man just is his thoughts. If you quote the whole verse, it's speaking to the fact that people sometimes will make professions or statements contrary to their thoughts (hypocrisy). As John Gill says: "He is not the man his mouth speaks or declares him to be, but what his heart thinks; which is discovered by his looks and actions, and by which he is to be judged of, and not by his words." 

I referenced exactly where to go to find Dolezal's position: pgs. 118-123 of All That Is In God. It's up to you if you want to read it or not. I'm not going to type out the whole thing for you when it sounds like you have the book. Dolezal approves of John Owen's definition of person on pg. 122.

I don't recall saying anything to get you banned from a facebook group. 

I repeat, Clark wrote that the Trinitarian persons "do not know all of the same truths." That's a rejection of their omniscience. That's a statement that the persons are ignorant. Clark may not have meant to imply that. If so, I explained how he should have communicated instead. "I am the Son" is an indexical mode of expression. The truth or falsity of the utterance is indexed to the person uttering the statement. As such, it isn't a proposition, for a proposition is the meaning of an utterance. It isn't possible to know the meaning of "I am the Son" until we know first who it is uttering the statement. 

All of this is a side issue. The main point I made - which you have not addressed, so your accusation I made an out-of-context citation is unfounded - is that Dolezal denies that the persons are composed or composite. Clark affirmed such. That isn't a Clark-Van Til issue.

I forgot to mention that Dolezal upholds a Thomistic view of Truth. This is one of the shortfalls of Van Til. If God has one Truth, and humans can know nothing that God knows, then obviously there are two kinds of truth: God's Truth, and mere human "truth" and the two never meet. This is the sort of thinking that leads directly to denying that the Bible is God's truth. The Bible is without error, infallible, and inerrant. Furthermore, if we can know nothing that God knows as the absolute truth, this leads to relativism. Man is God's image. Man alone is a rational creature. 

Dolezal says: 

>>>The outstanding common denominator in each of these serious and sophisticated arguments against the DDS is the strong commitment to ontological univocism. Each critic speaks as if God and creatures were “beings” in the exact same sense, reducing the Creator-creature distinction to a difference of degrees. God’s is a higher existence and his attributes more perfect, but all told his are simply greater instances of the same sort of existence and attributes found in creatures. Given this outlook it is no wonder that the DDS appears incoherent to many modern philosophers and theologians. God, it would seem, could no more be identical with his existence and attributes than any creature could be really identical with its existence and attributes. 

But it is precisely this ontological univocism that the DDS will not allow.95 Though creatures bear the image of God’s existence and attributes, their similarity to God is better understood as analogical than univocal. The manner in which God exists and possesses attributes is so radically unlike anything found in creatures that he cannot be classified together with them in a single order of being or as the highest link on a great chain of being. As the one who ultimately accounts for being in general, as its first and final cause, God does not stand within that general ontological order.96 In this connection the various critics surveyed in the foregoing section seem to have gratuitously precluded the very ontological outlook in which the DDS is intended to make sense. One unfortunate corollary of this procedure is the forfeiture of divine absoluteness inasmuch as something other than God (e.g., abstract being, properties, necessary propositions, Platonic forms, or some other piece of abstracta) enters into the ontological account of his existence and essence.<<< 

Dolezal, James E.. God without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God's Absoluteness (pp. 29-30). Pickwick Publications, An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition. 

The problem here is that nowhere does Gordon Clark ever say that man shares any of the incommunicable attributes of God's essence or being. Since logic is a communicable attribute, it is not a confusion between the Creator and the creature. God is a rational and intelligible and intelligent being who is also three distinct but inseparable Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Man is God's image because man alone of all the creatures is a rational being, created in God's image. If there is any confusion here, it is on your part because it is Scripture that says that God created man in His own image and likeness. Genesis 1:27; John 1:9. The eternal Logos enlightens every man with rationality, a rationality that the other created animals do not have.

I only commented in the first place because you recommend both Clark and Dolezal. I'm just pointing out that the two hold incompatible views. 

For example, if logic is an attribute of God and if, per Dolezal, each divine attribute is ontologically identical to every other divine attribute (e.g. omnipotence), then logic qua predicated of God would not be communicable, for we are not omnipotent. You might deny the conclusion, but then one wonders why you recommend Dolezal at all.

I recommended Dolezal because he is the first to fully advocate the doctrine of divine simplicity in modern times. Does that mean that I approve of everything he said? Of course not. There are many problems with Dolezal's view, including his trying to excuse Van Til's view that God is both one Person and Three Persons at the same time and in the same sense. This would indeed be a contradiction. 

Dolezal's books are worth reading, even if he is wrong on many points. For example, how does Dolezal square the fact that everything in God's mind is the same thing? If God's attributes are all the same thing, then there could be no distinction between any of the attributes within God's essence. 

If Logic is an attribute of God and inseparable from His essence, does it logically follow that this an incommunicable attribute of God? If so, that would mean that the Bible is not a logical or propositional revelation from God at all. 

You might deny the conclusion, but Van Til's analogical and Thomistic view that truth is twofold leads to neo-orthodoxy--whether Van Til realized it or not. 

And so what is your position on the doctrine of Scripture? Is Scripture propositional revelation? Or is Scripture an analogical revelation? Do you subscribe to the archetypal/ectypal distinction that Turretin got from Thomas Aquinas? 

Does the Father not know anything? You're deliberately equivocating. ​ 

Is the Father ignorant of the proposition that He is not the Son or the Holy Spirit? ​

youtube isn't showing my replies

I did show how you took the quote out of context. First, Clark clearly said that all three Persons of the Trinity are omniscient. Since all three Persons share the same divine essence, being, and fullness of the Godhead, they are all equally God Almighty. The only difference, according to Clark, is that the Father cannot know that He is the Son or that He is the Spirit. The reason being that the Father is not the Son or the Spirit. Each Person knows all the propositions that the other two Persons know with the exception that the Father cannot know that He is the Son or the Spirit, etc. If so, then the Father would not be a distinct Person within the Tri-unity. You should study the Athanasian Creed.  

>>>Neither the complex of truths we call the Father nor those we call the Spirit, has the proposition, “I was incarnated.” This proposition occurs only in the Son’s complex. Other examples are implied. The Father cannot say, “I walked from Jerusalem to Jericho.” Nor can the Spirit say, “I begot the Son.” Hence the Godhead consists of three Persons, each omniscient without having precisely the same content. If this be so, no difficulty can arise as to the distinctiveness of human persons. Each one is an individual complex. Each one is his mind or soul. Whether the propositions be true or false, a person is the propositions he thinks. I hope that some think substance to be a subterfuge."<<< 

Do you see now how you deliberately or at least inadvertently misrepresented what Clark said? Clark is completely in agreement here with the Athanasian Creed. The Father is Almighty, the Son is Almighty, and the Holy Spirit is Almighty, yet there are not three Almighties. There is only one Almighty God.

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Here is what I had intended to be a response:

It sounds like you don't much agree with Dolezal after all. Anyone who has read his books (like me) can see that they are not compatible with Clark's views. Very few theologians (apart from Clark) believe the divine persons or the divine essence are composite, by the way. Dolezal isn't special in that regard. Clark is. 

I tried commenting on your blog, but let me point out that I never said Clark did not believe in divine simplicity. You didn't read me very carefully. On the contrary, Doug Douma has documented he accepted it. See here. 

My point is that Clark's view is inconsistent with his own Trinitarian ontology. Regarding logic, I didn't talk about inseparability but ontological identity. You avoided the point by changing the subject. The question isn't whether logic is inseparable from God but if logic is an attribute of God that is identical to all other attributes. If the latter, then logic would be incommunicable. If you think Clark's views are right, Dolezal is not a theologian I would recommend.

I affirm Scripture is propositional revelation and that we know the same truths God knows. I reject the 1940s OPC complainants' view. The Father knows every truth, as do the Son and Spirit. They are each omniscient because each knows all truths. That directly contradicts Clark. I can't be any clearer than that.

That rounds out what I had to say in the comment section. 

Turning to his recent blog posts on the subject (link, link, link), I still don't know if Ray has understood the central point. He criticizes Dolezal's Thomistic epistemology, but he fails to recognize (or articulate, at least so far) that the problem is Dolezal's Thomistic metaphysic: if God's attributes are identical to each other, nothing that can be predicated of or attributed to God can univocally be predicated of or attributed to man. This metaphysical point has implications regarding epistemology. If one is going to reject Thomistic epistemology, he must also reject Thomistic metaphysics; in particular, Thomistic divine simplicity.   

To give an example of how Thomistic divine simplicity bears on epistemology, let's say that Ray is "a knower of the truth that 'Jesus Christ is the Savior of believers.'" The highlighted part of the previous sentence in quotations is predicable of or attributable to Ray. If that is true - which we will take as an assumption - then let's also state the obvious: Ray is not God. 

Now, given these assumptions and Dolezal's view of Thomistic divine simplicity, the predicate or attribute could not be univocally predicated of or attributed to God. For given Dolezal's view, anything predicable of or attributed to God is identical to God. If the predicate or attribute were identical to God, and if the attribute is also predicable of Ray, then Ray would be God. This is absurd. For crystal clarity:

1) Ray is "a knower of the truth that 'Jesus Christ is the Savior of believers.'" 

2) Ray is not God.

3) God is "a knower of the truth that 'Jesus Christ is the Savior of believers.'" 

4) God is identical to that which is predicable of or attributable to Him.

There is an inconsistency here. How does one resolve it? Surely we must accept that Ray is not God. One option is to assert that God is not "a knower of the truth that 'Jesus Christ is the Savior of believers.'" But for Clark (and Ray), that would effectively deny God's omniscience. Another option is to deny that Ray is "a knower of the truth that 'Jesus Christ is the Savior of believers.'" But if we repeat this for all cases of knowledge, then while God would be omniscient, Ray would know nothing, i.e. Ray would be reduced to skepticism. What, then, is the alternative? 4) must be mistaken, for Thomistic divine simplicity has skeptical epistemological implications.

Thus, it is bizarre that Ray, who accepts Clark's epistemology (let alone Clark's metaphysics), would "highly recommend James Dolezal's lectures and his books" on divine simplicity. Ray's initial reply to me was that he did not think the difference between Clark and Dolezal "is as clear" as I said it was. The above should hopefully make the difference as clear as day. If not, perhaps Ray is more willing to hear Doug Douma consider much the same thing in The Presbyterian Philosopher (pgs. 18, 88).

Turning to Ray's newer materials, in one post, he says that I commented that "Clark apparently did not believe in divine simplicity." This is false. Nothing Ray goes on to cite supports that inference. What I said was that "Dolezal's position is different from that of [elder] Clark." And this is obviously true. For elder Clark, God is a complex or composite of truths. For Dolezal, God is not. Ray quotes more from Clark's book on The Incarnation than I do, but in no way does he satisfactorily explain the relevancy of it to this obvious and fundamental difference between Clark and Dolezal. Instead, Ray says:

It seems clear enough that in the first sentence of the quotation Clark affirms the doctrine of divine simplicity by stating that God is truth.

 The "first sentence" by Clark to which Ray refers is as follows:

Therefore, since God is Truth, we shall define person, not as a composite of sensory impressions, as Hume did, but, rejecting with him the meaningless term substance, we shall define person as a composite of truths.

Again, it is mystifying that Ray should think this is compatible with or not so different from Dolezal's view of divine simplicity. Clark clearly says that God is "a composite," the very thing Dolezal rejects. It is impossible to paint a starker contrast.

Since that initial post, Ray has admitted that he "prematurely advocated that my listeners read Dolezal’s book" (link). Really, he could have said that in his initial reply, and that would have been the end of the matter. But he has now mentioned me in a recent video on divine simplicity, so I finally turn to that.

At minute mark 1:07, he says I complained that Ray confused Dolezal's view of divine simplicity with that of Clark. I did no such thing. I simply observed (not "complained") that Dolezal's view of divine simplicity is incompatible with elder Clark's metaphysics. 

At minute mark 2:00, Ray intimates that one problem he has with Dolezal's view is the identity of divine attributes such as divine justice with divine wrath. Actually, Clark affirmed the same thing:

It is the honorable view that all the attributes are identical in God, and sometimes visibly so in history; for when God demolished the walls of Jericho, the single action was both an instance of grace and an instance of wrath. In greater generality, knowledge is power, omnipresence is omniscience, mercy and truth are met together, and righteousness and peace have kissed each other. (The Incarnation, chapter on "Analysis Resumed")

It appears, then, that Ray, like me, also finds some difficulty with Clark's metaphysical views. 

At minute 2:40, Ray says that I am apparently a Van Tilian. This was most amusing! I have no idea what I said that gave him that false impression. Perhaps he'll peruse my blog one day and also find humor in that comment.

At 3:55, Ray accuses me of editing a citation of Clark by inserting the word "figurative" in parentheses. I did no such thing. My citation is verbatim what one finds in the ebook published by the TrinityFoundation. The same wording is found on page 54 of the 1988 physical copy of the book. Ray even gives the citation himself (minute 5:12) and later apologizes for his mistake (9:12), so I'll accept that and move on.

Ray repeats a few of his youtube comments. I already responded to those above, so I'll skip that portion of his video. Following Clark, Ray claims that no one has given definitions of key terms. I recommend that Ray read this book.

At minute 23:55, Ray says I miscite Clark. Rather than saying "God is complex," Clark says the "persons within the Trinity are complex persons." But at minute 23:21, Ray says God is, in one sense, three persons. Clark agrees. Ray already quoted Clark as saying that "the Godhead consists of three Persons." If the persons are complex or a composite of propositions, then, so too must the Godhead consist of a complex or a composite of propositions. This dovetails with Clark's statement that "God is Truth," that essence means definition, etc. 

At minute 25:34, Ray expresses irritation that I said Clark's metaphysics of personhood entails that the Trinity cannot be omniscient. I invite the reader to go back to the initial back-and-forth in this post. Clark said that the Trinity "do no know all of the same truths." But omniscience literally means all-knowledge. If the Trinity cannot know all of the same truths, they cannot be all-knowing. That may upset Ray, but it's a straightforward inference. What we should conclude is that, contrary to Clark, the Trinity do know all the same truths. 

At 26:29, Ray admits that he has no idea what an "indexical" is. Well, that makes sense, and he should have just asked me to explain rather than doubling-down on a false position. Or he could have just googled it: an indexical is "a word or expression whose meaning is dependent on the context in which it is used (such as here, you, me, that one there, or next Tuesday). 

If I say "the cat is here" and another person says "the cat is at Ryan's house," these are just two modes or ways of expressing the same truth. "I" is another indexical. If I say "I am Ryan" and another person says to me that "you are Ryan," those are just two modes or ways of expressing the same truth. Therefore, it is not the case that the individual persons of the Trinity have privileged knowledge of truth that the other persons do not have. In other words, Clark is wrong to say that the Trinity "do no know all of the same truths." Clark's mistake is to think that a privileged mode of expression (i.e. the use of the word "I") entails privileged knowledge of truth that the other persons do not have. Rather than getting irritated, Ray should concentrate on understanding what I'm actually arguing.

At 25:55, Ray says I claimed Clark rejected divine simplicity. To repeat, I never said that. Again, the initial point I made was that Clark's metaphysic is inconsistent with Dolezal's (and, indeed, Clark's own) view of divine simplicity. That ends Rays mention of me in his video. Unfortunately, it is still unclear to me if Ray grasps the epistemological issues at stake in this conversation about theology proper. 

Personally, I reject the Thomistic model (one extreme) on which all attributes are only conceptually distinct. I also reject the other extreme on which the attributes are really distinct (i.e. separable) and somehow compose the essence of God (as if there were something more fundamental). For now, I accept the Scotist model on which the attributes are formally distinct but inseparable. Richard Muller does an excellent job of explaining the different Reformed views here, pgs. 284-298. Regarding what formal distinction means, Muller uses an example of how a 1) hardness and 2) shape of a table are inseparable attributes of the table yet correspond to an extra-mental distinction within the table itself. I also have an intuition the Scotist view might dovetail nicely with Clark's philosophy insofar as Duns Scotus accepted univocity. Finally, there is also something to be said about a distinction between 1) who or what God is and 2) what God does. I consider God's knowledge - His free knowledge, at least - as falling into the latter category, not the former.

UPDATE: Ray has made another video in which he references me (link). Unfortunately, he makes no progress in addressing my critiques. At 14:55, he says:

I want to draw this to a conclusion, but I just want to respond again to Ryan Hedrich and his accusation that Clark's view turns God into a composite or complex of propositions that He thinks.

This isn't an accusation. It's a fact, as has already been demonstrated above (and will be repeated below). Ray follows:

Now the first response I'd like to make to that is that does God know that 2 plus 2 equals 4? And if so, does that mean that God is a composite because God thinks different propositions in his mind? Of course, God had to predestine everything that comes to pass through His providence in time. And yet, God is an eternal being who never changes, who is immutable, absolutely immutable. God never has a new thought in his mind. And so, how do we relate God's omniscience that is intuitive - that is He knows all things there is to know all at once - yet He's not subject to time. We as human beings uh think one thought after another. But God knows everything. All is one, eternal now. And so, how does this relate to God's being a composite of propositions? Is He a composite simply because God thinks propositionally, simply because God knows all the propositions that that can possibly be known - including every mathematical system, every possible mathematics that man could think of - God already knew? I don't think so. 

So in adhering to divine simplicity, we need to recognize that God is not a composite simply because He is a Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all who share the same eternal will, all who share the same omniscience, the same eternal complex of propositions that God knows except for where God\, according to Athanasian creed, thinks thoughts that are distinct from the others. God is Almighty. The Father is Almighty. The Son is almighty and the Holy Spirit is Almighty. Yet there are not three almighties but one Almighty. 

A few responses:

1. God [the Father] indeed knows the proposition that "2 plus 2 equals 4." That doesn't mean we should agree with Clark that God is that proposition He thinks (among others). 

2. It's well and good that Ray concedes that God is not composite. If that is the case, though, then Ray disagrees with elder Clark and must reevaluate Clark's metaphysical view of a person as a "composite of truths." By they way, it is irrelevant that the persons think these truths eternally, immutably, non-discursively, etc. The point is that there are a plurality of truths which the persons of the Trinity think. Given that, if we say that the persons metaphysically are these truths - that the persons of the Trinity just are equivalent or reducible to truths (plural) - then this plurality obviously entails some kind of composition (just as Clark says). Ray is caught between a rock (divine simplicity) and a hard place (Clark's metaphysics). One must go.

3. Ray repeats his mistake that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit "share the same omniscience, the same eternal complex of propositions that God knows except for where God, according to Athanasian creed, thinks thoughts that are distinct from the others." Again, this means Ray denies that each person is omniscient. If one person knows a proposition the others don't, the other persons are not all-knowing by definition. And if each person knows a proposition the others don't, then none of the persons are omniscient. Ray continually fails to understand this point. I think this failure is because Ray seems to conflate propositions with thoughts. Each person of the Trinity can know all propositions without having the same thoughts.

Propositions and thoughts are not necessarily the same. Propositions are the objects of one's thinking; thoughts "point" to propositions. For example, "the Son is incarnate" is a proposition. Anyone can think this proposition. On the other hand, "I am incarnate" is a thought which "points" to or expresses a proposition. A thought is performed by a specific thinker, like the Son. A thought, therefore, can be subject-relative. If I think "I am incarnate," I would point to a different proposition with that thought. I would be pointing to the proposition "Ryan is incarnate." That proposition is false, so my thought is also false. The Son alone correctly thinks "I am incarnate." A thinker (like the Son) can express a thought in a certain way or mode that no other thinker (like the Father and Spirit) correctly can.

Does this mean the Father and Spirit don't know the same propositions that the Son does? No. That would mean we, like Ray, would have to reject that the persons are omniscient. Instead, the Father and Spirit can think the exact same propositions as the Son - e.g. "[the Son] is incarnate" - they just can't express their thoughts the same way.

At 17:30, Ray says, "let me get into the accusation that Hedrich makes." He then quotes from Clark's book, The Incarnation, pgs. 75-76 (link). While he says he hopes the pages clarify things, the unfortunate truth is that they don't. I'm not sure how those pages are relevant to my so-called accusation that Clark says God is composite. The topic isn't even mentioned on those pages. 

Instead, what Clark talks about on those pages are definitions of key terms. Clark says that bishops of Chalcedon were "talking non-sense, because their terms had no sense at all." But Clark has not been alive for 40 years. Clark wasn't alive when the minutes of Chalcedon were published (which I've read). He wasn't alive when Richard Muller published a book on defining the very key terms that Clark questions (I already linked to this book above - clearly, Ray decided not to read it). Clark was not alive to read books that have traced the use of key terms by the early church and the way in which they changed in meaning over time (link). 

I am a friendly critic of Clark, and I try to be charitable even why I point out that Clark made more radical statements than Nestorius (link; I also discuss the two minds model of the incarnation and provide my own definition of "person" - see also the comment section). And I would like to extend the same charity to Ray. It would be easier for me to do so if Ray actually responded to the points I'm making, but I do hope this helps him.

If Ray posts anything further about me, I'll simply update this post.