For divine simplicity: the question is not whether knowledge and power are the same, but whether God's knowledge and God's power are the same (or substitute any two attributes you like). It is possible for two things to be different in definition but the same in special cases. For example, in geometry, the centroid, orthocenter, and circumcenter are all defined differently and are usually different points in a triangle, but in an equilateral triangle, they are the same point. Similarly, knowledge and power have different definitions and are different in most things, but are the same thing in God.

Book ordered on Amazon, bumping it up on reading list....finishing up with Churchill, then on to Dr. Cooper! Thanks for all your good scholarship!

Very informing. And for what it’s worth: I urge you to stand your ground in these matters . Courage

A truly "non-philosophical" position is necessarily an irrational position.

The Apostle Paul seems to affirm simplicity in his adoption of of the Greek poets as proper language applying to God, in particular in Acts 17 “in Him we move and have our being.” Job says “God is higher than Heaven and Lower than Sheol,” Solomon says, “Heaven and Earth cannot contain you.” All good texts to spend time reflecting on

Why assert that God is simple, and then say that we cannot even comprehend what that means? Why create an entire philosophical concept, if we're just going to relegate it to Mystery? Why not just do away with the whole idea of Divine Simplicity and state plainly that God's Nature is Mysterious, but that He sees fit to use the language of Scripture to reveal Himself, and so that is how we should also describe Him.

Van Til was extremely well read. Even though he heavily criticized various uses of philosophy, he read Plato for fun on his own time, in Greek. Any who is curious about this can go to the sermonaudio website and listen to lectures from him on this topic. And many of his papers are free online.

I really enjoyed watching this podcast today Dr Jordan Cooper ✝️💕🙏

Helpful podcast, as always. I'm currently making the leap from Calvinism and Presbyterianism towards something more liturgical. Could be Lutheranism. Could be Anglicanism. Could be Rome. Wherever I land, I always find your books and podcasts helpful! Thank you!

would Proverbs using Egyptian proverbs be suggestive of the Israelites having history in Egypt (aka The Exodus)?

I’ve enjoyed the video but maybe just a thought as to why Van tillians are not on the philosophy train as you have described it. I think they would say that yes they do adopt a different philosophy, but they do so based on what the scripture says on issues and their philosophy is being shaped by scripture which is the only thing described as God breathed. I don’t think they would say we have no philosophy or no need of philosophy, but a philosophy that’s shaped by what God has said in His word. I think that’s the approach they would take

The article "'Turtles all the way down': The Unity of the Trinity as Eternal Regress in the Godhead" explains divine simplicity, and how God can have love and wrath as different attributes, anyway.

Red argyle is a bit much. Otherwise: wonderful video!

Hey Dr Cooper quick question are you ever going to make a video about why Lutheran sacraments are valid? here's a lot in the Catholic and orthodox circles

I think people are starting to have an issue with Aquinas and his teaching that there is no distinction between God’s actions in the world and His essence. Especially with verses like this: Philippians 3:21 21 who shall transform the body of our humiliation to its becoming conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working of his power(energeia), even to subject to himself the all things.

How about a video on the role of reason in doing theology? Where and when do you trust your reason? Is your reasoning capacity entirely vitiated by sin or only slightly impaired? Can we reason our way to the doctrine of the trinity but not to other things? When you mortally sin, and are thereby separated from Christ, do you still reason your way back to repentance anyhow?

I’d love to hear you treat Van Til in a deeper more thorough way. I’m a new fan of Reformed Forum and I was surprised by your comments here-not because I expected praise from a Lutheran, but because I’ve seen very well-reasoned argumentation from the Van Til crowd you seem to be treating as anti-intellectual. Also, probably the biggest hangup I have with Lutheranism is indeed appealing to mystery where there’s bald contradiction (a and ~a) rather than paradox or missing information (the trinity). Obviously I’m talking about the crux theologorum. This is only tangentially related to this video on philosophy and theology, but your thoughts would be appreciated. Oh and one more thing. Why keep the mortal/venial sin distinctions in Lutheranism? Don’t you also believe we mortally sin quite often? Why would we repent after mortal sin if that separates us from Christ whose Spirit moves believers to repent? Thanks Btw sorry about editing in more detail. I didn’t know you’d reply so quickly.

I am curious if Hoenecke or Pieper even talk about the Shema in the context of Divine simplicity.

Regarding natural reason, the issue is not whether fallen natural reason can know truths about the world, even truths about God in a sense. Attributes of a prime mover are true of the triune God in a sense, but the problem is what fallen natural reason tries to do with that knowledge. Van Tils position on Romans 1 is actually stronger than yours, in that rather than saying you can reason from natural revelation to some knowledge of God, he says God's revelation in nature is so clear that all men actually do know God, and not a generic theism, but the triune God. The problem is, and this extends to generic theistic arguments, that fallen natural reason has an *ethical* hostility to God and tries to suppress the true knowledge it does have. And that's the problem with arguments for generic theism; they can be affirmed by an unbeliever within a system that is still built to suppress true knowledge of the triune God. The Van Tillian approach then is to challenge the system that is suppressing the true knowledge they do have, rather than try to reason from within their system, which is built around suppression. So I think the question is more precisely, how does your system account for fallen natural reasons ethical hostility towards and suppression of true knowledge of God?

The Reformed Baptists pushing back against natural theology etc are only doing so against the _other_ Reformed Baptists who have discovered this new toy and are now somewhat overtaken with it. Re. Jeff Johnson's book, I would say it is unhelpful for his side, firstly because the title is so over the top that to prove his thesis he needs exceptional argumentation, and secondly his understanding of philosophical terminology appeared to me inadequate which left me cringing, specifically at the "fatal flaw" critiques of Aquinas. I left the book doubting he had done the original reading in good faith, instead suspecting he had relied on secondary sources to piece together a polemic. It's not all bad but I kinda wish someone else had written the contribution.

Hey, can you do a "5 Reasons I'm not Federal Vision" video?

nice vid pastor, but I have to disagree with you on the topic of presuppositionalism once again. you seem to think that presups just merely dodge the hard questions and just engage in some sort of tactical argumentation. although tactic in debate is not necessarily a bad thing presuppositionalism is not merely a tactic. it ultimately proves God from the impossibility of the contrary but also engages the unbeliever at an evidentialist level. presup is not just to give Christians a peace of mind, it is the ultimate apologetic against non-Christian religions including atheism. and yes I would call it doctrinal development.

John Frame is my fav anti ADS cool protestant guy

No suit? 😟

This is a muddled mess of unbiblical philosophy. When theology gets disconnected from specific texts of Scripture, this kind of nonsensical, confused jargon is the sad result. None of this is taught (or even implied) in the Bible. For anyone interested, James White did a great job responding to this in his most recent podcast on the subject of simplicity.

You reason your way into contradictions and then call them incomprehensible mysteries? How then am I supposed to trust the reasoning that got you to the incomprehensible conclusions? I understand the reasoning that gets us to divine simplicity; but rather than looking at the conclusions that follow and shrugging at them, why don’t you back-track to see where you went wrong instead? Otherwise I don’t see how I should know when to stop trusting fallen reason, or if any stopping point before supposed mystery is totally arbitrary.

It’s sad that the idea of knowing God has become a mental jungle gym upon which to climb all over in the attempt to figure him out rather than knowing God as a personal savior who literally loves you so much he was willing to step into history and die in your and my place that we might live with him now and forevermore. I wish you’d stop with dogmatics and doctrines to reach the head instead of teaching the Bible as it’s written so that people can love God through what he’s done.