Kingsnorth and Quay on transhumanism

My review of Grayson Quay’s The Transhumanist Temptation and Paul Kingsnorth’s Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity appears in the Fall 2026 issue of the Claremont Review of Books.

Craig on Thomism and divine simplicity, Part II

Let’s continue our critical look at William Lane Craig’s treatment of Thomism and the doctrine of divine simplicity in Volume IIa of his Systematic Philosophical Theology.  In the first part of this series, I showed that in several ways, Craig badly misunderstands the views of Aquinas and other Thomists.  In this second part, I’ll turn to Craig’s treatment of the more general metaphysical disputes underlying the debate over divine simplicity, and to specific criticisms he raises against the doctrine and the arguments of its defenders.

Craig on Thomism and divine simplicity, Part I

In an earlier article, I discussed William Lane Craig’s treatment of the kalām cosmological argument in Volume IIb of his Systematic Philosophical Theology.  Let’s now take a look at Volume IIa, which is devoted to the divine attributes.  Specifically, I’ll address what he has to say about Thomism and the doctrine of divine simplicity.  This is part of a larger discussion of the doctrine, but I’ll confine what I say in this two-part article to his treatment of the Thomistic position, for two reasons.  The first is the practical one of keeping these posts to a manageable length.  The second is that, as a Thomist, I think the Thomistic approach to the issue is the most plausible and important.  Craig might agree with that much.  He says that “Thomas Aquinas [is] the preeminent defender of divine simplicity” (p. 104), that “historically, the doctrine of divine simplicity comes to its fullest expression in the theology of Thomas Aquinas” (p. 136), and again that “with Aquinas we have reached the highwater mark in the history of the development of the doctrine” (p. 143).

Craig on finitism and presentism

The kalām cosmological argument for God’s existence holds that the universe must have had a beginning.  (Not all versions of the cosmological argument make this claim.  For example, the versions I defend in my book Five Proofs of the Existence of God do not make it.)  William Lane Craig’s influential presentation of the argument defends the claim in several ways, one of which is by arguing that a beginningless universe would amount to an actual infinite, and that an actual infinite is impossible.  That judgment, in turn, is supported by appeal to examples like the Hilbert’s Hotel thought experiment, in which the idea of a hotel with an actually infinite number of rooms and guests yields a variety of bizarre consequences.