All is Center: CS Lewis’ vision of the Great Dance

Frequently I have discussions with people who want to de-center humanity from the most important place in the universe, in order to help us realize that we are part of a greater whole as people who live interdependently with the rest of creation. This attempt is noble, because many have misused Scriptures such as Genesis 1 where it tells the first humans they are “made in God’s image” to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth and rule it” along with the creatures who dwell on Earth. A dominionist reading of this can lead to a theological form of “manifest destiny” which makes humans entitled to pillage and pollute creation in order to gratify selfish desires for consumption and domination. 

The Complexity of Love's Simplicity

After posting my last essay, Fr. Kimel has noted that David Bentley Hart affirms Divine Simplicity in many places and "divine simplicity is an expression of negative theology. It doesn't say anything positive about God; it simply denies that he is composed of parts." And this is absolutely true about Hart, and his recent book "You are Gods" has several mentions of the implications of Divine Simplicity. But the important distinction I would like to make is that in the West, Divine Simplicity is frequently tied to knowledge of evil which determines created beings to be evil. This makes God the cause of evil, because nothing could be otherwise than God has known it and made it to be. 

Hart's concept of Simplicity states almost the exact opposite conclusion: God's Simplicity implies that God will inexorably work good for all beings, even after their choices have led them into bondage to evil. Yet, for Aquinas (and those who follow him) the simplicity and unity of God leads to the inexorable conclusion that God will damn some or most eternally, for God's own glory. So, while I can agree that the concepts of Divine Simplicity as put forward by Aquinas and Hart are similar insofar as they are an apophatic statement of what "God is not" in Godself, they are perfectly opposite as regards what this entails for God as God relates to a created world. At least this is what it seems to me, and it seems that with such a wide difference of effect, therefore one cannot say they are the same concept of Divine Simplicity.

So the major difference I am getting at is that Divine Simplicity is pernicious if it is used as a rationale for why God would will and cause evil in the world, including damning many or most humans eternally. 

Divine Simplicity is simply too simple

Recently the amazing Fr. Aidan Kimel has written an article on how the "free will theodicy" is incompatible with Thomas Aquinas' concept of Divine Omniscience. This "free will" argument is that evil and suffering and death are the consequence of creatures freely choosing to deny and destroy themselves and others, and not because God has directly willed evil to happen. Yet, Aquinas' account of Divine Knowledge would deny this, and posit God as the active cause for all choices and events.