Dialogue with Aquinas: A Systematic Refutation of Divine Simplicity

 

 

Introduction:

 

         The Doctrine of Divine Simplicity (DS) has been held by the Church for centuries through the works of great theologians such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. However, under scrutiny it will be demonstrated that the doctrine has no legs to stand on. Firstly, a systematic articulation of DS will be provided for background context. Secondly, I will offer several objections and incoherencies that DS entails. Thirdly, I will provide a possible alternate solution to understanding the relationship between God’s attributes and essence. This essay-style blog post will replace all of my other blogs on the same subject as this is the synthesis of them.

 

Chapter I: What is Divine Simplicity?

Divine simplicity (DS) is the idea that God's attributes are identical to each other in His reality. Attributes, for example, are love, wrath, knowledge, and power. Any attribute that is predicated to God is identical to one another. For two things to be identical to one another they must be the same thing just as Superman is identical to Clark Kent, they are two names that are referring to the same being. Augustine, a major Christian theologian, in his book, On the Trinity, claims, 

“But God is truly called in manifold ways, great, good, wise, blessed, true, and whatsoever other thing seems to be said of Him not unworthily: but His greatness is the same as His wisdom; for He is not great by bulk, but by power; and His goodness is the same as His wisdom and greatness, and His truth the same as all those things; and in Him it is not one thing to be blessed, and another to be great, or wise, or true, or good, or in a word to be Himself.” (Book VI, chapter 7). 

The attributes seem multiple because one cannot see how God truly is and through faith they are identical in the same essence of God and therefore there is no diversity in God. Thomas Aquinas makes it clear that, 

“The manifold actions ascribed to God, as intelligence, volition, the production of things, and the like, are not so many different things, since each of these actions in God is His own very being, which is one and the same thing.” (Summa Contra Gentiles II.10) 

Therefore, when it is said that God acts, such as creating the universe or sending revelation to the prophets, each one of these actions of God are such that there’s only one action of God. Each of these actions in God is his own being or essence, they are one in the same. It is rather the denial that God has any composition, including a composition of different attributes. This is to avoid a God that is contingent upon any parts. The center of which is the claim that God is identical to the pure act of being. God's essence is just to exist. Whereas in the case of every other being their essence is distinct from their existence, in the case of God his essence just is the act of being. The Thomistic perspective holds that in God, essence and existence are identical. For created beings, there is an essence-existence distinction. Each created thing has its essence, which is what it is by definition, and its existence, which is the act of being granted by God. A human or a unicorn is not a necessary existence rather it is contingent. Furthermore, the essence of the human soul is its definition not its existence or in other words, the description of the soul does not contain existence, it would contain however immateriality. Its existence is given to it by God. However, the being whose essence contains its existence is God as previously mentioned. Rather, his existence is identical to his essence due to Divine Simplicity. Since his essence is his existence and his existence is his essence, he exists necessarily. The essence of a human being can be known without its existence as a human can cease to exist. Therefore, anything whose existence is separate from its existence received its existence from somewhere and the rational mind knows that there cannot be an infinite regress of beings providing existences to the next. Therefore, there must be a first cause or God whose existence is his essence that gives way to all other existences.

“First, whatever a thing has besides its essence must be caused either by the constituent principles of that essence (like a property that necessarily accompanies the species—as the faculty of laughing is proper to a man—and is caused by the constituent principles of the species), or by some exterior agent—as heat is caused in water by fire. Therefore, if the existence of a thing differs from its essence, this existence must be caused either by some exterior agent or by its essential principles. Now it is impossible for a thing's existence to be caused by its essential constituent principles, for nothing can be the sufficient cause of its own existence, if its existence is caused. Therefore that thing, whose existence differs from its essence, must have its existence caused by another. But this cannot be true of God; because we call God the first efficient cause. Therefore it is impossible that in God His existence should differ from His essence.” (Summa Theologica, First Part, Question 3, Article 4)

This distinction between the thing’s essence and its existence is drawn from Aristotle, and in Aristotle this is a conceptual distinction. You can conceive of the nature (essence) of something without knowing whether there is such a thing. But for Thomists this is not simply a conceptual distinction. It is a metaphysical distinction. Thomists hold to what's called a constituent ontology where things are made up of ontological parts. And for the Thomist all creaturely things are composed of essence and existence. These are metaphysical parts of the thing. The claim then is that in God there is no such composition of essence and existence. God just is existence subsisting without any sort of limiting or restricting essence to this or that kind of thing. His nature itself is being. Our nature itself is not being as we can lose our being. If I am a Lego construction, my pieces are existence and essence. These two ontological constituents that make them up – their essence and their existence or act of being – whereas in God he has no essence. He is just the pure act of being subsisting also known as Actus Purus. What does it mean for God to be pure act? As Aquinas explains, composite things have potential. They move from potential to actual. But God is simple, so He must lack potentiality and be pure act. One example of this idea is that God just is His act of existence. God is not something that underlies His properties because He does not have any properties. God does not go from potential to actual for He is pure act. God’s act is identical to God, and not something distinct. How does this view of God relate to divine temporality and divine timelessness? This conception of God must necessarily be timeless. If the simple God was in time then it would be the case that He exists from one moment to the next one. Therefore, God has phases in His life that are not identical for that very reason as He would stand in relation to time in terms of earlier or later. This goes against the concept of Thomistic divine simplicity as God is completely unchanging and simple. According to Christian philosopher, William Lane Craig, in his book, Time and Eternity: Exploring God's Relationship to Time, expound upon this,

“Like simplicity, the immutability affirmed by the medieval theologians is a radical concept: utter immobility. God cannot change in any respect. He never thinks successive thoughts, He never performs successive actions…” (pp. 30)

Furthermore, if the simple God was in time then His knowledge would also be changing which goes against the immutability of God under this conception. The evidence for this is as His knowledge would go from ‘I exist at this moment’ to ‘I existed at that previous moment and I exist now’ as there is a temporal change from one moment to the next. A timeless God’s knowledge, perhaps would be ‘I exist’ without the temporality of ‘at this moment’ predicated to it. The Thomistic understanding of divine simplicity necessarily leads to divine timelessness due to the unchanging and indivisible nature of a simple God but this aspect of time will not be pertinent to the discussion but that of immutability will be. God is immutable if and only if He cannot undergo any intrinsic or extrinsic change. Further, a being who is pure act does all that He does in one timeless present. He simply is His act of thinking, willing, creating, and so on. If God went from potential to act, He would have accidental properties. But as pure act, He has no accidental properties. Since He has no accidental properties there is no worry of Him changing or persisting through time. Objects that persist through time are constantly gaining and losing accidental properties. God has no accidental properties, therefore, He is timeless. In short, according to DS:

1. God cannot have any spatial or temporal parts.

2. God cannot have any intrinsic accidental properties.

3. There cannot be any real distinction between one essential property and another in God’s nature.

4. There cannot be a real distinction between essence and existence in God.

Chapter II: The Problem of Free Will

 

If God’s one act is identical with His essence, which is both eternal and necessary, then His one act is also eternal and necessary. Necessary meaning that it could not be done in any other way, unlike contingency which is the opposite – it is the way it is but it could be otherwise, therefore God does not have free will, modal collapse of both necessity and contingency. Modality in logic refers to categories of necessity and contingency. DS results in collapsing these two categories into one category and thereby making everything necessary in God such that He would have no free will. If it is a key component of DS is that all of God’s acts are identical to each other such that there is only one divine act (if there is more than one divine act, i.e. distinction, then God would no longer be simple) and this one divine act is identical to His essence and God’s essence is identical to His existence which is necessary and eternal, His one divine act would be eternal and also necessary and if it is necessary then God does not have free will because He could not do otherwise. In other words, If all His actions are identical to His essence and His essence is necessary, this would entail that all actions are necessary which leads to modal collapse. Secondly, related to the previous point, if all His actions are necessary then He could not do otherwise which negates the pure libertarian free will of God. Thirdly, if they are identical to His essence and He is eternal, this entails that creation is also eternal alongside God which is polytheism. Another reason why DS negates the free will of God is because under DS, God can have no accidental properties. Could God have refrained from creating the universe? If God is free then it seems that the answer is obviously ‘yes.’ He could have existed alone. Yet, God did create the universe. If there is a possible world in which God exists alone, God is not simple. He eternally has unactualized potential for He cannot undo His act of creation. He could cease to sustain the universe in existence, but that would not undo His act of creating. One could avoid this problem by allowing for a modal collapse. One could say that everything is absolutely necessary. Necessarily, there is only one possible world— this world. Necessarily, God must exist with creation. There is no other possibility. God must create the universe that we inhabit, and everything must occur exactly as it in fact does and therefore, God could not have done otherwise and therefore, God does not have free will and the universe is eternal alongside God.

 

Chapter III: The Problem of No Real Relations

 

         Christians around the world claim that God loves them and has a personal relationship with them but this is far from the truth under the doctrine of DS. Furthermore, doctors of the Catholic Church who profess DS also claim that God cannot have real relations with His creation! For example, Thomas Aquinas, in his magnum opus, the Summa Theologica, states,

 

“As the creature proceeds from God in diversity of nature, God is outside the order of the whole creation, nor does any relation to the creature arise from His nature; for He does not produce the creature by necessity of His nature, but by His intellect and will, as is above explained (I:14:3 and I:14:4; I:19:8). Therefore there is no real relation in God to the creature; whereas in creatures there is a real relation to God; because creatures are contained under the divine order, and their very nature entails dependence on God. On the other hand, the divine processions are in one and the same nature. Hence no parallel exists.” (Summa, First Part, Q28, Article 1)

 

This is known as the doctrine of no real relations and is interconnected to DS. There is a one-way connection in which man can be related to God but not vice versa. Therefore, what does it mean when it is said that God loves his creation? Aquinas answers this as well but his response may surprise you,

 

“God loves all existing things. For all existing things, in so far as they exist, are good, since the existence of a thing is itself a good; and likewise, whatever perfection it possesses. Now it has been shown above (I:19:4) that God's will is the cause of all things. It must needs be, therefore, that a thing has existence, or any kind of good, only inasmuch as it is willed by God. To every existing thing, then, God wills some good. Hence, since to love anything is nothing else than to will good to that thing, it is manifest that God loves everything that exists. Yet not as we love.” Summa, First Part, Q20, Article 2)

 

God’s love for His creation is merely Him creating and willing its existence. There is no real relation between God and His creation. How this relates to the human nature of the incarnate divine Christ will be discussed later. Under the position that Aquinas is explaining, God’s love is the same regardless of whether you exist or not. The difference between creation’s love for God then is intentionality. Under DS, God’s one act is identical to Himself and this is why He is called pure act or Actus Purus. Therefore, if He is one act of love, He is identical regardless if creation exists as DS holds that there is no change in God including that of relations. One could respond that God is acquainted with all facts and therefore is omniscient and if God is omniscient, then He would be acquainted with creation prior to its existence and therefore can love me. However, to this I say the problem is not whether creation exists eternally alongside God or not the problem is a modal concern. God's knowledge of you is not modally necessary but modally contingent. If it is modally contingent, then God's love is different across possible worlds. God's love is thus different in a world where you do exist relative to a world where you do not exist. Again, this shows that intentional directedness is a necessary component of love. If you believe God's knowledge of you is modally necessary, then it leads to modal collapse where everything has to exist eternally alongside God. Love requires intentionality rather than merely willing good for another. For example, if I am stranded in a desert without any water and suddenly there was an earthquake that opened up an oasis for me to drink out of. No sane person will claim that the blind earthquake loves me! Analogously, since God has no relation to His creation under DS, He is as blind as the earthquake. While creatures are known by God, God does not know creatures. While creatures are beloved of God, God does not love creatures. These properties or relations exist only in the creatures themselves. Creatures have properties by participating in goodness, wisdom, life, or what have you. God, who is the greatest being, does not have goodness by participating in something else. Goodness is identical to His essence, and God is identical to His essence. Therefore, God is the Good.

 

Chapter IV: The Problem of Relations in the Trinity

 

         It has been discussed so far, DS, as posited by Thomas Aquinas and other Scholastic philosophers, asserts that God is not composed of parts or properties. In other words, God’s attributes are identical to His essence. God’s love, for instance, is not something that God has, but rather something that God is. This doctrine is rooted in the desire to affirm God’s absolute transcendence, unity, and immutability. On the other hand, the Doctrine of the Trinity posits that God is one in essence but three in person: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each person of the Trinity is distinct, yet each fully partakes in the divine essence. This doctrine is central to the Christian religion and is seen as a mystery of the faith. The apparent contradiction between these two doctrines arises when we consider the implications of each. If God’s attributes are identical to His essence (DS), it would seem that there can be no distinctions in God. However, the Doctrine of the Trinity posits that there are distinctions in God (three persons), each partaking in the divine essence. If the persons are identical to God as all the virtual attributes of God are identical to His essence, then the persons would be identical to each other but this is the heresy known as modalism and this is what the Eastern Orthodox accuse the Thomists of while the Thomists accuse the Eastern Orthodox of polytheism as they claim that each of the three persons are instantiations of the divine essence instead of being identical to it.

 

Chapter V: The Problem of the Incarnation

 

In the same way that creation’s relation to God is real, so too is Christ’s humanity to his divinity. Equally, in the same way that God is not really related to creation, Christ’s divinity is not really related to creation. Christ’s human nature, as a created thing, also is contingent on the divine nature. That is to say that without the divine nature, there would be no human nature whatsoever. Therefore, if his human nature is created, how is there not a change in the person of Christ if he assumes a new nature as DS affirms the immutability of God? Furthermore, since he is fully God and fully human at the same time due the Hypostatic Union, is his divine nature not truly related to his human nature? How can the immutable God enter time which is a relational change which contradicts DS and live and interact amongst humanity while being unrelated to himself and to those he interacted with? The Communicatio Idiomatum is a central aspect to the Incarnation. It is a technical expression that means that the properties of the Divine Word can be ascribed to the man Christ, and that the properties of the man Christ can be predicated of the Word. This was in order to avoid the heresy known as Nestorianism which claimed that the two natures of Christ were separated enough to count as two persons. Jesus Christ as a person, therefore, with his two contrary natures, is both related and unrelated to himself and to creatures which is a contradiction in his personhood. If one says only the human nature changed then due to the Communicatio Idiomatum one must also say the person changed including the divine nature in order to avoid Nestorianism. If one argues that Christ's divine nature is always related to his human nature and therefore there is no change in God, one objection to this is how can God be related to something uncreated? Is Christ always a human and God then before his incarnation? Augustine, Boethius, Lombard, and Aquinas all deny extrinsic accidental properties of God. For example, God being referred to as things like Creator, Redeemer, and Lord. God cannot have these accidental predicates because that would entail that God came to have them, and thus He would be mutable, temporal and not simple. Classical theologians held that we can refer to God, but that we must realize that our accidental predicates only befall us and not God.

Another problem is whether only the Son can be incarnate or can the Father and Spirit too. If it is a real possibility that the Father or Spirit could have become incarnate but did not, then this is an unactualized potential in God and therefore, God is not simple. If the proponent of DS claims that only the Son became incarnate then becoming incarnate is an essence property the Father and Holy Spirit do not possess and therefore, they are not of the same essence which undermines the Doctrine of the Trinity.

 

Chapter VI: The Problem of Multiplicity in Creation

 

According to many Aristotelian philosophers, all bodies have the inseparable property of motion and it does not proceed from the nature of bodies themselves and thus motion demands an external source or a prime mover. The series of moving causes must stop at an immovable object that moves everything else to avoid an infinite regress of movers. This first mover is God. Since the transition from non-existence to existence is a form of motion and motion requires matter then God must be immaterial and eternal while all things created by it are material and in motion. God is free from matter and therefore is free from motion and therefore cannot change and therefore is pure act (actus purus) and also therefore God must be completely simple as God is not made of parts.

Now the question is in regards to creation, how can the many be created by one or how can something like God who is completely simple under DS create multiplicity or how can a single cause have multiple effects. When it comes to creation, the cause can have various powers as I can do multiple actions or the cause may use various means to produce various effects. However, when it comes to the first cause, God, this cannot be the case since he does not have various powers under divine simplicity. The multiple attributes of God are only through a virtual distinction rather than being real attributes to avoid God being composed of parts. This means that it only appears to creation that God has multiple attributes but in reality it is one pure act.

While our argument of God was Aristotelian, an argument can be made from a Neoplatonic paradigm to solve this dilemma of a simple God causing multiplicity. If this is the only answer that can solve the dilemma then put forth that Aristotelian metaphysics must lead to Neoplatonism. The answer of the dilemma may be that God only created only one thing which led to the creation of another. This one thing may be known as the logos of God if you are Philo of Alexandria or Justin Martyr or you may call it the first intellect if you are Al Kindi, or it may be known as the Demiurge (nous).

Now I have a possible objection to the Neoplatonic solution, if the One or God who is simple creates the Logos of the First principle or Demiurge, regardless if this causation is eternal or not, the result should still be a simple being since it has been established simple beings only create simple things. If the Logos is simple then whatever it creates should also be simple even if the Logos is a lesser degree divine or exactly equal to God. If it is less divine, the emanation of the Logos should be less divine than the Logos and each further emanation should be continually less divine but each should still be simple as only simple beings cause simple things. Therefore, I do not see how multiplicity arrives. The common rebuttal I have seen to this is that the process of emanation might be thought of not as a simple being creating another simple being, but as the “overflowing” of the One’s goodness. This overflowing gives rise to a multiplicity of forms, each of which is a distinct, though less perfect, reflection of the One. However, the solution of emanation simply pushes the problem back a step without truly solving it. If the One creates the Logos, which then creates the world, why couldn't there be another entity beyond the One that created it? This leads to an infinite regress, which the original argument sought to avoid. Furthermore, it is unclear how a simple, singular entity can give rise to a diverse and complex universe, even through a process of emanation of an “overflowing” but perhaps I am misunderstanding it. Either way, the notion of divine simplicity and the resultant theological complexities it engenders deviate from Biblical principles for Christians and Jews, as well as from Quranic teachings for Muslims. Biblical claims that ‘God is spirit’ and ‘God is love’ significantly underdetermine divine simplicity and fail to bring us anywhere near the essential elements of the doctrine. DS is derived from Greek philosophy of Aristotle and Plotinus yet to deny it for simply that reason is to commit a genetic fallacy. However, if one wants to call God their Lord, Creator, and their refuge, one should abandon DS.

Chapter VII: The Solution, A New Paradigm

 

         The solution to avoid these blunders in Aquinas’ metaphysics is to simply reject it! Luckily, there have been other models that seek to understand God’s attributes as it relates to His essence in a way that escapes incoherency. For example, in my understanding of Athari metaphysics, God is the One, the Singular, who has no peers nor rivals, His attributes subsist and adhere in Him and cannot be separated from Him, in other words, the attributes of God are not identical to Him nor other than Him. His attributes are not created and they subsist in His essence. His essence is not dependent on independent attributes, rather His attributes depend on His essence in the sense that God’s attributes subsist in His essence, they cannot be separated from it. The dependence of His attributes on His essence is not a causal dependence otherwise they would be created, it is a counterfactual dependence. Proponents of divine simplicity argue that if God is composed of parts that entails that God is contingent as God would be dependent upon His attributes. However, this argument is false as to claim that a composite thing is dependent upon its components which in turn contradicts its necessity is false. Rather God depends on Himself. The dependency of the composite thing on the whole is in fact a dependency on its own self and the statement of the one who says a thing depends on itself is equivalent to the meaning intended when one says that it is necessary in and of itself. Such a self-existence does not entail any dependency that contradicts dependency. God is not dependent on anything outside of Himself. When it is said that God cannot exist without His attribute and His attributes cannot exist without Him, it is a counterfactual dependence not a causal dependence. This dependence is merely by association. For example, it is an entailment of God’s existence which implies statements like the composite thing cannot exist without the existence of its parts, or two parts cannot exist without the other part, or the part cannot exist without the existence of the whole, or the attribute cannot exist without the subject of its attribution. Again, it is not a causal dependency as it is not that each of the two things, His essence and His attributes, is dependent on the other in such a way that the other is an efficient cause for it, or circular dependency, rather the existence of the two things is a condition for the other thing, they must go together, such as if there is a part then there must be a whole. God’s act is an attribute of the one that is acting, it subsists in His essence and therefore the effect of the act is distinct from the action as the effect is creation itself. Nothing that is created can subsist in His essence because God is uncreated. The description of an attribute is also distinct from the thing that it is being attributed to. When I call God beautiful, the speech of me calling God beautiful is a description of God and the attribute that I am referring to subsists in His essence. This also goes for the speech of God. Everything apart from God is created and all His attributes subsist in Him and God is greater than all. His act of speaking is tied to His will and His power as God chooses to speak by His will. It is important to mention that the way God hears is unlike the way we hear things but the plain meaning is affirmed. It is analogically predicated of God and Aquinas also used the same language of predication in describing God as stated in his Summa, First Part, Q13, Article 5.

         Even in Catholicism DS does not need to be affirmed. John Duns Scotus believed that God has real attributes that are not identical to each other nor to His essence yet they are inseparable from each other and the essence. They are not free-floating entities apart from God. God cannot exist without them nor can they exist without God. It would seem that Duns Scotus’ view on God and His attributes are closer to the Islamic tradition than to Thomas Aquinas’. There is a distinction within God that does not lead to composition as His attributes are able to be distinguished and actualized within God infinitely and cannot be separated from His essence. These attributes can be expressed in a finite mode in creation according to Duns Scotus. There is an objective difference between God’s perfect and infinite love, power, mercy, and wrath prior to the mind’s activity. There is a formal distinction between His attributes not a virtual distinction. According to scholar and expert on Duns Scotus, Dr. Richard Alan Cross,

 

“On Scotus’ account, infinity when applied to God is just a sort of property and this is quite distinct from Aquinas’ view that infinity is just a negation. Clearly allowing that a property like infinity is some sense distinct from the attribute it modifies will entail that God has formally distinct properties at the least the intrinsic mode of any divine attribute or the divine essence will be formally distinct from both attribute and divine essence… all of God’s attributes are essential to Him, He is inseparable from any of them, and they are inseparable from each other, but His attributes are nevertheless different attributes. They satisfy Scotus’ idea for what is called a formal distinction… The fact that the attributes are different than each other is entailed though, perhaps not explained by Scotus’ univocity theory. According to this theory, the basic lexical definitions of some of the terms applied to God are exactly the same as the lexical definitions of those terms when applied to creatures. Now the lexical definitions of many such terms when applied to creatures are different from each other and Scotus’ criterion for a formal distinction between different attributes is roughly that the attributes admit of different lexical definitions. Different divine attributes will be formally distinct from each other. Scotus makes the point by arguing that if these different attributes were not distinct in God then given his univocity theory, they will not be distinct in creatures either. So univocity as understood by Scotus entails a weak account of divine simplicity according to which the divine attributes are distinct from each other. On Scotus’ account, divine simplicity is consistent with God having several formally distinct transcendental attributes… a formal distinction does not entail having parts…if  we are to attribute a property to something then that property must be really distinct from the thing, there must be a form instantiated by the thing. Here, the divine essence refers to the concrete divine existence, something which we might want to label God’s substance… an instantiated property does not have to be really distinct from its subject. A thing’s necessary or essential properties for example are properties that it cannot exist without but on Scotus’ separability condition for real distinction, properties that something cannot be without cannot really be distinct from it. Scotus seems here to imply that God is the subject of His essential attributes i.e. the divine attributes in much the same way as any substance on his account is the subject of its essential properties. On this showing there will be a formal distinction between God and His attributes. God and His attributes are inseparable but the definition of no divine attribute will fully encompass the divine substance. Equally, Scotus holds that God’s substance or essence is somehow explanatory of His attributes. Aquinas would agree I think with the claim that univocity entails a weak account of simplicity, he expressly claims that God’s simplicity prevents words we apply to God having the same sense that they have when we apply them to creatures. Aquinas accepts a strong account of divine simplicity according to which there are no distinctions at all between the divine attributes. For example, Aquinas holds that God’s wisdom is in every respect identical with his goodness. In fact, Aquinas holds that these attributes are in every respect identical to the divine essence and that this essence is in turn identical to God’s existence. On this account all divine attributes are just identical with existence.” (Duns Scotus, Great Medieval Thinkers pp 42-43)

 

Conclusion:

 

         From the foundations laid in the assertion that God’s attributes are identical to His essence, we traversed through challenges posed by free will, real relations, the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the creation’s multiplicity. Each step brought forth new questions and potential incoherencies within the framework of the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity. It should be clear that DS should be abandoned in favor of the two alternate solutions presented in Chapter IV.