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.

UPDATE: 4 months later, Ray has decided to follow up on the original discussion we had on youtube linked above. Here is his comment:

No, but what you are expressing is modalism, which denies the trinity. The Oneness Pentecostals claim divine simplicity and say that all trinitarians are proponents of divine complexity. You are making a false accusation against Clark based on one or two slightly imprecise statements in his book. Errors in logic are caused by the noetic effects of sin. 

And here is my response:

Well, at least you finally admit Clark makes statements that are false. I'm sure Clark did not intend for those statements to lead to larger errors, but it is important that we point out that his false statements would lead to larger errors (if one followed them to their absurd conclusions).

That you think I express modalism is just an assertion. You have presented no argument for that, and I certainly have said nothing that entails it. I don't accept "divine complexity." You are welcome to read this thread (I am the original poster), where I start by explicitly state that "God is without parts," but in which I also reject Dolezal's views: 

https://puritanboard.com/threads/questions-on-divine-simplicity.112883/

There is a diversity of historic, Reformed views on how to view God's attributes. I recommend Richard Muller, pg 286 (and the broader context) explaining how the Reformers viewed distinctions between God's attributes. I accept the formal distinction model, not the Thomistic/Dolezal model: 

https://archive.org/details/postreformationr0003mull/page/286/mode/1up

I recommend doing a lot of reading before throwing out false accusations.

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

A Critical Evaluation of Eastern Orthodoxy

I have been reading about Eastern Orthodoxy, and while I was recently visiting Emory's theological library, on a whim, I picked up a journal from 2011 called Greek Orthodox Theological Review. One article in the publication is by Eduard Borysov and entitled, "The Doctrine of Deification in the Works of Pavel Florensky and John Meyendorff: A Critical Examination" (link). In it, he outlines a few 20th century Eastern Orthodox theologians and their understanding of how "mystical union between the transcendent God and creatures" is possible.

While the bulk of the article is expository in nature, the final section ("Critical Evaluation") is one of the more incisive critiques of Eastern Orthodoxy I've read. So I thought to reproduce this section here for any who are interested:

In light of the presented views, the tension between indirect participation in God through his energies that are, at the same time, God himself remains unresolved. There are ambiguities in these ideas on several levels. 

The first ambiguity relates to the issue of the definition of the divine energies and their distinction from essence. How can immanent, known energies of God manifest his unknown transcendent essence? If God is wholly present in his energies, in what way are those energies different from his essence? In other words, if the uncreated energies of God are God himself, how one can equate and at the same time distinguish manifestations of the nature with the nature itself? It is still unclear whether the deified person assumes two natures after union with Christ, that is, the deified human nature and the divine nature by grace. If so, what does it mean to be God by grace, and how is that different from being God by nature? Is it not true that complete participation in God implies the fact that he is no longer unknown to the participant and is not transcendent? If communication between God and man occurs at the level of the external manifestations of their natures, how does this happen? Since deification is an experience of God beyond human reason, emotions, or will, in what way can one claim that he has participated in God and not in some other sort of ecstatic or psychological phenomenon?

If a living essence cannot avoid manifesting itself through energies, they are inseparable. However, the problem of identifying energies with essence is that, in the doctrine of salvation, synergy would not only mean a divine-human energies partnership in salvific activity, but also a union of the natures involved in such synergistic salvation, namely, God and man. One should also take into account the notion of "symbol," which Florensky defined as essence, whose energy is mingled with the energy of the other, higher essence, so that symbol is a reality that is greater than itself." If we apply this analogy to deification, we would have to conclude that the energies of man are mingled with the divine energies. And since we cannot discern God from his energies, because energies are inseparable from the divine essence, then both human and divine essences are mingled as well, and thus are indiscernible. Even if Florensky would say that they are not mingled, they are still indiscernible, which brings in a problem for our understanding of the nature of God. 

The second ambiguity is connected to the language used to define and describe deification. It seems that Florensky follows Maximus the Confessor closely, being at some points very ambiguous about the limitations of theosis. He is not afraid to be misunderstood when he talks about the patristic prohibition against participation in or contemplation of the divine nature. He scarcely mentions the traditional patristic teaching that the deified participates only in the divine energies and never in the divine nature. Another example of ambiguity in Florensky's terminology is the idea of synergy between two essences. He says that the synergy of two essences by means of energies produces something "new" to both participants. That sounds like Eutychianism. 

The third ambiguity is based on the philosophical, mainly Platonic, dichotomy between a generic essence and a particular person. Rakestraw is correct when he points out the inappropriate "emphasis upon humanity, rather than human beings [;] being divinized seems to put the focus more on generic human nature rather than individual men and women." Since, according to Agiorgoussis's comment on Maximus, "will and energy do not belong to the person, but to the nature (essence)" by partaking in the divine energies, one shares in the divine nature, not in the divine person. However, the biblical language of participation and sharing belongs on the plane of persons, not natures. For Paul, Christians are transformed into the image and likeness of Christ, not into his deified human nature. Moreover, to what extent can one speak of essence-transforming in the experience of the deified? How would this person's divine nature be different from the divine nature of God? It is unreasonable to invent different kinds of divine nature, whereby God possesses a higher kind of divinity and man a lower kind. 

There is inconsistency in presenting energies as belonging to essence in the Christological context and also as belonging to persons in the Trinitarian context. Meyendorff says, "Repeatedly in the writings of St. Gregory Palamas one finds the expression that divine energies—or the uncreated light—are 'hypostatic' (ÚTroaxaxiKOv cpcoç) or 'en-hypostatic' (évuTióaxaiov)." Since essence does not in reality exist by itself without a hypostasis, it is logical for Meyendorff to conclude that energies belong to a person. However, this statement would contradict the decisions of the ecumenical councils, which claimed that the Trinity has one essence and thus the same energy shared by the three persons, while Christ has two natures and two energies that belong to one person. 

Finally, inconsistency is present in the ways deification is acquired. The Orthodox representatives are assured of the divine source of the union because the transformation of human nature can happen only as the result of God's gift of grace. At the same time, they agree that participation in the sacraments, virtues, and hesychastic prayer are essential in receiving that grace. Ultimately, synergy of the divine gift and human efforts results in a theoandric metamorphosis of the human partaker.

Borysov's comments stand on their own, but I want to make some follow-up observations. 

1. The article immediately reminded me of similar criticisms of Eastern Orthodoxy provided by Steve Hays (link, link, etc.). I encourage readers to read these and search for other articles by him.

2. Borysov writes the following in the main body of his article:

Palamas's theology of energies, according to Meyendorff, has no philosophical rationale behind it. However, one should not forget that the philosophical notions of hypostasis, nature, and energies played a key role in the Christological controversies and had become the basic principles for Palamas's theology proper as well as his soteriology. God is, by definition, unrelated to and above any essence, hence he is unknown by any essence. (Gregory Palamas, Gregory Palamas: The Triads, § 3.2.24, ed. John Meyendorff, trans. Nicholas Gendle (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1983), 95)

If God is unrelated to and above any essence, in what way can humans be images of God?

3. I'm going to highlight one of the more fascinating parts of Borysov's article:

Since essence does not in reality exist by itself without a hypostasis, it is logical for Meyendorff to conclude that energies belong to a person. However, this statement would contradict the decisions of the ecumenical councils, which claimed that the Trinity has one essence and thus the same energy shared by the three persons, while Christ has two natures and two energies that belong to one person.

I imagine Borysove is referring, for example, to the third council of Constantinople:

…as we confess the holy and inseparable Trinity, that is, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, to be of one deity, of one nature and substance or essence, so we will profess also that it has one natural will, power, operation, domination, majesty, potency, and glory…

Consequently, therefore, according to the rule of the holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of Christ, she also confesses and preaches that there are in him two natural wills and two natural operations. For if anybody should mean a personal will, when in the holy Trinity there are said to be three Persons, it would be necessary that there should be asserted three personal wills, and three personal operations (which is absurd and truly profane). Since, as the truth of the Christian faith holds, the will is natural, where the one nature of the holy and inseparable Trinity is spoken of, it must be consistently understood that there is one natural will, and one natural operation…

…we confess God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost; not three gods, but one God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost: not a subsistency of three names, but one substance of three subsistences; and of these persons one is the essence, or substance or nature, that is to say one is the godhead, one the eternity, one the power, one the kingdom, one the glory, one the adoration, one the essential will and operation of the same Holy and inseparable Trinity, which has created all things, has made disposition of them, and still contains them. (link)

To summarize, Borysov's initial point seems to be that the divine essence doesn't exist or subsist apart from the persons of the Trinity. Therefore, the persons of the Trinity are who will, think, choose, operate, etc., for "energies belong to a person." If I am understanding him correctly, this makes sense to me, for I myself have argued for a long time that the persons of the Trinity are not (contrary to, say, absolute divine simplicity) identical to their acts of will, thoughts, choices, operations, etc. To all appearances, such would lead to modal (and, seemingly, hypostatic) collapse.

Borysov's initial point also reminded me of the following comment by Joseph Farrell who, I recall, used to be cited as a go-to theologian by Eastern Orthodox apologists (I'm not sure if this is the case any more since he deconverted): "there must be in each case a unique enhypostatization of the will in the person, each free to do with the natural will and its objects of choice what he sees fit" (Free Choice in Maximus the Confessor, pg. 189, link).

While it is true that, in context, Farrell is referring to human persons, insofar as there is an admitted analogy between Trinity, Christology, and anthropology, Farrell's above statement seems to agree with Borysov that "energies belong to a person," for then each person of the Trinity would have "a unique enhypostatization of the [divine] will in the person."

Now, I understand the argument against grounding "the will" in persons or hypostases, for that would either lead to either Monothelitism (Christ only has one will because He is one person) or Nestorianism (Christ has two wills because He is two persons). Both of these positions are false, so "the will" shouldn't be grounded in the individual or subject but rather his nature(s). The one Christ has two natures and, therefore, two wills.

We must be careful to strike a balance here, however, for to say the will is grounded in nature does not mean that people who have the same nature make the same choices. My actual choices are not your actual choices, for even though we have the same nature, "there must be in each case a unique enhypostatization of the will in the person," "energies belong to a person," etc. You and I are consubstantial, but the actual choices you and I make are particular to us as different persons or hypostases. In short, I think that to understand this is to understand the difference between numeric and generic unity which I have attempted to explain in several other places (link, link). 

[Parenthetical: it bears repeated emphasis that one really needs to be careful to strike a balance here. While Borysov does not mention original sin and I do not want to stray too far from the point I am attempting to make, what I have said above does not entail that the Reformed understanding of original sin is false. Nothing I have said implies that only actual choices are sinful, that one cannot participate in the sins of one's forefather[s] (even though actual choices are made by persons), etc. While such Reformed views would require a nuanced defense (e.g. of traducianism), Eastern Orthodox apologists are too hasty if and when they suggest the Reformed understanding of original sin implies nominalism and so forth.

While I am on the subject of Eastern Orthodoxy and original sin, their own synods affirm that infants are subject to eternal punishment: 

We believe Holy Baptism, which was instituted by the Lord, and is conferred in the name of the Holy Trinity, to be of the highest necessity. For without it none is able to be saved, as the Lord says, “Whoever is not born of water and of the Spirit, shall in no way enter into the Kingdom of the Heavens.” {John 3:5} And, therefore, baptism is necessary even for infants, since they also are subject to original sin, and without Baptism are not able to obtain its remission. Which the Lord showed when he said, not of some only, but simply and absolutely, “Whoever is not born [again],” which is the same as saying, “All that after the coming of Christ the Savior would enter into the Kingdom of the Heavens must be regenerated.” And since infants are men, and as such need salvation, needing salvation they need also Baptism. And those that are not regenerated, since they have not received the remission of hereditary sin, are, of necessity, subject to eternal punishment, and consequently cannot without Baptism be saved. So that even infants should, of necessity, be baptized. Moreover, infants are saved, as is said in Matthew; {Matthew 19:12} but he that is not baptized is not saved. And consequently even infants must of necessity be baptized. (The Confession of Dositheus, Decree 16)

Since Eastern Orthodoxy rejects the Reformed understanding of original sin, their apologists have a challenge in accounting for this.]

Returning to my former line of thought, this is one reason I am inclined toward the view, for example, that the Father, Son, and Spirit have distinct thoughts. If they are distinct hypostases or persons or subjects or individuals, then we would expect that each would refer to Himself using reflexive indexicals and would not do the same when referring to the other persons. And, indeed, this is what we see in Scripture (e.g. John 17, in which the Son prays to His Father using first person pronouns for Himself and second person pronouns for the distinct person of the Father to whom He is praying). 

Of course, I affirm each Trinitarian person is omniscient. The propositional knowledge they share is common, but the mode in which each person would affirm this knowledge (e.g. of the economic activity of the Trinity, although the same could be applied to their intra-Trinitarian relationships, such as they are) cannot seemingly be the same without collapsing the three persons into one. That is, only the Son can think, for example, "I became man." 

Analogously, each Trinitarian person would also seem to have a different mode of will. While this mode of will would not be what Eastern Orthodox refer to as "gnomic," nevertheless, only the Son could truly affirm (because it corresponds to the enhypostatized, willed reality), "I became man," whereas only the Father can truly affirm, with respect to the Son, that "I sent you" (because it corresponds to the enhypostatized, willed reality), etc. 

This also coheres well, for example, with the Reformed idea of a covenant of redemption. The Father and Son agree (which language already suggests "unique enhypostatization[s]" of the natural, divine will that each Trinitarian person has) about how to act to redeem the elect. The nature of the Trinitarian persons would entail that they necessarily and conjointly agree about what free choice[s] they make - for our creation, let alone our redemption, was not necessitated or obligated - but [their roles in] said choice[s] require distinction.

I will leave aside the question (as interesting as it is) about whether this has implications regarding historical councils. Rather, an ironic point I think Borysov underscores is that the above may be underemphasized in Eastern Orthodoxy, apologists of which make a big deal about absolute divine simplicity (as if Reformed theologians have universally affirmed this; they have not, link). 

That is, just as Eastern Orthodoxy argues against identification of the divine attributes, so too they ought to be careful to avoid identification of the modes of thought and will of each divine person. But this is a danger if Eastern Orthodoxy rejects (for whatever reason - adherence to historical councils or otherwise) "generic unity" by taking consubstantiality to mean that the Trinitarian persons share the "same energy" - as if such energy does not belong to persons, as if the divine will or nature is not enhypostatized a la Farrell, as if reflexive thoughts of members of the Trinity collapse into a singular referent, etc. 

Perhaps such dangers are not a necessary consequence of Eastern Orthodoxy (despite that Borysov seems to think so). Naturally, this discussion could beg a host of other questions, and I don't intend to address all of them (e.g. further nuances of the Eastern Orthodox view of an essence and energies distinction). The main point is that if or when I have said anything in the past about there being three wills or minds among the members of the Trinity, I have not meant to suggest that three wills or minds are suggestive of distinct natures or that "the will" is grounded in hypostases; rather, the language I have been trying to convey is of unique enhypostatizations of the same, generic nature (in which "the [divine] will" is located) by which we call the distinct persons consubstantial. This seems to be a more precise formulation.

I think (although I could be wrong) that this is also what Ian McFarland is getting at when he discusses Maximus the Confessor:

...one of Maximus' chief arguments against the Monothelites was that their association of will with hypostasis led to the unacceptable conclusion that there were three wills in God. As one nature, God has one will. If follows that what God wills, God wills naturally. Maximus takes it as self-evident that such a conception of willing does not amount to a form of necessitarianism; moreover, it remains internally differentiated by virtue of its enactment in and through the three hypostases... (link)

See also footnote 68, wherein McFarland cites Maximus as writing, "For [Christ] came with the good pleasure of the Father and the co-operation of the Spirit" (Opuscule 7). This language too implies that the energies of the persons are distinct precisely because, as has been said several times now, "energies belong to a person." The Trinitarian persons necessarily co-operate, for there is more than one person and, thus, more than one person's energy or energies in question.

Anyways, the point I am making about generic unity and distinction in choice, thought, etc. wouldn't, I think, be all that controversial when applied to men. To the degree one takes issue with a Trinitarian-Christological-anthropological analogy, then, he would have to explain what is relevantly different about the Trinitarian situation (i.e. something more than just pointing out that the consubstantiality of the Trinity entails that they necessarily work towards the same end; such a point does not address the examples of unique thoughts or choices each person has). This, though, I gather that this is precisely what an Eastern Orthodox apologist would wish to avoid.

Necessitarianism and "Eternal Omniscience"

I still intend to give a fuller treatment of necessitarianism to which I have alluded in a couple other posts (link, link). But after recently finding another piece by Gordon Clark that had not yet been made available online (link), I am prompted to briefly mention two points on the subject:

Firstly, I believe the proposed timeline I constructed as to when Clark changed his mind on the issue of necessitarianism has been strengthened. I wrote:

Given the unqualified disparagement, I take the above to be an argument meant against necessitarianism in general as well as against the Stoics in particular. Then, further, the following was written in 1963, when I gather Clark still rejected necessitarianism...

Now, compare the above to later works in which Clark has - for reasons I again will address elsewhere - revised his view and come to accept necessitarianism. The first two citations are from Clark's books The Trinity (originally published in 1985) and The Atonement (originally published in 1987). Clark had finished both as early as 1977 and had hoped would be published as early as 1978 as parts of a larger book - a systematic theology (link). Some time in this timeframe between 1963 and 1977, it seems Clark's views changed.

For if one reads Clark's reply to Daane (whose thoughts, by the way, I am not intending to defend; while researching material on Clark, I stumbled across what I can only charitably describe as a haphazard, unhelpful "review" that Daane wrote against Clark's book on predestination), Clark appears to deny that divine freedom implies contingent truths. Leaving aside Daane's views in his book, note Clark's own position that he defends in the following quotes from his own 1977 book review of Daane:

Though it may at first be difficult to see what Daane meant by freedom, it soon becomes clear that he does not mean freedom from external control. No doubt God is free from external control, but for Daane this is by no means sufficient for the doctrine of God.

What is worse, or at least what is more obviously unscriptural, Daane argues: "In his freedom God decreed. As an unnecessary decree, as a decree that bears the pedigree of the historical, it might not have been" (p. 77). This means, does it not, that the truth, "Judas betrayed Christ," might never have become true? And though Christ was slain from the foundation of the world, historically Jesus might not have been crucified...

One must face the question, being the kind of God he is, could God have decided against Christ's being crucified before the foundation of the world? Presumably Daane says yes. But then Daane's God is not really the God whom the Bible presents. Omniscience makes Daane's God impossible.

On page 162 we read, "God's creation of the world as his free act is not contrary to rationality, but something other than his rationality requires." On the following page he continues: "Either alternative would accord with his nature." But this statement is something neither Daane nor anyone else can possibly know. Admittedly it seems very plausible to most people that God's nature does not require ten planets in the solar system rather than only six. So far as omnipotence is concerned God could have made this system with any number of planets. But though this is so plausible when omnipotence along is considered, the situation is different when we take omniscience into account. Since there is much that is not revealed in Scripture, our ignorance is such that we cannot know that "either alternative accords with his nature." Therefore, unless Daane can support his premise, there is no reason to accept his conclusion.

Clark intimates that because Christ was [decreed to be] slain from the foundation of the world, the eternal decree itself was or is necessitated (which does not follow). Clark then appeals to God's omniscience several times to support his view, as if Daane is on shaky ground for believing God's eternal decree is not necessitated - by anything external, of course, but also not by anything internal to God. 

For whatever else Daane may have written, I believe he is well supported by Reformed tradition for implicitly distinguishing between God's necessary/natural knowledge and God's free/decretal knowledge. Read, for example, Richard Muller's Post Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. III, pg. 412ff. It is Clark who needs to elaborate on why he thinks omniscience precludes divine "free knowledge." He may do so in other place, but he did not do so in this article.

The second point I want to mention in this post is about the very motivation for eternal omniscience on a necessitarian view - or rather, the lack thereof. To do that, I will first quote a recent argument I made against necessitarianism:

Consider what it would mean for God and creation to be ontologically distinct yet for the latter to be necessitated by the former. This would be analogous to a particular understanding of the doctrine of eternal generation - which, even if untrue, highlights the point. If the Father necessarily generates the Son, the Father and Son would be mutually dependent upon one another. Obviously, the Son would depend upon the Father, being necessitated by Him. In turn, however, the Father could be who He is ("Father") without a Son.

So, too, a necessitated creation would mean that the Creator and creature are mutually dependent such that God cannot be who He is ("Creator") without a creation. If necessitarianism is true, then God not only needs to create to be Creator, He needs to be Creator. Creation is no longer contingent, so God as Creator isn't a contingent predicate either. Indeed, it's essential or necessary that He be Creator. There is, then, a real dependence on creation in order for one to be able to refer to God as what He essentially and necessarily must be - Creator.

The point needn't be that the Father-Son relationship is exactly the same as the Creator-creature relationship. One could maintain (as I did and do) that the Father and Son are of the same nature, whereas God and creation are not. In both cases, however, necessitation entails mutual dependency, and this is what changed my mind.

[Side note: on a theistic-contingentarian position, God is still the Creator, but such is not essential to who He is. There is no mutual dependency, guarding divine sufficiency. On theistic-necessitarianism, on the other hand, there is no apparent reason why being "Creator" would be any less integral to the essence of God than any commonly regarded divine attribute. Indeed, perhaps this line of reasoning begins to show that Karofsky's reductive monism does follow from necessitarianism (and, hence, why Christians must disagree with Karofsky).]

In short, for a Christian, theistic-necessitarianism is caught on the horns of a dilemma: 1) a pantheistic concession (such as a theistic-Karofskyan necessitarian would make) would salvage the doctrine of divine sufficiency at the expense of the Creator-creature distinction; 2) on the other hand, a concession that there is a mutual dependency between an ontologically distinct Creator and creation would salvage the doctrine of the Creator-creature distinction at the expense of divine sufficiency.

In bold is one argument I would present against Clark's necessitarianism. Now, further notice that because necessitarianism precludes divine sufficiency, there is less motivation to believe God is eternally omniscient.

What I mean by that is this: one reason I reject libertarian accounts of free will would be that I think such accounts preclude divine sufficiency, for God['s knowledge] would then be contingent on His creation. In fact, this was instrumental to my personal attraction to Reformed theology. To protect divine sufficiency, I would argue God's knowledge must be eternal and not contingent on anything external to His own nature and will (i.e. what I call "eternal omniscience" for shorthand).

But if divine sufficiency is denied (as a necessitarian must do to remain relatively consistent), then that is one less reason to believe eternal omniscience. Clark may argue for eternal omniscience on other bases, but significant portions of his book Predestination would have to be revised, such as:

In contrast with Calvinism the Arminian theory of the will may be called the theory of contingency. Or it may be described as the liberty of indifference: That is to say, no motives determine the will. It can choose the weaker motive over the stronger, or, what is more to the point, it can choose without any motive at all. This ability is frequently called the power of contrary choice. Given a set of antecedents, not only external but also internal, the will’s decision could have been the reverse of what it was. A contingent event is one which may or may not happen. It is devoid of certainty, and therefore cannot be foreknown or predicted. Thus the doctrine of free will is a denial of omniscience. (Predestination, Appendix on "Predestination in the Old Testament")

If necessitarianism allows that God necessarily depends on there being a creation to Himself be [Creator], then God is not divinely sufficient, and Clark's above argument is itself insufficient against Arminianism on this point. And while Clark does, in other parts of the book, certainly supports "eternal omniscience" exegetically, if we stop and think about it, rather than it being the case that the traditional Reformed view on divine free knowledge undermines "eternal omniscience," Clark's view undermines it. 

For if God depends on creation to be [Creator], there can be no a priori reason for supposing it is wrong that God's knowledge also depends on creation. Indeed, it would seem that on necessitarianism, God's knowledge "I am Creator" does depend on creation. Thus, it doesn't appear that theistic necessitarianism can be consistent with eternal omniscience. On theistic necessitarianism, divine eternity and divine sufficiency are undermined.

Reflections on Contingentarianism and Necessitarianism

I had recently thought to finally make an effort to complete a post that has been in the draft phases for around 7 years now in which I revisited necessitarianism, a position I formerly held (example). There was already much to say on the subject even before Amy Karofsky published an interesting - if flawed - book providing a rare defense of necessitarianism (link). With that publication, I thought to use it as a foil for some reflections I've meant to publish for a while now. 

Was Augustine a Necessitarian?

One argument Karofsky makes is that Augustine was a necessitarianism: 

Augustine also believes that the future is necessitated. Combining Christianity with aspects of Plato's metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical theories, he maintains that there is an ultimate, necessary basis that is a fully good and all-knowing God. Because God is omniscient, God knows what will occur in the future, and because God's intellect and will are unchanging, so, too, is the way that the world will unfold. God even knows what a person will choose to do. However, Augustine explains, such divine foreknowledge does not cause or force the person to choose in the way that they do; the person still chooses of their own will. (pg. 10) 

...it is, of course, possible to live by the theory of necessitarianism - Parmenides, the Stoics, Augustine, Spinoza, and I are all cases in point. (A Case for Necessitarianism, pg. 158)

In reality, to suggest Augustine believed the future is "necessitated" or was a "necessitarian" is misleading, to say the least. The simplest refutation is that Augustine argued our will is not necessitated: "We sin not by necessity but by the will" (link). 

Now, the future is indeed foreknown by God. In fact, Karofsky is correct that Augustine believes God's knowledge to be eternal (The Confessions, Book XI, link). But this does not, to Augustine, imply necessitarianism. When Evodius asks, in On the Free Choice of the Will, "How is it that future events God foreknows do not happen necessarily?" Augustine's answer is, in part, that "God foreknows all the things of which He is the author and yet is not the author of all the things He foresees. He is not the evil author of these things..." 

It may be inconsistent for Augustine to hold that God's "eternal" knowledge is [seemingly] contingent on future events like human free will - events and free will that is not necessitated - but that is indeed what it appears that Augustine believed, and nothing in The Confessions indicates otherwise.

Perhaps one might argue that the above only reflects Augustine's earlier thought. On the Free Choice of the Will was written at least a decade before The City of God, the other work by Augustine which Karofsky cites. But it turns out that Karofsky's own citation (book 5, chapter 10) is precisely what rules Augustine out as a necessitarian. Augustine writes:

Wherefore, neither is that necessity to be feared, for dread of which the Stoics labored to make such distinctions among the causes of things as should enable them to rescue certain things from the dominion of necessity, and to subject others to it. Among those things which they wished not to be subject to necessity they placed our wills, knowing that they would not be free if subjected to necessity. For if that is to be called our necessity which is not in our power, but even though we be unwilling effects what it can effect — as, for instance, the necessity of death — it is manifest that our wills by which we live up-rightly or wickedly are not under such a necessity; for we do many things which, if we were not willing, we should certainly not do. This is primarily true of the act of willing itself — for if we will, it is; if we will not, it is not — for we should not will if we were unwilling. But if we define necessity to be that according to which we say that it is necessary that anything be of such or such a nature, or be done in such and such a manner, I know not why we should have any dread of that necessity taking away the freedom of our will. For we do not put the life of God or the foreknowledge of God under necessity if we should say that it is necessary that God should live forever, and foreknow all things; as neither is His power diminished when we say that He cannot die or fall into error — for this is in such a way impossible to Him, that if it were possible for Him, He would be of less power. But assuredly He is rightly called omnipotent, though He can neither die nor fall into error. For He is called omnipotent on account of His doing what He wills, not on account of His suffering what He wills not; for if that should befall Him, He would by no means be omnipotent. Wherefore, He cannot do some things for the very reason that He is omnipotent. So also, when we say that it is necessary that, when we will, we will by free choice, in so saying we both affirm what is true beyond doubt, and do not still subject our wills thereby to a necessity which destroys liberty. (link)

Later in The City of God, a concrete example of prelapsarian Adam illustrates exactly what Augustine means by "liberty" and "free will," and his statements, such as the following, are unintelligible within the framework of Karofsky's necessitarianism: "the first freedom of will which man received when he was created upright consisted in an ability not to sin, but also in an ability to sin" (link). 

How Karofsky can be aware of such a work yet classify Augustine as a necessitarian is a mystery, for this is exactly what Karofsky denies is possible to a necessitarian: "a necessitarian will reject any account that takes free will to mean that a person can sometimes choose one of (sic) more than one possible alternative beliefs... Instead, a necessitarian believes... nothing could have been otherwise" (A Case for Necessitarianism, pg. 153).

To drive the point home, Augustine not only believed that man is - or, at least, was (prior to the first sin) free - he believed that God is free. In The Enchiridion, Augustine says, "both baptism and death, were submitted to by Him, not through a pitiable necessity, but of His own free pity for us" (link). And again, "The omnipotent God, then, whether in mercy He pities whom He will, or in judgment hardens whom He will, is never unjust in what He does, never does anything except of His own free-will, and never wills anything that He does not perform." While God's grace is necessary for our salvation, salvation itself not necessitated but is rather a "free gift."

What is "Theistic Contingentarianism"?

Karofsky defines contingentarianism as the contradictory of necessitarianism. The former (contingentarianism) is the view that "at least some thing about the universe could have been otherwise in some way or other" (A Case for Necessitarianism, pg. 1). The latter view (necessitarianism), as mentioned above, is that "nothing could have been otherwise." Insofar as many theists defend divine freedom in accepting that God could have refrained from creating, theistic contingentarianism is a species of contingentarianism. 

Christianity and Theistic Contingentarianism

What motivates theistic contingentarianism? There's probably more than one answer to this question, so I'll answer for myself one reason why I now disbelieve necessitarianism. If necessitarianism is true, creation is necessitated. What I eventually have come to conclude is that necessitarianism is incompatible with the biblical doctrine of creation and/or God. 

Christians believe in a Creator-creature distinction. Compare this to Karofsky's monism as expressed in pages 137-144. She admits that she believes, for example that "the essence of one thing contains the essence of every other." Any attempt to develop a theistic necessitarianism along such lines would be pantheistic, anti-biblical, and a non-starter for Christians.

In contrast, my own, former view argued that pantheism or monism were not entailments of theistic necessitarianism (link). However, even if my former view were true - even if a necessitated creation is not essentially divine - I now believe such would entail a denial of divine sufficiency. 

Consider what it would mean for God and creation to be ontologically distinct yet for the latter to be necessitated by the former. This would be analogous to a particular understanding of the doctrine of eternal generation - which, even if untrue, highlights the point. If the Father necessarily generates the Son, the Father and Son would be mutually dependent upon one another. Obviously, the Son would depend upon the Father, being necessitated by Him. In turn, however, the Father could be who He is ("Father") without a Son. 

So, too, a necessitated creation would mean that the Creator and creature are mutually dependent such that God cannot be who He is ("Creator") without a creation. If necessitarianism is true, then God not only needs to create to be Creator, He needs to be Creator. Creation is no longer contingent, so God as Creator isn't a contingent predicate either. Indeed, it's essential or necessary that He be Creator. There is, then, a real dependence on creation in order for one to be able to refer to God as what He essentially and necessarily must be - Creator.

The point needn't be that the Father-Son relationship is exactly the same as the Creator-creature relationship. One could maintain (as I did and do) that the Father and Son are of the same nature, whereas God and creation are not. In both cases, however, necessitation entails mutual dependency, and this is what changed my mind. 

[Side note: on a theistic-contingentarian position, God is still the Creator, but such is not essential to who He is. There is no mutual dependency, guarding divine sufficiency. On theistic-necessitarianism, on the other hand, there is no apparent reason why being "Creator" would be any less integral to the essence of God than any commonly regarded divine attribute. Indeed, perhaps this line of reasoning begins to show that Karofsky's reductive monism does follow from necessitarianism (and, hence, why Christians must disagree with Karofsky).]

In short, for a Christian, theistic-necessitarianism is caught on the horns of a dilemma: 1) a pantheistic concession (such as a theistic-Karofskyan necessitarian would make) would salvage the doctrine of divine sufficiency at the expense of the Creator-creature distinction; 2) on the other hand, a concession that there is a mutual dependency between an ontologically distinct Creator and creation would salvage the doctrine of the Creator-creature distinction at the expense of divine sufficiency. 

Thus, theistic necessitarianism is anti-biblical, and this is an obvious motivation for Christians such as myself to reject it. None of this would probably persuade Karofsky herself, but that is a separate matter.

Does Theistic Contingentarianism Fail?

While the above makes a case for why a Christian might be motivated to accept theistic contingentarianism, Karofsky argues that theistic contingentarianism in fact fails. As such, the book implicitly attacks Christianity. 

One such argument it fails is as follows:

In general, it seems that any theory that attempts to account for contingency by appeal to entities that are in some way necessary and in some way contingent will fail. Indeed, the other leading theory that posits a basis for modalities that is partly contingent and partly necessary also fails, and does so for pretty much the same reasons that dispositionalists account fail. That theory is what I will call contingentarian theism.

As I explained in the Introduction, a contingentarian-theist typically maintains that although God is a necessary being, God has free will, and, as such, God could have chosen to create a different world with different inhabitants. God's necessary nature provides for the necessity of laws, essences, and eternal truths, while God's free will provides for the contingency of the existence of the entitites in the world and some of their properties. However, there are many problems with the contingentarian theistic account of contingency, and many of those problems are similar to those that arise for dispositionalist accounts.

Both the dispositionalist and the contingentarian-theist attribute a contingent feature to an otherwise necessary basis. The dispositionalist attributes potency to the essential nature of dispositional properties and the contingentarian-theist attributes free will to the necessary nature of God. As I showed earlier, the contingent feature of dispositions not only fails to account for contingency but also prevents the dispositionalist from providing an adequate account of necessity. A similar problem arises in contingentarian theism and can be expressed as a Euthyphro-type dilemma that might go like this: When God chooses to create from among possible alternative, either God makes the choice for some reason, or God makes the choice for no reason. If God chooses to create this world for some reason (say that it is the best), that reason determines God's choice, in which case, the choice could not have been made differently, and the outcome is necessary and not contingent. However, if God chooses for no reason (God just happens to choose this world), then God's choice is arbitrary and any choice can follow, in which case anything is possible, and nothing is necessary. So, either nothing is contingent, or nothing is necessary. 

The problem is not that difficult to see. Both the dispositionalist and the contingentarian-theist recognize that a necessary basis is needed in order to have necessary natural laws and necessary eternal truths. Both also recognize that if the basis is entirely necessary, there can be no contingency. In a desire to avoid necessitarianism, they attribute some contingent feature to that basis. But then that basis is such that it could have been otherwise in at least some way, in which case it is not necessary and cannot provide an adequate basis for the necessity of certain laws and truths. In essence, one cannot have one's cake and eat it, too.

Finally, the further condition that was derived from Shalkowski's argument works to show that both dispositionalism and theistic contingentarianism fail because, according to that condition, only what is necessary can be a member of basis. (Karofsky, A Case For Necessitarianism, pgs. 76-77)

Paragraphs 1 and 2 set the context for the argument. Paragraphs 3 spells out an argument to which I intend to reply below, as it is similar to the following arguments I made when I was a necessitarian (with some differences, on which, again, see below):

Why did God decree to maximally manifest His glory? I don't see any other possible conclusion than something similar to this or what I said to my friend. In fact, to say there are multiple possible worlds is simply to say God's instantiation of this possible world was not necessary. On this supposition, can there be a reason God instantiated this possible world? Would not such a reason imply the necessity of the instantiation? If not, then is not the alleged reason an arbitrary one? (link)

I then elaborated on this argument here:

My current response would be that nothing which occurs is unnecessary, for that would imply, as Clarke wishes to avoid, that God’s will is arbitrary. Sure, on the assumption that there are multiple possible worlds, God may have a reason for instantiating some particular possible world, but as on Clarke’s view such a reason would not be necessary, it would still be arbitrary. I may as well ask what God’s reason was for choosing His reason for creating this possible world over against any other reason capable of being chosen which might have led to the instantiation of another possible world, and there could be no answer because the reason itself was chosen arbitrarily. (link)

And once more, I make the same essential argument here:

If I ask what the basis or reason is that, given that world A (in which God creates) and world B (in which God never creates) are both agreeable to His nature, God chose to instantiate world A rather than world B, the answer “it was agreeable to His nature” doesn’t suffice. For world B would also have been agreeable to His nature. The arbitrarity objection stands. (link)

To try to put the argument as forcefully as I can think to, one further way to state it is to suppose God was free to create or not create as He has. On this supposition, further suppose we say God has some reason[s] w to create this world. Reason[s] w would not necessitate the creation of this world, so conceivably, God could have refrained from creating this world for reasons x.

Now, any reason[s] y which we might posit as an explanation for why God chose reason[s] w (on which account He created this world) rather than reason[s] x (on which account He might have refrained from creating this world) would be reason[s] subject to the same point ad infinitum. 

That is, reason[s] y would not necessitate choice of reason[s] w (on which account He created this world), so conceivably, God could have had chosen reason[s] x (on which account He might have refrained from creating this world) for reason[s] z.

Reason[s] w do not explain why God did not refrain from creating this world. Reason[s] y do not explain why God did not choose reason[s] x, etc. In short, no appeal to "reasons" can serve as a full-stop explanation of why God chose to create this world rather than refrain from creating this world. On theistic contingentarianism, any attempt to work out why this world was created rather than not would generate an infinite regress. So what Karofsky argues is similar to what I too have entertained. 

So stated: should a theistic-contingentarian regard this objection as problematic?

I now argue that it is not problematic. 

Was this creation necessitated? Did God have to create at all? If divine sufficiency is true and pantheism is false, I think not. 

This does beg the question as to whether God's choice to create this world is "arbitrary." In a sense, the answer to this must be yes. In another sense, no. 

When I was a child, one of the first philosophically interesting things I read was in Animorphs: "...can you decide to do nothing? That's a decision too." (K. A. Applegate, The Message). My dad also listened to Rush quite frequently, and their following refrain in the song Freewill communicates the same point: "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."

That is, God either could have chosen to create - as He did - or chosen not to create. But a choice simpliciter had to be made. A choice was necessary even though one specified choice was not. Accommodating our language to the timelessness of God's eternal choice is not easy, but however one wants to phrase it, the reality of having to make a timeless choice itself was not arbitrary. 

Neither was God's choice arbitrary in the following sense - God could have had [and indeed does have] reasons for creating this world "so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places." One may ask for what reason He wanted to make that known. I believe the answer to all such teleological questioning is that all things exist for the glory of God. Although such reasons for His choice are no more necessitated than the choice to create itself, they are still reasons.

This departs from Karofsky: in her third paragraph, when she says that if necessitarianism were false, then "any choice can follow," "that anything is possible," or that "nothing is necessary." If I understand her correctly, I don't follow her reasoning here and disagree with her. That God, being free, is not limited to one choice does not imply "any choice can follow" in the sense, for example, of "any choice [which we could imagine]." We have epistemic limitations, as Karofsky herself acknowledges. These limitations may prevent us from understanding why some choices which we might imagine God could have made might not, in fact, "follow" or be consistent with the nature of God.

Finally, then, in what way must we admit that God's choice is "arbitrary"? God's free choice is the final, metaphysical (causal) explanation of how this world came to be. If we attempt to ask why or for what reason this world was chosen rather than not so created in the sense of seeking a deeper, more fundamental metaphysical explanation for God's choice, I don't think we find one. While it could have "pleased" God to refrain from creating this world, He was "pleased" to freely choose to create this world. He did not have to choose to create this world, and the same can be said for any "reasons" God may have had in freely choosing to create this world. Again, however, this is not a problem, for God had to choose, and He [freely] has. 

Moving on, in reply to Karofsky's fourth and fifth paragraphs on pages 76-77 of her book (cited above), God is indeed the necessary basis for the contingentarian-theist. But I don't think this statement of hers follows: "if the basis is entirely necessary, there can be no contingency." A thorough reply would require a much longer post than I intend here to provide, as it would require a full-fledged exposition of one's metaphysical views to form a complete response to Karofsky. I will, however, offer a few reflections.

Initially, I didn't understand on what grounds she thinks a necessary being would have to [timelessly] act in a way that is necessitated rather than merely in a manner consistent with the nature of said being. In a different context, she makes a similar assertion: "the divine essence includes the divine will and thus includes everything that God chooses" (pg. 12). By initial appearances, she conflates God's will with the exercise thereof. 

Additionally, given her first argument against Aquinas on page 11, I am not sure to what extent Karofsky is familiar with distinctions between God's natural and free knowledge. Her second and third arguments against Aquinas also lead me to wonder how much exposure she has to theistic replies to Euthyphro's dilemma.

An alternative explanation for pages 11-12 might be that Karofsky is only attempting to internally critique the philosophers about whom she is writing (Aquinas, Leibniz). Even if that is the case, her case against theistic contingentarianism on page 76 seemed lacking, and given that I disagreed with her exposition of Augustine, if I knew more about Aristotle and/or Leibniz, I could imagine finding myself disagreeing with her historical analysis of them too.

In general, it was my impression, then, that Karofsky's arguments against theistic contingentarianism here were laden with hidden, unsubstantiated metaphysical assumptions. I thought she might regard certain, controversial views of God - e.g. absolute divine simplicity - as standard for all Christians. 

As it turns out, she lays out the metaphysical background for her criticisms a little later on (pgs. 81-82, 92ff., 137ff.). I'll plan to address these in a separate post, but I will touch on my disagreement with them below as a precursor of further thoughts. 

Is Non-Theistic Necessitarianism Epistemically Viable?

While I might at some other time discuss Karofsky's ethical and metaphysical views in more detail, for now, I will make one criticism - a crucial one, in my mind - of Karofsky's necessitarianism. Is it epistemically viable? 

Earlier, I mentioned Karofsky's monism to be of such a nature that "the essence of one thing contains the essence of every other." Correspondingly, and in the same context, Karofsky also concedes that on her view, "the meaning of one term includes the meaning of all terms" (pg. 143).

These and other such similar statements she makes means she believes herself and fellow necessitarians to be committed to the doctrine of internal relations. This would be epistemically problematic, as Gordon Clark pointed out (before, ironically, he too changed his mind to necessitarianism - without addressing any criticisms of it that I mention in this post - cf. his book The Trinity, pgs. 111-119):

Reenactment of a thought is possible, nonetheless, because it can be separate from this immediacy without alteration. Not only so, it can be separated from other thoughts without alteration. Thus history becomes possible. 

This self-identity of the act of thought has been denied by two extreme views. The first view is that of idealism, the theory of internal relations, the notion that everything is what it is because of its context. This makes history impossible. To know any one thing it would be necessary to know its context; i.e. to know the whole universe. Knowledge would thus be restricted to the explicit consciousness of the omniscient Absolutes; and Collingwood, though he may be Beckett, does not claim to be the Absolute... 

What follows if it is true that psychological analysis presupposes a “complete knowledge of the psychological possibilities of life”? It would follow, would it not, that historical analysis also presupposes a complete knowledge of historical possibilities. In short, it would be impossible to know anything without knowing everything. 

Such a Platonic or Hegelian requirement of omniscience is a serious philosophical problem. It is not to be dismissed thoughtlessly. The meticulous scholar, J. H. Hexter, in his Reappraisals of History, castigates historical relativism as a fad and insists on the “rudimentary distinction” between knowing something and knowing everything. But he omits all philosophic justification for this distinction. 

Undoubtedly this distinction must be maintained, if a human being is able to know anything at all. Make omniscience the prerequisite of partial knowledge, and partial knowledge vanishes. But Bultmann, like Hexter, offers no help: less help, in fact, for Bultmann lets the requirements of omniscience stand. (Historiography, Secular and Religious, pgs. 225-226, 334)

Given that Karofsky admits epistemic limitations throughout her book, these and similar arguments (more of which can be read here) pose serious difficulties to her. She does not and indeed cannot know the meaning of all terms; therefore, on her own grounds, she cannot know the meaning of even one term. Her brand of necessitarianism entails epistemic skepticism. 

Thus, I think the problem of partial knowledge illustrates why a theistic contingentarian metaphysic is more defensible than Karosky's: it is more cohesive with a sound epistemology (link, link).