Divine Simplicity and Modal Collapse

Fr. Aidan Kimel would like me to discuss  the question whether the doctrine of divine simplicity entails the collapse of modal distinctions.  I am happy to take a crack at it.  I take my cue from a passage in a paper Fr. Kimel kindly sent me.  In "Simply Impossible: A Case Against Divine Simplicity" (Journal of Reformed Theology 7, 2013, 181-203), R. T. Mullins asks (footnote omitted):

Could God have refrained from creating the universe? If God is free then it seems that the answer is obviously ‘yes.’ He could have existed alone. Yet, God did create the universe. If there is a possible world in which God exists alone, God is not simple. He eternally has unactualized potential for He cannot undo His act of creation. He could cease to sustain the universe in existence, but that would not undo His act of creating. One could avoid this problem by allowing for a modal collapse. One could say that everything is absolutely necessary. Necessarily, there is only one possible world—this world. Necessarily, God must exist with creation. There is no other possibility. God must create the universe that we inhabit, and everything must occur exactly as it in fact does. There is no such thing as contingency when one allows a modal collapse. (195-196)

The foregoing suggests to me one version of the problem.  There is a tension between divine simplicity and divine freedom.

1) If God is simple, then he is purely actual (actus purus) and thus devoid of unexercised powers and unrealized potentials. He is, from all eternity, all that he can be. This is true in every possible world because God exists in every possible world and is pure act in every possible world.

2) As it is, God freely created our universe from nothing; but he might have created a different universe, or no universe at all. Had he created no universe, then his power to create would have gone unexercised. In those possible worlds in which God freely refrains from creating, God has unexercised powers. 

The dyad seems logically inconsistent. If (1) is true, then there is no possible world in which God has  unexercised powers. But if (2) is true, there is at least one possible world in which God has unexercised powers. So if God is both simple and (libertarianly) free, then we get a logical contradiction.

There are two main ways to solve an aporetic polyad. One is to show that the inconsistency alleged is at best apparent, but not real.  The other way is by rejection of one of the limbs. I take the dyad to be inconsistent.

Many if not most theists, and almost all Protestants, will simply (pun intended) deny the divine simplicity.  I myself think there are good reasons for embracing the latter.  To put it in a cavalier, bloggity-blog way: God is the Absolute, and no decent absolute worth its salt can be a being among beings. We have it on good authority that God is Being itself self-subsisting.  Deus est ipsum esse subsistens. Platonic, Plotinian, Augustinian, Aquinian, Athenian. It can be shown that simplicity is logical fallout if God is Being itself.  So it seems I must deny (2) and deny that God could have refrained from creating.  But this seems to lead to modal collapse. How so?

Modal Collapse

We have modal collapse just when the following proposition is true: For any x, x is possible iff x is actual iff x is necessary.  This implies that nothing is merely possible; nothing is contingent; nothing is impossible.  If nothing is merely possible, then there are no merely possible worlds, which implies that there is exactly one possible world, the actual world, which cannot fail to be actual, and is therefore necessary.

(The collapse is on the extensional, not the intensional or notional plane: the modal words retain their distinctive senses.)

Suppose divine simplicity entails modal collapse (modal Spinozism). So what? What is so bad about the latter?  Well, it comports none too well with God's sovereignty. If God is absolutely sovereign, then he cannot be under a metaphysical necessity to create. Connected with this is the fact that if God must create, then his aseity would seem to be compromised. He cannot be wholly from himself, a se, if his existence necessarily requires a realm of creatures.  Finally, creaturely (libertarian) freedom would go by the boards if reality is one big block of Spinozistic necessity.

An Aporia?

It seems that the proponent of divine simplicity faces a nasty problem.  At the moment, I see no solution.

The aporetician in me is open to the thought that what we have here is a genuine aporia, a conceptual impasse, a puzzle  that we cannot solve. God must be simple to be God; the modal distinctions are based in reality; we cannot see how both limbs of the dyad can be true and so must see them as contradictory.   

It could be like this: the limbs are both true, but our cognitive limitations make it impossible for us to understand how they could both be true.  Mysterianism may be the way to go.  This shouldn't trouble a theologian too much. After all, Trinity, Incarnation, etc. are mysteries in the end, are they not?  Of course, I am not suggesting the doctrine of divine simplicity can be found in the Bible. 

Later I will evaluate an attempt to solve the problem via an approach to real modality via potentialities and dispositions.  

References to relevant literature appreciated. By the end of the year I have to update my Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Divine Simplicity entry.  

Comments

[Josh]

I have never understood why some philosophers think this is a problem. Whatever creation is, it does not imply that some previously unrealized potential has been realized in God. Neither would his "decision" to refrain from creating be an unrealized potential in God. The fact that we have no phenomenological data as to how this works/what it's like, etc. is exactly what we should expect, not being God.

Anyway, I admire the philosophers who do think this is a problem, so I imagine I am just missing the force of it. In any case, this paper might be worth considering for your SEOP revisions:

https://www.academia.edu/33579056/Collapsing_the_Modal_Collapse_Argument_On_an_Invalid_Argument_Against_Divine_Simplicity

[Vlastimil]

"If God is simple, then he is purely actual (actus purus) and _thus_ devoid of unexercised powers and unrealized potentials." (My emphasis)

I wonder whether fine scholastics would agree. Lukáš Novák should know, I will ask him. I guess they commonly admit that the perfections of simplicity and pure actuality leave room for certain sorts of composition and potential. (These compositions and potentials involve no imperfection.) That's what I recall -- though vaguely -- about their reaction to the claim that divine simplicity leaves no room for the Trinity.

[BV]

Vlasta,

Please do ask Novak. Even if simplicity is compatible with Trinity, it is not clear to me how there could be act-potency composition in God. If God is pure act, then he is -- wait for it -- pure act! It is a bare-faced contradiction to say that God is pure act AND harbors unrealized potentialities. You may as well say that God is pure act and not pure act.

Thank you for your comment.

[BV]

Josh,

Thanks for the comment and the link.

I'd say you are missing the force of the problem. I presented it very clearly, I think, more clearly than Mullins. It is no adequate response to simply assert that there is no problem.

[Daniel]

I do not see how this is a problem beyond the standard Thomas Morris objection that God must be identical with His acts of knowing or creating. Most of the scholastics are happy to allow God 'active potencies', powers to actualise X, even if He should never chose to do so. That God has such powers is a commitment of the powers theory of modality + divine Omnipotence.

A question if I may: in 'Divine Simplicity: A New Defense' you suggest that the DS champion should just accept that God has accidental properties, like willing X, and that the position only requires that God be identical with all his essential properties. Would you still be willing to accept this? To me it seems an interesting position to defend.

[Fr Aidan Kimel]

Thanks, Bill, for these reflections on the Mullins's article and modal collapse.

What happens if we posit, in Dionysian fashion, that God exists beyond being? Would this not mean that God also exists beyond modal distinctions and beyond our notions of libertarian and compatibilist freedom?

[Vlastimil]

Perhaps, the scholastic point is that the pure act need not be so pure or unrestricted after all, yet still may stay clear from any admixture of imperfection.

I have emailed Lukáš.

[Vlastimil]

In other words, "pure" should not, and need not, be understood in an unrestricted way. But I am only guessing.

[Vlastimil]

The link provided by Josh (above) is worth reading.

[chris]

I have some reflections on this. I think the aporia can be resolved by adopting an extrinsic model of God-creature properties.

https://notesonthefoothills.wordpress.com/2018/08/23/solving-the-modal-collapse-by-invoking-the-trinity-and-the-creator-creature-distinction/

[BV]

Fr. Kimel,

If God is beyond Being and radically transcendent of all our conceptuality, then it would seem that theology would be impossible. We would then be better off spending our time in deep meditation in quest of infused contemplation.

There is also the question of what the Dionysian Absolute could have to do with the God of the Bible who speaks to man, intervenes in history, smites his enemies, etc.

[BV]

Fr. Kimel,

I have reposted near the top of the queue a response to you from three years ago on the 'beyond being' business.

[Fr Aidan Kimel]

Bill, I think Dionysius would disagree with you that theological statement is rendered impossible by his assertion that God is beyond being. For him, theology is grounded upon God’s self-procession into finite being: the cosmos is theophany and on this basis we may properly name him: https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2018/06/17/dionysian-ponderings-the-god-who-is-theophany/. Our contemplative ascent does require, it is true, the negation of these divine names, as these names are based on perfections found in the world, but the negations must themselves be negated, for God is not a being that can be contrasted with the world, either by affirmation or negation.

Hence my continuing suspicion that the Byzantine construal of divinity (God beyond being) escapes the charge of modal collapse. And given that I cannot see a big difference between Dionysius and Aquinas on this point (Thomas’s understanding of divine transcendence seems to be just as radical as that of Dionysius’s), I also suspect that Aquinas’s construal of divinity also escapes the charge of modal collapse. But it’s only a suspicion.

[Jonathan Barber]

When we consider God's ontological status, we say that his existence is necessary. Another way of saying this is that he exists a se. He has no external cause, for there could be no such thing. I was wondering whether we could hold similarly regarding God's will.
Suppose that the act of creation is an unactualised potential in God. It does not therefore follow that Divine Simplicity is false. Beings other than God require an actuator in order to realise their potentials. God does not: he is his own actuator in the same way that he is his own cause. This is surely part of what we mean by God's aseity.

[BV]

JB,

Yes, God's existence is necessary. But being necessary and being a se are not the same. Abstract objects are necessary but not a se if they are divine thought-contents. Aquinas distinguishes between that which has its necessity from itself and that which has its necessity from another. Only the first is a se.

>>Suppose that the act of creation is an unactualised potential in God.<<

That makes no sense. An act cannot be unactualized.

[John Sobert Sylvest]

Bill, my sneaking suspicions agree with Fr Aidan re "beyond being." I agree with you that divine simplicity holds, but maybe we can say that, while the modal distinctions are based in being, being does not exhaust reality?

To wit:

https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/24/the-apparent-tension-between-divine-simplicity-divine-freedom/

[John Sobert Sylvest]

My apologies, Bill, for I mistated above, as you know, that reality > being.

That s/h/b being > reality > existence.

Aaron Bruce Wilson, Peirce’s Empiricism: Its Roots and Its Originality, Lexington Books, Oct 19, 2016

[John Sobert Sylvest]

Below is an excerpt from the dissertation of Dr. Mariusz Tabaczek O.P., which is the best example of a theology of nature as would be consistent with what I am struggling to articulate.

https://mariopblog.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/1234.pdf

"A theory of emergence based on dispositional metaphysics would show a new explanatory potential as well. It would not only reconcile Aristotelianism with emergentism, but also have a significant impact on the view of divine action developed in reference to the theory of emergence. God’s action would no longer be conceived panentheistically as an influence on the totality of the world, which metaphysically assumes that the causation of God and creatures is of the same kind (univocal predication) and so runs the risk of collapsing into pantheism. The recovery of the plural notion of causation allows for a recapturing of the classical understanding of divine action as proposed by Aquinas. God is regarded as the ultimate source of forms, and the ultimate aim of all teleology in nature. With regard to efficient causation, God’s transcendence is protected by Aquinas’ distinction between the primary and principal causation of the Creator and the secondary and instrumental character of the causation of creatures. Therefore, God’s immutability, omniscience, omnipotence, infinity, eternity, and impassibility are not challenged, while his immanent and constant presence in all worldly events is by no means undermined."

[John Sobert Sylvest]

While denying a strictly metaphysical impasse between divine simplicity & freedom and while suggesting we've thus avoided any logical inconsistencies (e.g. due to parodies grounded in conceptual incompatabilities), it’s not to suggest we’ve also thereby eliminated the aporetic confrontations that inescapably attend to all theo-kataphasis. At the same time, it’s just no small victory to dismiss the facile caricatures & snarky parodies of “devastating” neo-atheological critiques?

https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/26/simply-divine-or-a-divinity-fudge-cooking-with-dionysius-scotus-peirce-aquinas-palamas/

So, in the end, I resonate w/both Bill & Fr Aidan. Thanks for stimulating my heartfelt musings & generously sharing some cyber-real-estate. I hope I haven't taken undue advantage of your kindness.