The Aporetics of Divine Simplicity

Thomist27 e-mails: 

Thank you first of all for a spectacular blog. I discovered Maverick Philosopher a few years ago and have been reading it regularly ever since. Through your blog, I learned that you wrote the SEP's article on divine simplicity, among similar things; I think, then, that you are qualified to answer my questions.  My questions concern divine simplicity and divine knowledge, two nuts that I've lately been making every effort to crack. First, do you think that theism can be salvaged without absolute divine simplicity? I know that there are many theists who don't believe that God is simple, but is such a concept of Deity coherent? I believe a case can be made, pace Alvin Plantinga and other theistic deniers of divine simplicity, that to deny the absolute ontological simplicity of God is to deny theism itself.  For what we mean by 'God' is an absolute reality, something metaphysically ultimate, "that than which no greater can be conceived." (Anselm)   Now an absolute reality cannot depend for its existence or nature or value upon anything distinct from itself.  It must be from itself alone, or a se.  Nothing could count as divine, or worthy of worship, or be an object of our ultimate concern, or be maximally great, if it lacked the property of aseity.  But the divine aseity, once it is granted, seems straightaway to entail the divine simplicity, as Aquinas argues in ST.  For if God is not dependent on anything else for his existence, nature, and value, then God is not a whole of parts, for a whole of parts depends on its parts to be and to be what it is.  So if God is a se, then he is not a composite being, but a simple being.  This implies that in God there is no real distinction between: existence and essence, form and matter, act and potency, individual and attribute, attribute and attribute.   In sum, if God is God, then God is simple.  To deny the simplicity of God is to deny the existence of God.  It is therefore possible for an atheist to argue:  Nothing can be ontologically simple, therefore, God cannot exist. A theist who denies divine simplicity might conceivably be taxed with idolatry inasmuch as he sets up something as God that falls short of the exacting requirements of deity.  The divine transcendence would seem to require that God cannot be a being among beings, but must in some sense be Being itself . (Deus est ipsum esse subsistens:  God is not an existent but self-subsisting Existence itself.)  On the other hand, a theist who affirms divine simplicity can be taxed, and has been taxed, with incoherence.  As an aporetician first and foremost, I seek to lay bare the problem in all its complexity under suspension of the natural urge for a quick solution. Second, if my understanding is correct, then according to the doctrine of divine simplicity, God has no intrinsic accidents. How is that compatible with divine freedom? I know it's trite, but I haven't seen a good answer to the question of how God could have properties such as having created mankind or having declined to create elves without their being just as necessary to Him as His benevolence and omnipotence (especially if He is what He does). This is indeed a problem. On classical theism, God is libertarianly free: although he exists in every metaphysically possible world, he does not create in every such world, and he creates different things in the different worlds in which he does create.  Thus the following are accidental properties of God:  the property of creating something-or-other, and the property of creating human beings.  But surely God cannot be identical to these properties as the simplicity doctrine seems to require.  It cannot be inscribed into the very nature of God that he create Socrates given that he freely creates Socrates.  Some writers have attempted to solve this problem, but I don't know of a good solution. Even if there's a solution to that problem, what's to be said about God's knowledge? Isn't His knowledge an intrinsic property of His? But, since the truth of a proposition like the planet Mars exists is contingent, isn't God's knowing it an accidental property, and, furthermore, an intrinsic accidental property? Well, this too is a problem.  If S knows that p, and p is contingent, then S's knowing that p is an accidental (as opposed to essential) property of S.  Now if God is omniscient, then he knows every (non-indexical) truth, including every contingent truth. It seems to follow that God has at least as many accidental properties as there are contingent truths.  Surely these are not properties with which God could be identical, as the simplicity doctrine seems to require.  Now there must be some contingent truths in consequence of the divine freedom; but this is hard to square with the divine simplicity.  And if it is in fact the case that God's knowledge is the cause of things, then how are we to understand His knowledge of the free actions of creatures? I know that God is supposed to be the final cause of these actions, as well as their ultimate efficient cause, but the issue is still unclear to me. This is also a problem.  The simplicity doctrine implies that God is identical to what he knows. It follows that what he knows cannot vary from world to world.   In the actual world A, Oswald shoots Kennedy at time t.  If that was a libertarianly free action, then there is a world W in which Oswald does not shoot Kennedy at t.  Since God exists in very world, and  knows what happens in every world, he knows that in A, Oswald shoots Kennedy at t and in W that Oswald does not shoot Kennedy at t. But this contradicts the simplicity doctrine, according to which what God knows does not vary from world to world.  The simplicity doctrine thus appears to collide both with divine and human freedom. I sincerely look forward to your addressing these questions. Thank you in advance for your consideration of these weighty matters. I have addressed them, but not solved them.  Solutions have been proffered, but they give rise to problems of their own -- something to be pursued in future posts.

Comments

[Alan Rhoda]

Dear Bill,

Hi. Long time no chat. I trust all's well with you.

Anyway, nice post. I like your honesty about both the pros and cons of divine simplicity (DS).

For my part, I'm more impressed by the cons. The case for DS seems less compelling to me. I suspect the entailment from "God is that than which no greater can be conceived" to "God is an absolute reality" or "God exists wholly a se". To make those derivations work one has to make substantive assumptions about maximal greatness.

Furthermore, it seems plausible to me that one can affirm that God is "a se" in virtue of not owing his existence to anything else and "simple" in virtue of having no proper parts, without having to endorse anything so radical as the Thomistic version of DS.

Maybe the question to ask is what a "real" distinction between "existence and essence, ... act and potency, individual and attribute, attribute and attribute" would amount to. In light of the contingency of creation and creaturely freedom, I'm inclined to say that there must be a distinction of some sort, not merely notional, between God's essence and existence, God and God's properties, etc. Perhaps there's something in between a full-blooded "real" distinction and a mere "notional" one.

[Bill Vallicella]

Hi Alan,

Very good to hear from you. All is well on this end and I can see from your list of forthcoming papers that you have been using your time well at ND. Saw you on YouTube a while back.

A real distinction as I understand it need not be a distinction between one res and another. X and y can be really distinct even if neither can exist without the other. Thus essence and existence in me are really distinct even though my essence is nothing without existence, and my existence is nothing without essence. This real distinction in me is the ground of my contingency, and the lack of this real distinction between essence and existence in God is the ground of the divine necessity.

But I admit that DDS is murky and tapers off into the mystical. I sympathize with your sense that there has to be some distinctions in God that are not merely 'notional' as you put it, but somehow grounded in extramental reality.

The whole problem in a nutshell is that we cannot help but think of God as a being among beings who has properties in the way everything else has properties, but we also must realize that God, to be God (to be a se, transcendent, etc.) cannot be a being among beings but must be Being itself. All the mystics understand this, and there is a mystical strand in Aquinas that comes from Plato, Plotinus, and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.

When it comes to God we must grope and fumble and gesture at the boundary of the Sayable and the limit of the Intelligible. DDS is an expression of this predicament we are in. Thus it can appear as "hogwash" (C. B. Martin) but also as deep truth.

[James Chastek]

The cons need to be tightened up a bit. As far as I can tell, Thomist27 argues

1.) What is simple, has no accidents.
2.) What is free and intelligent has accidents.
3.) God is free and intelligent.

His last argument doesn't speak of simplicity at all.

I don't see how he is establishing 2.) I don't know that it would be that hard to do (who can imagine a mind without accidents?), but I also don't see how it would be any different than just saying that freedom or intelligence must be an accident. I have no experience of a mind without an accident- nor can I imagine one- but I have no experience of freedom as anything other than an accident in a free being- nor can I imagine it.

Alan,

We've gone around on this before, but I'd deny at least that the move from "absolute being" to "a se" involves any substantive assumptions. It seems analytic to me. Absolute means "non-relative", and so not pointing to another, but "a se" (as opposed to ab alio). Or are you saying that something can be ab alio, but not relative to it? Relating to another, but not relative?

[Alan Rhoda]

Hi James,

I wasn't questioning the inference from "exists absolutely" to "exists a se", but rather the inference from "is that than which a greater cannot be conceived" to either "exists absolutely" or "exists a se". Now, if all you mean by the latter expressions is that God does not owe his existence to anything else, then I agree. But I take the proponent of DS to mean something stronger by "exists absolutely" or "exists a se".