the traditional doctrine of divine simplicity

The Traditional Doctrine of Divine SimplicityAuthor(s): Katherin Rogers and Kate RogersSource: Religious Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Jun., 1996), pp. 165-186Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20019808 .Accessed: 08/03/2014 10:51

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Rel. Stud. 32, pp. 165-186. Copyright ? 1996 Cambridge University Press

KATHERIN ROGERS

THE TRADITIONAL DOCTRINE OF DIVINE SIMPLICITY

The question of the one and the many is the oldest problem in western

philosophy. It was the fact that Tha?es concluded that there must be some

fundamental unity underlying the multiplicity of the world of experience that made him a philosopher, after all. The view that simplicity is a per? fection, implying immutability and incorruptibility, was established by the time of Parmenides and found its fullest expression in the Neoplatonic system of Plotinus who considered the term

'

One '

to be the least inadequate name

for the source of all. When the great religious thinkers of the middle ages strove to produce a systematic world-view synthesizing divine revelation and

Greek philosophy they made the absolute simplicity of God the keystone of their intellectual structure. Recently the question of divine simplicity has come up in the work of a number of contemporary analytic philosophers of

religion. There has been lively debate between those who would defend the view that a perfect God must be absolutely simple and those who would deny it, and both proponents and opponents claim to be working with the tra?

ditional doctrine of simplicity as it was set forth by such late classical and medieval thinkers as Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas. In the contemporary discussion, however, the traditional position has frequently been misrepre? sented. Thus, recent criticisms, even if they are cogent, succeed only against the doctrine of simplicity in its current form.1 And if the recent defences seem tortuous and inadequate this need not cast doubt upon the defensibility of the traditional position.2

1 Recent critics include Richard LaCroix, 'Augustine on the Simplicity of God ', The New Scholasticism, Li, 4 (1977) ; Plantinga, Does God Have a Mature? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1980) ; Morris, '

On God and Mann : A View of Divine Simplicity ', in Anselmian Explorations (Notre Dame, IN : University of Notre Dame Press, 1987) ; Christopher Hughes, On a Complex Theory of a Simple God (Ithaca, NY: Cornell

University Press, 1989). 2 Recent defenders include Mann, 'Divine Simplicity', Religious Studies, xvm (1982), 'Simplicity and Immutability in God', International Philosophical Quarterly, xxni (1983), and 'Simplicity and Properties: A

Reply to Morris', Religious Studies, xxn (1986) ; Stump and Kretzmann, 'Absolute Simplicity', Faith and Philosophy, 11 (1985); Brian Leftow, 'Is God an Abstract Object?', Nous, xxiv, 4 (1990); and William Vallicella, 'Divine Simplicity: A New Defense', Faith and Philosophy, ix (1992). Among the defenders, Stump and Kretzmann do offer the correct analysis of the traditional view of divine simplicity, but their article is devoted to reconciling this doctrine with the idea that God has free choice rather than to making the doctrine itself plausible.

Nicholas Wolterstorff suggests that the medieval position on divine simplicity makes sense within what he terms the medieval's 'constituent ontology'. It would have seemed unproblematic in the middle ages to identify God with His nature because, 'For a medieval,... an essence or nature was just as concrete as that of which it is the nature'. Corporeal beings are made of two constituents, a nature and some


166 KATHERIN ROGERS

The recent characterization of the doctrine usually goes roughly like this :

God has certain properties; omniscience, omnipotence, perfect goodness, etc. He is identical with these properties (or at least with His own instance of

these properties3) and each property is identical with the rest. The difficulties with this view are obvious. How can God, who is a person, be a property? How can He be, for example, omniscience, which is an abstract entity? Omniscience, per se cannot be an agent. And since knowledge is clearly a

different property from power, and both are quite different from goodness, how can any sense be made of the claim that the perfect instances of these

properties are literally the same thing? This doctrine of divine simplicity, that God is identical with His properties, is not the one found in Augustine or Anselm or Aquinas. The traditional doctrine denies that God has any

properties at all. God is an act... an eternal, immutable, absolutely simple act. But if God is an act how can He possibly be a person? And how can all the terms we use of God, omniscient and the rest, name this single act?

In this paper, after a brief look at motivations for the doctrine of simplicity and at a medieval version of the doctrine different from that offered by

Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas, I shall try to explain and defend the two

aspects of the traditional view; God simply is an act, and all the words we use to describe God refer to this act. It will become clear that the compre

hensibility of the doctrine depends on an entire system of classic metaphysical assumptions, but analogies from human experience help render these assump? tions plausible. From the doctrine of divine simplicity there follow a number

of worrisome corollaries which I shall set out, with some attempt to mitigate their apparent difficulties. The most troublesome corollary will prove to be the fact that on the traditional doctrine of simplicity, if rational creatures

have libertarian freedom then they contribute to God's nature. This is a

rather shocking conclusion on which the believer in freedom and divine

simplicity may just have to bite the bullet. Thus this paper is intended to defend the coherence of the doctrine of divine simplicity, but without mini?

mizing the problems with the view.

individuating matter which, according to Wolterstorff, the medieval thinker sees as really existing things which combine to produce an individual, Thus the medieval could easily identify an incorporeal God with His nature ('Divine Simplicity', Philosophical Perspectives, 5, Philosophy of Religion, ed. James E. Tomberlin (Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing Company, 1991), pp. 531-52, see pp. 541-4).

WolterstorfTs analysis of the medieval position is questionable. It seems mistaken at the outset to speak of a medieval view when the question of the ontological status of natures was one of the most hotly argued issues of the middle ages. (The view which Wolterstorff attributes to

' us twentieth century philosophers...

to think of things as having essences, and to think of these essences as certain properties or sets of properties '

is the view which Abelard advanced as that of the moderni in the twelfth century.) The philosopher cited

by Wolterstorff is Aquinas, but Aquinas, good Aristotelian that he is, adamantly denies that natures are

concrete things the way particulars are. True, according to Aquinas, in the case of incorporeal individuals the individual is identified with its form, but this does not explain divine simplicity. The angels are

incorporeal. For them there is no individuating matter, and so each angel is a species unto itself. But the

angels are not simple the way God is. For example, their essence is not identical with their existence. Only God, the absolutely necessary being, is perfectly simple. Thus WolterstorfTs analysis does not seem to

capture Aquinas' position on divine simplicity. 3 See Mann (1982), p. 454.


DIVINE SIMPLICITY 167

I. WHY DIVINE SIMPLICITY?

The recent debate over simplicity underscores a number of reasons for

adopting the doctrine. It enables us to solve the paradox from the Euthyphro concerning the relationship of God to the moral order. God neither obeys the

moral law nor invents it. God is the standard for good since He is, eternally and immutably, perfect goodness itself. Contemporary philosophers have

argued that the doctrine of an absolutely simple God supports the cosmo?

logical argument and allows us a variant on the ontological argument.4 For the medievals the doctrine of divine simplicity followed inevitably from the

aseity of God and the incorruptibility of God. God exists a se, absolutely independently of all that is not Himself. In fact, whatever is not God is created by Him. It is certainly correct to characterize Him as wise, powerful, good, etc., but if wisdom, power, goodness and the rest are necessary to God's

nature, but not identical to it, then God depends for his existence on other

things. But that is impossible. Therefore God does not possess these qualities. He simply is omniscience etc. For God essence and existence are the same.5

Moreover, God is incorruptible, but something with parts can be broken down into its constituents. And even if it cannot be pulled apart in fact (at least this is the way Anselm puts the argument) its parts can be separated in intellectu. As a being than which no greater can be thought, God cannot be

divided into constituents even conceptually. If He could be, we could think of a superior being, one which could not be pulled apart even in intellectu?

A further argument which the medievals may have taken as too obvious to state is that, since unity is a perfection, a perfect being must be characterized

by perfect unity, transcending any conceivable multiplicity including that of numerous properties in a substrate. Thus, there is good reason to retain the

doctrine, if possible.

II. THE ERIUGENEAN POSITION

The doctrine of divine simplicity adopted by Augustine, Anselm and

Aquinas, what I am calling 'the traditional doctrine', is not the only view of divine simplicity advanced by medieval philosophers. It will be valuable to look at the position of Scotus Eriugena, not just for comparison, but also because it is intrinsically interesting and has proved itself to be a tenacious version of the doctrine of simplicity.

When Plotinus addressed the question of how you can correctly use a number of different terms to describe something absolutely simple he gave the obvious answer. You can't. The One is above all positive charac

4 See respectively, Stump and Kretzmann (1985), pp. 376-8 and Leftow (1990), pp. 595-6. 5 Anselm, Monologion, xvi and xvn, Aquinas, ST la. 3, 4. See also, Leftow (1990), pp. 582-3. 6 Proslogion, xvm.


168 KATHERIN ROGERS

terization. He will grudgingly permit the names of'Good' and 'Beautiful' to be applied to it so long as these terms are seen to be synonymous with

'One', which is itself only the least inadequate way of referring to the source of all. Positive superlatives are reserved for that lower divinity which eman? ates from the One, the Nous. It is the Nous, described in a single passage as the World of Forms and Thought thinking Itself, which is Highest Wisdom and Highest Being. But the Nous, precisely because it does contain, though in some unified way, the World of Forms, and because it cannot escape the

duality of being not only the subject but also the object of thought, cannot be the source of all. The ultimate must be One.7 (Among the virtues of the

Nous Plotinus does not include omnipotence as the medievals understand it, since the ability to act in our world is not a perfection. It is the lowest member of Plotinus' divine trinity, the World Soul, which brings the physical universe into being, and its generative act is often described rather negatively, as a

falling away from the best.) If the criticism is raised that this view renders it impossible to talk about the ultimate source, Plotinus responds that that is exactly the point. We cannot talk about the One. We cannot think about the One. The goal of our lives is to pass beyond reason upwards through the

Highest Intellection, the Nous, and experience union with the One in a flight of'the alone to the alone'.8

Plotinus' system with its three-tiered deity and its path beyond reason to the inexpressible had a profound impact on medieval thinkers. In the Latin

west Augustine adapted Plotinus to an extent which is only now being fully evaluated. The eastern fathers were even more thorough in embracing their

Neoplatonic predecessor. And in the ninth century when the works of these fathers were made available to the great Carolingian thinker, John Scotus

Eriugena, he produced an amazing synthesis of Christian Neoplatonic phil? osophy centred around the question of how the many could arise from the

One. As a Christian, Eriugena will not place God wholly outside relationship with the world He creates. He cannot follow Plotinus in seeing the source of all as entirely above and beyond the world of multiplicity. Moreover

Eriugena is committed to the inerrant truth of Scripture, and clearly the Bible gives God positive attributes. But Eriugena works within the frame? work of a set of epistemic assumptions, really rather plausible assumptions, which allow him to proceed to elaborate a system in which God is One, very much like Plotinus' One, yet related to the world and correctly called

Wisdom, Goodness, and all those other positive terms. When we try to think about God, Eriugena holds, we are pushing the limits of human capacities.

We cannot possibly wrap our minds around God just as He is. The closest we can come to understanding God is to affirm all those names which

Scripture applies to Him, never forgetting that, because He is unity, God

7 Enneads, vi 9.2. 8 Enneads, vi 9.4. (The phrase 'the alone to the alone' is from Enneads, v 1.6.)



transcends any meaning we give these terms. Thus God is Good and Not

Good, Wise and Not-Wise, Being and (yes ! ) Not-Being. And it is up to the human knower to keep both sides of the equation in mind at once. We do this by, in a way, transcending both via afirmativa and via negativa and

adopting the via superlativa, God is Super-Good, Super-Wise, etc. This is a sort of synthesis, says Eriugena, because although the terms are positive grammatically, they are negative in meaning.9

This synthesis of the via afirmativa with the via negativa is more than just a scheme for how our human words apply to God. It reflects the nature of the universe. In his Periphyseon Eriugena explains that the first division of nature, that which is not created but creates, God considered in Himself, is absolutely above all names. He has no essence. He is unknown, even to Himself. Prior

(logically) to creation He is Not-Being. He Himself is the Nothing from which the world was made. In producing the second division of nature, that which is created and creates, God gives Himself a nature. He creates Himself. This second division, as in Plotinus' system, is the World of the Forms where

universals, abstract entities like Goodness, Wisdom, the Form of Man etc., are located. The difference between Eriugena and his predecessor is that for Plotinus the source remained fixed in its unity and transcendence, whereas for Eriugena God is not only transcendent but also immanent. He creates

Himself even in the third division of nature, that which is created but does not create, our physical universe. God

' runs through

'

all of His creation. God is above all the terms we might give Him. He is their author, yet they are

properly applied to Him for, making all things, God makes Himself.10 Thus, in addressing the question at hand,

'

Is God so perfectly One that no positive attribute can be correctly applied to Him, or in spite of His unity, can He properly be called all those names given Him in the Bible?' Eriugena answers with a resounding 'Yes!' And he has not quite contradicted himself because, though we do seem to affirm what we deny, we are affirming and

denying relative to two different aspects of God, God in Himself, and God as Creator.

Now it is not surprising that neither Eriugena's name nor his method have found their way into the contemporary debate. The sanguine embracing of

opposites (even apparent opposites) is not the analytic way. In fact Eriugena's work did not fare much better in the ninth century. He was accused of pantheism, and if the charge is not strictly correct, it is easy to see how it could come to be made. Apparently Eriugena could not take quill to velum without infuriating every churchman in Europe, and legend has it that his pupils eventually stabbed him to death with their pens. But, besides its intrinsic philosophical interest, there are at least two reasons to keep

Eriugena's answer to the problem of the One and the many in mind. First,

9 Periphyseon, 1.14.

10 Periphyseon, 1.12.


170 KATHERIN ROGERS

at least in the middle ages, it is the most significant alternative to the doctrine of simplicity found in Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas, and so it may help clarify that view by contrast. The second reason is that various aspects of the

Eriugenean view crop up often and in unlikely places in contemporary

thought. (I am not necessarily suggesting direct historical influence. Those who sound like Eriugena may be appealing to common Neoplatonic sources, or just following out what they take to be the logic of the argument.) The process theologians, drawing on Hegel, who was profoundly influenced by classic Neoplatonism, downplay the transcendent side of Eriugena's balanc?

ing act and posit a God of Becoming Who creates Himself in history. And

Jean-Paul Sartre, of all people (again under Hegelian influence), says of human beings just what Eriugena said of God. Since we are absolutely independent beings, our existence precedes our essence. We have no pre?

existing nature. We are nothing until we create. The difference is that God doesn't get nauseous.

Most surprising of all, perhaps, traces of the Eriugenean view (though not labelled as such) can be found in the current discussion of divine simplicity among the analytic philosophers of religion. Apparently impressed, as was

Eriugena, by the argument that God must be creator of all that is not

identical with Himself, some participants in the recent debate have suggested that God is the creator of all abstract objects. Thus he creates the properties of goodness, wisdom and the rest. And since it is these properties which

constitute God's nature, God is the creator of His own nature.11 Put in this

sketchy way, this sounds very Eriugenean. The contemporary exposition of

the doctrine has not yet been fleshed out sufficiently for a final judgment to be made. It appears as odd today as it must have in the ninth century to say that God's nature is a creature. It remains to be seen whether or not the current generation of philosophers can advance this prima facie contradiction in a plausible form.

III. GOD IS SIMPLY ACT

Unlike the more Plotinian position of Eriugena, the traditional doctrine of

divine simplicity, that advanced by Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas, holds

that God has a nature, and that, rather than transcending and creating all

the perfections by which we name Him, God just is these perfections. At this point a warning is in order. Caveat lector. I have spoken in a single breath of

Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas and of a single doctrine that they share.

This is common practice in the contemporary literature, but there are

decided differences in the metaphysics of these three thinkers, and the

differences are felt in their discussions of this crucial question of divine

simplicity. For example, as everyone knows, Aquinas was profoundly influ

11 See Thomas V. Morris, 'Absolute Creation', in Anselmian Explorations, pp. 161-78.


DIVINE SIMPLICITY I 7 I

enced by Aristotelian metaphysics, though the impact of Augustinian Neo?

platonism on the thirteenth century thinker must not be underestimated. In

fact, the philosophical and historical relationship of these three has generated a great deal of scholarship, and will generate more before any consensus is reached... if ever. In this paper I am not attempting detailed historical

exegesis. My hope is to present, as the traditional approach, a version of the doctrine of divine simplicity sufficiently general to capture the similarities between Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas, and transcend the differences. Thus I shall appeal to texts from all three with only occasional notations

concerning variations in their views, but this ought not to be read as

suggesting that, below the most general level, their understanding of the traditional doctrine was exactly the same.

The clearest expression of the traditional doctrine is found in Aquinas. Since striving for perfection is the same as actualizing potentials, something

which is absolute perfection must be fully actualized. It must be wholly in act (maxime esse in actu, et per consequens maxime perfectum) .12 Though Aquinas' statement of the doctrine depends on an Aristotelian framework, the basic thesis that God is simply act, is clearly found in his more Platonic pre?

decessors, too. Anselm, for example, explains that when we say that God

exists, we ought to understand that it is not that He has existence, but that He is the highest existence. When we say that He is alive, we ought to

understand that God does not have life, rather, He is the highest life. He concludes his discussion by holding that for God to be the highest existence, the highest life etc., is to be 'nothing other than supremely being, supremely living, and the rest

'

(non est aliud quam summe ens, summe vivens, et alia similiter) .13 God is not a property, He is an act. Thus the criticism of the doctrine of

simplicity based on the idea that a god who is just a property, an abstract entity, could not do anything, entirely misses the mark when the traditional doctrine is in question. Not only does God do things, but He just is what He does.

But what does it mean to say that God simply is His act? First it will prove useful to try to distinguish clearly between acts and properties. The most obvious difference is that acts are what you do and properties are what you have. If we say, 'Sophia writes', or 'Sophia is writing', we describe Sophia engaged in an action. We do not name some quality or trait which she

possesses, which is the definition of'property' in Webster's. We do not even refer to a power or ability by which she writes. If someone should argue that '

Sophia writes ', is properly to be translated as '

Sophia possesses the property of being such that she is writing', or some such thing, there are three points to be made in response. First this will involves us in an infinite regress, because 'she is writing' remains embedded in our new property sentence.

Second, if the new property sentence is really equivalent to the original action 12

ST, la. 4, i. 13

Monologion, xvi.


172 KATHERIN ROGERS

sentence, then the translation is a mere matter of words and will not affect the attempt to render the view that God is act coherent. Third, it is not at all clear that the property sentence is an adequate translation for the action

sentence, and the burden of proof ought to lie with the one who wants to

speak the most awkwardly and use up the most ink and paper. Obviously it is one thing to do an action and another to have a property

if'to have a property' means to possess some quality or trait. The reason that the two are easily confused may be that, for created beings, to do an action

implies to have a property. That is 'Sophia writes', implies 'Sophia is literate'. Sophia could not write if she did not possess the power of being able to write. I take it that any creaturely action is the manifestation of some

property, or, as Aquinas would put it, the actualization of some potential. The point is that this is precisely the difference between God and creatures. God does not have any unactualized potentials. If we say, 'God is

omniscient', we should not understand this to mean that God possesses some quality, omniscience, which enables Him to know everything. Rather '

God is omniscient' means just that God knows everything. Strictly speaking, God does not have the power to do things. God does things.

In the tradition in question the properties which creatures have are simply the fragmented reflections in the finite being, of the one, perfect act which is God. In the sentences, 'Jeanette is wise', or 'Patrick is powerful', or 'Nicholas is good', the words 'wise' and 'powerful' and 'good' refer to

properties possessed by these creatures, properties which are the scattered

images of God's act. Thus Mann's attempt to defend the simplicity doctrine cannot be squared with the traditional view. Mann argues that God is not to be considered Wisdom per se, for example, or Justice per se. That is, the

wisdom and justice which creatures have is one thing, and the Wisdom and Justice with which God is identical are another.14 But for Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas the individual perfections in creatures are the limited reflections of the perfection of God. God is Wisdom and Justice, and creatures are wise and just by participation.15

The question remains : How can God, Who is a person, possibly be an act? If actions are what people do, it seems obvious that a person cannot be an

action. If we look carefully at human experience, though, this point becomes much less obvious. Odd as it seems to call David Hume as a witness for the defence here, the radical empiricists seem to be correct when they point out

that all we can experience of ourselves is our own experiencing. We do not

experience ourselves as having certain traits or properties underlying our

activities. All we perceive is our thinking, our feeling, our perceiving. But

14 Mann (1982). 15 This is one of the areas in which our three spokesmen for the tradition seem to differ. All three speak of the creature

'participating' in the Creator, but it is probably correct to say that Augustine and Anselm are more comfortable with the view that creatures somehow

'

share in '

God's being than is the less Platonic

Aquinas whose doctrine of participation focuses on the metaphor of'copying' rather than 'sharing in'.


DIVINE SIMPLICITY I 73

thinking, feeling and perceiving are actions. Or, if this seems to be too broad a use of the term 'action' (a narrower use might recognize the fact that we often use the word in connection with deliberation and choice) nonetheless, these experiences are much more like things we do than like properties we

have. We (at least those of us who reject radical empiricism) hypothesize some one thing which does the thinking, feeling etc., a unifying self under?

lying our various experiences, because we see that if there is no one somehow 'beneath' the diverse many then we as individuals do not really exist at all.

But in terms of what we can know of ourselves through introspection, we are

really rather more like actions than not. With God we do not hypothesize any unity underlying the diversity because there is no diversity. There is just the one, perfect act which is God. In order to make the traditional doctrine of simplicity somewhat more comprehensible, it is only necessary to show that in human experience there is some analogue for a person who is an act. Since what we perceive of ourselves in act, or at least active, the analogy is not hard to find.

Before we address the more difficult question of how all those terms we

properly use of God could refer to a single act, it would be a good idea to mention a problem which arises even if we do not insist that God's knowing

is His doing, etc. The contemporary participants in the debate concerning divine simplicity have done the medievals the favour of largely ignoring an

especially difficult facet of the traditional approach to the problem. For

simplicity's sake let us focus on one term: 'omniscient'. God is omniscient in that He knows everything. But surely we have already introduced multi?

plicity. There are, after all, a lot of different things to know. But if God knows a

variety of things He is not as perfectly unified as He might be. Seeing this, Plotinus simply holds that the ultimate source of all does not know anything ... even itself. It is the next level down, the Nous, which knows itself and the

forms of things, and even Nous does not concern itself with corporeal indivi? duals. Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas, of course, were committed to a God who is not just One, but is also providential. God knows all things down to the least fallen sparrow and the number of hairs on our heads. The problem, then, for the traditional doctrine of simplicity, is to argue that this multi?

plicity can be contained in one act of knowing. Again, human experience cannot offer a precise picture of how this could be, but it may provide an

adequate analogy. Suppose I say, 'I know Socrates' (I don't intend any fancy meaning for 'know' here. I'm using it as one would in ordinary conversation.) And suppose I do know Socrates. Perhaps my knowledge incorporates at least that he was the teacher of Plato, a critic of the Sophists, and had a snub nose. These three facts are facets of my knowing one thing, Socrates. Thus, that one might know many things in knowing one thing is

quite an ordinary phenomenon even for the limited human creature. Instead of knowing merely a great number of things through one act of knowing,


174 KATHERIN ROGERS

God knows all things in His one act. Aquinas systematizes this view nicely when he explains that God knows all things in knowing Himself, because in

knowing Himself He knows the myriad ways in which He could be

imitated.16 If it is argued that, nonetheless, God knows many things, the

spokesmen for the tradition with which we are working will agree that indeed He does. If knowing everything in one, single act is insufficiently simple, the clearest medieval alternative is the Eriugenean approach. One could hold that Plotinus was right. God, considered in Himself, is so perfectly unified that He does not know anything, even His own nature. But this view has its own problems, so it may be best to stick with the traditional doctrine which allows a sort of multiplicity to be subsumed under the divine unity.

IV. ALL GOD'S ACTS ARE ONE

The traditional doctrine of divine simplicity holds that God is not a property but an act. All the terms we correctly use to describe God refer to this one

act. But this is puzzling. We describe God in a great many different ways. For the sake of brevity let us focus on three key terms we properly use to

describe God: 'omniscient', 'omnipotent' and 'perfectly good'. I take it that most of what we want to say about God (apart from God as triune or

incarnate) can be fitted under one or another of these headings. And let us first ask whether or not 'omniscient' and

'omnipotent' could refer to the same act.

In the tradition we are considering it was taken almost for granted that

God's knowing is His doing, or put the other way around, God does things through His knowing. When the medievals read in Genesis that in the

beginning God said, 'Let there be light', they took God's 'speaking' to be

thinking. And when they read at the beginning of John's Gospel that it was

through the Word that all things were made, they again understood the

Word, the Second Person of the Trinity, to be logos, ratio, the thinking of

God.17 God's thought is causal, and God acts through thinking. (A trouble? some corollary follows from this, as we shall see below.)

Even on the human level, if thinking and doing are not literally the same,

they are obviously closely related. (When speaking of divine thought we can use

'thinking' and 'knowing' interchangeably since whatever God thinks He knows. On the human level knowledge is a rare and much disputed

phenomenon, and so for the purposes of our discussion here it will be safest to talk about thinking.) At least in the case of deliberate actions, either thinking is part of doing or it is a necessary adjunct. It is difficult, if not

impossible, to imagine doing anything deliberately without thinking about

16 SCG i, 55. Anselm discusses the idea that in knowing Himself God knows all things at length in the

Monologion, see especially ch. xxxm. 17 See, for example, Anselm's Monologion, chs xxxm-xxxvi.



how or why or what to do. Even on the human level, act and thought cannot

be divorced. And for God, who acts without the aid of anything external to

His own mind, no body, no matter from which to create, the idea that His

knowledge and His power are one is not incoherent. But can omnipotence be the same as perfect goodness? If we start with the

human condition, identifying power and goodness seems a formidable task.

We might take Joseph Stalin as an example of human power. He managed to impose his own arbitrary will on a vast empire, terrorizing and brutalizing its citizens and ordering the deaths of innocent millions. Now that's power!

And as an example of goodness, perhaps Mother Theresa, who has devoted her life to feeding the hungry and comforting the sick and lonely. There does not seem to be much common ground between Mother Theresa and Joseph Stalin, between earthly goodness and earthly power. The goodness and

power with which we are familiar seem almost to be opposites, so how can we make sense of the idea that on the divine level they are literally the same

thing...God's perfect act? I take it that there is a mistaken assumption at work here, and once we

eradicate it, the close relation of goodness to power will be apparent. At first

glance one might suppose that '

omnipotence '

could correctly be defined as

'the ability to do any possible thing', or words to that effect. This was not

the traditional understanding of God's omnipotence. There are all sorts of

possible actions that God cannot do. God cannot sin. God cannot make a

mistake. God cannot even blow His nose. None of these technical 'inabilities' are limitations of God's power. The 'ability' to sin is a weakness and can

only be possessed by a limited corruptible creature. To be 'able' to be

mistaken is intrinsically a flaw. And to blow your nose, you need a nose to

blow, but noses only belong to corporeal beings who are imperfect and limited by the very fact of their corporeality.18 In the tradition of Augustine,

Anselm and Aquinas, 'omnipotence' does not mean the ability to do just anything. The word would be best translated

' all powerful

' in the sense of

'possessing all strengths', when 'strength' connotes something positive and valuable. On this understanding, the ability to act intelligently would be a

strength and the ability to act brutally would not. God's strengths are creative and productive. God does not do just anything. God does what is good. That is what divine omnipotence means.

If this analysis of God's power is correct, then we may want to reconsider our choice of Joseph Stalin as a good example of earthly power. No doubt Stalin was an extremely 'powerful' human being as the world judges power, but it may be that the world has a funny idea of what real power consists in.

Certainly Stalin had the 'ability' to make people do things that they didn't want to do, and destroy on a grand scale, but this can hardly be considered

18 See, for example, Anselm's discussion of why God is not limited by the fact that He cannot sin. De

libertati arbitrii, i.


176 KATHERIN ROGERS

a strength. That the world calls Stalin and his ilk 'powerful' reflects more on

the corrupt and twisted nature of our fallen condition than it does on whether divine power could be identical with divine goodness. To understand God, in however limited a fashion, we look to His image in the creature. Thus we are concerned here not with just any individual or activity which people happen to choose to call 'powerful'. We are concerned with the sort of

individual and activity that reflects the perfect productive power of the divine. On this understanding of power, Mother Theresa is more powerful than Joseph Stalin. The act of feeding a single hungry child is more genuinely

powerful than all the brutality and all the murder in our brutal and mur?

derous century. Thus power, the sort of creative strength which is the image of God, is not far from goodness, even on the human level.

Moreover, that God's goodness is identical with His one, perfect act follows

immediately from the natural law ethics of the tradition we are discussing. The good for any creature is to fulfil its nature. The good for a cat is to

become the best example of catness it can be. The good for an oak tree is to

be the best oak. The good for the human being (also known in this tradition, pace Kant, as 'happiness for the individual') is to do those things conducive to fulfilment for a heaven-bound, rational, social animal.19 Another way of

putting this is to say that the good for anything is the actualization of its

potentials. But this means that perfect good must be pure actualization...

nothing but act... that is, God. God does not have goodness over and above what He does. In being pure act He is perfect goodness, and in striving

towards actuality, that is in trying to fulfil their natures, creatures imitate God. Natural law ethics requires that 'ought' be derived from 'is' on the

creaturely level, because 'ought'just is 'is' on the divine. If one is wedded to some other ethical system, something Kantian and deontological let's say,

than, of course, it will be very difficult to see how God's goodness can be identical with His act of knowing and causing. But if one finds the concept of a simple God appealing, one might do well to look seriously at the natural law ethics which is an essential facet of the traditional doctrine.

V. WORRISOME COROLLARIES

Two of the most serious contemporary criticisms of the doctrine of divine

simplicity can be met by the traditional version. The critics argue that it is

absurd to identify God, who is a person, with a property, and it is equally 19 Natural law ethics is set out most systematically and clearly by Aquinas, but I think it is correct to

say that, in general, both Augustine and Anselm agree that the goal of human existence, happiness, is

to be achieved by fulfilling human nature. The major difference between Aquinas and his more Platonic predecessors is that for Aquinas ethics, like everything else about the human condition, is

a split-level affair. There is a natural man and a supernatural man, and hence a natural goal of earthly happiness, and a supernatural goal of eternal happiness with God in heaven. Augustine and Anselm

see the process as a continuum. The only fulfilment for the human being lies in God and everything else must be ordered to God with no intermediate goal.



absurd to identify God's various properties with one another. But God is not an inert property, an abstract object. God is pure act, and some sense can be made ofthat idea when we consider our own experiences. Moreover, that God thinks all that He thinks and does all that He does in one act is not incoherent. Nor is the view that God's perfect act is the standard for all good.

And I take it that if God's omniscience, omnipotence and perfect goodness can be coherently thought to be one, it is unlikely that any term we use of

God (setting aside terms concerning the Trinity and the Incarnation) will prove irreconcilable with God's unity. However, some very troubling corol? laries of the traditional doctrine of divine simplicity remain to be discussed.

First, the traditional view entails a conclusion that many contemporary philosophers of religion find simply inconceivable, and that is that God is eternal. He is outside of time. To the temporal religious believer it seems to be the case that in the past God made the world, in the present He sustains

it, and in the future... perhaps He will bring it to an end. If God simply is His act, and if His act is in time, then God's nature changes radically and cannot be unified. In the past what God was was the act of creating. Now

He is the act of sustaining. In the future He will be the act of ending the world. As we noted in discussing the position of the radical empiricists on

personal identity, if what you are is a succession of changing experiences, then there is no real self there at all. But if we posit some unity underlying

but separate from the changing acts of a temporal God we have entirely abandoned the doctrine of simplicity. If an eternal God is incoherent, then so is the traditional doctrine of divine simplicity.

Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas are firmly committed to the idea of an

atemporal God. Like the modern physicists, the medieval philosophers hold that time is a function of the physical universe. God, as the author of the

physical world, transcends and cannot be bound by His creation. The

spokesmen for the tradition find it inconceivable that God could be temporal, His past lost forever, His future yet to come, clinging, as do we severely

limited creatures, to a barely existing present. And each finds the concept of an eternal God sufficiently coherent to see analogues in human experience.

Augustine, in his classic treatment of the nature of time and eternity in his

Confessions describes God's eternal present as being like a present moment of

time, but entirely irnmutable.20 Aquinas offers the image of someone sur?

veying a road (time) from the highest point around (eternity). From such a vantage one could see the entire road, though the travellers on the road could not see far ahead or behind.21 Anselm suggests the most intriguing analogy. 'Just as the present time contains all place and whatever exists in any place : in the same way all time and what exists in any time is enclosed in the eternal

present.'22 Contemporary philosophers of religion, too, have argued that an

20 Confessions, xi, 11-14.

21 ST la. 14, 13. 22 De concordia praescientiae et praedestinationis et gratiae dei cum libero arbitrio 1, v.


178 KATHERIN ROGERS

eternal God who nonetheless acts upon a temporal world is not an incoherent idea.23 This is a difficult issue and time does not permit a discussion of it here. Suffice it to say that there is no escaping the fact that the traditional doctrine of simplicity entails an eternal God, but the idea that God transcends the

temporal universe is at least defensible. That a simple God must be eternal need not make us reject divine simplicity.

There is, however, a more problematic corollary to consider. If God is

eternally what He does, it seems that He could not do other than He does without being other than He is... that is, being other than God. It follows that God not only 'must' create, but 'must' create this world. And this seems to infringe upon God's freedom.

Mann attempts a solution to this problem by arguing that someone who holds that God is 'his own power or activity', is not saying, 'Necessarily, the essence of God is what God wills', but rather, 'Necessarily, the essence of

God is the power or activity by which God wills all things'. In order to understand the difference we must

'

distinguish between a power or activity and its manifestation'. Mann offers the example of someone who can lift

150 lb or less in a world in which all the objects weigh over 150 lb. Such a person would have the power to lift things which he could never manifest.

Similarly, God's power would remain the same even if He chose to manifest it differently, or not at all.24

There are several problems with this defence. First, it makes sense only if we abandon the traditional doctrine of simplicity. Mann describes God as

being His 'power or activity'. Now, an inherent power can be distinguished from the manifestation of that power. Sophia is literate, and then exhibits that power of hers by actually sitting down and writing. However, an activity just is the manifestation of a power (unless you are a perfectly simple divinity, in which case all there is is the act). Mann's hypothetical inhabitant of

Heavyworld may have the power to lift 150 lb or less, but he cannot engage in the activity of lifting 150 lb or less in a world where everything weighs

more. Mann will have to choose between describing God as an activity or as a power. If God is his power, then we are back with our original problem.

How can a mere ability to be or do something be a person at all? Moreover, Mann seems to aggravate the problem with his weight lifting example. The

example was intended to show that one might properly be said to have a

power which one does not manifest. But if omnipotence, omniscience and

perfect goodness refer only to a power, then God might be omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good, yet not do anything, know anything or

23 Recent defenders of divine eternity include Stump and Kretzmann, 'Eternity', The Journal of Philosophy, Lxxviii (1981), 429-58 and Brian Leftow, Time and Eternity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991). Both defences argue that on the medieval understanding God's eternity is extended. I argue that, not only is the notion of an extended eternity incoherent, but it is almost certainly not what the

medievals had in mind, precisely because extension would vitiate God's perfect unity. '

Eternity has no

Duration', Religious Studies, xxx (1994), 1-16. 24 Mann (1983), pp. 273-5.



actually exhibit any goodness, and this seems odd to say the least. But if God is His Act, as the tradition holds, the current difficulty remains. God cannot

do other than He does without being other than He is.

Stump and Kretzmann address the same question and explain what they take to be Aquinas's solution to the problem. They allow that there is a sense in which God's having created just this world is necessary. There is a necessity

which is conditional upon the event. If I am writing, then, necessarily I am

writing. Obviously this does not suggest any constraints, external or internal, upon my freedom. God is eternal, so whatever He wills, He wills eternally. There was never a time when God 'could have chosen otherwise'. Thus the creation of our actual world is conditionally necessary, in that it is always true that since God wills this world, necessarily God wills this world. How? ever Stump and Kretzmann hold that in some other possible world God

might have created differently or not at all. They note that this represents a weakened version of divine simplicity, but argue that '... maintaining that there are necessarily no metaphysical distinctions in God is not the same as

claiming that... God is the same in all possible worlds'.25 This may well be a correct interpretation of Aquinas, but it is difficult to

see how the idea that God could act differently in other possible worlds can be squared with the traditional doctrine of divine simplicity. If we say that,

x = x's act in W (the actual world), and

y =

y's act in W (some other possible world), and

x's act in W 4= y's act in W,

it seems very hard to avoid the conclusion that

x #= y.

If we replace x and y with 'God' then 'God =|= God' and that is absurd. Augustine and Anselm were both quite sanguine about the idea that God

'must' create, and 'must' create this world. God is the best and does the

best, but this does not entail any sort of constraints on God. Augustine explains that,

'

if He is not able to make good things then He has no power, and if He is able and does not make them, great is His envy. So because He is omnipotent and good He made all things very good.

'26 For Anselm in his Cur Deus Homo the driving assumption is that if something is best, God must do it. Again, not by any sort of constraint, but simply because He is best. 'For just as in God impossibility follows upon the smallest unsuitable thing, so

necessity attends the smallest reason, if it is not outweighed by a 25

Stump and Kretzmann (1985), pp. 357-71. 26 De Genesi ad litteram, iv, 16, 27.


18o KATHERIN ROGERS

greater.'27 But this does not mean that God is not free or not praiseworthy. Anselm explicitly defines 'freedom' as 'the ability to keep uprightness of will for its own sake' in order to include the freedom of God, who simply does the best.28 I have argued elsewhere that the idea of a God who inevitably does the best is not only coherent, but appealing. In fact, in the tradition which

we are considering, God is not only perfectly good, but the absolute standard for good. It is difficult to see how the standard for good could possibly be or

do less than the best. It may be true that we wouldn't praise a fellow human

being who 'had to' do the right thing, by nature, but our praise of God is a different matter. It is worship, and hence quite unlike the praise we give fellow creatures.29

The traditional doctrine of divine simplicity does seem to entail that God 'must' create, and that He 'must' create this world. This is a defensible

conclusion which need not force us to abandon the doctrine. However, there is a further, even thornier problem. It seems to be an inescapable corollary of the traditional doctrine that if any creatures, human beings let's say, are free in the libertarian sense, then there must be other possible worlds and,

what is even worse, creaturely choices are in part responsible for God's nature. And that seems a shocking and radical thing to say. One of the main

motives for accepting the doctrine of simplicity is that it seems to follow from the view that God exists absolutely a se. But if creaturely choices somehow affect God's nature, isn't His aseity compromised?

We can set out the problem through an example. Suppose John and Mary, who are both married to other people, freely choose to commit a sin by having sex with each other. And suppose Jane is the result of this illicit union. Since Jane exists, God knows Jane and sustains her in being. God's eternal, immutable act includes knowing and sustaining Jane. But Jane would not exist if it were not for the choice of John and Mary. It is up to John and Mary

which possible world will be actualized, and moreover their choice is par?

tially constitutive of God's act which is His nature. An obvious way to avoid this difficulty is to deny that human beings (for

brevity's sake we need not concern ourselves with whatever other rational creatures the universe may hold) have libertarian freedom, that is, to deny that creatures are the ultimate originators of their choices. Augustine, for

example, insists that the only real locus of causal power is God. Whatever exists is caused by God. This is what omnipotence means. (The following, ultimately rather negative, interpretation of Augustine's doctrine of the will does not command universal assent, and if anyone can prove it wrong from

Augustine's text, I will be grateful.) Human beings certainly have free will, but the will inevitably chooses what it wants most. 'My love is my weight;

27 Cur Deus Homo, i, 10. 28 De libertati arbitrii, in. 29

'Anselm on praising a necessarily perfect being', International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, xxxiv (1993), 41-52.


DIVINE SIMPLICITY l8l

by it I am borne wherever I am borne. '30

Moreover, 'It is necessary that we

do whatever attracts us more. '31 So long as the will is able to follow its desires it is free. In Augustine's view freedom does not require an ability to choose other than one does in fact choose.32 As I understand it, this is Aquinas's position as well.33

Augustine's view becomes very clear in looking at the causes of the original sins of Satan and Adam. In The City of God Augustine explains that the bad

angels, having been made from nothing, were inexorably drawn back towards the nothing from which they came. And the good angels remained

good, not because they opted, entirely through their own choice, to cling to

God, but because God gave them extra help, grace which He withheld from the bad angels. It must be that the superior choice of the good angels came from God, Augustine insists, because

'

If the good angels were at first without a good will and produced it in themselves without the operation of God, then it follows that, on their own they made themselves better than they were

made by God. And that is absurd.'34 Augustine makes the same point concerning the fall of Adam and Eve in his Opus Imperfectum contra Julianum,

which includes an extended and scathing attack on the doctrine of libertarian freedom.35

That God's omnipotence means that all causal power flows from Him jibes nicely with the idea that God's knowledge is causal. Augustine says,

'

God does not know all creatures, spiritual and corporeal, because they exist; but

they exist because He knows them'.36 And Aquinas explains that, 'God's

knowledge is the cause of things'. This must be so because 'His being is His

knowing'. And so Aquinas analyzes Origen's saying that God knows future

things because they are going to happen as meaning only that if something is going to happen God must know that it will happen,

'

but nevertheless it is not that future things are the causes of what God knows'.37 Nothing affects

God causally. In His perfect act, God knows all and, in the final analysis, causes all. Thus there is no problem of the creature being, in however minute and remote a fashion, partially responsible for the divine nature.

But the problem of evil becomes acute. On this view of the will, God could have made human beings to be always perfectly good without the least

infringement on their freedom. This is a conclusion which Augustine accepts. 30

Confessions, xiii, vin, i o. 31

Expositio Epistolae ad Galatas, xlix. 32 Scholars often cite De libero arbitrio as evidence that Augustine believed, at least in this relatively early work, that freedom requires options, and that to really be good it must be possible for us to choose evil. But the text does not say this. What Augustine argues is that it is better to have a will, even if it sometimes chooses evil, than not to have a will, because without a will we could not choose good. But to say that it is by our faculty of will that we are able to choose what we choose is not the same as saying that we are able to choose between genuinely open options. Nowhere does Augustine offer what has come to be known as the free will defence in connection with the problem of evil. 33

See, for example, Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. L. K. Shook (New York, 1956), pp. 244-8.

34 The City of God, xn, ix. 35 Opus Imperfectum contra Julianum, v, lvii.

36 De Trinitate, xv, 13. 37 ST la, 14, 8.


l82 KATHERIN ROGERS

If we should ask why God did not prevent evil by simply turning all human wills to good, Augustine responds, 'Because He did not choose to. And why did He not choose to? God only knows.

'38 Nor, of course, can we argue with

God's punishing wicked people because, as we noted above, even though they are drawn to evil inexorably, they act freely, that is, through their own

wills. But this seems a very uncomfortable conclusion to say the least. In order to save the traditional doctrine of divine simplicity, are we

required to abandon the libertarian view of freedom and allow that God could have prevented moral evil and yet punishes those who inevitably choose evil when He fails to help them? I think not, but accepting both the traditional doctrine of simplicity and libertarian freedom will mean biting the bullet on the corollary that creaturely choices affect God's nature. What I intend to argue is that perhaps this conclusion, though radical, is not quite as shocking as it might have appeared at first, and perhaps it does not really conflict with God's aseity. Let me start making my case by pointing out, in

good medieval fashion, that I am not being original. Unlike Augustine and

Aquinas, Anselm defends not only the doctrine of simplicity, but also the libertarian view of freedom, and I think his work holds the key for reconciling the two.

Anselm does not make an issue of the fact that he is disagreeing with

Augustine on the question of free will, but in De casu diaboli he clearly expounds a libertarian doctrine of freedom. Satan fell though he could, on

his own, have held fast to the good, and the good angels remained steadfast,

though they genuinely could have fallen.39 And what is most interesting is that Anselm makes this argument in order defend the very conclusion which

Augustine found obviously absurd. Anselm holds that God gave the rational creature (in this case Satan, though the argument is certainly meant to apply to human beings, too) the ability to choose on its own to cling to God or to reject Him, in order that the creature might be able, in a way, to give goodness to itself; to, in a sense, participate in its own creation. It is not that

the creature can produce any good on its own; and here is where Anselm

parts company with Pelagians such as Julian, Augustine's interlocutor in the

Opus Imperfectum contra Julianum. But in that the creature could, by its own

choice, abandon the good it has been given, if it holds fast, again by its own

choice, then it can be said to 'give justice to itself. Thus freedom is a great gift, in that it enables the creature to imitate God by helping, in however limited a way, to produce its own goodness.40

It might seem at the outset that libertarian freedom cannot be reconciled

with the view that God's knowledge is His power, because on the traditional

38 De Genesi ad litteram, xi, x, 13. 39 De casu diaboli, v. This chapter is entitled 'That the good angels were able to sin before the fall of the bad', but to prove that Anselm really intends this in a libertarian sense one ought to look at chapters

xxi-xxiv where Anselm explains how before the fall all the angels were equally ignorant of the con?

sequences of turning from God. 40 De casu diaboli, xvm.



view this means that God is the cause of what He knows, and there is nothing in existence not known and caused by God. If God knows human choices then He must cause them. In fact, if God knows evil choices then He must

be the cause of evil. And that is a conclusion that must be avoided at all costs. Mann notes this apparent implication of the doctrine of divine simplicity and responds by arguing that God might knowingly and willingly bring it about that someone does something wrong without thereby doing something

wrong Himself. God's intentions and His special status may insulate Him from the charge of wrongdoing.41 Mann offers the analogy of parents who could prevent a child from breaking his sister's toy, but permit him to do so in hopes that the experience will teach a moral lesson.42 The analogy is weak

because it is only the act of breaking the toy which it is in the parent's power to prevent. The parents do not permit (and hence on Mann's analysis 'bring about') the choice to break the toy, because there is no way they could prevent the choice. If parents were in a position to ensure that their children always

made good choices then the 'learning experience' would be pointless. God, in knowing all, apparently brings about the wrong choices. The traditional free will defence, as we noted above, will hold that God stands back and

permits bad choices because it is of overriding importance that rational creatures be free. Curiously, though Mann's example jibes with this argu?

ment, he himself seems to reject it. ' In the case of God... there is no plausible

moral difference between his actively bringing about a situation that is evil and his passively allowing a situation that is evil to be brought about'.43 But

surely, if we include 'X makes the wrong choice', among the evil situations that require explanation, there is a difference between God's actively pro? ducing X's choice and God's allowing X to make it. However, accepting the free will defence will not, by itself, solve the problem at hand. The traditional doctrine of divine simplicity entails that for God to know something is to cause it actively. God may permit certain evil situations to obtain, but that

God does not actively cause evil choices is a non-negotiable point. Anselm takes up exactly this question in his De concordia praescientiae et

praedestinationis et gratiae dei cum libero arbitrio. Here Anselm makes the initially surprising claim that in fact God is the cause of good choices, and He does not know evil. God gives the human being all and only goods, but it is up to the creature to hang on to them. Evil, ontologically, is simply nothing. It is not a positive being...a black, smouldering, foul-smelling substance. It is

just the absence of a good which ought to be there. In the tradition with which we are dealing this is the only possible view of evil. If God is the absolute creator either He makes evil, or evil does not exist. And this reading of evil, that it is the lack, the corruption, or the destruction of the good, is

41 'God's Freedom, Human Freedom, and God's Responsibility for Sin', in Divine and Human Action,

Thomas V. Morris ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), pp. 182-210. 42 Mann (1988), p. 208. 43 Mann (1988), p. 206.


184 KATHERIN ROGERS

really very plausible when one applies it to human experience. What is wrong with genocide, after all, if not that you are destroying what you ought to be

helping to preserve? This ties in again with the idea that God's omnipotence is not the ability to do just anything, but is the positive power to create and

produce. But if evil is not a thing, it is not there to be known or caused by God. All that has existence in choice and action... the will itself, the motives

involved, the actual turning... all are sustained by God. And if the choice is for good, then Anselm is happy to say that God is the source for that choice.

However, Anselm will argue that it is possible for the human being, on its

own, to reject the goodness given by God. The human being can produce in itself a lack of good. And that evil, that nothingness, is caused by the human

being. Even in the evil choice, all that has any existence is sustained by God, but that absence of what ought to be there, since it is just nothing, is neither known nor caused by God.44 In choosing good, all we do is cling to what God has given. It is in choosing evil that we become really original. But since it is possible for us to choose evil, God gives us credit for the good choice, even

though all it involves is not falling away when we could. Anselm provides a

simple analogy. What if you were naked and somebody gave you not only some clothes but also the very power by which to keep the clothes. In such a case, the person who gave you the clothes is responsible for your being clothed. But you could always take the clothes off and throw them away. In

which case you would be entirely to blame for your own nakedness.45 All that is is known and caused by God in His one eternal act. But God has given us the gift of being able to turn away from Him, so that we can get credit for not doing so. But God does not know or cause evil.

Still, isn't it up to the human chooser what possible world to bring about? Isn't it up to John and Mary whether or not the actual world will be a world

including Jane? Thus we are faced again with the problem we addressed when discussing Stump and Kretzmann's answer to the question of how a

simple God could know and cause some things contingently. I argued that if God is identical to His act in this actual world, then, in some different

possible world, God could not really be God. But here the problem seems much worse in that it is not a question of whether or not God Himself could have brought about some other possible world, but of whether John and

Mary could have done so. Thus it seems to be up to John, Mary, and every free creature, what possible world, and hence what version of God (if such a thing can be said!) will exist.

I think there are two things to be said here. First, we ought to be careful not to be led astray by the language of possible worlds. Given the traditional

44 De concordia, i, vu. Eriugena said roughly the same thing in De divina praedestinatione, his contribution to the bitter debate over predestination in the ninth century. As usual, though, when Eriugena said it it

only provoked the wrath of all concerned. Aquinas also offers basically this solution to the question of how God could know evil without causing it. God knows evil simply as the absence of good. ST la. 14, 10. 45 De concordia, m, v.



doctrine of divine simplicity, other possible worlds are possible only quoad nos.

From the divine point of view there is only one possible world, the actual

world. From the human perspective, assuming libertarian freedom, it is quite true to say, ?I could have done otherwise'. But from God's perspective in

eternity all choices are made. Using the popular medieval analogy of the eternal God as the centre point producing and equally present to all of the circumference of a circle which represents the temporal world, we can say that there is only one possible 'circle' since it has 'already' been drawn. This

point clearly raises the perennial problem of creaturely freedom given divine omniscience. If libertarian freedom means an absolute and literal ability to do otherwise, then how could one possibly say that God

' sees

'

all choices in His eternal present? If God eternally knows that I will do X at time t then I can hardly do other than X at time t. My own response is that libertarian freedom does not require an absolute ability to do other than one does. We are free in the libertarian sense so long as our choices are completely un?

determined by anything but our own wills. There is no contradiction be? tween God's omniscience and creaturely freedom because, though the circle has been drawn from all eternity, it has been drawn, at least in part, by us}*

God eternally knows what I do in fact do, and eternally sustains the world

partially actualized by human choices. From the divine point of view things cannot be other than they in fact are. It is only the temporal and limited

point of view which allows discussion of other possible worlds. God inevitably does the best taking into account the free choices of His creatures, and He knows eternally exactly what He will do. That is, He knows eternally what

world He will make in response to free choices. But since a world not made

by God is not a possible world (in the tradition under consideration), from God's perspective, obviously the best perspective, there is only one possible world, and that is the actual world.

But nonetheless, God acts to some extent in response to free creaturely choices, and we have not avoided the difficulty that creatures are somehow

partially responsible for God's nature if God is identical with His act. There is no escaping this conclusion as far as I can see. But does this lessen God?

Does this genuinely conflict with divine aseity? Perhaps not. When Anselm

argues in Cur Deus Homo that God '

had to '

become incarnate, his underlying assumption is that God, as a perfect being, must do the best. God 'must'

respond to human sin by saving His creation, and He must save it in the only way God can do anything, that is, the best way. But this necessity is in no

way a limitation on God. It is not a limitation because it arises from His own nature as best. That is, the first cause in this chain of relationships is God. It is not that human sin causes God to become incarnate. It is God's perfection that causes Him to do the best. (We must speak as if God contained

46 I make this case in '

Omniscience, Eternity, and Freedom '

forthcoming in International Philosophical Quarterly.


186 KATHERIN ROGERS

multiplicity in order to make the point clear. In reality, of course, God's

perfection is identical with His acting.) That God 'must5 become incarnate is a strength, not a weakness. And perhaps a similar case can be made in connection with God's actions in general. If we posit libertarian freedom and a

simple God whose doing and knowing are His being, then we cannot escape the conclusion that God acts in response to His creatures. But on Anselm's

understanding of the human condition, freedom is a great gift because it enables the creature to become the best it can be by actually, if in a very limited way, giving goodness to itself. The ultimate cause of this freedom is

God's goodness. Thus the originating cause of the whole system in which God would respond to free choices is God, and His aseity is preserved. God's nature is affected by His creatures only because He chooses to be thus

affected, and He chooses it only because He is best. But does the paradox remain of a simple God who is other than He might

have been? Is there not still a distinction in God between a primordial nature and one consequent upon creation?47 Should we not make a distinction between God in Himself and God as the sustainer of Jane, the product of

John's and Mary's free choice? Perhaps we can say, following the line we

adopted with the question of the existence of other possible worlds, that there is a distinction, but only quoad nos. That is, it is possible to think about the

basic and necessary attributes of God, omniscience etc., in separation from God as the knower and sustainer of this actual world. But from the eternal, divine perspective, even granting libertarian freedom, there is only one

possible world. And it is 'part' of God's primordial nature as perfect Good that He chooses to respond to creaturely choices, that is, that He chooses to know and sustain this world. God just is the centre point of the circle we have helped to draw. We may speak of God in Himself and of God the sustainer of Jane as distinct, but in fact there is just God, whose primordial nature is to be the simple act in which He knows all He knows and does all He does, including responding to the free choices of His creatures. When we push the traditional doctrine of divine simplicity to its conclusions we cannot escape the consequence that our free choices affect God. And they do not affect just

various divine thoughts and actions. All of God's thoughts and actions are one and identical with God. Because God chooses that it should be so, we affect God's very nature. This is indeed radical, but it does not necessarily conflict with God's aseity. Perhaps it means only that God is even stranger and better and greater than we might have thought at first.48

Philosophy Department, University of Delaware,

Newark, DE igji? 47 I am indebted to the editors of this journal for pointing out to me this last difficulty. 48 I would like to thank my colleague, Jeffrey Jordan, for comments on an earlier version of this paper.


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Issue Table of ContentsReligious Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Jun., 1996), pp. i-iv, 143-296Abstracts [pp. i-iii]Scientific Explanations of Mystical Experiences, Part I: The Case of St. Teresa [pp. 143-163]The Traditional Doctrine of Divine Simplicity [pp. 165-186]Swinburne on Atonement [pp. 187-204]The Locations of the Soul [pp. 205-221]The Impossibility of a Pluralist View of Religions [pp. 223-232]Are Beliefs about God Theoretical Beliefs? Reflections on Aquinas and Kant [pp. 233-258]Simplicity and Theology [pp. 259-270]The Dalai Lama and the World Religions: A False Friend? [pp. 271-279]ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 281-283]Review: untitled [pp. 283-285]Review: untitled [pp. 285-286]Review: untitled [pp. 286-289]Review: untitled [pp. 289-292]

Book Notes [pp. 293-295]Back Matter

the traditional doctrine of divine simplicity

Documents

view of divine simplicity

question of divine simplicity

absolute simplicity

cornell university press

marquette university

university of notre

perfect god

jstor terms