How Could a Simple God be a Person?

The Worthy Opponent writes,

And how is the view of divine simplicity and consequent unintelligibility consistent with the view of God as a person? A person has a mind whose thoughts and feelings are distinct and successive. As Hume (1711–76) argued, a being who is simple has ‘no thought, no reason, no will, no sentiment, no love, no hatred; or in a word, is no mind at all’.ⁱ Yet God is obviously a person, according to Plantinga and othersⁱⁱ. Then he is obviously not simple. 

i^ Hume, David. Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. Edited by Richard Popkin. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1980, part 4.

ii^ Does God Have a Nature? Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1980. See Eleanor Stump on the same. ‘We can say ‘you’ to God’. God is a particular, with a mind and a will. ‘We can say ‘you’ to one another, and say ‘you’ to God’.

This is a very hard nut to crack. The problem cannot be solved, in my opinion, by simply denying the divine simplicity. For there is a very powerful argument for it.  As I say elsewhere:

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.

In sum, God must be simple to be God.  On the other hand, there can no denying of the force of the Opponent's objection. It has two prongs: the notion of a simple being is unintelligible; no person is simple.  But God is a person. This cannot be denied either.  We appear to be nailed to the cross of the following aporetic triad:

A.God is a person.
B. No person is simple.
C. God is simple.

The classical theist accepts all three propositions. But they are inconsistent.  Some theists will argue that the inconsistency is merely apparent.  I don't believe that this can be compellingly established, and neither does the Opponent.  He thinks the inconsistency real and so concludes that God is not simple.   This makes sense, of course, but it is not quite satisfactory, ignoring as it does the powerful arguments for divine simplicity.  God can be neither an impersonal absolute nor a personal non-absolute.  The Opponent ends up with the view that God is a personal non-absolute.

I myself am inclined to adopt a mysterian 'solution' according to which we accept all three propositions while confessing that we cannot understand how they could all be true.

If we have good reason to believe that p is true, and good reason to believe that q  is true, then we have good reason to believe that p and q are logically consistent (with each other) despite an absence of understanding as to how they could be mutually consistent. What is actual is possible whether or not one can render intelligible how it is possible.  For example, motion is actual, hence possible, despite my inability in the teeth of Zenonian considerations to understand how it is possible. Many similar examples could be given.

And so a mysterian move suggests itself:  We are justified in maintaining both that God is simple and that God is a person despite the fact that after protracted effort we cannot make logical sense of this conjunction.  The fact that the conjunction  -- God is simple & God is a person -- appears to us, and perhaps even necessarily appears to us, given irremediable cognitive limitations on our part, to be or rather entail  an explicit  logical contradiction is not a good reason to reject the conjunction.  The mysterian is not a dialetheist: he does not claim that there are true contradictions. Like the rest of us, the mysterian eschews them like the plague.  His point is rather that a proposition's non-episodic and chronic seeming to be a contradiction does not suffice for its rejection.  For it may well be that certain truths are inaccessible to us due to our mental limitations and defects, and that among these truths are some that appear to us only in the guise of contradictions, and must so appear.

Compare the mind-body problem. Many are inclined to say that that in us which thinks is the brain. But the brain is wholly material, and matter can't think. No physical state as physical states are understood by physics has semantic content and is directed to an object.  Colin McGinn suggests that our cognitive architecture is such as to prevent us from understanding how the limbs of this apparent contradiction can all be true.  How the brain thinks is thus a mystery.  I am not endorsing McGinn's materialist mysterianism but suggesting that a mysterian approach to theological topics may be the best we can do. Besides divine simplicity, Trinity, Incarnation, and Real Presence are all arguably impervious to understanding by the discursive intellect.  We just cannot see how they could be logically possible.

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Comments

[Thomas]

I see no mention of analogical terms here. Do you think it helps us in this situation to say that when we talk of God as a person or being personal, we only mean this in an analogical sense of when talking about persons? God is not literally a person, but is a person or is personal, as we are, but in an analogical sense. Does this get us around the apparent contradiction between 'God is a person' and 'God is simple'?

[Opponent]

Thanks - to avoid confusion, the passage you quote is taken from a draft of a section of the book, where I am simply laying out the positions (and attempting a very brief history of divine simplicity and its connection with negative theology). The last part ‘Then he is obviously not simple’ should understood as ‘Then [according to Plantinga and others] he is obviously not simple’.

No position, at this point, was intended.

I think you rather do seem to be nailed to the cross of your triad.

[Astute opponent]

>>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.

What if the whole is identical with its parts? Then it false to argue that it depends on its parts, except as it depends on itself. The logic is flawed.

[BV]

Thomas writes,

>>Do you think it helps us in this situation to say that when we talk of God as a person or being personal, we only mean this in an analogical sense of when talking about persons? <<

It would if we could make good sense of analogical talk the analogia entis. Much of what has been written about this is very murky. Pryzwara's *Analogia Entis* for example is a total mess when it comes to clarity of exposition, although the book contains brilliant insights.

One paragraph of this book would suffice for the Noble Opponent to consign it to the flames.

>>God is not literally a person, but is a person or is personal, as we are, but in an analogical sense.<<

I believe you are making a mistake here. According to the doctrine of analogy, God is LITERALLY, though analogically, a person. When a Thomist says that God is a person, he doesn't mean that in a figurative sense.

[The Noble Opponent]

>>One paragraph of this book would suffice for the Noble Opponent to consign it to the flames.

I have changed my name accordingly.

>>When a Thomist says that God is a person, he doesn't mean that in a figurative sense.

But doesn't he use the name 'person' in a different, more philosophical sense? Not an expert.

BTW I emailed a passage from Scotus that may interest you.

[The Noble Opponent]

All the stuff about persons is here.

[BV]

Opponent,

But of course you do reject the divine simplicity, right? Given the way your mind works, you would have to.

I see you simply ignored my mysterian suggestion.

>>What if the whole is identical with its parts?<<

In that case you have simply admitted DS.

[BV]

Here is one set of distinctions: univocal-equivocal-analogical.

Here is another: literal-figurative.

My cat's feces are healthy. That's an analogical use of 'healthy.' But also a literal use.

When we say that God is wise we are not speaking figuratively, but literally, either univocally or analogically.

[The Noble Opponent]

>>I see you simply ignored my mysterian suggestion.

Well of course. Argumentation is like a game of chess with fixed rules (logic) where we pit our logical wits against one another. If someone announces as we approach checkmate that the King is invulnerable, or changes the fixed rules to their advantage, then the game is over, isn’t it?

[The Noble Opponent]

>> I myself am inclined to adopt a mysterian 'solution' according to which we accept all three propositions while confessing that we cannot understand how they could all be true.

OK perhaps I will comment via Richard Cartwright:

But a mystery is not supposed to be refutable by human reason, as if a truth of reason could somehow contradict a revealed truth; on the contrary, putative refutations are supposed themselves to be refutable. Nor is a mystery supposed to be unintelligible, in the sense that the words in which it is expressed simply cannot be understood. After all, we are asked to believe the propositions expressed by the words, not simply that the words express some true propositions or other, we know not which.

[Robert Francis George Allen, Ph.D.]

No logical mystery here. Just a mistaken understanding of divine thought. God thinks Himself, unlike other minds whose thoughts are effects of other things (say, natures in substances). The latter have thoughts, the Former is His thinking. Nor does God think in Time, so His thoughts are not successive. Now I'll readily concede that there is a HUGE mystery here as to how such Being is possible; exacerbated, of course, by our own mental fragmentation. But it is not the logical one of how a blatant contradiction can be true. A side note: 'That is us which thinks is the brain.' You mean to say 'That IN us which thinks is the brain.' But do we really believe that? Is not Aquinas' argument for the immateriality of thought sufficient to refute Materialistic Reductionism/The Identity Theory? Have a good day and go Trump!. RFGA, Ph.D.

[BV]

Opponent,

Trinity is a revealed truth, but is the simplicity doctrine? Is everything put forth as dogma by the Catholic Church supposed to have the status of divine revelation?

One can believe that some man satisfies the predicate 'is faithful to his wife' without believing of any particular man that he is faithful to his wife. Similarly, one can believe that some true proposition is expressed by 'God is simple' without believing of any particular proposition that it is true and expressed by 'God is simple.'

It might be that every proposition I can get before my type of mind that is a reasonable candidate for the sense of 'God is simple' is unintelligible while it is also the case that there is some proposition beyond our ken that is intelligible in itself and true and expressed by 'God is simple.'

I think we agree that every proposition we can get before our discursive, ectypal, type of mind that is a reasonable candidate for the sense of 'God is simple' is unintelligible to us. Here is a reason. The sentence has a subject-predicate structure. So we cannot help but think of the proposition as having the same structure. But 'simple' implies that God IS his attributes, and does not HAVE them. (Or he has has them by being them.) So the proposition *God is simple* is necessarily false by its very sense-structure.

Where we disagree is that you think nothing is real except what satifies the exigencies of the discursive intellect.

[The Noble Opponent]

>> one can believe that some true proposition is expressed by 'God is simple' without believing of any particular proposition that it is true and expressed by 'God is simple.'
I had a hard time getting my head around this. It seems to require the apparatus of Russellian propositions.

Aquinas says something similar, although holding to the Aristotelian view of the proposition, and in a different context. He says a proposition can be self-evident in two ways: in itself, although not to us, or in itself and to us as well. It is self-evident when the predicate is included in (or is the same as) the subject, and so if predicate and subject are signified for what they are (‘are known to all’), then the truth of the proposition will be evident. But if not, he says the proposition will be self-evident in itself, although not to those ‘who have no knowledge of (qui ignorant) the predicate and subject of the proposition’

However this argument depends on the slippery 'essence'.

>> The Opponent ends up with the view that God is a personal non-absolute.
Not true in fact. Only true if we accept the realist view that what is signified by the predicate is numerically different from what is signified by the subject. We nominalists hold that 'God is good' is true when what is signified by 'God' and what is signified by 'good' are numerically one and the same thing.