¶1out of Philly, this is the Reluctant Theologian Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. R.T. Mullins from the University of Lucerne. So I got some questions recently about my book, God and Emotion.
¶2There was a critical review of the book that raises some very serious objections to my work, so I thought it would be good to consider these absolutely devastating objections. Also, I want to ask why the internet classical theists just keep missing the point. 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 appreciates all the support that people have already offered.
¶3If you have questions or topics you'd like to hear on the show, you can send me a message at rtmullins.com. Well, ready or not, here I am talking about everything. Enjoy. Act 1, Mild Criticisms. So there are a lot of good defenders of classical theism, but for some reason, these are not the people getting most of the attention.
¶4You might get the impression that the classical theists today, they're just not sending their best people out in the world to defend their position. And that brings me to the topic of today's episode. So what I'm going to talk about is a little bit of an old story, but for some reason I got questions about it recently. So several people have asked me what I think about Brendan W. Case's review of my book, God and Emotion.
¶5This is a book review that the London Lyceum published several years ago, and for whatever reason, I got some questions about it again. So let me start by saying I'm thrilled that people are actually reading God and Emotion, because when you write academic books, you just kind of expect no one's going to read it. I mean, like, sure, your mom says she's going to read your book, but really that just means she's going to put it on the coffee table, so that way when people come over to visit, she can brag about her son. So I'm really glad that Brendan Case read my book. Like, it's very nice.
¶6And Brendan, he raises some absolutely devastating, I mean, devastating objections to my book that I think are worth addressing in today's episode. Now, before I address some of the criticisms that Case has against my book, God and Emotion, let me give a little bit of context so that everybody listening, you know, you can kind of follow along. So my book, God and Emotion, it is part of the Cambridge Elements in Philosophy of Religion. It's in that series. So the Cambridge Elements, they have a very strict word limit of 35,000 words.
¶7I was able to manage to get a few extra words in there, but I had to cut a lot of material. Like, man. So a lot, in much of that extra material, it ended up getting published elsewhere. So like the Spanish version of my book, God, Emotion, and Scripture, like a lot of the stuff got put back in there. But then there was also a bunch of like papers that got published much earlier too.
¶8So there was this paper called The Problem of Arbitrary Creation for Impassibility that got published by Open Theology in 2020. In this paper, I argue that impassibility, creation ex nihilo, and divine rationality, those all entail a contradiction. Basically, it is metaphysically impossible for an impassible god to create a universe or perform any contingent action at extra for a reason. And then there's also my paper from 2018 called Why Can't the Impassible God Suffer? Analytic Reflections on Divine Blessedness.
¶9So in that paper, I argue that timelessness, immutability, and simplicity, they don't really obviously entail impassibility. And I will also mention one further paper, though I could mention a lot of other stuff that just didn't make it into the book, but eventually got, you know, published. So one final paper is called Classical Theism, Christology, and the Two Sons Worry. And so this ended up in a book called Impeccability and Temptation, Understanding Christ's Divine and Human Will. This was edited by Johannes Grossel.
¶10So what I do in this paper is I argue that impassibility entails Nestorianism. Now, for those of you listening, you might be thinking, like, Ryan, why are you talking about these other publications? Here's why. I keep hearing people say, why didn't Ryan's book address all of these topics that he's published on everywhere else? That's been one of the main criticisms from a certain group.
¶11It's been one of their main criticisms of my book, God and Emotion. And what you're going to see is this is also one of Brendan W. Case's main criticisms as well. To which I reply, I did not talk about those other topics because the book had to be short and I addressed those topics elsewhere. Maybe learn how to do some basic research.
¶12You know, just a thought. But like I said, this is not unique to Brendan Case. So when God and Emotion, when it first came out, there was a common objection that I heard online. It would go like this. I can't believe Mullins did not even mention this one obscure dead guy.
¶13This is not serious scholarship. Now, who the dead guy is, that depends on, you know, who was speaking and what their theological background is, like, you know, who their, like, favorite people are. Now, apparently, apparently because I did not mention your favorite obscure dead theologian, that just means I'm not doing serious scholarship. And it also means, it just logically entails that none of my arguments are valid. I mean, that's kind of a funny way of doing theology, but it's really common.
¶14Here's one of my favorite examples of this. This one killed me. It was so funny. So one critic complained that I did not mention an obscure American Calvinist theologian named Robert L. Dabney.
¶15Now, for those of you who don't know, Dabney was a Calvinist theologian from the American Civil War era. Now, I was, when I saw this complaint online, I was really tempted to respond by saying, now, while I did not mention Dabney in this book, I did briefly date a member of his family, which is, which is true. It's a true story. I had a summer fling with it, with a Dabney. But, um, so anyway, although true, my previous romantic dabblings with the Dabney lineage, that's just, that's ultimately irrelevant to the arguments that are contained in my book.
¶16It just, it just, it just makes me wonder why internet classical theists are incapable of staying on topic. It's, it's almost like it's a defining feature of internet classical theism that they, they just have to miss the point. Anyway, let's get into Brendan Case's critical review of my book. So Case starts out with a summary of my book, God and Emotion. That's, you know, which is, that's just standard practice when you're writing a book review.
¶17Like, when you're writing a book review, you, you start with a summary of the book, you know, just what's the book about. And then you offer some interesting, like, insights or highlights and maybe some criticisms. It's just, that's just how you do it. And, and for the most part, like Case's summary of my book, God and Emotion, I thought it was pretty fair, you know. But I, but I do want to quickly address some, some, some of the, some of the points that Case raises at this stage.
¶18And these are just like gentle criticisms from Case when he's summarizing my book. These are not the absolutely devastating objections to me. I'm going to save those for act two of this episode. So to start, Case has a gentle complaint about my opening chapter on the philosophy of emotion. So in my book, I offer a crash course on the philosophy of emotion just to help readers get ready for the debate over God's nature.
¶19Now, if, if you read the book, you'll notice that I make a distinction between moods and emotions. Case says he just, he doesn't find that distinction between emotions and moods. He just doesn't find it obvious. Doesn't find it obvious. I found this odd.
¶20I mean, this is a distinction that is widely discussed within the philosophy of emotion. It's, it's a distinction that's discussed in pretty much like every intro textbook on philosophy of emotion. So the distinction between emotions and moods, it goes a little bit like this. So it rests on the intentionality or the aboutness of emotions because emotions, they are about stuff. Emotions have cognitive content and that they are always about something out there in your situation.
¶21Moods, well, moods are different. Moods seem to be about everything and nothing. Moods do not have a clear intentional object. At least that's how world leading experts in the philosophy of emotion, that's, that's how they see things. Case though, he says he finds this less than obvious.
¶22Why? Why? Case cites a computer scientist who claims that emotions are not always about objects in the world, which I guess you could cite a computer scientist on the topic of emotions. Because as we all know, computer scientists, like that's, that's kind of their, you know, like the thing they do is to talk about emotions. So Case can do that if he wants.
¶23I, I, however, I, I prefer to cite psychologists and philosophers of emotions on the topic of emotions. Maybe, maybe that's just a personal preference of mine. You know, my personal taste is to cite actual experts, but maybe, maybe I'm just being silly over here on this issue. Now, the next thing I want to consider in Case's summary is this. He says that I insist, I insist that divine empathy rules out impassibility.
¶24I suppose there's a sense in which I insist on this point in my book, God and Emotion, but I, I think it's probably more accurate to say something like this. Mullins cites numerous classical theists who explicitly say that the impassible God cannot have empathy. Cause, cause, you know, like that's kind of what I do in the book. So for example, there's this classical theist named, uh, Girolamo Zanchias, and he says, it is a good thing that God does not have any empathy because if God had empathy, he wouldn't be impassible. Here's, here's another way that you could accurately describe what I do in the book.
¶25You, you, you could say Mullins explains why impassibility is inconsistent with divine empathy because that's also, you know, that's, that's what I do in the book. Unlike internet classical theists, I don't go around just making lots of bold assertions. So as I explain in the book, an impassible God cannot be moved, cannot be caused, and cannot be influenced by anything outside of himself for his beliefs, his emotions, and his actions. Empathy involves being moved and influenced by something outside of yourself for your beliefs and your emotions. So an impassible God cannot have empathy.
¶26Okay. So, so notice what I just did there. This is really important. I defined impassibility and then I drew an inference from it, like a rational inference from it. It's like that, like that's something I do a lot in, in, in, in my, in the book and in my work as a whole.
¶27And something I noticed throughout case's critical review is that he never defines impassibility and he never defines passibility. So he doesn't do the whole, like start with definitions and then make inferences. So just kind of keep that in your back pocket. I'm going to, I'm going to return to this lack of definition theme. I'm going to return to that theme again in a, in a minute.
¶28So the next mild critique from case is my reliance on reformed theologians like James Dozel, Herman Bavinck and Arthur Pink. This will later connect to a major criticism that case has against me. Case complains that I don't talk about Thomas Aquinas enough. I know, I know, I only have a few citations from Aquinas in my book, God and Emotion, because apparently citing a bunch of people who say the exact same thing as Aquinas, that's just not sufficient in case's mind. Now, sure, like James Dozel, he cites Aquinas so much that one wonders if Dozel's violating like a fair use copyright law, but it is accurate.
¶29It's very accurate to point out that James Dozel is not in fact Aquinas. Aquinas and James Dozel, I think would agree on this point that they're not the same person. So my reliance on brand new work from Dozel in a book that's trying to help readers understand current debates. Well, that's problematic, according to Brendan W. Case.
¶30So Dozel, like, I'm sorry that I cited you so much. Like Dozel, like he was part of this book called Impassibility Four Views. It was a debate book. And I apologize for helping readers understand what was going on in that debate book. I apologize for that.
¶31Now, the final mild criticism contained in Case's summary is about the problem of creepy emotions for divine empathy, which, as some of you know, I guess it's a very fun argument. So Case says that my response to the problem of creepy emotions, it makes the passible God surprisingly close. That's his word, surprisingly close. It makes the passible God surprisingly close to the impassible God. I found this odd since impassibility explicitly says that God cannot have empathy, whereas passibility says that God has maximal empathy.
¶32So I don't quite understand how saying that God has maximal empathy, I don't understand how that looks anything remotely close to an impassible God who cannot possibly have any empathy. And this connects to something I said a minute ago. Case never defines impassibility in this review. Nor does he define passibility either. Many of his comments leave me wondering if he actually understands these definitions.
¶33Perhaps Case should consult a computer scientist on this point to help him out. Act two, devastating objections. So in this act, I want to briefly consider some of the major criticisms that Case raises against me in his review of God and emotion. So the first one is about my claim that there is no biblical evidence for impassibility. So in God and emotion, I point out something that most scholars agree upon.
¶34The biblical portrayal of God is that of a passible being. So classical theists like Paul Helm, like Paul Helm is just like, yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's right. That's what's going on there in the Bible. And so I state that there is no biblical evidence for divine impassibility. And then I refer readers to John Peckham's exhaustive study on this topic.
¶35I also cite several biblical scholars who may make the same claim. I could have gone on like further to cite scholars like Clark Pinnock and Terence Fretheim, who say that impassibility is an anti-biblical doctrine, but the space limitations of the Cambridge Element series, they do not allow me to belabor any point. So Case, he takes issue with this point though. He raises two problems for my claim. First, according to Case, there are biblical passages like James 1.17 and then the, then Hebrews 13.8.
¶36Case believes that these passages, he thinks they support divine impassibility. And then second, there's this paper by David Bentley Hart called No Shadow of Turning. I don't cite it in God and Emotion. I cited it in my first book, The End of the Timeless God, but I didn't cite it here in God and Emotion. And so Case is very perturbed that I did not cite this paper from Hart.
¶37So let me start with this, this, this criticism about the, about the Hart paper. So I actually did originally have a few citations to Hart's paper, but the original manuscript, it was, it was, it was way over the word limit. It was. So Hart just, he didn't make the final cut. Why?
¶38Well, Hart's paper is very heavy on bald assertions and, and caricatures of opposing views. And it's very light on arguments. I, I tried to think of what I could say in response to Hart's paper and like then have that in, in my book. But the only reply I could think of is to just accurately describe divine passability. And then also the other kind of reply would be to not include unnecessarily big words in my book in an effort to sound smart.
¶39Now, since my book does accurately describe divine passability, well, then I really wasn't anything left to do in terms of engaging with Hart's paper. So, you know, Hart got cut. What about those biblical passages in James and Hebrews though? So, so Case believes that these support divine impassability. And I find these to be, I just find them really odd proof texts for impassability.
¶40Now, remember, Case never defines impassability in his, in this critical review. So, so James 1 17, it says that there is no shadow of turning in God. And Hebrews 13 8 says that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. What does that have to do with impassability? I'm not really sure.
¶41Impassability says that it is impossible for God to be moved, caused, or influenced by anything external to himself for his thoughts, emotions, and actions. Nothing in either of these verses says anything like that. I guess what Case actually has in mind is that these passages suggest divine immutability, you know, which is the view that God cannot change intrinsically or extrinsically. So what are we, what are we meant to make of this? Well, first, I guess let's just ignore the fact that most biblical scholars do not think that these passages teach this very strong doctrine of immutability.
¶42We don't, we don't really need to consider what biblicists like John Peckham or, or Walter Moberly, we don't need to consider what they have to say on the topic. You know, we don't want to consider what, you know, actual biblical scholars have to say. And then second, we should ignore the fact that the Hebrews passage explicitly describes the mutable and passable Jesus Christ. It describes Jesus Christ in explicitly temporal terms. It describes Jesus as having a past, a present, and a future.
¶43Like, let's just ignore the fact that that's not how you should go about describing an immutable and a timeless being because those are explicitly temporal terms. So when we set all that aside, you know, when we move beyond that, I suppose that we really should be open to the possibility, the very real possibility, that Hebrews is trying to describe Jesus as an impassable, immutable, and timeless person. We should be open to that. Okay, let's keep going. So here's another major complaint that Case has with my book.
¶44So it's about the, about the metaphysics of creation. So here's a quote from Case. He says, I take it that Mullins does not adequately reckon with the importance of divine impassibility for a coherent metaphysics of creation. So that's the quote from Case. This is a remarkable statement.
¶45Now, to be fair to Case, the content of my paper, The Problem of Arbitrary Creation for Impassibility, you know, to be fair to Case, that, like, that didn't make the final cut of God in Emotion. And Case is offering a review of my book, God in Emotion. He's not supposed to be offering a review of, like, the larger body of publications that I've made. So Case cannot be criticized for failing to engage with my papers that are explicitly on the topic of impassibility in the metaphysics of creation. Yet, I even want to make that concession.
¶46I really cannot make sense of Case's complaint here. After saying that I do not reckon with the importance of impassibility for creation, Case goes on a lengthy diatribe about divine timelessness and divine simplicity. The discussion on timelessness and simplicity, that makes up the majority of Case's critical review of my book, God and Emotion. So as far as I can tell, Case's complaint is not actually about impassibility at all. What he's really going on about is timelessness and simplicity.
¶47And I guess the complaint is something like this. Ryan, your book, God in Emotion? It does not adequately reckon with the importance of divine timelessness and simplicity for a coherent metaphysics of creation. Okay, so if that's the complaint, then, you know, I think that's fair. It's fair.
¶48In fact, I think it is actually a really devastating objection to my entire book, God in Emotion. I mean, God in Emotion, it just does not give a lengthy discussion of timelessness. It does not give a lengthy discussion of simplicity. So Case, if you're listening, I will concede this point to you. I originally tried, I tried really hard to have a lengthy discussion of those topics, but Cambridge University Press wouldn't let me do it.
¶49Okay, so let me explain. So the original draft of my book, God in Emotion, the original draft contained the entirety of my first book, The End of the Timeless God, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2016. So the original draft of God in Emotion, it contained my entire manuscript of my first book on divine timelessness, simplicity, and creation. But here was the problem. The copy editor at Cambridge University Press told me that this violated some sort of copyright laws.
¶50I didn't really understand what she was going on about, but the end result was that I was not allowed to include my entire book on divine timelessness and simplicity. I wasn't allowed to include that entire book in my book on impassibility and passibility. You know, maybe I should have fought harder to get the entirety of my first book into this little Cambridge element on God in Emotion. I don't know. I mean, I guess this is just going to be one of my life's biggest regrets.
¶51I really don't know what else to say. So let's get into a different issue from Case's critical review. So Case considers my unity argument against the consistency of divine love and impassibility. So in my book, I look at the classical theist's own account of divine love, and I argue that it is incompatible with impassibility. So the classical theist says that love involves a desire to be united with the object of love.
¶52And I point out that impassibility rules this out entirely. And I offer multiple reasons for why this is the case. And one of those is because impassibility says that God does not have any desires. Like, that's just like a really, like really glaring problem, like right there on the surface. Now, in reflecting on these different arguments that I give, Brendan Case notes that I primarily focus on Calvinist thinkers for this argument.
¶53And I do not consider the work of Aquinas. So in Case's mind, Aquinas has a far superior view of the nature of divine love than those Calvinists that I engage with. So that's the complaint. I'm not really sure what to make of this complaint. I mean, my chapter on love, it offers quite a bit of engagement with Eric Silverman's recent Thomistic defense of the coherence of divine love and impassibility.
¶54And then my chapter on love, it also offers a lengthy discussion of the recent work on divine love from the Thomistic philosopher Eleanor Stump. So Stump's work on divine love is an exposition in defense of Thomas Aquinas' theology. And so my unity argument is explicitly responding to Stump's Thomistic defense of divine love and impassibility. So I'm really not sure what Case is going on about here in this complaint against me. Perhaps Case just needs another computer scientist to help him notice what's actually going on in my book.
¶55Moving swiftly on, here is another complaint about my book from Brendan Case. In one section of Case's review, he suggests that God timelessly has analogical grief towards creation. Analogical grief? I gather that Case thinks analogical grief would help the classical theist avoid some of the objections that are discussed in the book. You see, in my book, I consider some incompatibility objections between classical theism, divine anger, and divine sadness.
¶56So for example, lots of classical theists, they want to say that God is angry at the sin in the world. But then what I also point out is that a whole bunch of other classical theists, they're like, we can't say that. We can't say God's actually angry at the sin in the world. Because if we did say that, well, then we'd be inconsistent with impassibility. So I point out that classical theists have noticed the problem here.
¶57And then what I do is I go through several arguments to demonstrate that there is an incompatibility between divine wrath and impassibility. I do this whole thing where I define terms and I draw out inferences. You know the deal, the whole analytic philosophy thing. So I also look at some really funny arguments from classical theists themselves, where they explain why God cannot be timelessly sad about the world. So there's this really great argument from the classical theist Marshall Randalls.
¶58Marshall Randalls, if you don't know, he was this guy, he published this book in the year 1900 on the happiness of God. And so it's supposed to be this full defense of impassibility. Really interesting, really cool stuff. And there's some really funny moments in it too. So Randalls, he says that if God is timelessly sad about what happens in the world, you get this like really absurd conclusion.
¶59So imagine this, like general resurrection of the dead happens, you know, like sin and sin and death and sickness, all that stuff like it's just removed from the world. And so like, you're really happy, you know, you're really excited. And so you walk up to God to express just how happy you are. But then you see that God is just, well, God's timelessly sad. So basically God's just up there being like a cosmic party pooper because he cannot stop being timelessly sad.
¶60But the rest of us, the rest of us though, we just should carry on celebrating that there's no more sin and death in the world while God is just timelessly like grieving. Like that's, that's, that's, that's, that's Marshall Randalls argument. He's just like, he's just like, come on, man. Like that's, that's nuts. Now, why do I discuss this argument from Randalls?
¶61Let me give you two reasons. First, because it's funny. Like it's just a really funny argument. Second, because I wanted to demonstrate that lots of classical theists in the past, they were really smart. Like they're really smart.
¶62And those classical theists in the past, like they had, you know, good reasons for the positions that they wish to affirm. Because I want readers to understand this really obvious point. So classical theists in the past, they saw the incompatibilities between timelessness and divine sadness. And so what they did is they rejected divine sadness. But Brendan W.
¶63Case thinks that maybe timeless analogical grief, that could help the classical theist out here. However, I, I cannot make much sense of this. I don't, I don't know what that means. As I explain in God and Emotion, analogical predications are literal predications. They are not metaphorical predications.
¶64Classical theism says that God cannot have any emotion that is inconsistent with God's undisturbed happiness. And then further, this happiness is grounded entirely in himself, since an impassable God cannot be moved or influenced by anything external to himself. Now, I take it as obvious that grief is inconsistent with pure bliss that is entirely grounded in God. Also, I don't understand how an impassable God could have grief over the events of history. Because impassibility says that the events of history cannot influence God.
¶65So in light of what classical theism actually says, I cannot make sense of this so-called analogical grief that Case speaks of. Instead, I believe that Case is doing what far too many internet classical theists do. They believe that merely throwing around the word analogical, like they think that somehow magically solves all of their problems. Okay, let's look at one final complaint from Case's critical review of my book. In the final section of Case's review, he claims that the Neo-Chalcedonian doctrine of the Incarnation, it helps us transcend the debate between impassibility and passibility.
¶66This is because God the Son is both passable and impassable. My guess is that Case wants to say that the divine nature of Christ is impassable and that the human nature of Christ is passable. I'm guessing that's what he wants to say. And that's fine. But notice something though.
¶67If you say that, that does not help us transcend any of these debates over the divine nature. Because all of the arguments that I present in God and Emotion, they are concerning the divine nature. So nothing about adding a human nature to the story addresses the arguments that I develop about the divine nature. Like, you know, it's this whole thing called staying on topic. In fact, I think that classical theism plus the Incarnation, I think it entails Nestorianism.
¶68So appeals to the Incarnation, they certainly will not help one avoid any of the arguments that I have raised against classical theism. As I pointed out at the beginning of this episode, I published a paper arguing that the Neo-Chalcedonian doctrine of the Incarnation is inconsistent with classical theism. Now again, again, I need to be very clear about this point. Case cannot be judged for not engaging with this paper on the Incarnation. Because Case, what he's meant to be doing, he's meant to be writing a review of my book, God and Emotion.
¶69Case is not meant to review issues that fall outside of the scope of this book. Of course, most of Case's review focuses on issues that do in fact fall outside of the scope of God and Emotion. And most of Case's review concerns topics that I have published a great deal on elsewhere. So I cannot help but believe that Case does not know how to stay on topic. I mean, if Case really is interested in what I have to say about the Incarnation, or if he's really interested in what I have to say about God's relationship to time, it would be best that he look at my books on those topics.
¶70And in case you're wondering, like, when I wrote a book called God and Emotion, it's just about God and Emotion. When I wrote a book called The End of the Timeless God, well, I put timelessness there in the title, so that way people know what the topic is. So in my book, The End of the Timeless God, I've actually got a whole chapter just on the Incarnation. So if Case wants to know what my views are on those topics, he can just look there. Now, in reflecting on this whole, you know, situation here, I can't help but notice a particular pattern.
¶71So again, most of Case's complaints about God and Emotion, most of his complaints are about topics that I address in other books and papers, which makes me wonder why Case would read a book called God and Emotion if he really just wants to see a discussion about timelessness, simplicity, and the Incarnation. What it does is it reminds me of the debate that I had with Gavin Ortlund a few years ago on divine simplicity. So before that debate, I gave Gavin a copy of my forthcoming chapter from the Contemplating Divine Simplicity Five Views book. I gave Gavin that chapter on divine simplicity for a couple reasons. First, it is actually on the topic of divine simplicity, you know, like the topic of the debate.
¶72And then second, my paper covered all of the arguments that we were going to discuss in the debate. So I thought this would help Gavin prepare for the debate on divine simplicity. But instead, when questioned about this, why he did not read that paper? Gavin said, well, he said this publicly. He said that he read my book God and Emotion instead.
¶73He said he read my book God and Emotion to help him prepare for a debate on divine simplicity. So Gavin read a book on a completely different topic to help him prepare for our debate. That's certainly a choice that one could make. So here's my question, I guess. Here's my closing thoughts here.
¶74Is this just something that internet classical theists have to do? Like in order to be a part of this crowd, do you have to consistently fail at missing the point? Does group membership require that you just go off topic all the time? And here's another question I have. Because remember, the London Lyceum published this review.
¶75Is this book review what counts as cheerful charity and critical thinking over there at the London Lyceum? I'm not really sure. Maybe I should consult a computer scientist to help me out here. And there you have it, another episode of a Reluctant Theologian podcast. Stay tuned for more episodes on philosophical theology.