God Is Immanentia Omnis: A Primer
Greetings, dear reader! Welcome to RobertDryer.com. Allow me to offer you a friendly tour of my model of God, which is where I invest most of my energy when it comes to my theological musings (which is essentially all I do here). My approach seeks to reconcile the age-old conundrum of the Trinity and divine simplicity. Essentially, my theology centers around anything that needs to be said to supplement that theme. Occasionally, I write on other topics such as social issues or provide a Catholic perspective on a particular subject. For instance, I recently offered my (Catholic) view on the sacred scriptures and criticized Sola Scriptura, a Protestant doctrine. Allow me to guide you through my approach to solving the Trinity/Simplicity problem so you can navigate this site effectively and gain a deeper understanding of it. (Unless, you’re here for my music, then in that case mosey on over to the links over on the right and click the music link.)
My approach began with the concepts of individuation and personhood. In my worldview, it’s persons all the way down. I even tend to think of God in the highest principled form as a universal agent, a principle of universal agency, if you will. Individuation is about the process of differentiating entities based on their unique properties, while personhood allows us to focus on the ethical, legal, and theological aspects of these entities. Here’s where the magic happens: I propose a new representation of the Trinity as T = [Actus Purus, Immanentia Omnis], where Actus Purus signifies God’s transcendence and Immanentia Omnis signifies God’s immanence. When I arrived at that formula through personhood, I knew I was onto something. I began reflecting, with the help of AI and extensive data on the subject, but that was the key move I came up with. You can see my first soiree into this approach here: https://robertdryer.com/god-is-immanentia-omnis-microsoft-word-doc/ …
That link will introduce you to how I began my theological journey around Trinity/Simplicity. However, one thing I haven’t clearly mentioned yet is that in that paper, I argue that personhood is a comprehensive framework for understanding the scope of all immanence. That’s right! It’s like having a Swiss Army knife for tackling the multifaceted nature of entities. By focusing on the cognitive, moral, legal, and theological aspects of entities, personhood provides a nuanced and multifaceted approach to understanding the identity and individuality of entities with substance.
From there, I narrowed my focus on the concepts of transcendence and immanence – two key aspects of the ‘classical’ conception of God that have caused theologians many sleepless nights when trying to reconcile them with the doctrines of the Trinity and divine simplicity. Traditionally, the response has been to construct elaborate logical systems to force these concepts to coexist. But I thought, why not shake things up a bit?
Rather than getting defensive, I wanted to approach the problem in a way that naturally aligns with Christian thought as its grappled with received revelation and scripture through the ages. The result is my model, where I present transcendence and immanence in a manner that’s not just compatible, but that naturally integrates with the doctrines of the Trinity and divine simplicity. It’s a bit like getting two dogs who are always fighting to become best friends – ambitious, yes, but far from impossible! In fact, plenty of Theologians have tackled the issue, I just hadn’t come across a modern account that was faithful to the catholic tradition that highlights the mystery and glory in the received experience and scripture, or the broader tradition in light of the doctors. I still have a lot of ways to go to show how my framework is just reworking their work (scripture and doctors) in a modern context. Thanks for the patience while I make this case. If you’re here and reading you’re now my dawg too. Welcome to the dog pound play nice lol
For my introductory perspective on transcendence, you can go here: https://robertdryer.com/the-transcendence-of-god-a-theological-examination-through-the-lens-of-actus-purus-and-immanentia-omnis/ …
And for my introductory perspective on immanence, you can go here: https://robertdryer.com/immanentia-omnis-gods-all-immanence-as-parallel-to-actus-purus/ …
There you have it, that’s essentially the secret sauce, conceptually. Frankly, I couldn’t have made it happen without training AI to learn and express all the key Christian data I was interested in. After analyzing a ton of texts, authors, and concepts, ChatGTP and I realized that the basic idea is to… Actually, here’s ChatGTP’s characterization of the problem: “Ultimately, the aim of reconciling the Trinity with divine simplicity is to uphold the unity and transcendence of the divine essence while acknowledging the distinct relational identities and interactions within the Trinity.” -ChatGTP.
My role was to keep it Catholic, essentially utilizing all the key concepts from Thomas Aquinas and how I perceive the issues. I see the problem as involving four elements: relational language (like divine names), perichoresis (mutual indwelling), eternal generation, and unity of essence. With the assistance of ChatGTP (and Thomas Aquinas), I realized that these four issues offer an advanced understanding of divine Persons as distinct yet interconnected realities in a complex relational network (the RCP, or Relation-Personal Complex). My unique presentation of the issues is what this website is all about.
Speaking of uniqueness, since it’s my website, I’m all about the jargon. In fact, I have an ongoing glossary of terms that you can use to train an AI to understand and see for yourself how all the magic happens in my theology. My goal is to introduce a new term to theology: Immanentia Omnis. That’s my contribution. I feel like we have some good words (typically in Latin) for God’s transcendence, so if we can find a good one for Immanence, then my formula and model of God will prevail in the debate on the Trinity/Simplicity as it pertains to orthodox Christian theology. My glossary of terms is here (check out the last paragraph for instructions if you want to use my terms with AI) : https://robertdryer.com/god-is-immanentia-omnis-a-glossary/ …I love jargon, so pardon me if that’s not your cup of tea.
If you really want to scrutinize the math behind my model of God, I wrote a paper on that too https://robertdryer.com/god-is-immanentia-omnis-check-the-math/ …But, I think the jargon approach through my glossary of jargon (terms) is a more accessible way to grasp what I’m trying to do, so I suggest starting there.
God is Immanentia Omnis; that’s my vision and offering here. The rest is just because I’m a theology nerd. But, I genuinely believe that if we Christians can combine God’s immanence and transcendence in a single sentence as a norm, we really can solve the Trinity/Simplicity problem. We’ve done it in other ways, typically in prayers. For instance, the Glory Be, the Hail Mary (within a Rosary context), and the Apostle’s Creed are incredibly subversive forces for theology through prayer. I think T=[Actus Purus, Immanentia Omnis] can be a subversive force too, albeit through theology proper. I’m not sure how, but my prayer is that the Spirit guides, and this small offering through theology and technology helps. And if it’s not God’s will well, you got to start somewhere and that’s my basic approach into theology and offering to it in a sense.
So, there you have it, folks! A fresh perspective on the perennial problem of the Trinity and divine simplicity. It’s a bit like getting a new pair of glasses – suddenly, everything is much clearer and makes a whole lot more sense. I hope you enjoyed the tour, and remember: theology, like a good cup of coffee, is best enjoyed one sip at a time, and regularly. So come back soon.
