![]() ![]() In any event, Mullins’ objections, I have claimed, do not succeed. Consider first the claim that divine simplicity is incompatible with divine freedom. The objection begins by noting that the doctrine of divine simplicity holds that God is identical with his attributes. The stakes in this debate are therefore much higher than Mullins lets on, and for a theist to refute the doctrine of divine simplicity would require more than merely raising objections of the kind Mullins does. It would require explaining how such objections could avoid inadvertently refuting theism itself. These are the reasons why defenders of divine simplicity sometimes go so far as to argue that to deny the doctrine entails atheism. For if being an uncaused cause and being absolutely unique entail simplicity, then to deny that there is anything that is simple or non-composite is implicitly to deny that there is an absolutely unique uncaused cause. And since to be God just is to be an absolutely unique uncaused cause, to deny divine simplicity is therefore implicitly to deny the existence of God. By contrast, according to the doctrine of divine simplicity, there is no distinction between God and his nature or essence. God just is his nature, so that it is not something that he could have in common with another thing. And if there cannot be anything else that has the divine nature, then there cannot even in principle be more than one God. In this way and others, divine simplicity protects monotheism. ![]() įor another thing, divine simplicity safeguards God’s uniqueness. Where there is a distinction between a thing and its nature or essence, then that thing will not necessarily be unique. For example, there is a distinction between a given particular triangle and triangularity as a common nature or essence. Given that distinction, something other than that particular triangle might share that same nature or essence, so that there can be more than one triangle. Take the latter point first. Though its critics often treat the notion of divine simplicity as an unimportant curiosity, there are good reasons why the Church Fathers, the medieval Doctors, and two ecclesiastical councils regarded it as essential to orthodoxy. For one thing, it is a consequence of God’s ultimacy. For anything composed of parts is ontologically posterior to those parts, and can exist only if something causes the parts to be combined. Hence if God were composed of parts, there would have to be something ontologically prior to him and something which combines those parts, thereby causing him to exist. But there is nothing ontologically prior to or more ultimate than God, and nothing that causes him. To be the uncaused cause of everything other than himself is just part of what it is to be God. Hence God cannot be composed of parts but must be absolutely simple. ![]() Ryan Mullins provides an admirably clear and direct statement of the most important objections to the doctrine of divine simplicity. But the objections fail, and Mullins fails to consider the dire implications of rejecting the doctrine. ![]()
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