No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
On Divine Simplicity and Perfect Being Theology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 March 2025
Abstract
This paper relates the metatheological approach known as ‘Perfect Being Theology’ (PBT) and criticisms of the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) in its Thomistic version. After briefly contrasting PBT with Thomas Aquinas’ alternative approach, which will be labeled ‘Analogical Natural Theology’ (ANT), it is shown that an option for the first approach dominates much of what has been written on simplicity. Then the structure of ANT is outlined in an attempt to explain the stronger commitment this project has toward DDS.
- Type
- Article
- Information
- Copyright
- © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers.
Footnotes
A much shorter draft of this paper was written in Spanish and features in the online proceedings of a 2024 Philosophy Conference. Part of the material can be traced back to my bachelor’s dissertation, which received funding from the Chilean Government (ANID). Later revisions took place in the context of PhD studies funded by the FAI of Universidad de los Andes, Chile.
References
1 So is argued in Matthew Baddorf, ‘Divine Simplicity, Aseity and Sovereignity’, Sophia 56 (2017), pp. 403–18; Brian Leftow, ‘Is God an Abstract Object?’, Noûs 24, no. 4 (September 1990), pp. 581–98; Thomas V. Morris, ‘Dependence and Divine Simplicity’, International Journal of Philosophy of Religion 23, no. 3 (1988), pp. 161–74; Alvin Plantinga, Does God have a Nature?, The Aquinas Lesson (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1980).
2 Johnathan L. Kvanvig, Depicting Deity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021).
3 For example, this is how the matter is presented by Brower, in a brief description that seems to associate the Neoplatonic approach with PBT. See Jeffrey E. Brower, ‘Simplicity and Aseity’, in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology, eds by T. Flint and M. Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 107. Tom Morris also mentions these two strands, Aristotelian and Neoplatonic, but does not explain their differences. See Thomas V. Morris, ‘On God and Mann. A View of Divine Simplicity’, Religious Studies 21, no. 3 (1985), p. 299.
4 See Mark D. Jordan, ‘The Names of God and the Being of Names’, in The Existence and Nature of God, ed. by Alfred J. Freddoso (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp. 161–90.
5 Peter Weigel, Aquinas on Simplicity. An Investigation into the Foundations of His Philosophical Theology (Oxford: Peter Lang Publishers, 2008), pp. 30–37.
6 Plantinga, Does God have a Nature?, p. 1.
7 Plantinga, pp. 1–2.
8 Plantinga, pp. 3–4.
9 Plantinga, pp. 7–8.
10 Plantinga, pp. 26–61.
11 Plantinga, pp. 61–92.
12 Plantinga, pp. 92–126.
13 Plantinga, pp. 127–40.
14 Morris, ‘Dependence and Divine Simplicity’, p. 161.
15 See Nicholas Wolterstorff, ‘Divine Simplicity’, Philosophical Perspectives 5 (1991), p. 549; Baddorf, ‘Divine Simplicity, Aseity and Sovereignity’.
16 Baddorf, ‘Divine Simplicity, Aseity and Sovereignity’, pp. 407–9.
17 William E. Mann, ‘Simplicity and Immutability in God’, International Philosophical Quarterly 23, no. 3 (1983), p. 268. To support his interpretation, Mann cites texts from both Anselm and Aquinas. In a similar vein, see William E. Mann, ‘Divine Simplicity’, Religious Studies 18, no. 4 (1982), pp. 453–54.
18 William F. Vallicella, ‘Divine Simplicity’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. by Edward N. Zalta (2023) <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2023/entries/divine-simplicity/> (last accesed on February 20th 2025).
19 Brian Leftow, ‘Why Perfect Being Theology?’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 69, no. 2 (2011), pp. 103–18, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-010-9267-0; Brian Leftow, ‘God, Concepts Of’, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Taylor and Francis, 2015), https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/god-concepts-of/v-2 (last accesed February 20th 2025).
20 Leftow, ‘Is God an Abstract Object?’, pp. 581–82.
21 Leftow, pp. 584–86.
22 Leftow, ‘God, Concepts Of’.
23 Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, ‘Absolute Simplicity’, Faith and Philosophy 2, no. 4 (October 1985), p. 353.
24 See James E. Dolezal, God without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God’s Absoluteness (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2011).
25 Barry Miller, A Most Unlikely God. A Philosophical Enquiry (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996), pp. 1–2.
26 Miller, p. 3.
27 Miller, p. 4.
28 Miller, p. 1.
29 Miller, p. 1.
30 Plantinga, pp. 77–84.
31 Fredderick Gerrit Immink, Divine Simplicity (Kampen: Kok, 1987), pp. 77–84.
32 Immink, pp. 163–67.
33 For example, see Jeff Speaks, The Greatest Possible Being (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
34 Johnathan L. Kvanvig, ‘Anselmian Adversities’, Religious Studies 56, no. 6 (2020), pp. 318–32, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412518000604; Johnathan L. Kvanvig, ‘Metatheology and the Ontology of Divinity’, in The Divine Nature, eds by Simon Kittle and Georg Gasser (New York: Routledge, 2021), pp. 138–57; Kvanvig, Depicting Deity.
35 Kvanvig, ‘Anselmian Adversities’, p. 320.
36 Daniel De Haan, ‘Thomist Classical Theism: Divine Simplicity within Aquinas’ Triplex Via Theology’, in Classical Theism, eds by Jonathan Fuqua and Robert C. Koons (Routledge, 2022), p. 107, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003202172-8.
37 On this, see Clemente Huneeus, ‘Triplex Via and the “Gap Problem” with Cosmological Arguments’, New Blackfriars 103, no. 1106 (2022), pp. 536–53, https://doi.org/10.1111/nbfr.12727; Clemente Huneeus, ‘The Functions of Natural Theology in Thomas Aquinas’, Religious Studies, Firstview (2023), doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412523000616.
38 De Haan, ‘Thomist Classical Theism: Divine Simplicity within Aquinas’ Triplex via Theology’, p. 108.
39 See Huneeus, ‘The Functions of Natural Theology in Thomas Aquinas’; Huneeus, ‘Triplex via and the “Gap Problem” with Cosmological Arguments’.
40 On the systematic order of the components of the triplex via and the foundational role of causality within this heuristic program, see De Haan, ‘Thomist Classical Theism: Divine Simplicity within Aquinas’ Triplex Via Theology’, pp. 107–10; Huneeus, ‘Triplex Via and the “Gap Problem” with Cosmological Arguments’, pp. 544–46.
41 With diverse nuances, such thesis has been developed by David B. Burrell, Aquinas. God and Action (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979); Lubor Velecky, Aquinas’ Five Arguments in the Summa Theologiae 1a 2, 3 (Kampen: Kok, 1994); Rudi Te Velde, Aquinas on God: The ‘Divine Science’ of the Summa Theologiae (Farnham: Ashgate, 2006); Huneeus, ‘The Functions of Natural Theology in Thomas Aquinas’.
42 On the relationship between DDS and the negative moment in the theology of St. Thomas, see Gregory Rocca, Speaking the Incomprehensible God. Thomas Aquinas on the Interplay of Positive and Negative Theology (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004), pp. 3–77.
43 Christopher Hughes, On a Complex Theory of a Simple God. An Investigation in Aquinas’ Philosophical Theology (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1989), p. 4.
44 See Hughes, pp. 28–30.
45 Hughes, pp. 33–36 and 41–50.
46 Hughes, pp. 36–41.
47 Hughes, pp. 50–54.
48 In fact, what Hughes proposes does not seem to be a doctrine of simplicity at all. It is the mere acceptance, with certain restrictions, that God is immaterial and eternal. See Hughes, pp. 149–52.
49 Some authors have suggested that rather than an identification of the divine attributes with each other and of these with God, what the theist really requires is to establish an indivisibility or necessary connection between the divine attributes. For example, see Yann Schmitt, ‘The Deadlock of Divine Simplicity’, International Journal of Philosophy of Religion 74 (2013), pp. 117–18, or Immink, Divine Simplicity, pp. 168–70. In a similar vein, Hughes suggests at one point in his book positing a common supervenience basis for all divine properties instead of identifying them. See Hughes, On a Complex Theory of a Simple God. An Investigation in Aquinas’ Philosophical Theology, pp. 71–83. I think there are two problems with these suggestions. First, their only motivation seems to be adherence to excessively univocal theories of abstract reference, where the mere conceptual distinction between two predicates is sufficient to assume the existence of a correlative ontological distinction among properties. There are reasons entirely independent of DDS to think that such metaphysics of properties are implausible and problematic. The mere observation that two properties are necessarily coextensive would be sufficient, prima facie, to think that in reality we are here confronting one and the same property considered from different angles. On the other hand, how can this necessary connection be justified if not by appealing to identity? This would require either a case-by-case examination of all the divine attributes, resulting in the verification, for example, of the existence of this common basis of supervenience that Hughes speaks of, or else dogmatically postulating a necessary connection other than identity or causal dependence by virtue of which two things that are distinct in themselves must necessarily always be united. In this sense, it seems much more economical and reasonable to maintain that all the predications or true propositions expressing an intrinsic feature about God have one and the same ontological item as its truthmaker (the absolutely simple and indivisible divine essence), and that the necessitating connection between divine intrinsic properties is simply the self-identity of the truthmaker for all the true propositions that ascribe him those properties.