¶1Billy, this is the Reluctant Theologian Podcast. I am your host, Dr. R.T. Mullins from the University of Lucerne. This is the 200th episode of the show, and I can think of nothing better than to talk about God's glory.
¶2Why does God create? Why does God do anything? Does God do it for his own glory? Or if you're a Southern Baptist, for God's glory! Today I have with me Sean Luke to explain absolutely everything.
¶3So if you'd like to support the show, you can donate money to my Patreon account or my Ko-fi account. Any donation amount helps me out in so many ways. My student loan provider greatly appreciates all the support that people have already offered. If you've got questions or topics you want to hear on the show, you can send me a message at rtmullins.com. Well, ready or not, here I am talking about God's glory.
¶4Enjoy! So as some listeners know, I am currently focusing my research on God's reason to create a universe, and then a host of related problems. So a couple years ago, I did an interview with Jordan Wesling about his book on divine love. In that episode, Jordan argued that God's glory is not the best motive for God to create. Instead, God's love is the clear motive for God to create the universe that we find ourselves in.
¶5Well, today I have with me Sean Luke, who is going to argue the opposite. So, Sean, welcome to the show. Yeah, thank you for having me. Thanks for having me on. Excellent.
¶6So I just want to jump straight into this, because, you know, we don't like fluff on this show. We want to, like, sometimes we like jokes, you know, but, like, we want to do some hard-hitting philosophy and theology. So in order to do that, we've got to define some terms here. Yep. So I've got a few different positions that you want us to consider.
¶7So you've got Jordan Wesling's amorist position, so amora, like love. Then we've also got something called pure glorification and impure glorification. So, you know, just define some of these terms for us, and then also tell the audience which position you're going to defend, just as, like, a heads-up for the audience. Yeah. So if we're putting this on a spectrum, let's put pure amorism, right?
¶8Just to coin the term. That would be the idea that God's sole motivation to create the world, his ultimate end, would be love, his love of the creature. The sort of in-between views would be a kind of impure amorism or a mixed glorificationism, an impure glorificationism. And the idea there is that God could have multiple ultimate ends. So one ultimate end could be his glory, but you also might have an ultimate end being his love.
¶9And among those ultimate ends, you can have different sorts of priorities and ordering. So the impure amorist would want to say, and it's funny, I don't like the impure amorist, but they might say that there are multiple ultimate ends, but the more important one is love. The impure glorificationist might say there are multiple ends, but the more important one is the divine glory. And the pure glorificationist is going to say that the ultimate end, the sole ultimate end for which God created the world is the glory of God. Okay.
¶10Now, so you said this word glory, and I mean, this is something I see in Christian theology all the time. I don't, oftentimes I'm like, I don't know what you guys are saying. So just define this for me so we can have a clear understanding of what glory is. Yep. Yeah.
¶11So the glory of God, if we look throughout Exodus 32 through 34, we look at John 1, 1 Corinthians 15, it's associated with this idea of light. And what does light do? Light reveals, right? Light makes manifest. And so when God declares his glory on Sinai, he declares his name.
¶12He declares who he is. So the divine glory is the revelation of God. It is God's excellencies becoming luminous in creation. So I define it in the paper as the revelation of God's splendor and excellence, which illumines and dazzles, revealing God's perfections in creation while pointing to the super abundance of those perfections beyond the reach of created intellects. So you can think about it as the revelation of God's excellencies in creation.
¶13Okay. So it's revealing God's excellence is perfection, something like this. Okay. So you mentioned this paper. So for people listening, this paper is in the Journal of Analytic Theology.
¶14And so it's free to download. So you don't have to, it's not hidden behind some paywall or anything like that. So if people want to know more about what Sean's up to, this is the place to go. Now, in this paper, you claim that glorificationism follows necessarily from God's austeity. Yep.
¶15So I'm going to need you to tell me what exactly austeity is and then develop this argument for glorification. Yep. So divine auseity is the claim, it comes from the Latin, right? God exists of himself. And it's this claim that God is not dependent on anything external to God for his being, that he is totally self-sufficient and depends on and is himself the ultimate sort of criterion of being.
¶16So all other creaturely being emerges from, emanates from God. God himself does not derive any of his perfections or his being from anything outside of himself. So that's the traditional doctrine of aseity. It's a denial of any form of divine dependence for what God is. He doesn't gain anything by creating us.
¶17So the claim, then, that if God creates in order to gain something, that would be a violation of the sort of classical idea of aseity, if he gains something and then already possesses in his own being. Now, my argument is this. If we affirm that God is ase, he's the ultimate sort of foundation of reality, such that all other reality is defined by his being, it receives its shape from his being, then whenever God acts for an end, presumably he's going to act for a good end. I would hope so. Yeah, right.
¶18I would hope so, right? He's going to choose an end because he thinks it's good, right? But if his being is itself the criteria of what is good, of what is valuable, that is to say something is good or is valuable because it reflects the divine being, then God will choose an end as a good end because it's a God-reflecting end, which means anything that God does, any end that God chooses, will be chosen on the basis of its capacity to reflect the divine being. And that, then, just is glorificationism. It's that God created the world to reflect his being in maybe a variety of different ways in creation, but nevertheless, that's the sole ultimate ordering end of all of God's ends.
¶19Okay. So, I want to run a few different potential objections by you because, you know, we're like, okay, you've got this view. Well, now let's see if it actually works. Let's test it out a bit, right? Yep, yep.
¶20So, to start, someone might complain like this. They might go, look, this leaves no room for God to love creatures. And here's the big idea. If God only acts for his own glory, then God cannot act benevolently. God, like, wouldn't be able to act for your sake or for my sake or for any of the audience's sake.
¶21He would only act for his own self-regard. Yep, yep. Now, like, we kind of make a big deal of benevolence. Like, we often say it's an essential divine attribute. So, like, that sounds like a really serious problem for glorificationism if it prevents God from acting benevolently.
¶22So, how would you deal with this one? Yeah, yeah. And it's a good question. So, when we think about benevolence, right, pure benevolence is sort of defined, as you mentioned, as acting for the good of the other without regard to any sort of self-benefit. Now, the question I'd want to ask, just thinking in terms of experience, is whether pure benevolence is actually a good, the idea that you have no regard to your own self-interest, if that's actually loving.
¶23So, the example, which I actually got from John Piper years ago, which is really funny, is suppose you bring flowers to your wife, right? And she says, honey, like, why did you bring me flowers? And you say, because nothing makes me happier than seeing you happy. Like, she wouldn't say, you selfish jerk, all you think about is your own happiness, right? Like, it's probably not her response, right?
¶24She, and if you said, well, I'm just doing it out of duty, not because I really care, not because I'm getting any joy out of this, but solely because I'm thinking of you, she probably wouldn't feel as flattered as if you were, as if you were to act by saying, you know, like, I, nothing makes me happier than seeing you happy, right? So, the joy in your object, pursuing joy in your, in the good of your object can actually be a superior, I would argue, a superior form of benevolence because it communicates the worth of the object. If I ask, if I act for the good of the beloved, because I take joy in the good of the beloved for its own sake, of course, but nevertheless, it's because I take joy in the good of the beloved for their own sake, that's actually going to honor the beloved more. Uh, so there, so with that sort of in the background, there are a couple things to say here. So first, um, I, I don't think God acts, as I mentioned before, to gain anything from creation.
¶25Now, that's just context because sometimes the way the objection can be framed as well, if God's acting for his own glory, he's really just acting to, like, get something for himself. And that's not the right way to think about glorificationism, right? Glorificationism views creation as sort of the emanation of the excellencies of God. Uh, so there isn't any sort of possibility, possibility of gaining anything. But the second thing to consider is if the truth of the creature's essence, right, just is all the way down, expressive of the eternal word, then there actually is no such thing in reality for God to consider a creature in itself, apart from considering the divine nature, because creatures just are the emanations of the excellencies of God.
¶26So when, when, when the objection is raised, right, well, can't God love me for my own sake without self-regard? It's assuming, I would argue, the idea of a creature that doesn't exist. All creatures are at root, actually, emanations of the excellencies of God, uh, which means that we need a different definition of benevolence, which I would say a good definition of benevolence is that, uh, someone acting for another person's end because they value that person's good, because they, they take joy in that person's good for its own sake. They count that, that, that person's joy as an end in itself. And then the way God can act for the good of the creature as an end in itself and act for himself as an end in itself coincides with the metaphysics of creatureliness, namely because creatures just are emanations of the excellencies of God.
¶27For God to act for the good of the creature in itself is just for him to act for his own sake. Okay. I've got a, I've got, I guess, I guess a few follow-ups on this one. So first we need to talk about emanation because, um, cause I know that like sometimes like a lot of like Calvinist, uh, Edwards, Jonathan Edwards kind of inspired stuff. They use this word emanation and people are like, excuse me, what are you talking?
¶28They're thinking like, is this like Plotinus style emanation where God's not intending to bring about anything, but somehow like the whole universe just fought. Like you're not saying that. So explain to the audience what you're saying. Yep. Yeah.
¶29By emanation, I mean that the, it's funny cause Aquinas actually uses the word emanation, uh, even though he's not an emanationist in that classical sense. So when I'm thinking about emanation, I'm talking about the fact that all creaturely excellencies are preeminently contained in God. They sort of, uh, they are radically dependent on God in such a way that there is no excellency contained in creation that doesn't exist in a super abundant way in the creator. Uh, that's what I mean by emanation. Not, not that it's sort of a spontaneous, like, like, it's not that God barfs out a universe, right?
¶30Right. Um, it's rather that all of the perfections contained in the universe are preeminently contained in God in an analogous way to how the, the sort of heat and light contained in sunbeams is preeminently contained in the sun itself. Okay. Cause this, this leads into the kind of the next thing I was trying to understand in your answer. So you're wanting to say benevolence, uh, should be understood as God seeing some kind of value, valuable thing, but that valuable thing is really just a reflection of himself.
¶31So when he's creating you, he's like, I really, I'm just seeing the goodness of myself in you, uh, or the power of myself in you, something like this. Yes. Yep. Yep. Yep.
¶32Yeah. And I, and I would have no, yes. So it would be that, uh, God, when God sees me, he sees God's excellencies displayed Sean wise. Okay. Or Ryan wise.
¶33Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Cause that's what we just want to try to get clear for the audience. They can really get an understanding of it.
¶34So there's this other objection though, that I've got. So in your paper, you say that God does not gain anything from creation. I mean, this is super common, like very common throughout the entire Western history. I see it repeated by Jews, Christians, Muslims all the time. Yep.
¶35And at some point I feel like I'm losing my grasp. Like I don't understand what this really means anymore because I don't understand what would be the big deal if God did gain something from creation. Cause like, like, here's a really obvious one. Like God gains a universe. Like he didn't have a universe and then he wanted one and then he got one.
¶36Uh, so, so here are like two issues, I guess, that I want your insights on that I think will help people out. So, so first, why is it a problem if God gains something from creation? And then second, how do you, like, like how did God not gain anything when it seems really obviously like he gained a created cosmos? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So great question.
¶37So to the first, right, when we talk about God gaining something, what we typically mean is God doesn't gain something that's not already contained in himself. So for instance, the tradition talks about, uh, the Exodus redditus, the sort of outgoing of creation and the return of creation to God. You could think about that as a kind of gain, but it's a, it's a gaining of something he already contains in himself. So in that way, it's not a real gain. Like it's not a real addition.
¶38Um, the, the, the reason we want to affirm that is because if we think that God can gain something that's not already contained in himself, then he is no longer the ultimate explanation for all of the perfections of reality. Uh, if it's not already contained in himself, then there's some sort of standard of perfection outside of God's own being, which as it were measures the increased perfection in God's being, uh, and by which we can say that God has sort of been enhanced or enriched. So because we don't, because we don't want to say that there's any sort of facet of reality that's not explained by the being of God, that doesn't have its ultimate root in the being of God, uh, we'd want to deny the possibility of his being, being enriched by a good or a value that isn't already contained in himself. I think it's the last part of it is what I'm struggling to follow. So I understand the idea that like God's all powerful.
¶39So he creates a universe. Well, he's not like getting more power. Like he's just expressing his power. Right. Um, you know, and he's perfectly good.
¶40Okay. Well, create a universe. Well, what was the, the question would be like, well, what would, what kind of universe would a perfectly good God create? It's not like, Oh God gets a little bit more goodness. Um, so it's like, I understand that point, but God was saying like, I would like to have a universe where my, uh, goodness and power are displayed Ryan wise and Sean wise.
¶41I don't have that. I want that. Okay. I bring it about. It seems like God gained something that he didn't have, uh, which would be now he's got a universe where his power is displayed Ryan wise and got in, and Sean wise.
¶42So yeah. Yeah. Great. And that doesn't seem like it adds to his perfection, but like he's gaining something here. So yeah.
¶43Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there are kind of two ways to think about that. Like you could think about that in the sort of Edwardsian sense where Edwards was kind of a necessity.
¶44He was almost a necessitary. I mean, I think he just wasn't. I know there's like a debate about how to interpret him, but I think it does look very necessitarian to me. Basically a necessitarian. So one could, one could actually say that, um, and in that sense, there wouldn't be a kind of gain.
¶45It would just be a sort of like God expressing something that's already innate to his being, but like, let's, let's take it in the non necessitarian sense. Um, if it's the case that God could create the universe and let's say the state of affairs with God and the universe is more valuable to God than the state of affairs with just God alone, then it would seem to follow that his being alone isn't the ultimate foundation of all possible value. That is right. He needs to create in order to sort of enrich the total state of affairs of reality to bring it up to like maximal value. Does that, does that make, feel free to push back?
¶46Yeah. Let me push back slightly here. So you said you want, you want God to be the foundation of value like that. I'm fine with that. Yeah.
¶47Right. Of all possible. That's, that sounds good. Um, but that's different from, um, you could be the foundation of all possible value and then you would also bring about certain values that were not realized previously and then you'd still be the foundation because you're the one who did it. Foundation.
¶48Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, so it looked like you might be sneaking in another claim here, which is foundation and source. That's a good, yeah.
¶49So it's going to be the foundation. It's going to be the source. But you're, you're wanting to avoid the idea that the amount of value that's in the world somehow increases when God creates. Yeah. That's the part where I'm getting lost on.
¶50Yeah. Yeah. And so the reason if we could kind of think of it like this, right? So if you just have a state of affairs with just God alone and a state of affairs with God and creation, right? Let's call that state of affairs God, like S2 or whatever, right?
¶51That's more valuable than S1. Well, then it seems like there's a criteria of value that sort of like comprehends and measures even the value of God's being, the value of God's being in other creatures. And in that sense, then there's a standard of value to which even God's being itself is accountable to that, that is out, that transcends God's being, right? It measures God's being over and against other things. And in that case, then God wouldn't preeminently even contain that value source.
¶52He would be measured by it. What if that standard of value is just a divine idea? You know, like, yeah, because God's got all like the mathematical like ideas. So he's got all these kind of other like standards of measurements and whatnot. And depending on what country you're in, you know, like you've got different standards of measurements, but God's like, yeah, I've got all the divine ideas of all of them.
¶53One of them is like all these, like the absolute, like perfect standard of value. So it's not a source outside of God. It's just an idea in the mind of God. Yeah. Yeah.
¶54Yeah. So that's interesting. Like, yeah, would, if it were just the divine idea, would it be a measure, would that idea be applicable as a measure of the being of God itself? Yeah. I mean, just like God's got the idea of like, say like a perfect goodness.
¶55And he's like, oh yeah, I fit that because it's me. It's just a description of me. Um, but I've also got like the, like the, like the, like the idea of like a standard of other kinds of, uh, axiological, axiological properties. So if you like, you buy into something like the great chain of being, uh, like this very long tradition, like that, I, as I would see the great chain of being, these would just be ideas in the mind of God. And he knows this is how the hierarchy goes of all the, all the things that could exist on the great chain of being where their places and all that.
¶56Yeah. So classically, we've wanted to say that the divine ideas themselves, right. Are generated by God's self-reflection on his essence, on the things that are already in his essence. So you don't have a divine idea of something that isn't already contained in the divine essence. You have a divine idea of, of something that's kind of like a, it's archetypically patterned after the divine essence, right?
¶57So if God has a, an idea of a standard of value that his being itself doesn't meet, then it would seem like he couldn't have derived that idea from like reflection or contemplation on his own being. Yeah. So say that again. Yeah. So because the divine ideas derive, all the divine ideas are right, are just ways that the divine essence can be manifest.
¶58Like God generates all of them through reflection on his own being. If we have, let's say God's being isn't as valuable as it could be, right? It would be even more valuable in a state of affairs where it's relating to creation. Then it would seem like the standard, right? Or that, that sort of axiological standard that's contained in the divine idea couldn't be like, it couldn't be perfect.
¶59It could only be as sort of valuable as God's being already is, right? So it couldn't therefore be a measure of God's being or a measure of, of the progression of God's being towards that ideal. I guess I don't understand where we're getting this idea that like God's being would somehow get more valuable from creation. Like I was thinking like the, the idea would be God's being is like really valuable, most valuable thing in existence. But there's some other values that just would not exist unless God created them.
¶60So the, the value of a creator creature relationship, like that just can't exist without God like doing something. Well, we, so, so historically we've wanted to say, right. So like even values that, that wouldn't exist, wouldn't quote unquote exist otherwise. They, we would say they do, right. Preeminently exists in the father's relation to the son, right.
¶61So the father's relationship though, right. It would be the archetype for create, for all creaturely relations. Okay. You know, so all creaturely relations are sort of like, uh, refractions of that one eternal relation. Uh, but then that eternal relation is, is that value existing preeminently in the being of God.
¶62Uh, so even there, like, I wouldn't want to say that there are values that are instantiated in the world that aren't already preeminently existent in God, because then his being would in itself be like that, which it has, which, uh, ultimately contains and ultimately, ultimately measures, uh, all sort of axiological possibility in, in reality. So would it be fair to say, so sometimes you see this claim from like, Augustine sometimes says it, then sometimes he takes it back. Um, you know, cause that's Augustine. Like he's, he's, he's like, he likes to like run his mouth about. Yeah, retraction.
¶63Yeah. Uh, so sometimes you see this claim that God realizes all values in himself. Yep. Uh, is that kind of what you're, you're saying here? Yeah.
¶64Yep. Yep. So his own being is, is the source of all values. So if God then measures some end as valuable, right, it has to be because it conforms to his own being in some way. Um, he pursues it because it's a God reflecting thing in some way.
¶65So when God's creating, he's not adding value to the world. Okay. Right. He's expressing the value that's already in, in his own essence. Okay.
¶66Cause that's, that's what I was trying to get clear on. Cause there's different strands within the Western tradition on this. One is like, God like realizes all values himself. So he can't realize, like bring about more values. So that's not an explanation for creation.
¶67And then this other kind of strand is going, uh, well, goodness just is like necessarily diffusive. So it has to like realize all these like values that are not realized otherwise. Yep. And so you're wanting to go more with this first track of going all the values already maxed out in God. It's already preemptively there.
¶68So when God creates you or me, no value is being added to the world. Right. Okay. That's exactly right. Yep.
¶69Yep. Okay. The majority, and I don't know how much you weigh this, but for me, you know, I weigh tradition pretty heavily because most of the tradition seems to want to say God could have not created, you know, it's a very strong, yeah, there's a lot of people who want to make this claim. And I, when I see the counter response to that going like, well, God just has this higher kind of freedom. And I'm like, tell me what that is.
¶70And they're like, it's beyond. And I'm like, beyond what? Like you can get it, but I can't grasp it. Cool. Thank you.
¶71You know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But so, yeah, I think you, and I'm ultimately comfortable with saying yes.
¶72Now you can talk about, of course, as you know, like contingentness, once God chooses to create their contingent necessities, you know, it's a ways the good might, might diffuse itself then, but I would be willing to say it's a, God creates solely because he, solely out of a choice to express his, uh, his, his excellencies that way, even though there was nothing that compelled them to. Okay, good. So I want to get into something else that's in your paper here. So like I mentioned before, you've got this disagreement with Jordan Wesleyan on the meaning of God's glory. So, so Wesleyan says that God's glory is God's own delight in God's perfection.
¶73And that's something I see in a lot of different theologians, but you want to say God is, God's glory is displaying, uh, God's excellence, his perfection in the creative order. And I see that a lot too, like in theology. Um, so Arthur W. Pink, like he, he makes this distinction between God's essential glory and God's manifestative glory, which is a word that it took me a while to practice before I could say that properly. Manifestative.
¶74Manifestative. It's not, it's not a word you get to say often. Uh, so I'm going to enjoy this for just one second. So, so God's essential glory. Here's the idea.
¶75So God's essential glory is his delight in his own perfection. And then God's manifestative glory is the display of God's perfection in creation. So it sounds like you are affirming God's manifestative glory. Right. Yes, that's exactly right.
¶76Okay, good. I don't, and I don't have an objection just to like that idea. Um, so, but here's where the objection comes in. So prior to creation, God did not have manifestative glory. Like God only gets the manifested glory subsequent to creation.
¶77So again, it looks like God's gaining something from creation. So how would you deal with this objection? Yeah, that, so I would reply by saying his manifestative glory is eminently, like preeminently contained in the relation between the father, son, and spirit. So in the eternal generation of the persons, the father, as it were, eternally, the odd intrant displays himself by generating the son who then eternally displays himself in his eternal return in bond with the love of the spirit. So there would be the processions of the persons would be the sort of archetype for the manifestation of God's glory on extra, which is a pretty traditional, it's a pretty traditional move.
¶78I don't know if I understand it though. So I know what it would mean for the father to communicate something to the son and to the Holy Spirit. And I understand that like, you could say this is like an archetype, but it's clearly not the same thing as like God saying, Hey, Hey Ryan, uh, here's, here's some stuff you need to know. Like, like, that's a very different thing because I'm not omniscient. Uh, so I can't like get a perfect grasp of it.
¶79Like the way the son could, um, you know, I'm a bit slow sometimes. And so it's like, God's going to be like, I'll try again. You know, like there's, it seems like a very different kind of way of communicating to me than the way that the father would communicate to the son. And so I just don't see how this could really be there prior to creation, especially when I'm not there. How can it be the archetype?
¶80Yeah. Yeah. So one way to think about it would be that God's relation to the creature is what happens when that eternal self gift of the father to the son is fragmented in time. Right. So like the eternal self gift to the son, uh, there is no sort of dimension of time there.
¶81Right. It's not like a T1 goddess. The father has given less of himself to the son than at T2. It just happens all in a sort of eternal now, but then what happens when that is fragmented? Well, then you could think about God's relation to the totality of creatures as kind of like, uh, approximating his self gift to the son as a kind of limit.
¶82Uh, so, you know, that would be one way. The second way to think about it would also be the key difference in creation is the reality of sin, right? Uh, sin and the fall and things like that. It's not necessarily sin for me to be slow, but there could be realities of fallenness that are impacting me that I'm not even aware of. And how you grasp the revelation and everything right.
¶83Like that's, that would be a really big difference of, yeah, the son's not a sinner, but I am. So God's like, I can't explain it to you. You like, you wretched creature. Yeah. Yep.
¶84Yep. But even there, like, I'd want to affirm that the way God resolves the tension has its sort of preeminent echo in the way the father gives himself to the son and the way the son returns himself to the father. Um, so it's that idea of like, there's an eternal plentitude, uh, that's the archetype for even the way God gives himself to Ryan, right? So God, if God were to fragment in time, the way the father gives himself to the son, uh, it would look something like the father giving himself to Ryan and Sean and the angels and all those things, you know, as the sort of like symphonic portrayal of what's going on in God's being from eternity. So I guess, uh, so follow up on this just a bit, like the, the fragmented, like frag, fragmenting things in time.
¶85I don't know how you'd have an archetype of that, uh, in like an eternal now, because an eternal now lacks succession. Uh, what would it, I don't know how that could be an archetype of a necessarily successive thing. Yep. Yep. And that's where I would say, I, I would think it would happen in the very decision to create.
¶86Okay. Right. So like the, in that very decision to, to, to create, there would be the, the sort of logically prior archetype for, uh, for the quote unquote fragmentation of the equivalencies of God's being in time. So would you want to put a bunch of logical moments in the, in the life of God? Yes.
¶87Yeah. I think in the processions of the persons you have to, you know, and, and you could actually, and that's a good point too. You can even talk about, um, and I think Aquinas does this, right? That the, the processions of the persons, their logical relation as a kind of archetype for temporal ordering, you know? Um, so I, I would be comfortable doing that as well.
¶88I, I think that's fine. Um, of course I would shy away from the language of causality because of the problems with the saying that that raises, but in terms of the notion of the father being a principle, right? of divinity and the first principle, um, that, that is something I'd very much hold to. Okay. So, so like Aquinas, you're like, principle sounds less Arian.
¶89So I want to go with, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. That's right. Cause I, I, that's something I really appreciate about like that moment in Aquinas where he's just like, if I say cause, I, I just sound like I'm saying a heresy. So it's better to say, and I'm like, okay, so you see the problem here.
¶90I appreciate that. Yeah. So I've got, I've got one final worry I want, I want, I want to discuss with you. So, uh, so some people that are listening, they're like, okay, so God's doing all this stuff for his own glory. Like, like that just, that just sounds really egotistical.
¶91So like, is your God just like this egomaniac? Like, like, you know, explain this one. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, that's a great question.
¶92So when we think about ego, right? The, the definition of an egomaniac is someone who prioritizes themselves too much and to the exclusion of others, right? Uh, those are both, both components of, of being an egomaniac. So too much to the exclusion of others. It's not egotistical if someone swims a good lap, right?
¶93And to take some pride in it. Like, that's not an, that's not a problem of ego there. So the question then would be, is it possible for God to take too much delight in himself? And I think we'd want to say no, like if he's the source of all joy, all beauty, all goodness, and he values that which is good infinitely, that would entail him valuing himself infinitely. Uh, but now is it to the exclusion of others?
¶94Well, and here's where the metaphysics I sketched of a seity really matter. No, because creatures just are the emanations of the excellences of God. So it doesn't even, when God loves me, it doesn't even make sense to say he's doing that in order to love himself or like he's stepping on me in order to get this other thing called like the display of God's glory. Uh, it's that because I am a sort of expression of the excellencies of God, his love for me is his love for himself. So his love for him, he's the only being in the universe for whom his love for himself contains love for everything else.
¶95Well, Sean, on that note, I want to say thank you so much for being on the show today. This has been an absolutely fascinating conversation. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, thank you so much for having me.
¶96I appreciated it. And there you have it, another episode of a Reluctant Theologian podcast. Stay tuned for more episodes on philosophical theology.