London Karl refers me to this piece by Stephen H. Webb in which we read (emphases added):
I recently reviewed Hart’s new book, The Experience of God, at First Things. Hart defends three basic points: First, there was a consensus among ancient philosophers and theologians regarding the simplicity of God. Divine simplicity can be stated in many ways, but it basically means that God has no parts. Or you could just say that God is immaterial (since anything material can be divided). Second, this consensus was shared by nearly all the world’s oldest religions. Third, this consensus is crucial for the Christian faith. It is, in fact, the only way to make sense of God, and thus it is fundamental for everything that Christians believe and say about the divine.
The first bolded passage is inaccurate. On traditional theism God is of course immaterial, and is maintained to be such by all traditional theists. But the doctrine of divine simplicity is not identical to the claim that God is immaterial, a claim rejected by many traditional theists. The simplicity doctrine entails the immateriality doctrine, but not vice versa. Thus the simplicity doctrine says more than the immateriality doctrine. If God is simple, then God has and can have no (proper) parts, hence has and can have no material parts; a simple God is therefore an immaterial God given that every material thing is partite, actually or potentially. But an immaterial God needn't be simple. The simplicity doctrine implies that there are no real distinctions among:
- God and his existence
- God and his attributes
- Any divine attribute and any other one
- Existence and nature in God: God doesn't have, he is, his nature.
- Potency and act in God: God is actus purus.
- Matter and form in God: God is forma formarum.
Consider God and the attribute of omniscience. According to the simplicity doctrine, God does not exemplify omniscience; he is (identical to) omniscience. And the same holds for all the divine attributes. For each such attribute A, God does not have (exemplify) A; he is (identical to) A.
Someone who holds that God is immaterial, however, holds that God has no material parts (and also no spatial parts, and no temporal parts if there are temporal parts). One can hold this consistently with holding that God is disinct from his attributes as he must be if he exemplifies them, exemplification either being or being very much like a dyadic asymmetrical relation.
But what if one were a constituent ontologist who thought that the attributes of a thing are parts thereof (in some suitably extended, non-mereological sense of 'part')? Then too the simplicity doctrine would not be identical to the immateriality doctrine. For immateriality has to do with a lack of material parts while simplicity has to do with a lack of material and 'ontological' parts such as attributes.
As for the second bolded passage, it is certainly false. Webb needs to read Plantinga and Swinburne.
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