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The doctrine of divine simplicity is typically characterized as the claim that God is utterly without composition, physical or metaphysical. This characterization, though very widespread, both historically and currently, remains ambiguous and therefore of little help unless one clarifies what is meant by “composition.” A discussion of this issue takes us into the subdiscipline of metaphysics known as mereology, the study of parts and wholes. One of the central questions of mereology concerns what conditions must be satisfied by any items in order for those items to compose an actual, bona fide object, a question known as the special composition question.1 Discussions of the special composition question almost invariably concern physical objects, but applied theologically, we may wonder what conditions would have to be fulfilled in order for God to be a composite object. Crucial to the special composition question and even more directly relevant to the doctrine of divine simplicity is the notion of being mereologically simple. An entity x is mereologically simple just in case x has no proper parts. But that characterization raises the question as to what necessary and jointly sufficient conditions must be satisfied in order for some object x to be simple, a question which we may call the simplicity question. Stating merely that x is simple if and only if x has no proper parts would be uninformative, for that requires us to know what counts as a proper part. When Ned Markosian broached this question in 1998, there had been “little or no discussion” of the simplicity question in the recent philosophical literature on the topic of composition indeed, he says, “I do not know of a single philosopher, recent or otherwise, who has explicitly addressed” this question.2 Unfortunately, while acknowledging that “there are interesting questions about nonphysical mereological simples,” Markosian is not “concerned with any such questions here. That is, I will be concerned here only with questions about physical, mereological simples.”3 As a result, some of the proposed answers he considers to the simplicity question are irrelevant to our concern. Markosian surveys a variety of proposals for answering the simplicity question, including that simples are pointsized objects, that simples are physically indivisible objects, that simples are metaphysically indivisible objects, and that simples are maximally spatially continuous objects. Since God is not a physical object, he is not simple in the sense of being pointsized or maximally spatially continuous4 but he is simple in the sense of not being physically divisible, and no doubt he is metaphysically indivisible as well. It is hard to resist the suspicion that for many theologians who have affirmed divine simplicity, especially historically but even today, simplicity has amounted to nothing more than this. They seem to understand composition to imply something like “assembled” or “constructed out of parts,” or perhaps “having proper parts more fundamental than the whole” – or at least their arguments for divine simplicity go to support no stronger a conception. Thus, very thin doctrines of divine simplicity might hold one or more of the following DS1 . God is not constructed out of parts. DS2 . God does not have parts more fundamental than himself. DS3 . God does not have separable parts. On such thin conceptions, God could still be complex in various ways, such as exemplifying a diversity of properties, which is contrary to the intention of many other defenders of divine simplicity.5 Christopher Hughes proposes that we understand divine simplicity straightforwardly as God’s mereological simplicity6 DS. God has no proper parts. According to DS the only part that God could have is an improper part, that single part which is identical to the whole, in this case identical to God himself. DS will require defenders of divine simplicity to explain what would constitute a proper part of God, which will lead to a very interesting debate. For example, are the divine attributes parts of God Are God’s essence and existence parts of God Are the persons of the Trinity parts of God In Hughes’ opinion, Trinitarian issues aside, there is nothing especially problematic about DS. Substance dualists take the soul similarly to be simple in such a thin sense, uncomposed of proper parts and indivisible. Rather the prima facie problematic claims are those often taken to be implied by DS, a stronger doctrine of divine simplicity which Hughes calls DS, according to which, for example, distinct divine attributes or an essence distinct from existence would be proper parts of God. Historically, a wide variety of versions of DS have been enunciated. Thomas Aquinas, the preeminent defender of divine simplicity, held to an especially strong version of DS, according to which NTDT. Neither God and his genus, nor God and his differentia, nor God and his accidental forms are two different things. OAST God and his perfections, God and his essence, and God and his existence are one and the same thing. “NTDT” abbreviates “not two different things,” and “OAST” stands for “one and the same thing.” Since God transcends the distinction between form and matter, genus and species, substance and accidents, and, we might add, actuality and potentiality, the items listed in NTDT cannot be said to be identical with God, since such things as God’s matter, genus, species, accidents, and potentiality do not exist at all. Rather they and God are not two different things. But the items listed in OAST do exist and so must be identical to God, lest God be composed of proper parts. Thinkers committed to OAST thus endorse what is often called “the identity thesis” for God’s properties, essence, and existence, for all of these are identical to God and, hence, to one another. But other theologians committed to NTDT endorse what is sometimes called “the replacement thesis,” according to which God replaces various items like his properties and essence, as well as his genus, differentia, and accidental forms, since these items do not really exist. Contemporary scholars need to be wary of reading strong versions of DS into earlier authors’ affirmations of divine simplicity, particularly statements by the Church Fathers or creedal affirmations lacking definition of terms.7 Now, obviously, with Thomas’ explication of divine simplicity, we find ourselves situated within a metaphysical framework which is so different from that of modernity as to constitute a barrier to understanding. Contemporary Christian philosophers have come to appreciate that patristic and medieval thinkers’ doctrines of divine simplicity need to be understood within their own metaphysical systems. Lest Christian systematic theology be held prisoner to a metaphysical framework now widely rejected and regarded as obsolete, however, the task of assessing the doctrine of divine simplicity must not only proceed internally with respect to, for example, a medieval metaphysical framework but must also involve a careful translation of the doctrine into a contemporary framework, where it may be assessed for its coherence and plausibility. 5.1 Biblical Data Concerning Divine Simplicity Not to get ahead of ourselves, we need to begin by inquiring after the scriptural justification for a doctrine of divine simplicity. The scriptural warrant for God’s incorporeality as well as for his aseity and eternality implies a thin doctrine of divine simplicity.8 Affirmations of God’s spirituality Jn 4.24 and omnipresence Ps 139.7 show that God is not composed of parts or divisible into undetached parts. Existing a se as the sole ultimate reality, the Creator of all things other than himself, God cannot be composed of more fundamental parts. As an eternal being who is permanent in his existence, it is inconceivable that God could somehow dissolve into parts and cease to exist. No biblical author, we may confidently say, feared that God might in time literally disintegrate. 5.1.1 Lack of Scriptural Warrant for DS That being said, however, it can scarcely be denied that no scriptural warrant exists for a strong doctrine like DS. The lack of a strong doctrine of divine simplicity in the Protestant Reformers is due to their emphasis on sola Scriptura and their suspicion of a scholastic theologia gloriae rooted in Aristotelian metaphysics rather than Scripture, where the doctrine is conspicuously absent.9 PostReformation scholastic theologians, both Lutheran and Reformed, absorbed rather uncritically the Thomistic metaphysical framework, including Thomas’ doctrine of divine simplicity, and their efforts to ground such a doctrine biblically are strained.10 Modern theologians came to renounce the strong doctrine of divine simplicity as an unbiblical deviation prompted by Greek philosophical influence.11 At the end of the nineteenth century the influential German theologian Hermann Cremer could complain, “The unfruitfulness of the doctrine of the attributes of God as handled in dogmatics and church teaching up to now is an open secret. No place in dogmatics has the content of the scholastic tradition been less abandoned, nowhere is the formal solution to the problem more sought via the path of scholastic conceptual analysis than here.”12 Cremer thinks that “the difference between the practical interest of faith in God’s revelation in Christ and the scientific formulation of the concept and doctrine of God has not been strongly enough perceived.”13 Cremer wants to lay out the doctrine of God’s diverse attributes like holiness, wisdom, omnipotence, omnipresence, eternity, and so on, in accord with revelatory religion Offenbarungsreligion. Unfortunately, Cremer’s salutary emphasis on biblical revelation is accompanied by an unconcealed antipathy toward the questions and methods of philosophy, which Cremer finds altogether misguided. He distinguishes the question of absolute being which philosophy poses and can never answer and the question of history which revelation answers through Christ. In place of “philosophical speculation” about God as “pure being,” Cremer would substitute God’s historical revelation in Christ as a solution to sin and death. Divine revelation is thus played off against philosophical theology. “We are directed to revelation because we have in it the reality of God, a reality that shows us the right question and at the same time the answer.”14 Twentieth century theologians like Emil Brunner and Karl Barth followed in the train of pursuing Offenbarungsreligion while disparaging philosophical theology. So John Feinberg reports, “In consulting various systematic theologies, one is hard pressed to find one that offers biblical support for the notion” of divine simplicity.15 The efforts on the part of modern theologians standing in the tradition of Reformed scholasticism to justify the doctrine biblically overreach. For example, Herman Bavinck attempts to prove that “every attribute of God is identical with his essence” on the grounds that “Scripture, to denote the fullness of the life of God, uses not only adjectives but also substantives it tells us not only that God is truthful, righteous, living, illuminating, loving, and wise, but also that he is the truth, righteousness, life, light, love, and wisdom.”16 This argument is terribly weak, for as Feinberg points out, it is guilty of trying to read metaphysical implications off the surface grammar of ordinary language sentences.17 By the same procedure, one could use other biblical passages to show that God possesses the relevant property rather than is identical to it. It is dubious, to say the least, that the biblical writers in either case want to teach some metaphysical doctrine about the relation of God to his attributes. They simply want to say that God is loving, truthful, wise, and so on without making recondite metaphysical commitments. Almost alone among contemporary defenders of divine simplicity, Steven Duby and Jordan Barrett maintain that the doctrine of divine simplicity is based wholly on Scripture. Barrett claims that “the origin of divine simplicity is not Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, natural theology, substance metaphysics, or perfect being theology. Rather, Scripture is the source of its motivation and content even if its form and terminology. . . is borrowed from outside Scripture.”18 Barrett argues that the doctrine of divine simplicity is “a conceptual elaboration of two biblical teachings, specifically the divine names and the indivisible operations of the Trinity.”19 Duby for his part argues that simplicity “is a divine attribute rooted in Holy Scripture’s portrayal of God in his singularity, aseity, immutability, infinity and work of creatio ex nihilo” and therefore “is not an iteration of the project of ‘perfect being’ theology, but rather an exercise in Christian dogmatics.”20 Nonetheless, the difference in the doctrine of divine simplicity thought by these authors to be implied by Scripture is striking. Barrett holds that the Bible teaches that God has a rich diversity of essential attributes which together constitute his essence. God is simple in not being composed of separable parts. Duby, by contrast, thinks that biblical teaching implies that God is simple in the strongest sense of the word, any distinctions in God being merely conceptual. Barrett thus actually denies a strong doctrine of divine simplicity in favor of a version which is so modest as to be soporific “Divine simplicity is a concept that elaborates what is implicit in scripture’s depiction of God – namely, that the divine attributes and the divine essence are identical, whereas the divine attributes are distinct from one another. . . . the simplicity of God affirms one nature in multiple and distinct perfections.”21 Barrett denies that biblical teaching implies “a radical doctrine of divine simplicity,” according to which all of God’s attributes are identical.22 He recognizes that this position actually “aligns me with some of the contemporary critics of divine simplicity.”23 Biblical simplicity in Barrett’s hands thus does not amount to much “This multiplicity of names and operations do not reveal God to be partially holy, partially good, or partially loving. . . . Instead, all that God is is holy, good, and loving.”24 Biblical divine simplicity holds merely that “God is rich and multiple without being composite or divisible into parts.”25 Duby, on the other hand, argues at length that Scripture teaches each of the aforementioned attributes or works of God and then, using the resources of Thomistic Reformed philosophy, infers from them a fullblown doctrine of DS, thus arriving at a position very different from Barrett’s. Duby’s fundamental mistake lies in thinking that by inferring divine simplicity from these other scripturally supported divine attributes or acts he is providing scriptural justification for simplicity, when an examination of his arguments reveals that in fact it is the reasoning of perfect being theology, not Scripture, that is bearing the weight of the argument. Sometimes he overreads the scriptural evidence for the attribute in question e.g., immutability, but more often he relies on philosophical arguments involving substantive metaphysical commitments to move from the biblical attribute to the affirmation of simplicity.26 Consider, for example, God’s singularity.27 Duby has no difficulty in showing that the Bible teaches that there is but one God. But does the Bible imply that that one God is simple Duby argues that there are at least four ways in which the biblical God’s uniqueness entails that he is simple i God’s singularity entails the identity of nature and suppositum in God, which means that God is deity itself subsisting. ii God’s singularity entails that he transcends the categories of genus and species and so is not composed of genus and species. iii God’s singularity implies that God is really identical with each of his perfections. iv God’s singularity implies broadly that all that is in God is really identical with God himself quod habet, quod est and that there is therefore no composition whatsoever in God. These arguments are instances of medieval perfect being theology based on extrabiblical, substantive metaphysical assumptions. More specifically, i presupposes a medieval constituent ontology involving natures and supposita, hardly a teaching of Scripture Duby notes that Scripture sometimes speaks of the divine nature Rom 1.20 Gal 4.8 II Pet 1.4 and human nature Acts 14.15 Jas 5.17. But such ordinary language expressions do not imply a constituent ontology according to which things are really composed of a nature and a suppositum. When Duby asserts that deity “has always been particular, personal and actual in and as God,”28 far more than a heuristic use of Thomistic Reformed terminology is in play these are substantive metaphysical commitments that are not incumbent upon the biblical believer. Similarly, ii presupposes the objective validity of a classificatory scheme of genus and species which is nowhere taught in Scripture. When Duby asserts that “Genus is essence conceived generally and without differentiation into various species, while species is essence taken specifically and completely” in order to argue that “the uniqueness of the biblical God implies that the divine essence cannot be restricted in or shared by different kinds of beings,”29 he is importing metaphysical assumptions into biblical teaching. As for iii, when Duby asserts that “In created substances, accidents. . . are derived from or adventitiously adjoined to the substantia,” so as to argue that “God’s uniqueness and particularity imply that he does not eternally individuate accidental forms or properties but rather is each of his perfections or properties subsisting,”30 he again presupposes the truth of a medieval constituent ontology which is not implied by Scripture. We may wholeheartedly endorse Duby’s admonition that “one must not assume Platonic realism and read the discussion of divine simplicity in light of it. Instead, we should follow the revelation of God’s singularity in Holy Scripture.”31 God’s revelation in Scripture has not, however, disclosed to us the truth of a medieval constituent ontology of substance and accidents. Finally, with respect to iv, when Duby quotes with approval Anselm’s judgement that “Every composite that subsists requires the things from which it is composed, and it owes that it is to those things,”32 in order to argue that there is no composition in God, we have a clear example of classic perfect being theology, based on a medieval constituent ontology. One is therefore astonished when Duby makes so bold as to conclude, “in this section the exegetical material, rather than an a priori set of philosophical assumptions, has impelled the movement toward divine simplicity even as certain philosophical terms have been invoked for elaborative purposes.”33 Or consider divine aseity.34 Duby endorses a rich conception of divine aseity, according to which aseity is not merely God’s being the sole ultimate reality but is “his independence, primacy, plenitude, perfection, and freedom of contrariety toward creation.”35 God’s aseity is said to imply divine simplicity in at least five ways i Divine aseity entails that God is actus purus. ii God’s aseity implies that he is his own divinity subsisting and is therefore not composed of nature and suppositum. iii God’s aseity implies that God or God’s essence is ipsum esse subsistens and is therefore not distinct from his own existence as ens from principium entis. iv God’s aseity implies that he is really identical with each of his attributes and is therefore not composed of substance and accidents. v God’s aseity implies broadly that he is simple in every way and has no composition whatsoever. Here again we have classic perfect being theology that is based upon extrabiblical metaphysical assumptions. Specifically, i presupposes a metaphysical distinction between act and potency not drawn from Scripture in order to deny such a composition in God. Duby insists, “It must be emphasized that it is not an a priori and generic perfect being theology that legislates the conceptualization of divine perfection here but rather the witness of Holy Scripture. . . that requires us to ascribe to God a fullness of goodness, love, power and so on that cannot at all be enlarged or intensified, which requires us then to say that God is actus purus.”36 Yes, Scripture teaches divine perfection, but it is Duby’s last clause that adverts inevitably to perfect being theology, since Scripture knows nothing of the metaphysical distinction of act and potency. As for ii we have again the assumption of a medieval constituent ontology. Duby thinks that we are forced to such a conclusion “In different ways, both a ‘relation’ ontology and an Aristotelian philosophical apparatus conceive created things to be what they are by derivation, but the biblical text impresses upon us God’s selfreferential completeness, sufficiency and ultimacy, which implies that he is what he is per se and as deity itself subsisting, rather than per participationem.”37 I agree that Scripture precludes God’s depending for his being or nature upon independently existing abstract objects, but that does not imply that God is deity itself subsisting unless we assume that the only alternative to a relational ontology is a medieval constituent ontology. iii involves an argument from perfect being theology that presupposes, among other things, a real metaphysical distinction between essence and existence not to be found in Scripture but in Thomas Aquinas’ metaphysics.38 In explicating iv, Duby not only presupposes once again the metaphysical distinction of substance and accidents, but also naively assumes a jointly exhaustive disjunction of a Platonistic relational ontology and a medieval constituent ontology when he contends, “God himself is to be regarded as the fullness of each of his perfections subsisting, lest he should be righteous, good and so on per participationem in order to be as he is and act as he does.”39 Finally, v is an explicit exercise in perfect being theology “If there were parts in God, these would stand prior to God and furnish his being ‘parts from which he would be composed would be prior to God, at least in the order of nature as a cause’.”40 There is, I think, no need to belabor the point by further examining Duby’s treatment of God’s immutability, infinity, and creation of the world ex nihilo, for the pattern is clear. An attribute of God is established biblically, and then divine simplicity is deduced therefrom employing arguments of perfect being theology based on a range of substantive and highly disputable metaphysical assumptions. The use of Thomistic Reformed metaphysics is not merely terminological or heuristic, as Duby avers, but substantive. Conclusions are based squarely on the truth of metaphysical assumptions which are extrabiblical in nature. Like his Reformed scholastic forebears, who thought that the doctrine of divine simplicity could be established biblically, Duby is strangely oblivious to the degree to which metaphysical assumptions are being read into biblical teaching. 5.1.2 Incompatibility of DS with Scripture Moreover, DS is not, like God’s broadly logically necessary existence, merely unbiblical in the sense of not being taught by Scripture, but actually contrary, at least prima facie, to scriptural teaching and therefore ruled out for any biblically adequate systematic theology. Historically, orthodox Muslims and Jews were clearsighted in this regard.41 Most fundamentally, Scripture teaches that we have an accurate, if not comprehensive, knowledge of God’s essential properties. Not that Scripture commits us to the existence of properties in a metaphysically heavyweight sense, much less to a view of what properties are. We speak here of properties in a metaphysically lightweight sense. Scripture affirms that God is immaterial, personal, holy, selfexistent, almighty, allknowing, everywhere present, eternal, and so on and so forth, so that as a result of his selfrevelation in Scripture we have a very good idea of what God is like. Moreover, given the prominence and centrality of such divine properties in the Bible, it is plausible that they are essential to God.42 It is unthinkable that biblical writers might have considered holiness or aseity or eternity to be properties which God merely happens to have but might have lacked, so that God could have been morally flawed, dependent for his existence upon something else, or mortal. Anything so characterized would not deserve to be called God. Finally, in Scripture these attributes are predicated of God univocally. When God is said to be holy and loving and righteous, it is taken for granted that these predicates have the same meaning that they do in discourse about creatures. Of course, creatures may possess such properties only to a finite degree or not at all, whereas God possesses them to a maximal or unlimited degree, but the meaning of the predicates is the same.43 For example, when it is taught that God is selfexistent and creatures are not, the meaning of the predicate, whether affirmed or denied, is the same. There is no suggestion in Scripture that these words have a different meaning when used of God on the contrary, it is assumed that the meaning is the same. The fact that we can have an accurate, if not comprehensive, positive knowledge of God’s essential attributes is incompatible with agnosticism about God’s essence, so that any doctrine of divine simplicity which implies such agnosticism by, for example, identifying God’s essence with his existence, which is inconceivable, is precluded. Moreover, Scripture teaches that God has unactualized potentialities, indeed, one wants to say, unlimited potentiality. Again, we are speaking in a metaphysically lightweight sense. God has the unlimited ability to do things that he does not do. According to Scripture God is changing in his actions toward the world, and, most dramatically, God could have chosen not to create the world at all. “Worthy art thou, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for thou didst create all things, and by thy will they existed and were created” Rev 4.11. There are, then, possible worlds in which God does differently than he does in the actual world. This truth is incompatible with doctrines of divine simplicity according to which God is pure actuality, with no passive potentiality, or God’s action is identical to his essence. Furthermore, Scripture teaches that God creates, knows, and loves creatures. Accordingly, any doctrine of divine simplicity that entails that God stands in no real relations to the world is prima facie contrary to scriptural teaching. In combination with Scripture’s teaching that God could have acted differently than he does, God’s being really related to the world implies that God has contingent as well as essential properties. For example, God is contingently the cause of the world, knowledgeable of what is going on in the world, and loving of the persons he has made. All this is incompatible with any doctrine of divine simplicity that holds that all that God is he is essentially, that there is nothing contingent in God. Moreover, God exists in the same sense that creatures exist. That is to say, predications of existence are also univocal with respect to God and creatures. When the author of Hebrews says, “Whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists,” he assumes the ordinary meaning of “exists” estin. To be sure, God exists a se whereas creatures exist ab alio. God’s mode of existence may also be different than creatures’, God existing necessarily and creatures contingently. But in these affirmations the meaning of “exists” is the same, something like “has extramental reality” or “is opposed to nothingness,” to borrow a Scotist phrase. A complete ontological inventory would include both God and creatures, the one independent and the other dependent, but both real. Accordingly, any doctrine of divine simplicity denying the univocity of “being” or “existence” for God and creatures is ruled out. Finally, Scripture, insofar as it contains embryonically the doctrine of the Trinity, implies that God is complex. There are three, nonidentical persons whom the NT calls divine. The personal distinctions are inviolable. God is tripersonal and therefore complex even if partless. This teaching is incompatible with any doctrine of divine simplicity holding that God is devoid of complexity. Prima facie, then, Scripture is sharply at odds with DS. It has been a watchword of classic Reformed theology that “As God reveals himself, so is he.”44 Unfortunately, this ringing affirmation has been muted by the doctrine of DS. Colin Gunton warns, “what might appear to be a proper human modesty before the divine can turn into the supreme blasphemy of denying revelation.”45 What one commentator has called “the twisted roots” of the strong doctrine of divine simplicity46 are to be found not in Scripture but in NeoPlatonism, particularly in the doctrine of the One of Plotinus. It is testimony to the overwhelming influence of Greek thought upon the JudeoChristian tradition that so many Christian, Jewish, and Muslim thinkers eventually came to embrace a doctrine so at odds with biblical teaching. 5.2 Roots and Development of Divine Simplicity We cannot hope in so short a compass to survey adequately the history of thought on the doctrine of divine simplicity. But perhaps we can touch briefly upon some of the highlights of that history in order to illustrate my claim that there has not been a unified doctrine of divine simplicity over the ages. 5.2.1 NeoPlatonic Roots The doctrine of DS is rooted in the philosophy of Plotinus 2045–2701. According to Plotinus the metaphysical ultimate from which all reality flows is an undifferentiated unity which he variously called the First or the One or, in Platonic terminology, the Good. But he insisted that any such label for the metaphysical ultimate is simply for want of any better way to refer to it, since, being utterly simple, it is beyond description and beyond conceiving.47 Plotinus is led to postulate this ineffable One as a consequence of the drive to find some sort of unifying principle behind the multiplicity, not merely in the sensible world, but also of the ideal realm “The Intellectual Cosmos thus a manifold, Number and Quantity arise. . . . What is the Simplex preceding this multiple what is the cause at once of its existence and of its existing as a manifold what is the source of this Number, this Quantity Number, Quantity is not primal obviously even before duality, there must stand the unity.”48 The reason Plotinus took it as obvious that unity must precede multiplicity ontologically, though not temporally, is that unity is the ground of being for things. Something exists only insofar as it is unified as one thing.49 Things that are composite cannot be the ground of their own being there must be something metaphysically prior which makes them a unity. “Any manifold, anything beneath The Unity, is dependent combined from various constituents, its essential nature goes in need of unity but unity cannot need itself it stands unity accomplished.”50 So “Above all, unity is The First. . . . for any member of the realm of Forms is an aggregation, a compound, and therefore – since components must precede their compound – is a later.”51 If, then, we consider all particular beings, “Much more must Collective Being, as container of all existence, be a manifold and therefore distinct from the unity in which it is but participant. . . . Unity cannot be the total of beings for so its oneness is annulled.”52 Plotinus’ impetus toward a simple metaphysical ultimate is itself deeply rooted in preSocratic philosophy and perhaps, provocatively, in ancient Egyptian religion. With respect to the Greek tradition, Plotinus scholar Lloyd Gerson observes, A central axiom of that tradition was the connecting of explanation with reductionism or the derivation of the complex from the simple. That is, ultimate explanations of phenomena and of contingent entities can only rest in what itself requires no explanation. If what is actually sought is the explanation for something that is in one way or another complex, what grounds the explanation will be simple relative to the observed complexity. . . . Taken to its logical conclusion, the explanatory path must finally lead to that which is unique and absolutely uncomplex.53 Plotinus himself lists among his precursors Parmenides, who embraced a monistic worldview, and Anaxagoras, who affirmed a simple and separate One.54 It is an intriguing historical note that Plotinus was a native Egyptian, educated in the academy at Alexandria. As such he must have been familiar with ancient Egyptian mythology. Over the course of its long history since the beginning of the third millennium B.C., Egypt developed a basic metaphysical and religious worldview that came to varying expression in four predominant cult centers at Memphis, Heliopolis, Hermopolis, and Thebes. The metaphysical worldview underlying all of these religious perspectives was the view that reality is ultimately one, an underlying, undifferentiated unity.55 Multiplicity emerges from this primordial underlying unity. The unfolding of primordial oneness into multiplicity takes form primarily in the process of theogony, the emergence of the gods, who in turn create the world. It is striking that the modifications which Plotinus introduced into Platonism, thus giving birth to the intellectual tradition known as NeoPlatonism, have to do precisely with the drive to unification in an absolutely simple unity from which multiplicity arises. Plotinus’ view of the One is a sort of demythologized Egyptian religion. Interestingly, in his Enneads, written during his teaching tenure in Rome, Plotinus does refer to Greek mythology, which would have been more familiar than Egyptian mythology to his students there, as embodying the truths he taught. Plotinus is next only to Plato and Aristotle in the enormous influence exerted by his metaphysical worldview. NeoPlatonic influences were absorbed into Christian theology through figures like Origen 185–253, who was trained, like Plotinus, under Ammonius Saccas in Alexandria, the Cappadocian Fathers Basil 330–379 and Gregory Nazianzus 329–390, who both studied philosophy in Athens, and Augustine 354–430, who had read Plotinus’ works. Still, we do not find in these thinkers a fullblown doctrine of divine simplicity. We must sturdily resist the temptation to read into patristic writers medieval doctrines of divine simplicity because of shared vocabulary. Statements by the Fathers on divine simplicity are ambiguous due to the fact that patristic writers use terms like “simple” and “composite” with different meanings and without any acknowledgement of this equivocation.57 Irenaeus 130–202 affirmed that God is simple merely in the sense that he is not composed of separable parts.58 Athanasius’ 2968–373 conception was even weaker “For, if he united from parts, he would appear wholly unlike to himself and have fulfilment from unlike things.”59 Hilary’s 310–367 affirmation is similarly thin “God is simple. . . . And he is not so diverse with parts of a composite divinity that there should be in him either will after stupor, or work after idleness.”60 As we have seen, Origen, despite his NeoPlatonic training, affirms that God is simple in the sense that he is incorporeal and indivisible like the human mind.61 Basil and Gregory of Nyssa 335–395, in their battle with the Arian theologian Eunomius of Cyzica d. 393, confronted head on an advocate of NeoPlatonic divine simplicity and, as we shall see in our next section, repudiated it in favor of a much more modest conception. We shall also find that Augustine, too, did not embrace divine simplicity as it came to be later understood. 5.2.2 Cappadocian Fathers Eunomius, in the name of divine simplicity, pressed a powerful objection against the proponents of Nicene orthodoxy. Also a product of the academy in Alexandria, Eunomius, in line with a NeoPlatonic conception of divine simplicity, denied that God has a plurality of properties. On the basis of Ex 3.14 he took God’s essence to be identical to his existence. Eunomius understood the single property which God is to be ungeneracy or unbegottenness agennēsia, a not implausible suggestion in view of God’s aseity, which many theologians have identified as the most fundamental of the divine attributes. God is the sole ultimate reality, who depends on nothing. Accordingly, if God the Father is unbegotten agennētos and his Son begotten gennētos, as the Nicene Creed affirms, then the Son does not share the divine essence ousia and so is not God.62 At the heart of the Cappadocians’ multilayered response63 to Eunomius lay their rejection of Eunomius’ Plotinian doctrine of divine simplicity. They affirmed in several ways the complexity, if not the compoundedness, of God. At the most basic level, there is a distinction between God’s being simple and his being ungenerate. “What we assert is this each of the words has its own connotation, and ‘indivisible’ is not implied by ‘unbegotten’, nor ‘unbegotten’ by ‘simple’. Rather, by ‘simple’ we understand ‘uncompounded’, and by ‘unbegotten’ we learn that something has no originating cause.”64 Prima facie, this would imply a plurality of properties possessed by God.65 So in response to Eunomius, we assert that ‘uncompounded’ means one thing and ‘unbegotten’ another one expresses the simplicity of the subject, the other the fact that it derives from no cause the connotations of the terms do not overlap, even though both are used of the one subject. Rather, we learn from the adjective ‘unbegotten’ that what is so described has no causal origin, from ‘simple’ that it is free from composition neither term is used as substitute for the other. So it does not necessarily follow that, because the Divinity is by nature simple, his nature is defined as ‘unbegottenness’ rather, inasmuch as he is without parts and uncompounded, he is said to be simple, and inasmuch as he has not been begotten, unbegotten.66 By thus distinguishing between simplicity and unbegottenness, the Cappadocians could then proceed to distinguish between God’s nature or essence, which they held to be simple and unknowable, and his other various properties like unbegottenness. 67 His nature, whether in the sense of a concrete individual nature or in the sense of a generic essence,68 is given in a definition of what God is, which definition escapes us. In addition to his nature God also has necessarily various other properties propria. In order to illustrate the difference between God’s nature and his propria, the Cappadocians borrowed illustrations from Plotinus’ biographer Porphyry which would also be adopted by medieval theologians, such as risibility, a property that follows from but is not part of man’s nature of rational animality. Thus, Gregory writes, “For this name i.e. ‘God’, which indicates the substance, does not tell us what it is which is obvious since what the divine substance is is inconceivable and incomprehensible. Rather, since it is drawn from some proprium that belongs to the substance, this name intimates the substance, just as when we say ‘neighing’ and ‘laughing’, which are propria of natures, we signify the natures of which they are propria.”69 Gregory identifies a number of such divine propria, such as goodness, power, wisdom, life, and incorruptibility, which he styles “virtues” or “goods.”70 Gregory held these divine virtues to be nonidentical but necessarily coextensive. The Cappadocians denied that ungeneracy is part of the divine nature, for that nature, whatever it is, is shared by the Father and the Son rather ungeneracy is uniquely predicated of the Father. Thus, the Cappadocians’ response to Eunomius depends on their rejection of his strong doctrine of divine simplicity. They undermined the NeoPlatonic doctrine of divine simplicity held by Eunomius in multiple ways first, by distinguishing between the simple, ineffable divine nature and God himself second, by distinguishing between God’s nature and his propria third, by attributing to God a multiplicity of propria which are nonidentical though coextensive.71 Did they also ascribe to God contingent properties like being the Creator They may have done. For Gregory indicts the Eunomians for their inconsistency precisely on this score “Since they call the Father both Creator and Maker, whereas he who is so called is simple in regard to his essence, it is high time for such sophists to declare the essence of the Father to be creation and making, since the argument about simplicity introduces into his essence any signification of any name we give to him.”72 It is assumed that such predicates ascribe real properties, but since these could be neither constitutive of the divine nature nor propria necessarily possessed by God, they would have to be,accordingly, contingent properties of God. RaddeGallwitz concludes that the Cappadocians, in effect, gutted Eunomius’ doctrine of divine simplicity, the same doctrine later to be propounded by Thomas Aquinas in a vastly more sophisticated version.73 5.2.3 Augustine Augustine seems to have imbibed NeoPlatonic tradition more thoroughly than the Cappadocians, though even in his case interpretation is difficult. We seem to have a baptized NeoPlatonism in his affirmation, “There is, accordingly, a Good which is alone simple, and therefore alone unchangeable, and this is God. By this Good have all others been created, but not simple, and therefore not unchangeable.”74 But what does Augustine understand by his affirmation that God is simple Sometimes he speaks of God as being simple in the sense that God’s attributes are essential to him, equal in degree, and necessarily coextensive.75 Just as there is “an absolutely inseparable and eternal union” of the three persons of the Trinity,76 there could be analogously such a union of the divine attributes in God’s essence. Such a view is compatible with God’s being composed of inseparable metaphysical parts. But elsewhere Augustine seems to shut out the possibility that God’s attributes can be construed as parts of God. Again, the analogy in this regard between the Trinitarian persons and the divine attributes is interesting. In inquiring how the divine substance is “both simple and manifold,” Augustine points out that no bodily substance is simple, since it is composed of parts that are individually not as great as the whole the whole is greater than its proper part. Although God is not a bodily substance, still if we think of the Trinitarian persons as parts of God, then we must say person.77 But for Augustine each divine person is as great or perfect as all three together.78 So although the divine persons are not identical, neither are they parts of God.79 Hence, God is simple though a Trinity. Similarly, just as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not identical even though they are not parts of God, so the divine attributes could be nonidentical though not parts of God. So long as we do not think of God’s attributes as parts of God, God’s having a multiplicity of distinct attributes does not compromise his being simple in the sense of being partless. In yet other places, however, Augustine seems to construe divine simplicity as incompatible with a plurality of nonidentical attributes despite their not being parts. He seems to affirm that the divine attributes are not merely coextensive but identical and, moreover, that God himself is identical with his attributes.80 The Augustinian maxim that “The nature of the good is simple. . . because it is what it has, with the exception of the relation of the persons to one another”81 seems to entail that God is identical to each of his attributes. But even here there is scope for interpretation. Leftow reminds us that Augustine was a Platonist, for whom abstract terms like “wisdom” denote what Plato called Forms.82 Normally, things have a quality by “participation” some sort of relation involving similarity and derivation or dependence in a Form. Since God is in no way dependent or derivative, God does not have his qualities by participation in Forms. Thus, Augustine says, the persons of the Trinity have unity of substance, “not by participation, but by their own essence, neither by the gift of any superior, but by their own.”83 So when Augustine asserts that God is the wisdom he has, he identifies God with a Form – or, more exactly, according to Leftow, he asserts that a term otherwise taken to refer to a Form refers in fact to God.84 This is not an identity thesis but a replacement thesis “Augustine identifies God with Forms to eliminate the Forms and have God take over their role in the theory of attributes.”85 Leftow thinks that Augustine, following one strand in Plato,86 treats Forms as standards for evaluating their participants. For example, says Leftow, “If ‘wisdom’ refers to a standard for wisdom, it refers to a perfect case of wisdom, to which other cases may measure up. . . . for Augustine, God, not God’s wisdom, is the standard case of wisdom. One is wise by so ‘participating in’ God that one counts as wise.”87 Thus, the claim that God is identical to some quality that creatures can share really means that God is identical with the standard for that quality. Augustine’s view does not imply that, for every nonrelational attribute F, if God is F, then God is identical to Fness, but rather that if God is F, God is the standard for being F. 88 Where an attribute is degreed, as in the case of omnipotence or omniscience, only a maximal degree case of it can be the standard. Important implications follow from Leftow’s interpretation Augustine’s doctrine of divine simplicity does not identify God with an attribute. Neither does it identify God’s attributes with one another. It asserts only that God is the standard for those various attributes. Leftow provides an engaging illustration how one thing can serve as the standard for two distinct attributes “If the standard meter bar weighs a kilogram, it can be both the standard meter and the standard kilo, without having it follow that being a meter long weighing a kilo, or that to be measured in length is to be measured in weight.”89 Similarly God can be the standard for all the various qualities listed by Augustine without those qualities’ being identical with one another. Leftow opines that his illustration is nonetheless defective “The standard meter bar can also be the standard kilo because it has two distinct attributes weight and length. If God is simple, that the persons taken together collectively are greater than each individual he does not.”90 This misgiving seems to forget that on Leftow’s interpretation Augustine’s doctrine of divine simplicity does not imply that God’s attributes are identical. There is room in his view for different attributes of God so long as God himself is the standard for each of them.91 One final consideration concerning Augustine’s doctrine of divine simplicity deserves to be broached his doctrine of the divine ideas. Augustine rejected as sacrilegious the notion that there might be a realm of uncreated, eternal Platonic Forms independent of God.92 He therefore, along with Middle Platonists like Nicomachus of Gerasa and Hellenistic Jews like Philo of Alexandria, moved the realm of the Forms into the divine mind as thoughts of God.93 For Middle Platonists and Philo, the intelligible world kosmos noētos served, as for Plato, as a model for the creation of the sensible world kosmos oratos but does not exist independently of God rather it exists as the contents of his mind, the divine Logos. The Logos doctrine was adopted by the Greek Apologists as a way of grounding the intelligible realm in God rather than in some independent realm of selfsubsisting entities like numbers or forms.94 Like Philo and the Middle Platonists Augustine associates the Forms with the Logos, who for him, as for the Greek Apologists, is the second person of the Trinity “the Form according to which a creature is created exists first in the Word of God before the actual creation of the work itself.”95 Leftow has recourse to these divine ideas as the standard for predicates which are not common to God and creatures, such as “is blue.”96 What is significant for our purposes is that Augustine, unlike Aquinas, makes no serious effort to eliminate the plurality of divine ideas, which insouciance goes to confirm that his concern was not to enunciate what later became the strong doctrine of divine simplicity. 5.2.4 Anselm In eleventh century Europe, Anselm 10334–1109 is typically thought to have embraced a strong doctrine of divine simplicity. He affirms, for example, that God’s nature “is in no respect composite” and that all of his perfections “must be one rather than many. Hence, each one of them is the same as all the others – whether they be considered distinctly or all together.”97 But appearances may be deceiving. At the end of his study of Augustine’s doctrine of divine simplicity, Leftow muses that Anselm is so thoroughly Augustinian that one would be surprised if he did not see the doctrine Augustine’s way.98 A reading of Anselm’s Monologion seems to bear out Leftow’s suspicion. Contrary to the conventional interpretation, Anselm does not seem to embrace the thesis that God is identical to his perfections or that they are identical to one another. Rather, like Augustine, Anselm is a Platonist in that he thinks of predications, not in terms of things’ possessing properties, but in terms of things’ participation in Forms. Since God is the Supreme Being, he cannot have his perfections by way of participating in a Platonic Form, for that would fatally compromise divine aseity. Rather God must himself play the role ascribed to Forms in the Platonic metaphysic. Anselm thus embraces, not an identity thesis, but a replacement thesis, according to which God himself replaces the many Forms.99 Just as Justice is for Plato just through itself, so for Anselm God is just through himself when we call the Supreme Being just or great or any such thing, perhaps we are indicating not what it is but rather what kind of thing it is or of what magnitude it is. Indeed, each of these predicates, viz., ‘just’ and ‘great’ seems to be predicated with respect to quality or to quantity for whatever is just is just through justice and likewise for other predicates of this kind. Therefore, the Supreme Nature is just only through justice. Hence, it seems that the supremely good Substance is called just by participation in a quality, viz., justice. But if so, i.e., if the Supreme Substance were just in this way, then the Supreme Substance would be just not through itself but through something other than itself. But this view is contrary to the truth which we have already seen viz., that – whether good or great or existing – what the Supreme Nature is, it is completely through itself and not through something other than itself. So if it is just only through justice, and if it can be just only through itself, what is more clear and more necessary than that this Nature is justice100 There is thus, in Immink’s words, an “evaluative aspect” to Anselm’s realism “The Divine Word is considered to be the ultimate standard of what ought to be.”101 Anselm writes, “The Supreme Nature is supremely whatever good thing it is. Therefore, the Supreme Nature is Supreme Being, Supreme Life, Supreme Reason, Supreme Refuge, Supreme Justice, Supreme Wisdom, Supreme Truth, Supreme Goodness, Supreme Greatness, Supreme Beauty, Supreme Immortality, Supreme Incorruptibility, Supreme Immutability, Supreme Beatitude, Supreme Eternity, Supreme Power, Supreme Oneness.”102 Creaturely things have qualities which vary in degree according to their resemblance to God. Indeed, Anselm even seems to embrace the notion that there are degrees of being, so that some things can be said to scarcely exist.103 Hence, for God to be justice or power or eternity is for God to be the standard for the possession of that quality, not for God to be a quality. On Anselm’s view a wide array of perfections may be truly predicated of God, but such predicates do not entail that God is actually composed of such perfections as metaphysical parts. On the one hand, “necessarily, the Supreme Being is living, wise, powerful and allpowerful, true, just, blessed, eternal, and whatever similarly is in every respect better than its negation.”104 On the other hand, these perfections are not metaphysical parts of which God is composed “If the Supreme Nature is so many goods, will it be composed of so many goods, or are they, rather than being many goods, only one good signified by so many names For everything composite needs for its existence the parts of which it is composed and what it is it owes to its parts. For through them it is whatever it is, whereas what they are they are not through it and so, it is not at all supreme.”105 Never mind the cogency of Anselm’s argument for God’s not being composed of more fundamental parts the salient point is that on his view we can truly predicate many different perfections of God without those perfections’ being ontological constituents of God. Anselm makes a nominalistic move in affirming that the divine perfections are the one Good, that is God, signified by many different names. In saying that the perfections predicated of God differ in name only, he is not claiming that these predicates all have the same meaning but that they all refer to God himself, not to various parts of God, as the standard of that perfection. In his Proslogion Anselm expands on his denial that God is composed of parts Surely, You are life, wisdom, truth, goodness, blessedness, eternity – You are every true good. These are many things and my limited understanding cannot in a single view behold so many at one time in order to delight in all together. How is it, then, O Lord, that You are all these things Are they Your parts, or, instead, is each one of them the whole of what You are For whatever is composed of parts is not absolutely one but is in a way many and is different from itself and can be divided actually or conceivably. But these consequences are foreign to You, than whom nothing better can be thought. Hence, there are no parts in You, O Lord. Nor are You more than one thing. Rather, You are something so one and the same with Yourself that in no respect are You dissimilar to Yourself. Indeed, You are Oneness itself, divisible in no respect. Therefore, life and wisdom and the other characteristics are not parts of You but are all one thing and each one of them is the whole of what You are and the whole of what all the others are.106 Here Anselm presents a different argument for God’s perfections’ not being parts of God parts are divisible, actually or conceptually, which Anselm takes to be incompatible with God’s supremacy. This argument would preclude not merely fundamental parts of God but even parts posterior to the whole. Anselm also implies that parts may be said to be dissimilar to the whole, perhaps in that the whole is greater than its proper part. The argument does not preclude that we may conceptually distinguish God’s perfections from one another, so long as those perfections are not taken to be parts of God. Anselm thus roundly rejects a constituent ontology with respect to God “whatever the Supreme Being in some respect essentially is is the whole of what it is.”107 If this is correct, then we should understand the following passage, quoted earlier, not as an endorsement of the identity thesis, but as a rejection of a constituent ontology for God Therefore, since this Nature is in no respect composite and yet is in every respect those very many goods listed above, all those goods must be one rather than many. Hence, each one of them is the same as all the others – whether they be considered distinctly or all together. For example, when this Nature is said to be justice or being, these predicates signify the same thing as do the other predicates, whether considered distinctly or all together. Thus, even as whatever is predicated essentially of the Supreme Substance is one, so whatever the Supreme Substance is essentially it is in one way, in one respect.108 The fact that the divine perfections are not parts of God does not imply that, for example, omniscience is goodness or that being eternal is not different than being omnipresent. God is the standard of all perfections, and his perfections, though nonidentical, are not constituents of God. 5.2.5 Medieval Muslim and Jewish Philosophers After the sixth century the Aristotelean corpus was lost in the GrecoRoman world but preserved in Muslim culture. Greek philosophical thought was introduced into medieval Islamic culture by Mu’tazilite theologians in the ninth century, whence it flowered into movements in both theology kalām and philosophy falsafa. In medieval Islamic philosophy we find a strange brand of Plotinus and Aristotle, an amalgam aptly described as a “synthesis of Neoplatonic metaphysics, natural science, and mysticism Plotinus enriched by Galen and Proclus.”109 Philosophy in the Arabic world sprang out of the translation movement, which imported Greek philosophy readymade to Arabic writers. The Caliphs encouraged the translation of Greek works into Syriac and Arabic, thus preserving in the Muslim world what was lost in the West, until it should be returned again centuries later via Jewish theologians. The translation movement had drawbacks that were to have a marked impact upon Islamic philosophy. For example, the influential Theology of Aristotle was actually a translation of Plotinus’ Enneads 4–6, wrongly ascribed to the Stagirite, and the Liber de causis was actually excerpted from Proclus’ “Elements of Theology.” The Arabic philosophers were under the impression that these NeoPlatonic works were authored by Aristotle himself and so firmly believed that Aristotle and Plato were in agreement on the one true philosophy. Reflecting Plotinus’ influence, the Arabic philosophers held God to be the One from whom all multiplicity and matter emanate. But reflecting Aristotelian influence, they did not want their First Principle to be beyond Being, for metaphysics is the study of Being as Being and of the One as well. Thus they brought the One into Being and brought the world out of the One in a series of successive emanations, which correspond to the system of the Aristotelian spheres. In order to avoid a panentheism inimical to Islam, they made the One a necessary being in whom essence and existence are not distinct, whereas in all other beings such a distinction holds. Nevertheless, the universe is in a sense necessary, for it was not created freely but emanates necessarily from the One. Thus the world exists as necessarily as the One, but in dependence upon it, whereas the One exists independently. Already in alKindi ca. 801– ca. 873, the first Arab philosopher at the fork between Islamic theology and philosophy, we find a strong doctrine of divine simplicity The True One, therefore, has neither matter, form, quantity, quality, or relation, is not described by any of the remaining intelligible things, and has neither genus, specific difference, individual, property, common accident or movement and it is not described by any of the things which are denied to be one in truth. It is, accordingly, pure and simple unity, i.e., having nothing other than unity, while every other one is multiple.110 The NeoPlatonic tendencies in the philosophy of alKindi come to full fruition in the metaphysical system of alFārābī d. 950, who has been hailed as “the founder of Arab Neoplatonism and the first major figure in the history of that philosophical movement since Proclus”111 and of ibn Sīnā 980–1057, the greatest of the Arabic philosophers in the east. Ibn Sīnā follows Fārābī in drawing an ontological distinction between essence and existence, which obtains universally save in God the One, who is the source of existence of everything else “Everything except the One who is by his essence One and Existent acquires existence from something else.”112 Any being composed of essence and existence requires a cause of the conjunction of essence and existence in that being and therefore cannot be absolutely necessary. Essence and existence cannot be distinct in God lest he be a composite being and therefore require a cause. His existence cannot be caused by his essence, for then the essence itself would have to be a complete being in order to cause the existence of another. But essence without existence is nothing and cannot, therefore, cause being. This implies that God’s essence does not just involve existence rather it is existence.113 In fact, it can even be said that God in a sense has no essence but simply is pure existence.114 Moreover, God must be pure actuality. For God must have all perfections, since all perfections in the universe come from him. Since he is perfect, he can have no potentiality to receive anything his perfection exists in full actuality. Further, he must be absolutely one and simple. For if his attributes were added to his essence, then the attributes would be in potentiality in respect to the essence. If his attributes were said to constitute his essence, then he would be composite and require a cause. Islamic theologians and philosophers bequeathed the fruit of their deliberations along with the legacy of Aristotle to western Christian theologians. The medium of this transmission was Jewish thinkers, who fully participated in the intellectual life of Iberian Muslim society. Moses Maimonides 1135–1204, who stood at the high water mark of medieval Jewish philosophy, followed Fārābī and ibn Sīnā in holding God to be an absolutely simple being of pure actuality.115 “There cannot be any belief in the unity of God except by admitting that he is one simple substance, without any composition or plurality of elements one from whatever side you view it, and by whatever test you examine it not divisible into two parts in any way and by any cause, nor capable of any form of plurality either objectively or subjectively.”116 In particular, in God there is no distinction between essence and existence “But as regards a being whose existence is not due to any cause – God alone is that being, for his existence, as we have said, is absolute – existence and essence are perfectly identical.”117 A champion of the via negativa, Maimonides maintains that we have no positive knowledge of God’s essence. “I am therefore at a loss to see how they can find any similarity between the attributes of God and those of man how their definitions can be identical, and their significations the same This is a decisive proof that there is, in no way or sense, anything common to the attributes predicated of God and those used in reference to ourselves they have only the same names, and nothing else is common to them.”118 Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed was translated into Latin within ten years of his death and became readily available to Latinspeaking theologians, being used in particular by Thomas Aquinas as his “guide and model” in his systematic harmonization of Aristotle and Christianity.119 Thus, the legacy of Plotinus’ doctrine of divine simplicity came to imbue medieval and, eventually, postReformation scholastic theology. 5.2.6 Thomas Aquinas Historically, the doctrine of divine simplicity comes to its fullest expression in the theology of Thomas Aquinas 1225–1274. On the heels of his famous five ways of proving God’s existence in his Summa theologiae, Thomas immediately turns to the question of God’s simplicity, which he develops over eight articles on the basis of his theistic proofs.120 Following ibn Sīnā and Maimonides, Aquinas argues that God is absolutely simple, nothing other than the act of being itself. Our interest at this point is not so much in the many arguments Aquinas gives in support as in the doctrine of divine simplicity that he enunciates. On the basis of his first way the argument from motion or change, his third way the argument from contingency, and his fourth way the argument from degrees of value among things, Thomas first infers that God is not a physical body Ia.3.1 These arguments are, significantly, taken to prove that God is pure actuality and in no way in potentiality. Next, on the basis of his second way the argument from causation, his third way, and his fourth way, Thomas infers that God is not composed of form and matter Ia.3.2. He even goes so far as to say that God, as the first efficient cause, “is therefore of his essence a form and not composed of matter and form.”121 But, as we shall see, there is reason not to take such an identification literally. It then follows that God is the same as his essence or nature, since beings which are pure forms, such as angels, lacking any matter to individuate their forms, are therefore each a unique instance of their respective natures Ia.3.3.122 Just as an angel is a concrete object, so the natures or essences spoken of here are concrete, not abstract, objects, which are ontological constituents of things.123 In denying that God’s nature is a proper constituent of God, Thomas distances himself from the Cappadocian view, which differentiates God from his nature. Next Thomas argues that since God has been proved to be the first cause, it follows that God’s essence or nature is identical with his existence Ia.3.4. For God’s existence is either 1 derived from his nature or 2 external to his nature or 3 the same as his nature. But 1 represents a selfcaused being, which the second way has shown to be impossible, and 2 describes a being whose existence is caused by another, which God is not. Therefore 3, God’s essence is the same as his existence.124 This thesis, adopted from the Muslim and Jewish proponents of divine simplicity, suggests that Thomas’ claim that God is a pure form, identical with his nature, is not an identity thesis but a replacement thesis such as we found in Augustine and Anselm. God is not literally a form but takes the place of a form, for no form is an act of being, as God is said to be. This conclusion seems confirmed when Thomas proceeds to argue that anything “which has existence but is not existence is a being by participation. . . . if, therefore, God is not his own existence he will be not essential but participated being.”125 Since God is the first being, he cannot have being by participation. Later Thomas will say, “since God is absolute form, or rather absolute being, he can be in no way composite.”126 Aquinas will not even allow God to be classified according to the scheme of genus and difference Ia.3.5. He argues on various grounds that God cannot be a species within some genus. Thomas observes that God’s standing outside this classificatory schema makes it impossible to define God, for a definition is stated in terms of genus and specific difference.127 Thus, we cannot know what God’s nature or essence is. The Cappadocians could soften the impact of this agnosticism by holding that God has many essential properties in addition to his nature which are knowable by us, but Aquinas precludes such knowledge by identifying God’s undefinable nature with God himself. God, moreover, has no accidental or essential properties Ia.3.6. What is especially striking in this article is that Aquinas denies not merely that God has contingent properties but even that he has essential properties.128 For he rejects the view, held by the Cappadocians, that God can have essential properties which are not constitutive of his nature,129 and since his nature is itself the pure act of being, it follows that God has no essential properties, indeed no properties at all. Despite God’s having no properties, Aquinas elsewhere affirms, paradoxically, that God does have all perfections although God is existence only, this does not mean that he should lack other perfections or excellences rather, he has all perfections of all kinds, and for this reason he is said to be perfect absolutely speaking. . . . But he has all these perfections in a more excellent manner than any other thing, for in him they are one, and in others they are diverse. And the reason for this is that he has all these perfections on account of his simple existence just as, if there were someone who on account of a simple quality could perform the operations of all qualities, then in that simple quality he would have all qualities, so too does God have all perfections in his existence itself.130 It might be thought that the paradox here could be resolved by adopting a nonconstituent ontology, according to which God has various perfections without having the corresponding properties as ontological constituents. But on Aquinas’ view God is identical to his nature, and the way in which we grasp what a thing is is by means of its falling under genus and species the pure act of being is therefore unintelligible, despite the affirmation of its perfection. As if to close any door left open, Aquinas argues that God is altogether simple Summa theologiae Ia.3.7. This conclusion follows from the previous articles For there is neither composition of quantitative parts in God, since he is not a body nor composition of form and matter nor does his nature differ from his suppositum nor his essence from his existence neither is there in him composition of genus and difference, nor of subject and accident. Therefore, it is clear that God is nowise composite, but is altogether simple.131 Aquinas adds confirming arguments from the dependence of composites on their parts, composites’ need of a cause of their composition, the presence of potentiality in composites, and the fact that in every composite there is something that is not the whole itself, all of which is incompatible with God as the first being.132 Finally, he clarifies that although God is being, he is not the generic being that enters into composition with other things but rather is their efficient and exemplaric cause Ia.3.8. All this raises the question whether for Aquinas God really has an essence. That is to say, is the claim that God’s essence is existence an identity thesis along the lines of OAST or a replacement thesis along the lines of NTDT Aquinas takes cognizance of this question after the close of his discussion of God as being itself subsisting ipsum esse subsistens in On Being and Essence V. He writes, there is something, namely, God, whose essence is his own existence and for this reason there are philosophers who say that God does not have a quiddity or essence, because his essence is not something other than his existence. And from this it follows that he is not in a genus. For everything that is in a genus has to have its essence besides its existence, since the quiddity or nature of their genus or species is not distinguished on account of the nature of those things of which these are the genus or species, but existence is diverse in the diverse things.133 In his earlier Commentary on the Sentences, Aquinas identifies these unnamed philosophers as ibn Sīnā and Maimonides.134 It is fairly clear which passages from ibn Sīnā Aquinas had in mind. In the metaphysical treatises of his alShifā’, ibn Sīnā says that “The First has no quiddity other than his individual existence” and that “there is no quiddity for the Necessary Existent other than its being the Necessary Existent. And this is the thing’s ‘thatness,’ its individual existence.”135 Whereas “The rest of the things, other than the Necessary Existent, have quiddities,” “The First . . . has no quiddity. . . . He is pure existence. . . .”136 Moreover, “The First also has no genus. This is because the First has no quiddity. That which has no quiddity has no genus, since genus is spoken of in answer to the question, ‘What is it’ and moreover genus in one respect is a part of a thing and it has been ascertained that the First is not a composite.”137 It follows that “Since he has neither genus nor differentia, he has no definition.”138 On the other hand, Maimonides did not seem to hold to the view ascribed to him by Aquinas. R. C. Taylor emphasizes that Aquinas tends to read Maimonides through the lenses of ibn Sīnā and so attributes to the rabbi the same view.139 In fact, in his Guide for the Perplexed Maimonides gives no indication that he denies that God does have an essence that just is his existence. He speaks freely of God’s essence as regards a being whose existence is not due to any cause – God alone is that being, for his existence, as we have said, is absolute – existence and essence are perfectly identical. . . . We further notice, that the existence, that is the essence, of this Being is not limited to its own existence many existences emanate from it. . . . What, then, can be the result of our efforts, when we try to obtain a knowledge of a Being that is free from substance, that is most simple, whose existence is absolute, and not due to any cause, to whose perfect essence nothing can be superadded . . . In the contemplation of his essence, our comprehension and knowledge prove insufficient. . . .140 What Maimonides was constrained to deny was any plurality at all in God’s essence.141 So he says, “He is a simple essence, without any additional element whatever.”142 Intriguingly, in On Being and Essence Aquinas remains noncommittal on the question of whether God has an essence, passing on to the next point.143 But he agrees, as we have seen, that God transcends the classification of genus and species and that anything falling under genus and species must be composed of essence and existence. He seems willing to accede to the claim that God is esse alone esse tantum. In his Commentary on the Sentences I.2.1.3, the question at issue is not whether God is existence without an essence but whether the diversity of divine attributes is merely conceptual or has a foundation in God himself. Aquinas opts for the view that while the diversity of the divine attributes is merely conceptual, the perfections have nonetheless a foundation in the divine being. Unable to grasp the simple divine being, we form separate and inadequate conceptions of God’s simple perfection. Eleonore Stump muses that one problem with the replacement thesis is that if God is esse alone, then, despite Aquinas’ insistence that we are unable to know the quid est of God because of God’s simplicity, we do know the quid est or essence of God, for we know that God is esse, and we know something about the nature of esse. 144 Stump’s worry seems misconceived. As she herself explains, “quid est” is a technical term of medieval logic having to do with the genus or species of a thing.145 The proof from his effects that God is esse tells us nothing about God’s genus and species146 indeed, he cannot be classified, and so we have no knowledge of his quid est. On the replacement thesis God has no quid est, and so we have no knowledge of his essence, just as Aquinas says. In any case, since on the identity thesis God’s essence is existence, Stump’s same objection applies we would have a good knowledge of God’s essence if it were the same as his existence, which Aquinas denies. The objection thus backfires. In his Summa contra Gentiles Aquinas vacillates between NTDT and OAST as ways of expressing God’s simplicity “His essence or quiddity is not something other than just being. . . . God, therefore, does not have an essence that is not his being. . . . God’s being must, therefore, be his quiddity. . . . God’s essence, therefore, is not something other than his being. . . . God’s being is his essence. . . . His essence is, therefore His being.”147 Given his failure clearly to endorse ibn Sīnā’s view, it seems best to think that Aquinas followed Maimonides in affirming the strict identity of God’s essence and existence. But there are reasons to think that he should have followed ibn Sīnā in affirming that God just is ipsum esse subsistens without an essence. First, God’s being is unrestricted by any essence but is the pure act of being subsisting. Second, essences or natures place a thing in its genus and species, but God cannot be so classified. Third, if God had an essence, then he should be definable, but God cannot be defined. Fourth, if God had an essence, it would be a pure form, but no form is an act of existence. Be that as it may, if God’s essence is literally one and the same thing as his being, we have no idea what that essence is, since the act of being is not conceivable by us. With Aquinas we have reached the highwater mark in the history of the development of the doctrine of divine simplicity. With all the best will in the world, we must admit that the treatments of the doctrine by PostReformation Protestant scholastics are but pale copies of Thomism. Only with the renaissance of Christian philosophy in our day have more sophisticated treatments of divine simplicity come to light. Let us therefore now turn to some evaluation of what we have learned. 5.3 Arguments for Divine Simplicity Let us first consider arguments in support of divine simplicity in the strong sense of DS. Given the want of scriptural support of the doctrine, it is perfect being theology which must bear the weight of justifying DS. Historically, the doctrine has been taken to be an implication of divine perfection and aseity. But today there seems to be a consensus that the traditional arguments offered in defense of this implication are extraordinarily weak or, perhaps, go to justify only a weak understanding of the doctrine akin to DS. Today even the proponents of DS typically assume a defensive posture, arguing that the doctrine has not been shown to be implausible or, at least, incoherent. 5.3.1 Arguments from Divine Perfection Arguments that divine simplicity follows from God’s perfection are remarkably weak. For example, reflecting Greek influence, it was widely assumed that anything simpler is thereby more perfect, so that a being of maximum perfection must be absolutely simple. Little comment is necessary, for the argument is clearly questionbegging without some reason for the assumption that to be simpler is to be better. On the contrary, a being that has a rich variety of superlative properties such as are ascribed to God is clearly greater than one lacking any such properties. Aquinas does argue that a composite being will have parts that are less perfect than the whole, but even conceding the point that, say, omnipotence alone is not as great as God, we have been given no reason to think that the parts of a maximally great being must be as great as the whole. It has traditionally been argued that a perfect being cannot have any passive potentiality but must be fully actual and therefore immutable. This argument is counterintuitive and, as we shall see, has theologically unacceptable implications. In the hands of advocates of divine simplicity, it entails that God lacks, not only any Aristotelian ability to change intrinsically, but, more radically, even the capacity to be different than he is. It is enough for now to observe that a being who has infinite resources of untapped potential is plausibly greater than a being whose power is exhausted by the creation of the finite world. What God has actually created could not possibly represent the full range of his power. The ability to create an indefinite number of different universes is obviously a greatmaking property which must therefore be ascribed to God. That God might change in actualizing some heretofore untapped potentiality in no way threatens his greatness, for change obviously does not entail a change for the worse or the better but may take place on the same level, so to speak. Aquinas claims that if God moves from potentiality to actuality in any respect, then there must be some external cause of that change in God, which is impossible. There is no reason to agree with Aquinas that the cause of the change cannot be God himself, freely choosing to actualize a potentiality. It is futile to object, as Thomas does, that God cannot be a selfcaused being, for that stricture concerns God’s existence he cannot bring himself into being. Only by assuming that God is his existence, which begs the question, can one deny to God the freedom to actualize his own potentialities. Moreover, having potentiality need not entail mutability. An immutable God has the potential to create different worlds. For example, God has the potentiality to have different foreknowledge of future contingents, even if it is impossible that his foreknowledge of the future change. If it is rejoined that God’s potentiality with respect to creating has been fully actualized by what he has done, so that no change is possible, it still remains the case that God is possibly different than he actually is and so must have contingent features to his being. That God would be different in different worlds, say, knowing that different creatures exist, subverts DS but is untroubling, so long as he remains essentially the same. 5.3.2 Arguments from Divine Aseity The claim that divine simplicity follows from God’s aseity is also unjustified. The principal arguments that divine aseity implies God’s simplicity attempt to show that composition is for one reason or another incompatible with divine aseity.148 For example, it has been traditionally said that if God is composed, then God is dissoluble, if not physically then metaphysically, into his constituent parts, so that he could cease to exist. This argument is weak, for it assumes without justification that God is not composed of metaphysically inseparable parts, so that God has the property of indivisibility along with his other perfections.149 A circle, for example, might have a certain circumference, a certain diameter, and a certain area, which, though distinct, are metaphysically inseparable properties. To be at all plausible, the argument must take “composed” to mean something like “assembled” or “constructed” out of parts, which no orthodox believer would affirm of God.150 It has also been argued that if God were composite, then there must exist a cause of the composition of his parts, in contradiction to the doctrine of divine aseity. This argument, too, is weak. If God were assembled out of parts, then plausibly there must be a cause of the conjunction of his parts, but no one imagines such a thing. To be at all plausible, the argument must assume that God’s coeternal parts are more fundamental than God. But there is no reason for such an assumption. God and his parts could be on an ontological par and metaphysically inseparable. Moreover, medievals themselves were familiar with wholes that are explanatorily or metaphysically prior to any parts one cares to specify in them, such as in cases of an object’s potential infinite divisibility. If the whole is metaphysically prior to its parts, then possessing such parts does not clearly require a cause of their conjunction.151 In his Incoherence of the Philosophers alGhazālī 1058–1111 argued this point forcefully against the Islamic philosophers of his day, maintaining that no good arguments had been given to show that God, as the First Principle, could not have an essence comprising a plurality of attributes.152 On the contemporary scene, similar considerations have led to widespread scepticism about the socalled Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts, which states that if a region of space is occupied by a material object, then the material content of any subregion of that space also constitutes a material object.153 This doctrine would imply that the matter comprising my big toe, the right side of my torso, and a strip in between is a material object. Van Inwagen argues persuasively that the doctrine leads to absurd consequences.154 Although his argument is not immediately applicable to God, it calls into question the assumption that arbitrary undetached parts of an object are themselves objects and therefore in need of a cause of their conjunction. For example, since a fundamental particle like an electron is physically simple, even though we can conceptually distinguish its right half from its left half, there is no cause of the conjunction of its right half and its left half. This fact suggests that we may distinguish between conceptual parts, which are minddependent aspects of objects, and ontological parts, which are mindindependent constituents of objects.155 So any two halves of the electron, whether right and left, upper and lower, front and back, are, as the medievals would put it, conceptually distinct with a foundation in reality there is a distinctio rationis cum fundamentum in rei. For the electron really is an extended object in which identifiable subregions are occupied by material contents, but that occupying matter does not constitute in any case a genuine object. The medievals were willing to allow such conceptual distinctions in God, for these were not real not a distinctio realis156 but unfortunately the medievals’ constituent ontologies prevented them from seeing distinctions such as substance and accident, a thing and its nature, essence and existence as merely conceptual rather than real. Ironically, then, although contemporary defenders of divine simplicity insist on assessing the doctrine within the medieval metaphysical framework, it was precisely that framework which occasioned the problems to begin with. Take, for example, the central distinction between essence and existence. What Aristotle took to be a conceptual distinction was transformed by the Arabic philosophers and Aquinas into a metaphysical distinction. It is only on the basis of that real distinction that Thomas’ causal argument for a primal being not so composed that is the cause of the conjunction of essence and existence in any finite being has any bite. Contemporary Thomists recognize and celebrate Thomas’ transformation of Aristotle’s conceptual distinction into the socalled real distinction between essence and existence. But they also recognize that Thomas nowhere tries to justify such a real distinction.157 His arguments from motion, causality, and contingency go at best to establish that finite beings exist contingently and depend for their existence upon a metaphysically necessary being. But that requires neither that finite beings are metaphysically composed of essence and existence nor that a metaphysically necessary being is the pure act of existence subsisting. Indeed, as we shall see, that inference leads to an unintelligible conclusion. In short, one might affirm that God possesses parts but not fundamental parts, and so no cause of their conjunction is required. It has also been argued, for example, by Anselm, that anything composed of parts is dependent upon its parts for its existence, which is incompatible with divine aseity “everything composite needs for its existence the parts of which it is composed and what it is it owes to its parts. For through them it is whatever it is whereas what they are they are not through it and so it is not at all supreme.”158 In a careful analysis of Anselm’s argument, Thomas Morris points out the central failing of Anselm’s reasoning. While it is true that A. If God’s attributes did not exist, God would not exist, it is also true that B. If God did not exist, God’s attributes would not exist. This sort of counterfactual dependence is of no ontological significance. Morris observes, “All that we have seen is apparently that between God and any metaphysically distinct property exemplified by him, a mutual logical dependency will exist, which consists in nothing more than the mutuality of the necessity of the relata on each side of the relation.”159 Anselm’s concern about divine dependence was thus quite misplaced. Morris goes on to argue that ontologically, any dependence relation is asymmetrical God’s attributes depend on God. He says, “If there is any substantive sense in which God depends on his properties, it will also be true that his properties depend, and depend in a deeper ontological sense, on him. Thus God will never be on the receiving end only, so to speak, of an ontological dependence relation.”160 Morris and Christopher Menzel’s attempt to defend God’s creating his own nature by appealing to a similar distinction between logical and ontological dependence got them into bootstrapping difficulties.161 But here no such creative account is contemplated. The point rather is that God is not composed of more fundamental parts. If God is composed of parts, God as a whole is ontologically prior to his parts. So traditional attempts to show that divine aseity implies divine simplicity are pretty unimpressive. The fact of the matter is that one can offer, as we have, a robust defense of divine aseity without implying theses like NTDT and OAST and thus embracing a strong doctrine of divine simplicity. As I have repeatedly intimated, we may refuse constituent ontologies such as were assumed by the traditional proponents of divine simplicity as part of their metaphysical framework. Peter van Inwagen has sharply challenged such constituent ontologies, denying that concrete particulars possesses any ontological structure.162 The reason for van Inwagen’s skepticism is that he cannot make sense of constituent ontologies. “I do not understand the words and phrases that are the typical items of the core vocabulary of any given constituent ontology. ‘Immanent universal’, ‘trope’, ‘exist wholly in’, ‘wholly present wherever it is instantiated,’ ‘constituent of’ said of a universal and a particular in that order these are all mysteries to me.”163 He therefore denies that properties are ontological constituents of things. He says, “abstract objects. . . can in no possible sense of the word be constituents of concrete objects. Thus, the Favored Ontology agrees with ‘austere nominalism’ on one important point concrete objects have no ‘ontological structure.’”164 Van Inwagen confesses that “I’d really like to be an austere nominalist,” but he finds himself reluctantly committed to the reality of properties by ineliminable quantification over abstract objects in our discourse.165 In other words, van Inwagen accepts a Quinean criterion of ontological commitment, such as we have seen good reason to challenge, that obliges him to accept Platonism in spite of himself.166 Not that such abstracta are doing any metaphysical work for van Inwagen rather properties, numbers, and the rest of the Platonic horde serve merely as the referents of certain reifying expressions like “the number 7” or “the property of wisdom.”167 Now we have already seen that a biblically adequate doctrine of divine aseity must reject such a Platonistic relational ontology, according to which God’s properties are uncreated abstract objects. Moreover, there is a powerful philosophicotheological argument against the existence of uncreated, Platonic properties.168 Consider the cluster of divine attributes which go to make up God’s nature. Call that nature deity. On Platonism deity is an abstract object existing independently of God to which God stands in the relation of exemplification or instantiation. Moreover, it is in virtue of standing in relation to this object that God is divine. He is God because he exemplifies deity. Thus, on Platonism God does not really exist a se at all. For God depends upon this abstract object for his existence. Platonism does not simply postulate some object existing independently of God – a serious enough compromise of God’s sole ultimacy – but makes God dependent upon this object, thus denying divine aseity. The implication “So deitythe Platonic realm, not God, is the ultimate reality.”169 Worse, if possible since aseity, like omnipotence, is one of the essential attributes of God included in deity, it turns out that God does not exemplify deity after all. Since aseity is essential to deity and God, on Platonism, does not exist a se, it turns out that God does not exist. On Platonism there may be a demiurge, such as is featured in Plato’s Timaeus, but the God of orthodox theism does not exist. Theism is thus undone by Platonism. Therefore, patristic and medieval thinkers were fully justified in their rejection of Platonism and a relational ontology.170 Too many proponents of divine simplicity therefore conclude that we must by default embrace a constituent ontology, just as the medievals did.171 This inference is a non sequitur based on the assumption that these two alternatives are jointly exhaustive. But they are not. As we have argued, we may reject both in favor of an antirealist alternative, according to which property talk is a useful and perhaps indispensable façon de parler, meaningful within a certain linguistic framework but without ontological commitment.172 We makebelieve that there are such things as properties in talking, for example, about God’s perfections Such antirealism about properties needs to be sharply distinguished from certain forms of theological nominalism. Nominalists are often said to have posited a mere distinctio rationis between God’s attributes, implying, in effect, that predications concerning God’s attributes are devoid of factual content and in that sense meaningless.173 By contrast, the antirealist allows a distinctio rationis cum fundamentum in rei with respect to the properties ascribed to any thing. Just as a dog which reflects a certain portion of the light spectrum can be truly said to have the property of being brown or an elephant which can reach the leaves up in the tree to have the property of being big, so God, who never began to exist and will never cease to exist, can be truly said to have the property of being eternal, or who sent his Son into the world for the sake of undeserving sinners, can be truly said to have the property of being loving. The antirealist’s point is that, absent a neoQuinean criterion of ontological commitment, such true predications are not ontologically committing to properties for him who asserts them.174 Thus, on an antirealist perspective on properties, God is, indeed, not composed of metaphysical parts and is in that sense simple, but then so is everything else, even things that do have physical parts.17 So against the theological nominalist we may truly assert that God is essentially selfexistent, eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, morally perfect, and so on with respect to all the rest of the perfections ascribed to God in perfect being theology but without being ontologically committed to an object like God’s essence that is an ontological constituent of God. Nether are we committed by such true predications to objects like aseity, eternity, omniscience, and so on, as parts of God. The antirealist may thus endorse DS without endorsing OAST and thus DS. An antirealist perspective on properties connects nicely with contemporary appeals to socalled truthmaker theory in defense of divine simplicity. Briefly by way of background,176 during the realist revival in the early years of the twentieth century various philosophers turned their attention to the question of the ontology of truth. Logical Atomists such as Russell and Wittgenstein thought that in addition to truthbearers, whether these be sentences, thoughts, propositions, or what have you, there must also be entities in virtue of which such sentences andor propositions are true. Various labels were given to these entities, such as “facts” or “states of affairs.” Among contemporary philosophers they have come to be known as “truthmakers.” A truthmaker is typically defined as that in virtue of which a sentence andor a proposition is true. According to Peter Simons, “Truthmaker theory accepts the role of something which makes a proposition true, that is, whose existence suffices for the proposition to be true. But it does not automatically pronounce on the ontological category of the truthmaker.”177 “Indeed,” he insists, “anything whatever is a truthmaker.”178 But historically the orthodox view has identified truthmakers with such abstract realities as facts or states of affairs – more often than not, the fact stated as a sentence’s truth condition, as disclosed by the disquotation principle. For the relation of a truthmaker to the relevant truthbearer is normally taken to be one of entailment. Thus, an entity a makes a proposition p true if and only if that a exists entails that p. 179 So, for example, what makes the statement “Al Plantinga is an avid rockclimber” true is the fact that Al Plantinga is an avid rockclimber or the state of affairs of Al Plantinga’s being an avid rockclimber. In defending divine simplicity, Michael Bergmann and Jeffrey Brower want to make God himself, not some fact or state of affairs, the truthmaker for all true, intrinsic predications about God.180 So in order to have a unified account of predication, they propose an account, not in terms of the ascription of exemplifiables however these are construed, but in terms of truthmakers which are concrete particulars.181 If we want to have objects without propositional content as our truthmakers, then we should substitute broadly logical necessitation for the entailment relation holding between truthbearers and their truthmakers. So Brower speaks of the relationship between a particular truthmaker and the predication it makes true in terms of broadly logical necessitation rather than entailment If an entity e is a truthmaker for a predication p, then e is necessarily or essentially such that p. 182 Now in the case of any contingent predication, its truthmaker cannot be the object denoted by the subject term of the predication, since that object does not necessitate the truth of the predication. For example, Plantinga himself cannot be the truthmaker of the statement “Al Plantinga is an avid rockclimber,” since Plantinga could exist without being a rockclimber. In the case of God, however, since simplicity theorists deny any distinction between God and his essence, all God’s properties are essential and so every true intrinsic predication about God is necessitated by God himself. Indeed, given his necessary existence, such predications are necessarily true. God can thus be the truthmaker of all true intrinsic predications about him, since God is necessarily such that these predications are true. In the case of creatures, predications will often be contingent, and so we must appeal to something like property instances or tropes, such as the particular redness we see in some object, in order to supply a concrete truthmaker of contingent predications, thereby implying a constituent ontology.183 But in God’s case such a constituent ontology is dispensable. Construing God to be the truthmaker for intrinsic predications about him does not entail that God does not have properties as constituent parts, but neither does it “require that God has any properties at all in the ontologically loaded sense of exemplifiables.”184 Thus if we adopt an antirealist view of properties, as advocated here, the advocate of divine simplicity may adopt truthmaker theory to explain why intrinsic predications about God are true without positing properties as divine constituents. Taking God to be the truthmaker of all true intrinsic predications about him does not entail divine simplicity. Truthmaker theory would permit a God who is composed, so long as God had no contingent properties or parts.185 To deny that God, though having distinct essential properties as constituents, could be the truthmaker for all intrinsic predications about him would seem to require one to say both that i a true predication has at most one truthmaker and that ii God himself is somehow preempted by his constituent properties from being a truthmaker. But i is inconsistent with the characterization of the functional role of truthmakers, which is simply to necessitate the truth of predications186 and ii is a stipulation thatis either ad hoc or takes God’s proper parts to be more fundamental than himself. The doctrine of divine simplicity thus requires much more than God’s being a truthmaker of all true intrinsic predications about him rather a denial of a constituent ontology for God is also required.187 The antirealist about properties rejects the claim that God has any properties in the ontologically loaded sense of exemplifiables, despite our ability to conceptually distinguish his various perfections, and so has the option of availing himself of truthmaker theory in order to explain why intrinsic predications about God are true. The sticking point will come with whether there are contingent true intrinsic predications about God. Truthmaker theory cannot account for such predications’ truth and so must deny that they are true, lest metaphysical constituents be admitted into God. This fact will doubtless diminish many antirealists’ enthusiasm for truthmaker theory. The traditional arguments from divine aseity and perfection to some version of DS therefore fail to persuade. In line with the modest DS we may agree that God does not have any proper parts, taking an antirealist view of properties, even though we can make conceptual distinctions with respect to God. Given that DS is incompatible with scriptural teaching, we already have sufficient reason, even apart from objections to the doctrine’s plausibility and coherence, for rejecting the doctrine of DS. 5.4 Objections to DS We come at length to a consideration of objections to a strong doctrine of divine simplicity, which constitute, in truth, the epicenter of the contemporary debate. It is generally agreed that a strong doctrine of divine simplicity finds no support in Scripture and that the arguments of perfect being theology offered in its support are not cogent. The adherents of the doctrine therefore tend to argue at most that the doctrine has not been shown to be implausible or, at least, incoherent. It is fair to say, I think, that the defenders of DS, in dealing with the many objections to the doctrine’s coherence or plausibility, find themselves back on their heels in the contemporary debate. One after another, ingenious responses to defeaters have been offered by the doctrine’s defenders, only in turn to be themselves defeated.188 Increasingly implausible and even desperate responses seem to be required to save the most recent defenses from defeat. Some defenders of the doctrine are finally driven to appeal to mystery in the face of seemingly unanswerable objections, while others capitulate by watering down the doctrine to a more acceptable articulation.189 5.4.1 Essence and Existence The centerpiece of Aquinas’ doctrine of divine simplicity is the thesis that God’s essence is his existence, or that God is the act of being subsisting.190 We have seen that it is ambiguous whether we should take this claim as an identity thesis or as a replacement thesis. Per OAST God and his existence are one and the same thing but are God and his essence one and the same thing or are they, more accurately, not two different things, since God’s pure act of being is not restricted by any essence to this or that sort of being The advantage of the replacement view, as ibn Sīnā saw, is that it makes intelligible why God transcends the distinction between genus and species. If entities A and B are identical to some third thing C, then C must have all the properties possessed by A and all the properties possessed by B. So if God’s being does not replace his essence but is identical to it, then God’s act of being must fall under genus and species like every essence.191 Unfortunately, if we say with ibn Sīnā that God has no essence, then we are bereft of any knowledge of God’s nature, since God has no On the other hand, if we say with Maimonides that God does have an essence and that it is identical to his existence, the result is the same, since we can have no conception of the pure act of being. The way we grasp the nature of a thing is by conceiving its genus and species, which God, as a simple being, transcends. Since God’s essence is the inconceivable act of being, we can have no knowledge of God’s essence. This consequence cannot be ameliorated by saying with the Cappadocians that in addition to his nature, God possesses many essential properties which we can know, for so to say is to sacrifice divine simplicity. We saw that in his Commentary on the Sentences I.2.1.3, Aquinas distinguishes two opinions concerning whether there is a diversity of attributes in God. Some, like ibn Sīnā and Maimonides, say that “things which are attributed to God are verified of him in two ways either by way of negation or by way of causality.” Aquinas objects that the way of negation and the way of causality leave us with no basis for predications of various perfections to God And according to this opinion it follows that all of the names which are said of God and creatures, are said equivocally, and that there is no likeness of the creature to the Creator from the fact that the creature is good or wise or something similar and this is the express opinion of Rabbi Moses. According to this, what is conceived regarding the names of the attributes is not referred to God so that it is a likeness of something that is in him. Hence it follows that the notions of these names are not in God, as if having a proximate foundation in him, but rather a remote one as we say of the relations which are said of God from time, for these relations are not found in God secundum rem, but rather follow upon the mode of understanding, as was said of intentions. And thus, according to this opinion, the notions of these attributes are only in the intellect, and not in the thing that is God and the intellect discovers them from the consideration of creatures either by negation or by causality, as was said.192 This opinion thus evacuates our theological predications of significance. On the other hand, he continues, “others, like Dionysius and Anselm, say that in God there exists in a preeminent way whatever perfection there is in creatures.” “According to this opinion, therefore, the conceptions that our intellect conceives from the names of the attributes are true likenesses of the thing that God is, even though they are deficient and not full, as are the other things that are like God. Hence, these notions are not only in the intellect, because they have their proximate foundation in the reality that is God.” The question is whether this second opinion is any more successful in warding off the agnosticism that Aquinas fears. We saw that Maimonides does not, in fact, deny that God has an essence but holds that God’s essence just is existence pure and simple and that the divine essence is therefore beyond human description, except through negation or causality, neither of which positively characterizes the divine essence. Since Aquinas’ conception of God is the same, how can he avoid Maimonidean agnosticism R. C. Taylor says of Aquinas’ rejection of Maimonides’ skepticism “Aquinas’ point. . . is that if essence can in no way be attributed to God insofar as he is only being or subsisting being, then, properly speaking attributions through causality cannot pertain to Divine Essence at all.”193 He quotes with approval Kenneth Seeskind’s conclusion “If God bears no likeness to the created order, and if terms like wise, powerful, or lives are completely ambiguous when applied to God and us, the conception of divinity we are left with is too thin for the average worshipper to appreciate. . . . In the end, you are left with a God whose essence is unknowable and indescribable. Of what possible value is such a conception either to philosophy or religion”194 Notice that this conclusion is said to attend the view that God does have an essence, an essence which as pure being subsisting is unknowable and indescribable. Thus, whether we think that God is being itself subsisting without an essence or that his essence is being itself subsisting, we do not know what God is. Thomists have been forthright about this consequence of Thomas’ doctrine. For example, Etienne Gilson writes As Thomas Aquinas understands him, God is the being whose whole nature it is to be. . . an existential act. . . . To say that God ‘is this’ or that he ‘is that’, would be to restrict his being to the essences of what ‘this’ and ‘that’ are. God ‘is’ absolutely. . . . God is the being of which it can be said that, what in other beings is their essence, is in it what we call ‘to be’. . . . Since, in God, there is no something to which existence could be attributed, his own esse is precisely that which God is. To us, such a being is strictly beyond all possible representation. We can establish that God is, we cannot know what he is because, in him, there is no what and since our whole experience is about things that have existence, we cannot figure out what it is to be a being who is only essence is ‘to be’. . . . God is the pure act of existing, that is, not some essence or other, such as the One, or the Good, or Thought, to which might be attributed existence in addition. . . but Existing itself ipsum esse in itself and without any addition whatever, since all that could be added to it would limit it in determining it.195 Thomas’ doctrine thus leads to a profound agnosticism about God, a conclusion which is, in the words of Eleonore Stump, “religiously pernicious.”196 Moreover, the claim that God is ipsum esse subsistens is not only theologically objectionable but philosophically unintelligible.197 It seems to involve a clear category mistake things exist, but it is unintelligible to say that existing or to be exists. When we say that “ exists,” the blank is filled by some nominal expression, such as “God,” but it makes no sense to assert that exists exists or subsists.198 “Insofar as the doctrine of divine simplicity involves category mistakes,” William Hasker rightly remarks, “its assertions are either necessarily false or, perhaps better, simply unintelligible.”199 Of course, it is possible that the propositions that the formulas in question are intended to express can be expressed in some other way that does not involve a confusion of categories. “If so, however, it is incumbent on the proponents of the doctrine to produce a clear and intelligible statement of what those formulas intend in the process, no doubt, admitting that the formulas themselves, if taken at face value, do not and cannot express truths.”200 Stump feels keenly this particular threat to the coherence of Thomas’s doctrine. She observes that in Aquinas’ commentary on Boethius’ De hebdomadibus, as well as in On Being and Essence, where he references Boethius’ work,201 Thomas carefully distinguishes between esse and id quod est that which is.202 The latter is an individual thing itself. Aquinas calls attention to the fact that id quod est is something concrete and particular, whereas esse is neither. Moreover, Aquinas explains that insofar as being is predicated without a qualifying predicate it is maladroit to affirm that esse itself exists “‘to be’ itself is not signified as the subject of ‘being,’ just as ‘to run’ is not signified as the subject of ‘running.’ Hence, just as we cannot say ‘to run itself runs,’ so we cannot say ‘to be itself is’ rather, ‘thatwhichis’ id quod est is signified as the subject of ‘being,’ just as ‘that which runs’ is signified as the subject of ‘running’.”203 Stump notes that Aquinas, having worked so hard to distinguish between esse and id quod est, then goes on immediately to say something that is on the face of it quite surprising “In simple things esse itself and id quod est must be really one and the same.”204 Similarly, in his Summa contra gentiles he states, “In a simple being, being and that which is are the same. For, if one is not the nature to be known. other, the simplicity is then removed.”205 Since Aquinas holds that God’s esse is identical to God as id quod est, it follows that “to be” is after all in some sense the subject of “being.” The challenge is to find a sense in which it can be coherently claimed that esse itself is. All this might suggest that God is not an individual thing or being but just the pure act of being. But Stump worries that only an id quod est can exercise any causal efficacy or enter into any causal relations, so that if God is esse alone it seems that many of the standard divine attributes accepted by Aquinas could not be applied to God. Worse, on this view it cannot be coherently affirmed that God exists, since only an id quod est can be affirmed to exist. Thus, on this view Aquinas appears “caught in large, obvious selfcontradictions.”206 But how can esse and id quod est be identical in God, given their incompatibilities How can esse be a subsisting thing Stump appeals what she calls “quantum metaphysics,” on the analogy of quantum physics, in order to save the doctrine of simplicity from its apparent contradictions. She explains, What kind of thing is it which has to be understood both as a wave and as a particle We do not know. That is, we do not know the quid est of light. . . . quantum physics, which is our best attempt at understanding the kind of thing light is, requires alternately attributing to light incompatible characteristics. Analogously, we can ask What kind of thing is it which can be both esse and id quod est We do not know. The idea of simplicity is that at the ultimate metaphysical foundation of reality is something that has to be understood as esse – but also as id quod est. We do not know what kind of thing this is either.207 Unfortunately, quantum physics is too often used as a sort of black box to justify belief in incoherencies. Hasker is blunt in replying to Stump’s gambit “It seems, then, that we do not, strictly speaking, have here a coherent view of God’s nature that is being proffered for our acceptance. What we have, rather, is a set of mutually incompatible propositions, each of which has something to be said in its favor, but at least one of which must be false.”208 This is actually too generous. For quantum physics is crucially disanalogous to divine simplicity in at least two respects. First, quantum physics does not assert that light, for example, is both a wave and a particle. Rather, as Stump notes, wavelike behavior or particlelike behavior is observed in measurement situations alternately, not simultaneously. Wavelike or particlelike behavior is consistently displayed under different measurement situations, so that quantum mechanics is contradictionfree, unlike the claim that God is ipsum esse subsistens. Second, and more importantly, we have overwhelming empirical support for the equations of quantum mechanics, whereas the arguments in support of divine simplicity fail to justify a doctrine so strong as that God is being itself subsisting. We therefore have no ground for thinking that the doctrine, despite appearances, really is coherent. Some defenders of divine simplicity seek to take refuge in the analogy of being “existence” is predicated of God and creatures analogically, so we should not expect to grasp conceptually what it is for God to be the pure act of existence.209 But such a recourse is as futile as it is unjustified. Existence does not plausibly come in degrees but is, like pregnancy, eitheror.210 As we saw, when Anselm spoke of God as more real than creatures, what he had reference to was not degrees of being, but the difference between contingent being and necessary being or beings that exist ab alio rather than a se or beings that are transitory rather than eternal. Differences in mode or duration are not differences in the degree of existence something has. Thus, there is no good reason to think that “existence” is predicated nonunivocally of God and creatures. In any case, such a recourse is futile, since, as Scotus saw, without some univocal core meaning to existence predicates concerning God and creatures, such as “opposed to nothingness,” our predications of existence to God become equivocal and therefore meaningless. But if there is such a univocal core, then we may predicate existence of God and creatures in just that sense. Peter van Inwagen is wellknown for claiming not to understand the views of his interlocutors, which he sometimes therefore regards as “meaningless.”211 This epithet is not meant to be condescending or insulting. Rather van Inwagen emphasizes that in doing metaphysics we are straining at the very limits of our understanding and that it is therefore easy for metaphysicians, including himself, to make assertions that, despite appearances, are in fact meaningless. The claim that God’s essence is existence or that God is the pure act of being subsisting is, I think, a prime example. Many Thomists freely deploy the jargon of school metaphysics, but often, I fear, without meaning. For example, Duby assures us that once we recognize that God transcends the field of common reality and embrace the analogical tenor of theological language, then the claim of the identity of God and his existence appears, not as a nonsensical claim, but as a radical but still analogical and intelligible reorientation of the concept of existence in service to theological description. Here God does not conform to the dynamics of creaturely esse rather, the concept of esse bends to the aseity and abundance of God and this then effects a chastening of esse it has no ultimacy or autonomy but is, in its absolute primordiality, the abundant triune God himself, who allows creatures finitely to participate in esse Acts 17.24–25.”212 This looks to me like flowery nonsense.213 Other Thomists more candidly admit that we have no idea of what it means to say that God is the act of being subsisting. 5.4.2 God and His Properties The contemporary debate over divine simplicity has since 1980 swirled round the question of the relation between God and his properties. In that year Alvin Plantinga in his influential lecture “Does God Have a Nature” charged that the traditional doctrine of divine simplicity, in stating that God is his wisdom, power, goodness, and so on, implied the identity of God and a property, which is metaphysically impossible.214 Some sought to dismiss Plantinga’s challenge by pointing out that for Plantinga properties are abstract objects, whereas for the medieval proponents of divine simplicity, they are not.215 Such an easy refutation is misconceived, however. In the first place, the response at best seeks to show that within the medieval metaphysical framework, properties are not abstract objects, but it does nothing to show that the medievals were correct in that belief. If properties really are abstract objects, then it does not matter what the medievals thought they got it wrong. Mere coherence within a given metaphysical framework is insufficient for the plausibility of the doctrine the defenders of divine simplicity need to give a defense of the plausibility of that framework. Second, and more importantly, Plantinga’s objection did not rest crucially upon his assumption that properties are abstract objects. Plantinga himself soon came to embrace the view that properties are not abstract objects but thoughts in God’s mind, yet his objection that God could not be a property still remains God is no more a thought in his own mind than he is an abstract object. Virtually any credible theory of properties will face the objection that God cannot be identical to a property, since properties have properties that God does not share. Bergmann and Brower believe that what raises trouble for simplicity theorists is not just Platonism, but any theory that takes for granted the following thesis about predication P. The truth of all true predications of the form “a is F” is to be explained in terms of a subject and an exemplifiable.217 Now the doctrine of divine simplicity requires that if an intrinsic predication of the form “God is F” is true, then God is identical with his Fness. So given P, God is identical to an exemplifiable. This leads to incoherence, as Brower explains, On the standard contemporary interpretation, the doctrine of divine simplicity requires that God is identical with each of his intrinsic properties. . . . The problem with this standard interpretation, however, is that it appears to lead directly to incoherence. If God is identical with each of his properties, then God must himself be a property. But that seems absurd. . . . For properties are, by their very nature, exemplifiable – that is, things that can be possessed, instantiated, or had. But no person could be a thing of that sort. Indeed, insofar as divine simplicity requires God to be a property, it appears to be not merely absurd, but guilty of a category mistake – that of placing a nonexemplifiable thing namely, God into the category of exemplifiables namely, properties.218 It makes no difference if one conceives of properties, not as abstract universals, but as immanent, concrete universals “The claim that God is a concrete universal seems just as problematic as the claim that he is an abstract universal. For by their very nature, universals are multiply exemplifiable entities. . . and concrete universals are typically regarded as constituents of the concrete particulars that possess them. Thus, interpreting simplicity in terms of concrete universals would have the consequence that God is both multiply exemplifiable and capable of serving as a constituent of other concrete particulars.”219 Therefore, defenders of divine simplicity must either offer and defend a theory of properties according to which properties are not exemplifiables or else identify some other category of nonexemplifiable things to replace properties. Defenders of divine simplicity have struggled vainly to articulate some credible theory of properties according to which not all properties are exemplifiables, such that God can be identified with a property.220 The problem is that the capacity for being exemplified is generally taken to be constitutive of, and hence inseparable from, the concept of a property. Brower points out that “This conception of properties is precisely the one lying behind the traditional view that properties are entities categorially distinct from substances. According to the traditional view, both properties and substances may be the subject of further properties, and hence can both be said to exemplify other things. But only substances are such that they cannot be exemplified by anything else.”221 So “the fundamental difficulty for any version of the property interpretation” may be succinctly stated as follows222 1. God is a substance. 2. No substance can be a property i.e., an exemplifiable. 3. Therefore, God cannot be identical with a property no matter how entities of this type are conceived. Brower opines that “the general failure of contemporary defenses of divine simplicity” is due to its defenders’ extreme reluctance to abandon the standard contemporary interpretation of divine simplicity in terms ofproperties in favor of an interpretation based on an account of predication and abstract reference in terms of something other than properties.223 Brower flatly concludes, “the claim that God is identical with a property really is absurd, and hence any interpretation of simplicity that requires its truth must be rejected as incoherent,” a claim that he says he has defended elsewhere.224 Consulting the referenced article, we find that Brower did not, in fact, argue that the proffered interpretations are incoherent, but that they, lacking independent motivation, are “not only extreme, but also extremely ad hoc.”225 This criticism underlines what I said before, that the bare coherence of DS within some metaphysical framework is insufficient to justify the systematic theologian’s thinking the doctrine to be acceptable, especially if the metaphysical account is outré. It might be said that the coherence of the doctrine within an implausible metaphysical framework suffices, not for the truth of the doctrine but at least for its possibility but as Brower observes, “any account of simplicity that could render the doctrine coherent without giving up the traditional conception of properties would be preferable.”226 So consider interpretations of divine simplicity that take abstract singular terms to refer to something other than properties. Again, the floundering for a tenable solution continues.227 We have already encountered the most recent entrant to the lists truthmaker theory combined with a constituent ontology according to which God has no proper constituents. Because truthmaker theory does not specify the ontological category to which truthmakers belong, Brower maintains that one may give up the futile quest for a single kind of entity to serve as the explanation for the truth of true predications. Instead, one may allow both substances and properties to serve as truthmakers, as each case of predication merits. Like Socrates, God himself may serve as the truthmaker for essential, intrinsic predications about him, but unlike Socrates God has no contingent, intrinsic properties and so may serve as the truthmaker for all true intrinsic predications about him. By contrast, in Socrates’ case, we have to allow his properties to serve as truthmakers for contingent, intrinsic predications about him. Truthmaker theory does not require that God be simple but that he have no contingent properties. Assuming that God has no proper constituents, God is both simple and the truthmaker of all true, intrinsic predications about him. Now Brower and Bergmann are offering an account, not just of predication, but of abstract reference. Their truthmaker account says nothing about the referents of abstract singular terms other than that such referents exist TA If an intrinsic predication of the form “a is F” is true, then a’s Fness exists, where this entity is to be understood as the truthmaker for “a is F.” TA is meant to articulate a perfectly general theory of abstract singular terms if “a is F” is true, then a’s Fness exists. Brower claims that TA is “a theory of predication and abstract reference that permits the referents of abstract expressions of the form ‘a’s Fness’ to refer to entities belonging to the category of substance namely, God himself. . . . the referents of such expressions can, at least in principle, be identified not only with concrete particulars in the case of God, but also with properties in the case of creatures.”228 But TA says nothing to legitimate taking the referents of abstract singular terms like “a’s Fness” to be substances rather than properties it is simply ambiguous or incomplete in this respect. Singular terms like “a’s Fness” are naturally taken to refer to a property. For example, since “Socrates is human” is true, TA requires that Socrates’ humanity exists. But Socrates’ humanity, like Socrates’ rationality or Socrates’ whiteness, surely is a property, not Socrates himself. Similarly, since it is true that “God is wise and powerful,” God’s wisdom and God’s power exist. Even if we agree that there is nothing “obviously absurd about saying that God is himself the truthmaker for each of the true intrinsic predications that can be made about him,”229 nevertheless it seems bizarre, if not absurd, to say that abstract singular terms like “God’s power” or “God’s wisdom” have as their referents not properties of God but God himself. If we say that “God’s wisdom is manifest in the marvelous intricacies of nature” or “God displayed his mighty power in raising Jesus from the dead” the abstract singular terms “God’s wisdom” or “God’s mighty power” most plausibly have as their referents not God himself but one of God’s properties. In identifying the referents of such singular terms as “God’s faithfulness, “God’s righteousness,” “God’s wrath,” and so on with God rather than properties of God, Brower seems to be guilty of a category mistake. The foregoing suggests that we are better advised to adopt a neutralist, deflationary account of reference, such I have articulated and defended,230 so that we are not committed ontologically to properties by means of our abstract singular terms. Then we can maintain with equanimity that abstract singular terms often do refer to God’s properties as well as creatures’ properties without being ontologically committed to properties as metaphysical constituents of God. Such a position seems obligatory in any case, since TA, interpreted in a metaphysically heavyweight sense, is outrageously inflationary ontologically. It constitutes not merely an extravagant metaontological criterion of ontological commitment but a criterion of existence itself. TA requires that if it is true that “The weather in Atlanta will be fine today,” then the fineness of the weather in Atlanta exists and is a constituent of the weather in Atlanta, which therefore must also exist If it is true that “Brady’s winning drive was spectacular,” then the spectacularness of Brady’s winning drive exists and is a constituent of his winning drive, itself a socially constructed object. If it is true that “My grandfather is dead,” then not only does my grandfather’s deadness exist, but so does he. Examples of this sort could be multiplied indefinitely. Moreover, if we do allow properties to be the heavyweight referents of our abstract singular terms, then in many cases they cannot exist as concrete constituents of things but must be abstract objects – which, once again, subverts divine aseity. So we have every reason to take TA, not in a metaphysically heavyweight sense, but in a metaphysically lightweight sense which is not ontologically committing. Brower takes cognizance of this concern, writing, “On my interpretation . . . truthmakers are required not only to explain the truth of true predications of the form ‘a is F’, but also to serve as the referents for their abstract counterparts – that is, expressions of the form ‘a’s Fness’. This might seem problematic. For it is natural to assume that such abstract expressions can only refer to properties.”231 In response, Brower replies, “there is nothing to prevent us from rejecting this assumption, despite its naturalness, and simply stipulating, as my interpretation does, that expressions of the form ‘a’s Fness’ are technical terms whose referents are the truthmakers for the corresponding predications.”232 But the problem does not concern stipulating that the referents of such singular terms are truthmakers but that they are substances. We are not free to stipulate a category mistake. In view of its ontologically inflationary consequences, moreover, we have every reason to reject a metaphysically heavyweight reading of TA, in which case there is no reason to make such an unnatural stipulation. But if we reject Bergmann and Brower’s account of abstract reference, then we shall have little incentive to affirm truthmaker theory as an account of predication, unless we treat it, too, as an exercise in makebelieve. Divine simplicity will not require it, for the antirealist about properties will agree that God’s wisdom and power, for example, are not two different things NTDT because they are not things at all and therefore not constituents of God. What he will not agree with is the simplicity theorist’s claim that God’s wisdom and power are one and the same thing OAST. Moreover, it is questionable whether truthmaker theory really saves the day for the proponent of DS. For according to that doctrine God is simply the act of being subsisting. It is not restricted by any essence, nor does God have any properties at all. So how can such a pure, featureless subsistent suffice to make true such predications as “God is powerful” or “God is loving” Recall that for the antirealist God is powerful, loving, holy, eternal, omnipresent, and so on, in a univocal sense. We can conceptually abstract some of these aspects of God and reflect on them alone, just as by abstraction we can focus on a dog’s brownness or fierceness or size alone, without thinking that it has these features as metaphysical parts. That the dog really is brown is evident from the way it blends in with the dry brush, and that it is fierce by the bites it has inflicted on innocent victims, and that it is small by the little bed it sleeps in. As the medievals put it, there is a disinctio rationis cum fundamentum in re among its properties. But if God just is the pure act of being subsisting then the fundamentum in re for God’s properties has been lost. No foundation seems to exist for true, univocal, diverse predications about God.233 Aquinas could not bring himself to accept, with Maimonides, that God has no positive perfections and so affirmed, as we have seen, that all creaturely perfections are somehow to be found in God. But this affirmation seems to be incoherent doublespeak borne out of a commendable sensibility to biblical teaching that made him recoil from the apparent implications of the doctrine that God is the act of being itself subsisting. 5.4.3 Modal Collapse Certainly one of the most serious objections to DS is the objection that the doctrine leads to modal collapse, so that, absurdly, the actual world is the only possible world there is. For if God has no potentiality, if everything about him is essential to him, then he is intrinsically the same in every possible world. For were he in any way different in another possible world, he would have the potential to be as he is in the actual world, so that God is not pure actuality. He can therefore have no contingent knowledge or action, but necessarily knows and acts as he does. But in that case all modal distinctions collapse and everything becomes necessary. Since “God knows that p” or “God wills that p” is logically equivalent to “p is true,” the necessity of the former entails the necessity of the latter. Thus, divine simplicity leads to an extreme fatalism, according to which everything that happens does so with logical necessity.234 Not only is such a denial of modal distinctions philosophically untenable, but, as R. T. Mullins points out, modal collapse is “odious to Christian theology” as well.235 For it denies God’s sovereignty over creation and his freedom to exist without creation, and by eradicating creaturely freedom, it has disastrous consequences for Christian dogmatics with respect to the problem of evil, grace, God’s goodness, and so forth. “It is at this point that we can see that divine simplicity is a cruel mistress who has no tolerance for contingency and freedom.”236 It might be said that Aquinas could escape modal collapse by his doctrine that God stands in no real relations to creatures. As a simple being, God transcends all the Aristotelian distinctions among substance and accidents, and since relations are one type of accident, God has no relational properties and stands in no real relations to things outside himself. Rather relations between God and other things inhere solely in the other things. Creatures stand in real relations to God, but the situation is not symmetrical God’s relations to creatures are just in our minds secundem rationis, not in reality. Thus God is perfectly similar in all logically possible worlds which we can imagine, but in some worlds either different creatures stand in relation to God or no creatures at all exist and are related to God. Thus the same simple cognitive state counts as knowledge of one conjunction of propositions in one world and another conjunction of propositions in another world. Similarly, the same act of power which just is the divine being has in one world effects really related to it in the form of creatures and in another world no such effects. But Thomas’s doctrine only serves to make divine simplicity more incredible.237 For it is incomprehensible how the same cognitive state can be knowledge that “I exist alone” in one world and that “I have created myriads of creatures” in another. It is equally unintelligible why a universe of creatures should exist in some worlds and not others if God’s act of power is the same across worlds. The reason cannot be found in God, since he is absolutely the same. Neither can the reason be found in creatures themselves, for the reason must be explanatorily prior to creatures. Thus, to contend that God stands in no real relations to things is to make the existence or nonexistence of creatures in various possible worlds independent of God and utterly mysterious.238 On the contemporary scene, in an effort to save divine simplicity from implying modal collapse, defenders of divine simplicity have similarly adverted to what has been called an extrinsic or externalist model of divine knowledge and volition, according to which God’s contingent knowledge and will may vary across worlds without involving any intrinsic variation in God.239 Predications about God’s knowing or willing creatures are said not to be intrinsic but to be extrinsic and so may vary in truth value from world to world without any intrinsic difference in God. But this attempt to save divine simplicity remains just as implausible as Thomas’ doctrine of no real relations.240 Brower thinks that God’s knowing that creatures exist requires only that God stand in a certain cognitive relation to the contingent truth that creatures exist and that creatures do in fact exist. With respect to divine volitions, Brower suggests that we dispense with volitions as causal intermediaries between God and his effects and just identify God’s volitions with his agent causal relations.241 I fail to see that this solves anything, for in order to stand in a certain cognitive relation to a proposition p, like believing that p or knowing that p, God must be in a certain intrinsic mental or cognitive state, and it is incredible that the same cognitive state could be involved in believing that p and disbelieving that p. 242 If God’s intrinsic cognitive state is the same in both cases, then the difference in relation must be due solely to the truth value of p, and it is mysterious how p’s truth value could render the same cognitive state belief on the one hand and disbelief on the other. Similarly, with respect to divine acts of willing, taking Brower’s very sensible advice about dispensing with volitions as causal intermediaries does not seem to solve anything, for in order to stand in different causal relations to different effects God must undertake different exercises of divine power. Indeed, in refraining from creation, as God is free to do, he exercises no act of power at all but refrains from any such exercise. So again, it is inexplicable why in some worlds God stands in an agent causal relation to creatures while in others he does not, if God is intrinsically similar across worlds.243 Moreover, in holding that God is able to stand in different agent causal relations to creatures we seem to ascribe potentiality to God, the potentiality to create or to refrain from creating, in contradiction to the claim that God is pure actuality. Such a solution, in other words, seems to force us to deny socalled “content essentialism,” the view that belief states have their propositional content essentially. The same applies to acts of willing. Acts of willing have, like belief states, propositional content, in that just as one may believe that p, so one may will that p. According to content essentialism, for any beliefs or acts of willing x and y, if x and y have different propositional content, they are not the same belief or act of willing, and if a belief or act of willing has a particular propositional content p, then there is no possible world in which that same belief or act of willing lacks p. If the systematic theologian is being asked to abandon content essentialism in order to maintain the doctrine of divine simplicity, then the doctrine exacts too much.244 W. Matthews Grant contends that one may retain content essentialism if one is willing to give up the assumption that belief states and, implicitly, acts of willing are intrinsic states of an agent.245 He points out that content essentialism does not specify how the propositional content of a belief state or act of willing is determined. Thus, one could embrace both content essentialism and socalled content externalism, the view that propositional content can vary without any intrinsic variation in a subject’s cognitive states. One can affirm both content essentialism and content externalism provided one denies that a belief or act of willing whose content is externally determined is intrinsic to its subject. “Allowing that a mental state might be extrinsic to its subject suggests the possibility that the state is at least partially constituted and, given Content Essentialism, essentially constituted by the extrinsic items that determine its content.”246 To my mind, Grant’s proposal is even more incredible than the view that God’s belief states and acts of willing are intrinsic to him but have their propositional content extrinsically.247 It requires us to believe that God’s cognitive states are not intrinsic states of God, which seems desperate. Moreover, as Schmid and Mullins remind us, in a possible world in which God refrains from creation and so exists alone, there is nothing extrinsic to God, not even propositions on pain of denial of divine aseity.248 So God’s knowledge or belief that “I am alone” cannot be predicated of God extrinsically, for he does not stand in relation to any such truth bearer. It is of no avail to appeal to content externalism, since in a world in which God alone exists, there just is nothing apart from God that could serve as the content of God’s mental states.249 It is therefore noteworthy that defenders of the doctrine of divine simplicity increasingly find themselves driven to affirm some sort of externalism in order to defend the doctrine from the threat of modal collapse. Christopher Tomaszewski has recently alleged that certain formulations of the modal collapse argument illicitly assume that coreferring terms may be substituted salva veritate in intensional, specifically modal, contexts and are therefore invalid.250 He has in mind a formulation like the following 1. Necessarily, God exists. 2. God is identical to God’s act of willing or knowing. 3. Therefore, necessarily, God’s act of willing or knowing exists. Such an argument is said to be analogous to the argument 4. Necessarily, 9 7. 5. The number of the planets 9. 6. Therefore, necessarily, the number of the planets 7. John Waldrop has shown, however, that many formulations of the modal collapse objection do not involve substitution of coreferential terms in an intensional context and that those that do can be reformulated so as to become unproblematic.251 Tomaszewski himself considers three ways of repairing the argument to make it valid i using a necessary identity statement for 2 ii taking “God’s act of willing or knowing” to be a rigid designator, picking out God in every possible world and iii reformulating the argument based on Leibniz’s Law of the Indiscernibility of Identicals. In each case Tomaszewski’s rejection of the repair effort seems to depend crucially on externalism. In response to i he says, What follows from DDS is the necessary identity of God with God’s act. But that God’s act is an act of creation is a contingent fact not entailed by DDS. DDS tells us only that God is necessarily identical with God’s act it does not tell us anything about what the effects of that act are.252 This reply requires externalism otherwise, God’s act of willing is intrinsically an act of creation. We need not consider its effects we just examine the act itself. In response to ii Tomaszewski writes, Here, the opponent of DDS may object if ‘God’s act of creation’ designates God at all, it must do so in virtue of something intrinsic to God, for acts are intrinsic to their actors. And since God is necessarily how he is intrinsically, if it designates God in virtue of his intrinsic act, it must do so in every possible world, and therefore designate God rigidly. But this isn’t the case. While God’s act is indeed intrinsic and therefore identical to him, ‘God’s act of creation’ designates that act, not how it is in itself, but by way of its contingent effects. . . . This is parallel to the way in which ‘the Creator’ designates God, not how he is in himself, but rather by way of the contingent effects of his act.253 Again, this reply seems to presuppose externalism with respect to God’s acts of willing. Otherwise “God’s act of creation” would, as Tomaszewski puts it, designate that act as it is in itself. With respect to iii, Tomaszewski says, It must not only be true that the entity designated in the actual world by ‘God’s act of creation’ has the property of necessary existence, but also that in every possible world, that entity is in that world an act of creation. This is so because while the entity designated in the actual world by ‘God’s act of creation’ i.e. God exists in every possible world, a creation exists only in those worlds where this entity not only exists but also is an act of creation i.e. the worlds in which God in fact creates.254 Unless one is an externalist, it seems, it is indeed true that the entity designated by “God’s act of creation” is in every world an act of creation. That the act entails the existence of effects does not imply that an externalist account of God’s acts of willing is true. So all of Tomaszewki’s efforts to stave off modal collapse depend on externalism.255 Similarly, in his reply to the modal collapse objection, Joseph Schmid relies on externalism with respect to God’s acts of willing. If we take 2 to refer to God’s actual act of willing or knowing, then “God’s act of willing” is a rigid designator and the above argument admittedly becomes valid and nonquestionbegging. So if God’s creative act necessitates its effect – then modal collapse straightforwardly ensues . . . .The only way for the classical theist to avert modal collapse, then, is to deny Necessarily, if God’s actual act of creation exists, the actual creation exists. Thus, the classical theist can only avert modal collapse if God’s act merely indeterministically produces its effects. Across all possible worlds, God’s one, simple act remains utterly the same, whereas the various created outcomes are different.”256 This is straightforward externalism concerning God’s acts of willing Again, in response to the modal collapse objection as I have formulated it – which does not involve the substitution of coreferential terms in an intensional context, but appeals to the fact that if God is able to know or will differently than he does, then God has unactualized potentiality, in contradiction to the claim that God is pure actuality, Schmid resorts to externalism The classical theist will. . . say that God’s ‘doing something different’ merely amounts to a different state of affairs’ obtaining with a dependence on God. To say without further, independent justification that this requires God himself to have some unactualized potential is to beg the question against the classical theistic position, according to which God is not crossworld different despite creation being crossworld different. . . . God’s act with which he is identical is fully, wholly, and purely actual. But this act can indeterministically give rise to different effects across different worlds. And we truthfully predicate ‘does A not B in wA’ and ‘does B not A in wB’ of God not in virtue of God’s being intrinsically or entitatively different across such worlds, but instead in virtue of A indeterministically coming about in wA with a dependence on God in the former case and in the latter case B indeterministically coming about in wB with a dependence on God.257 This is nothing more than a reiteration of Aquinas’ explanatorily impoverished doctrine of no real relations in God to creation. Schmid has a second response to this formulation of the objection traditional theists who do not hold to divine simplicity face a similar problem. For on their view, since God is free, there must similarly be an indeterministic link between everything necessary in God such as his essential attributes and everything contingent in God such as his contingent acts of willing and knowing.258 If such an indeterministic link between God’s necessary and contingent features is acceptable, then so is an indeterministic link between God’s acts of willing and the world. Schmid’s tu quoque retort does not impress. Because God is a personal, libertarian agent, an indeterministic link between his necessary and contingent features is both mandatory and appropriate. But it is a misnomer to speak of an indeterministic link between God’s acts of willing or knowing and their objects. Here it is a matter of infallibility, not determinism.259 In virtue of his omnipotence and omniscience, God’s acts of will infallibly produce their effects and God’s acts of believing infallibly track truth. There is therefore no room for a fallible link between God’s acts of willing or knowing and their objects. Neither are his acts free agents who can choose which effects to produce or propositions to believe. Therefore, the cases are not parallel. All this bears out Waldrop’s judgement that “the genuine debate over divine simplicity and modal collapse is substantially a controversy over the metaphysics of divine action.”260 For “the only plausible way, for the defender of DDS to avoid modal collapse . . . is to deny that the conclusion, the claim that the actual divine creative act necessarily exists, has any fatalistic import.”261 Externalism is just such a strategy. Tomaszewki points out that since an intrinsic account of God’s acts of willing and knowing is not an entailment of the doctrine of divine simplicity, he has succeeded in showing that the doctrine has not been demonstrated to lead inevitably to modal collapse and, hence, incoherence or absurdity. Whether divine simplicity or traditional theism entails an intrinsic account of God’s acts of willing and knowing may be left a moot point.262 For as I have been wont to emphasize, the question for the Christian systematic theologian is whether the doctrine of divine simplicity is plausibly true, not whether its bare coherence may be purchased at the expense of desperate expedients.263 The modal collapse argument, in requiring the divine simplicity theorist to advert to externalism, shows that DS is not plausibly true. Mullins reports that in the face of modal collapse, “By far, the most common response from classical theists is to appeal to ineffable mystery.”264 For example, Dolezal, after considering “various attempts to rescue divine simplicity and freedom,” in the end affirms, “the modality of divine freedom is entirely beyond our grasp. . . .while simplicity roots the absoluteness of God’s freedom, neither of these divine characteristics is comprehensible to us though both are indispensable to the confession that God is most absolute.”265 Such an appeal to mystery is appropriate only if one has some overriding reason to think that one’s beliefs are true and so merely paradoxical.266 But arguments in favor of DS can hardly be claimed to provide such an overriding reason. 5.4.4 The Trinity Although contemporary philosophical theologians, preoccupied with problems enough concerning the coherence of divine simplicity on generic theism, tend to ignore the problem of the coherence of divine simplicity with the doctrine of the Trinity,267 it is theologically noteworthy – as well as sobering – that historically some of the most prominent proponents of divine simplicity, including Arian, Muslim, and Jewish thinkers, have rejected the doctrine of the Trinity precisely on the basis of divine simplicity.268 Eunomius, ibn Sīnā, and Maimonides all repudiate the doctrine of the Trinity as obviously incompatible with a strong doctrine of divine simplicity.269 Although we reserve a discussion of the Trinity for later, we may note in passing that the problem of reconciling DS with Trinitarian theism is, indeed, obvious and acute for Christian proponents of divine simplicity. On a social Trinitarianism, such as the Cappadocian Fathers propounded, which emphasizes the three selfconscious persons of the Godhead, God cannot be utterly simple, as the Cappadocians themselves realized, for the divine nature and the divine persons are distinct. On a Thomistic model of the Trinity, which reduces the divine persons to subsistent relations, there remains no explanation even within the medieval metaphysical framework of how God can be simple, since the relevant relations are regarded as real relations, not merely conceptually drawn relations. When Reformed scholastics claim that the simple divine essence subsists in three distinct modes that are the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then absent any explanation on their part of how this differs from modalism or tritheism, we seem to have once again the substitution of empty jargon for conceptual analysis.270 In any case an individual which exists in three distinct modes can hardly be called simple.271 Contemporary defenses of the doctrine of the Trinity aspire to provide models of the Trinity that are both coherent and plausible. But such models do not in general aspire to demonstrate the compatibility of the doctrine of the Trinity with a strong doctrine of divine simplicity. 5.5 Concluding Remarks Tongue in cheek, Thomas Morris observes, “more than one newcomer to the field of philosophical theology, wading through the logical and metaphysical tangles of the doctrine of divine simplicity, has been heard to remark, ‘If this is divine simplicity, I don’t want to know about divine complexity’”272 In the course of our convoluted discussion, we have seen that there really is no single doctrine of divine simplicity that has been historically affirmed by Christian theologians. Rather various doctrines differing in strength have been enunciated. While the Scripture supports a thin doctrine of divine simplicity such as DS1–3, a doctrine such as DS, whose roots are to be found in NeoPlatonism, is not only unbiblical but is in various respects incompatible with the teaching of Scripture. Moreover, the arguments of perfect being theology, derived principally from considerations of divine perfection and aseity, do not go to support any doctrine of divine simplicity so strong as DS. Finally, we have seen that there are formidable objections to such claims as that God’s essence is existence, that God is not distinct from his properties, that God is pure actuality, and that the triune God is simple.273 Nonetheless, I have argued that if we reject constituent ontologies, taking an antirealist attitude toward properties, as seems plausible, then the Christian theologian may affirm without qualms that God is no more metaphysically composed than anything else. Accordingly, we should affirm a weak doctrine of divine simplicity, which we may characterize as follows DS4 As a spiritual substance, God is not composed of separable parts neither does he have metaphysical constituents.27