Brief Response to "The Non-Heterodoxy of ERAS"

This is a brief reply to Drew Smith’s recent article arguing ERAS has not been demonstrated to be heterodox: https://philpapers.org/archive/SMITNO-31.pdf

While I usually don't engage analytical philosophy as I think it tends to confuse categories, I have always been quite sad that I was too young to have engaged in the ERAS debates back in 2016 and so I thought it would be fun to try here.

I want to begin by discussing a topic that is remote to this issue but that I believe will help illustrate how I am going about responding, namely, the proper definition of law. The important thing here is not that you agree with me here, but only that you understand the conceptual distinction I am drawing between God’s eternal right and the natural law. I will put this section in quotations; it can probably be skipped, but it was helpful for me to think about as I wrote. Here, I take from my review of Fulford and Haine’s book on Natural Law: https://brandoncorleyschoo.wixsite.com/brandoncorley/post/haines-fulford-natural-law-review

The traditional Thomist definition of law as “an ordinance of reason, for the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated.” I believe that this is the correct definition of law and adequately explains its nature, giving its formal (“[an] ordinance”), material (“of reason”), efficient (“made by him who has care of the community”), and final (“for the common good”) causes. If any of these are lacking, then whatever we are talking about, it cannot properly be called “law.” Eternal law, Thomas says, is “nothing else than the type of Divine wisdom, as directing all actions and movements” which is explained by the authors as “the very mind of God as it is applied to His sovereign ordering and governing of creation.” 

However, to my mind, the “eternal law” thus defined lacks an element listed under efficient cause because the eternal law, considered in itself, lacks a community over which it might bind. The given description of eternal law as “directing all actions and movements” and as “the very mind of God as it is applied to His sovereign ordering and governing of things” is not a description of eternal law, but of natural law. If there is any application of the eternal law to rational creatures, as there must be if we are speaking of an ordering of reason that has actual binding power over a community, we are no longer speaking of eternal law, but of natural law, which is not entailed by God’s existence seeing as his existence does not imply the existence of creatures. The notion of “law” presupposes (1) a rational standard which is enforced, and (2) a being who both imposes and enforces that law. However, both of these criteria assume that a law is actually being enforced by the one who has care over an actual community. Is it not the case that because law is an ordering of reason to the common good established by the one who has care over the community, that such an idea as infractions against the natural law apart from the existence of God is contradictory precisely because the efficient cause of such a law would be lacking, and thus it would not be law? But the same argument equally applies to the concept of “eternal law,” and thus “eternal law” cannot be law properly speaking because it lacks one of the essential requirements of it. To be sure, this is not to deny the reality which they denote as the “eternal law,” but it is to say that this reality must be explained in terms other than “law.”

This argument can be written syllogistically:

(1) Law is the ordering of reason to the common good established by the one who has care over the community.

(2) “Eternal law,” considered in itself, lacks a community over which to order reason.

(3) Therefore, “eternal law,” considered in itself, is not law.

I have been influenced in my thinking on this by Gisbertus Voetius, who contends that the Thomists have confused “God’s right,” which exists formally in God and prior to creatures with “his law,” which necessarily binds creatures within time. See Gisbertus Voetius, Selectae disputationes theologicae, Vol. 1 (Utrecht, 1648), 339-340. Thus, if by “eternal law” you only mean God’s right, which exists in him eternally, apart from creatures, and fundamentally founds natural law when creatures come to exist, I grant the notion, but only deny that it is properly called “law.” Thus, God’s right is an eternal perfection of the divine nature, but natural law is a creature.

Coming to “authority,” I will define it like so:

Authority is a relation whereby the superior has the right or power to direct the inferior toward an end.

Or

Authority is a relation of governance whereby a superior is ordered as principle of direction toward an inferior, and the inferior is ordered by real dependence to the superior.

If the question is asked whether authority so defined is a “great-making property” (which I gloss as a perfection of God’s essence eternally and absolutely existing in him), the answer should proceed analogously to how law is understood above. If by "authority" you mean to denote God’s fundamental right of governance, which is identical with his essence and is logically conceived by us as a relation of reason to creatures, then yes this is a perfection. Yet since this is only a logical relation, it does not require the actual existence of creatures and therefore does not obtain in Smith’s state of  β. Relations of reason can exist between beings of reason. This sense of authority might be called “fundamental authority” since it grounds the real relation of dependence that creatures have on God when they are created. Thus, one can maintain authority as a great-making property apart from the actual existence of creatures.

But if you understand authority formally as a real relation of governance in an actually-existing subject, then it cannot be taken as a perfection of God, but is rather a real relation of dependence existing in creatures. This follows because creatures are really related to God, whereas God has no real relation to creatures but only a relation of reason grounded in His essence as cause. On this account then, “authority” is not formally predicated of God as a great-making property, but is denominated from the creaturely relation of subordination to Him. This is because here we are mentally excluding fundamental authority and focusing only on the creature’s real dependence on God. It is clear then that in this sense we are not talking about an attribute of God, but an accident in creatures. Therefore, taking this route, we maintain 4) Necessarily [no trinitarian person has authority over any other trinitarian person (outside the incarnation)] and thus deny authority in this sense as a great-making property. Thus when Smith writes:

“If global authority is not a great-making property, then on the present framework it is not an essential property of deity. Hence, whether the Son possesses or lacks it says nothing of his participation in the divine nature.”

The same might as well be said about creation. As Smith has so defined “essential properties,” then “being Creator” would not count as an essential property of deity and thus whether or not the Son possesses or lacks it says nothing of his participation in the divine nature, which is clearly absurd. The truth is that the name “Creator,” considered formally as a relational predicate, does not add an intrinsic perfection to the divine essence, but expresses the perfection of God’s causal power as conceived by us in relation to creatures. That is, “Creator” is a relative name of God that nevertheless fundamentally denotes his immanent act of creation, which is no different from his will and essence itself. Thus, if Smith excludes authority from the essential properties of deity on this basis, then the same exclusion would apply to “Creator,” since both are names grounded in real relations on the side of creatures and in a relation of reason on the side of God. That is to say, in Smith’s sense, “Creator” and “authority” would not actually be telling us anything about God’s perfections, but are only denoting an accident in creatures and therefore are rightly denied to be great-making properties.

In short, the entire argument rests on conflating what are real relations on the side of creatures with God’s own essential perfections. Just as God does not become Creator when he creates, neither does he become Lord. Relative names of God are fundamentally founded in some perfection that exists in him absolutely and thus we can coherently speak of him as eternal Creator or as eternal Lord. Yet the relation such names denote is only real on the side of creatures; not at all on the side of God.

But to get at the issue of ERAS more directly, the precise and formal reason why it subverts the perfection of God is that it posits a non-subsisting (and therefore accidental) real relation in God, or if it does not do so, then it at least posits more persons than 3. We deny that God is really related to creatures because real relations are categorical accidents. In fact, for the same reason, we deny any real relations in God at all excepting only the persons of the Trinity. The reason that this exception is able to be granted is because the persons are subsisting real relations and therefore by definition cannot be accidental. The only reason created relations presuppose already distinct terms is because accidents have to inhere in subjects; they are not subsistent. But relations in God cannot be accidents. Thomas gives exactly the correct reasoning here:

"Relation presupposes the distinction of the subjects, when it is an accident; but when the relation is subsistent, it does not presuppose, but brings about distinction. For when it is said that relation is by nature to be towards another, the word 'another' signifies the correlative which is not prior, but simultaneous in the order of nature."

The persons just are subsistent relations. The Father is Paternity, the Son is Filiation, the Spirit is passive Spiration. Any attempt to add another real relation in God would mean either:

1. The real relation is not subsistent. Therefore, it is accidental and thus God is not simple.

2. The real relation is subsistent. Therefore, there are more than 3 subsistences of a rational nature in God and thus God is not a Trinity, but at least a Quaternity.

Finally, moving past all that could be said, the analogy with the dancers fails for the reason that, granting such a scenario, there would not in fact be only one substance dancing on the stage that night, but three. If I were to kill the dancing Janes, 3 souls would depart from 3 bodies.