ABSTRACT

This essay’s aim is to demonstrate how recent defenses of divine simplicity have failed to address the prevailing challenge of analogical language, and thereby render much of their argumentation for simplicity’s appropriateness in Christian theology null-and-void. For this task, three book-length works published within the last few years are examined: Steven Duby’s Divine Simplicity: A Dogmatic Account (2016), D. Stephen Long’s The Perfectly Simple Triune God: Aquinas and His Legacy (2016), and Jordan Barrett’s Divine Simplicity: A Biblical and Trinitarian Account (2017). The first section briefly details what each author understands divine simplicity to characterize, and how that characterization involves the pivotal denial of God belonging to any genus. The second section addresses the extent to which each author provides an answer as to how one can analogically speak of a simple God. Finally, the third section critiques the kinds of analogical positions found in Thomas Cajetan’s influential De Nominum Analogia, showing that they do not provide a sufficient analogical framework to ground intelligible propositions or inferences about a simple God, which thereby places the original three authors’ defenses in danger of serious incoherence.

摘要

本文的目的是证明神圣的朴素的最新辩护是如何未能解决类比语言的普遍挑战的，从而使他们对简单性在基督教神学中的适当性的论证无效。为此，我们检查了过去几年出版的三本图书长度的作品：史蒂文·杜比的《神的朴素：教条》（2016），斯蒂芬·隆的《完美的三位一体的神：阿奎那与他的遗产》（2016）和约旦巴雷特的《神的朴素：圣经和三位一体的说法》（2017年）。第一部分简要介绍了每个作者对表征的神圣简单性的理解，以及该表征如何涉及对属于任何属的上帝的关键性否定。第二部分论述了每个作者在多大程度上可以回答类比简单神的答案。最后，第三部分批评了托马斯·卡耶坦（Thomas Cajetan）有影响力的“ De Nominum Analogia”中发现的类比立场，表明它们没有提供足够的类比框架来为关于简单神的可理解命题或推论提供依据，从而提出了原三位作者的辩护。处于严重不连贯的危险中。