There are fundamental questions men have been asking as long as they have been in existence: What is the purpose of life? Is there a God? What is God like? From these questions, philosophers have sought to find answers categorizing them into tidy compartments – Epistemology (what we know), Metaphysics (what is real) and Ontology (the nature of being). Though distinct, yet there is considerable overlap and interplay between the three, with each effecting the other. Once one brings God into the equation, then the question that would follow is ‘what is God like?’ Plato speculates in Euthyphro about the being of God; does He command the good because it is good, and forbid the bad because it is bad? Is the bad, bad, simply because God says it is, and the good, good, because God says so as well? If bad is bad and good is good simply because God says so, then that would mean there is a standard apart from God to which He Himself must attain; however, if God is good, then there is not a standard apart from Him – He is the standard – and if goodness is inherent in God, then He must be simple, i.e., not composed of ‘parts.’ Classic theism, as seen in the writings of Aquinas, affirms that God is unlike creatures, in that His qualities are not parts of Him, but rather cannot be separated from His being. This teaching, known as the doctrine of Divine Simplicity (DDS), is what separates the secular and Christian philosopher’s understanding of God.
AQUINAS ON DIVINE SIMPLICITY
Thomas Aquinas uses the doctrine of divine simplicity to provide language as it relates to God. As a theologian and as a philosopher, he understood that at the core of the theological task is the avoidance of idolatry and the education of believers in the truth of Christian faith. However, the doctrine of divine simplicity is a tool used from the wealth of philosophical learning to aid in the understanding of God as has been handed down through the centuries. DDS has been hailed as the gold standard in orthodoxy regarding the person of God, and it has been criticized as an unreliable rehashing of Greek thought, disconnected from God as He portrays Himself through revelation. Dolezal writes “historically the doctrine of divine simplicity has been regarded as indispensable for establishing the sufficient ontological condition for divine absoluteness. … But there no longer seems to be a broad consensus on the truth of or usefulness of the doctrine of God’s simplicity.”[1] Aquinas puts forward that simplicity allows us to understand God as radically other than creation. He argues this via negation stating, “..when the existence of a thing has been ascertained there remains the further question of the manner of its existence, in order that we may know its essence. Now, because we cannot know what God is, but rather what He is not, we have no means for considering how God is, but rather how He is not.”[2] Aquinas aims to show that God is simple because God is unlike anything in creation. Aquinas believes it is rational and reasonable to argue for God’s existence, but what exactly God is exists outside the scope of comprehension. “Though the doctrine has numerous positive implications for one’s understanding of God’s existence and essence … it is formally articulated apophatically as God’s lack of parts and denies he is physically, logically, or metaphysically composite.”[3] God’s incomprehensibility then will lead to understanding God is neither composed, nor does he exist as creatures do. This can only be reasoned to by negation, as it is understood that our reason cannot ascertain nor describe God’s existence. What Aquinas seeks to establish is not to give us “a positive concept of a simplicity like God’s but to make us conceive of Him, as least negatively, as the being free from all composition whatsoever.”[4] The negativity of simplicity demonstrates that in what God is not, our language of who God is will break down. Aquinas reminds us then that as we speak about God, what He is, is more formally what He is not, namely unlike anything in creation. He states, “it can be shown how God is not, by denying Him whatever is opposed to the idea of Him, viz. composition, motion and the like.”[5]
“Non-composition, it is argued, must characterize God inasmuch as every composite is a dependent thing that cannot account for its own existence or essence and stands in need of some composer outside itself.”[6] Composition for Aquinas is creaturely because it denotes a means of dependence on parts, and a reason for composition outside oneself. For God to be the absolute this composition cannot exist within Him. Even more, the understanding of composition is linked to potentiality. For God to be the Creator there must be no potentiality in Him where He is reliant on something else to cause Him to move or become in act. It would mean there exists something which God is not or has not. Therefore, securing simplicity for Aquinas is important because it is the traditional and foundational answer to the distinction between God and the universe, Creator, and creation.
The distinction between Creator and creation is the most important aspect of the doctrine of simplicity. As Aquinas states, it is important to understand “because every composite has a cause, for things in themselves different cannot unite unless something causes them to unite. But God is uncaused … since He is the first efficient cause.”[7] Simplicity aims to show us then that everything in creation is dependent, thus demonstrating that God is not part of creation nor is He limited in any way by the created order. In the Summa, Aquinas uses six distinct criteria for showing how composition is denied of God: (1) bodily parts, (2) matter and form, (3) supposit and nature, (4) existence and essence, (5) genus and species, (6) substance and accidents.[8] All six of these distinctions are further an elaboration on the differences that may exist between something to be in actuality versus potentially. For all six cases “it is a question of establishing that whatever is incompatible with the pure actuality of being is incompatible with the notion of God.”[9] In the Summa Theologiae 1a.3.7, Aquinas writes of all the ways in which God is understood as the first being, first efficient cause and as self-sufficient,[10] utilizing philosophical language handed down through Aristotle, Augustine and Islamic thinkers to present the simple God as true to Christian thought. Aquinas further writes that denying God any composition is crucial to understanding God as revealed in the scriptures. “Composition in God, as Thomas understands it, would jettison God’s independent self-sufficiency, his “un-causedness;” his fullness of being, and his absolute self-identity. Expressed negatively, composition entails that the composite thing be a dependent effect that is in some sense in the process of becoming and is not wholly self-identifying.”[11] Namely, simplicity marks a distinction between God and creation by characterizing anything that has composition as being created, and therefore, a creature, being dependent. The God of Scripture is not dependent. When the doctrine of divine simplicity secures the dependence, limits, and relational needs of creation, it shows that God transcends those limitations. He is truly the God who is, and is the God that is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Simplicity continues to be crucial for Aquinas not just to secure what God is not and to show that creation is dependent. DDS is crucial because it shows the importance of God’s attributes as eternal, non-accidental and held in unity. For Aquinas this was the logical progression of understanding simplicity as he wrote in the Summa, “Having considered the divine simplicity, we treat next God’s perfection. Now because everything in so far as it is perfect is called good, we shall speak first of the divine perfection; secondly of the divine goodness.”[12] From divine simplicity we may better understand God’s attributes in their perfection. “Here again it is impossible for us to conceive of a perfect being, but we must affirm God to be such, denying him all imperfection. Moreover, this is what we do in affirming that God is perfect. Just as the judgment concludes that God exists, although for us the nature of His act of existing is inconceivable, so it concludes that God is perfect, although the nature of His perfection is beyond the reach of our reason. For us to eliminate all conceivable imperfections from the notion of God is to attribute to Him all conceivable perfection.”[13]
FROM THE SCRIPTURES. The Simplicity of God is a good and necessary consequence of scripture, similar to the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. It is not explicit; however, it is implicitly understood and carries consistently through the Bible, which portrays His attributes as being equal to His essence.[14] There are hermeneutical errors regarding anthropomorphic language in scripture which attributes creature qualities to God. For example, God is said to have a face He sets against evil,[15] as well as hands,[16] arms,[17] eyes as well as ears.[18] Aside from physical attributes, God is often referred to as having emotions, including jealousy[19], grief[20], anger[21] and regret[22]. While anthropomorphic language helps us describe God’s attributes, it far from means that God shares existence on the same ontological plain as creatures; it is simply a descriptive literary effect. Since the Lord’s ways are higher than our ways, and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts,[23] the writers of scripture had to use the best tools available to them to carry the narrative along.
FROM REASON. Oddly, the most notable and critical argument against DDS comes from our own – Alvin Plantinga. Apart from his work on the problems of evil and the modal ontological argument for the existence of God, Plantinga, to make God more personal, argues that DDS reduces God to an object. “Let us turn to the most important and most perplexing denial of divine composition: the claim that there is no complexity of properties in him and that he is identical with his nature and each of his properties. God is not merely good, on this view; he is goodness, or his goodness, or goodness itself. He is not merely alive; He is identical with his life. He does not merely have a nature or essence; he just is that nature, is the very same thing as it is. And this is a hard saying. There are two difficulties, one substantial and the other truly monumental. In the first place if God is identical with each of his properties, then each of his properties is identical with each of his properties, so that God has but one property. This seems flatly incompatible with the obvious fact that God has several properties; he has both power and mercifulness, say, neither of which is identical with the other. In the second place, if God is identical with each of his properties, then, since each of his properties is a property, he is a property—a self-exemplifying property. Accordingly, God has just one property: Himself. This view is subject to a difficulty both obvious and overwhelming. No property could have created the world; no property could be omniscient, or, indeed, know anything at all. If God is a property, then He is not a person but a mere abstract object; he has no knowledge, awareness, power, love or life. So taken, the simplicity doctrine seems an utter mistake.”[24] Here, I would disagree with Plantinga. What Plantinga is trying to do is reconcile God’s attributes and His person where he does not need to. What he does is make a distinction, writing that God is not identical to love and goodness, but rather that God is identical to his love and his goodness. In arguing thus, what Plantinga has effectively done has made God a composite with parts, thus dependent upon his parts for His attributes. With such reasoning, Plantinga has fallen into the trap Aquinas sought to avoid – the idea that we are not contingent beings, but necessary beings – and this is tantamount to Platonism. I find this reasoning uncompelling and untenable from the perspective of ex nihilo creation, the teaching that God created everything, and in so doing, created everything distinct from Himself. Perhaps an unintended consequence of Plantinga’s reasoning would lead to an affirmation not only of Divine freedom of the will, but of human freedom of will as well. If this is the course Plantinga is seeking to navigate, then he is inadvertently (and by extension) set the stage for God and creatures to occupy the same ontological plain, excluding God as the first and necessary cause. In seeking to frame God as personal, Plantinga goes beyond the basis for a Christian’s belief – the Holy Scriptures – to reconcile the ‘otherness’ of God to his eminence. The explanation Plantinga offers seems to be more an appeal to reason apart from scripture than an appeal to reason from scripture. That we can know God’s attributes does not mean we cannot know His person; we know of Him what He has revealed, and what He has revealed is that we were made in His image, yet He is not like us. We can agree along with Plantinga that God indeed has personhood, but not personhood in the sense of creatures. There is a mystery to the being of God, and Plantinga seems to overstep his boundaries by attempting to remove the mystery, hinting at univocality of God, as opposed to equivocally.
SIGNIFICANCE OF AQUINAS’ THOUGHT ON SIMPLICITY
What we learn from a simple and perfect God is namely that we are an imperfect reflection as the effect of God, who is the cause. We may say God is simple, and that He is perfectly good, wise, just and loving, but as Aquinas has written, we say these things analogously. Aquinas in understanding perfection-terms “distinguishes between what an expression signifies (res significata) and the manner in which the expression signifies it (modus significandi).”[25] What this means is that though both simplicity and perfection are negative theological language in what we are saying about God, they allow us to articulate things that are true about Him. Language has meaning. Aquinas again writes “..our knowledge of God is derived from the perfections which flow from Him to creatures, which perfections are in God in a more eminent way than in creatures. Now our intellect apprehends them as they are in creatures, and as it apprehends them it signifies them by names. Therefore, as to the names applied to God—viz. the perfections which they signify, such as goodness, life and the like, and their mode of signification. As regards what is signified by these names, they belong properly to God, and more properly than they belong to creatures, and are applied primarily to Him. But as regards their mode of signification, they do not properly and strictly apply to God; for their mode of signification applies to creatures.”[26] We understand what an expression signifies and the meaning of the expression in a term like ‘good’ expresses goodness, but the manner in which it expresses goodness changes depending on what we are speaking of; we may speak of our children as being ‘good,’ but not in the same sense we may speak of God as being ‘good.’ When we speak of our children being good, we are speaking of their behavior; when we speak of God as being good, we are speaking of His being. It would follow that in light of God’s simplicity, His ‘otherness’ leads to understanding He is perfectly perfect in every way. What that means is that in simplicity God is more powerful than our composite nature and far exceeds the best of our language to describe him.
CONCLUSION
I have written earlier how our epistemology, metaphysics, and ontology are related. What DDS does is allow us to frame these in such a manner that preserves the Creator/creature distinction in a manner that faithfully represents both God and creatures as revealed in the Bible. DDS as Aquinas and others have traditionally expounded provides a useful tool in describing God as revealed in the Bible. It allows us to see how God is not like His creation – He is transcendent – and how God and creation relate one to the other. Further, we have come to understand He is not composed of any potency and that He possesses all perfections in unity of existence. What this does for Aquinas is lay the groundwork for God’s eternity, and changelessness as understood within orthodoxy. In shows that God is still the God of love, redemption and the One worthy of worship.
Simplicity secures for us that since God is without potency, motion, or change we may understand Him as eternal, and in that eternity as the powerful Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Elders writes, “God is what he is. If he is infinite, he is so negatively, that is by absence of any limit.”[27] Weinandy states “..no worldly power, no historical crisis, no natural threat is beyond him for he is other than them, and so can act in a manner that is in keeping with his unique distinctiveness.”[28] Only when we understand simplicity do we understand the fullness of what that ‘otherness’ signifies, God is free from the change, the clamoring, and events of this world to impact Him, or to effect His eternal perfections. Even in that this perfection and lack of change secures God has attained the highest of perfection.[29] Because He is simple, God possesses all perfection eternally in the fullest way. Since God is without change or motion He has the highest of all possible goods and is understood as infinite and perfect.[30] Aquinas has been critiqued for offering a version of God less than the biblical record would attest to. Though having received harsh criticism from traditional Protestants as of late, the trend away from DDS is more a redirection away from orthodoxy than an affirmation. When we understand God is simple we are stating the fact that God is all powerful in the fullest sense. Simplicity secures God’s eternity, immutability, lack of imperfection and fullness of actuality. Simplicity then philosophically secures the foundation of the God of revelation. God as simple, is the perfect God who has created us, and directs us back to Him.
[1] James Dolezal, God without Parts Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God’s Absoluteness (Eugene, OR : Pickwick Publications, 2011), xvii.
[2] St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 2nd Revised Edition, Summa Theologica (1920). 1a3.
[3] Dolezal, God without Parts, 31.
[4] Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 87.
[5] Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1a.3.
[6] Dolezal, God without Parts, 31.
[7] Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1a.3.7.
[8] Dolezal, God without Parts, 32.
[9] Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, 88.
[10] Dolezal, God without Parts, 33.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1a.4.
[13] Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, 97.
[14] Deuteronomy 6:4 – ‘Hear O Israel! The LORD our God is one.” John 4:24 – “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” 1 John 1:5 – “This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.” 1 John 4:8 – “The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” Malachi 3:6 – “For I the Lord do not change; therefor you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.” Psalm 145:17 – “The LORD is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works.” Hebrews 13:8 – “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Leviticus 19:2 – “Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, you shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” John 17:17 – “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.
[15] Leviticus 20:6 – “If a person turns to mediums and necromancers, whoring after them, I will set my face against that person and will cut him off from among his people.”
[16] Exodus 7:5 – “The Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them.”
[17] Deuteronomy 5:15 – “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand an outstretched arm…”
[18] Psalm 34:15 – “The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry.”
[19] Exodus 20:5 – “You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God…”
[20] Isaiah 54:6 – “For the LORD has called you like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit…”
[21] Exodus 4:14 – “And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses…”
[22] Genesis 6:6 – “And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart…”
[23] Isaiah 55:8,9
[24] (Plantinga 1980)
[25] (Burrell, Aquinas: God and Action 1979)
[26] Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1a.13.3.
[27] Leo Elders, The Philosophical Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (New York: E.J. Brill, 1990), 169.
[28] Thomas G. Weinandy, Does God Suffer (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), 46.
[29] Michael J. Dodds, The Unchanging God of Love: Thomas Aquinas & Contemporary Theology on Divine Immutability (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 101.
[30] Leo Elders, The Philosophical Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, 169.
