Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Divine Simplicity

  • God as Uniquely Unique

    I hit upon 'uniquely unique' a while back as an apt predicate of God.  But it is only the formulation that is original; the thought is ancient. To be unique is to be one of a kind.  It will be allowed that nothing counts as God unless it is unique.  So at a bare minimum,…

  • How Could God be Justice itself?

    David Gudeman writes; I reply:   George Berkeley was the first author who really shook my confidence in my existing world view. Before I read Berkeley, I had a Mr. Johnson-style contempt of physical idealism; after reading Berkeley, I realized that I had been naive–not because Berkeley was necessarily right, but because once I suppressed…

  • Intellectual Integrity and the Appeal to Mystery

    Bradley Schneider writes, . . . while we're on the subject of divine simplicity, I would be interested in your thoughts on the following dilemma.  Suppose you are strongly persuaded by philosophical arguments that, if God exists, God must be simple, i.e., some version of DDS must be true.  Otherwise, if God were composite, He…

  • Summa Theologica, Q. 19, Art. 3: Whether Whatever God Wills He Wills Necessarily

    This is the question we have been discussing. Let us now see if the answer Thomas gives is satisfactory.  The question is not whether, necessarily, whatever God wills, he wills.  The answer to that is obvious and in the affirmative. The question is whether whatever God wills, he wills necessarily. If so, then God's willing…

  • Sound or Unsound on Classical Theism? If Sound, then What?

    1) The existence of God is necessary for the existence of creatures: no God, no creatures. 2) The existence of God is not sufficient for the existence of creatures: the existence of God does not entail the existence of creatures. Therefore 3) God is really distinct from the act whereby he brings creatures into existence.…

  • Necessary God, Contingent Creatures: Another Round with Novak

    In an earlier thread, Lukas Novak writes, . . . God simply does not need any causal acts to mediate his causal power. He is causally efficient through his very essence, directly, and contingently, imparting being to the created essences immediately. It is only with respect to this causal power which is an aspect of…

  • The Euthyphro Dilemma, Divine Simplicity, and Modal Collapse

    The Question God commands all and only the morally obligatory. But does he command it because it is obligatory, or is it obligatory because he commands it? The question naturally arises, but issues in a dilemma. A dilemma is a very specific sort of problem in which there are exactly two alternatives, neither of which…

  • Divine Simplicity, Modal Collapse, and the Difference Principle

    The question before us is whether the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) can be upheld without the collapse of modal distinctions.  In "Simply Impossible: A Case Against Divine Simplicity" (Journal of Reformed Theology 7, 2013, 181-203), R. T. Mullins asks (footnote omitted): Could God have refrained from creating the universe? If God is free then it seems…

  • Some Questions About Divine Simplicity

    This recently over the transom:   Dear Dr. Vallicella, I'm a reader of your blog, and have really enjoyed much of your work. Since you wrote the Stanford Encyclopedia article on the topic of divine simplicity, I thought I might reach out to you to ask your opinions on some things. I am on an…

  • A Reader Proposes a Puzzle

    This from Cyrus: Suppose there is a possible world in which only God exists. Further suppose that that world is actual instead of this one. Further suppose divine simplicity. What is the truthmaker for the proposition “God exists, and nothing more” in that world? If God alone exists, and God is simple, then there are…

  • Updated Divine Simplicity Entry Now Online

    I am not entirely happy with it, but the updated version  passed  muster with the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy philosophy of religion referees.  If it is good enough for them, it is good enough for me, at least for the time being. The older I get, the higher my standards become. I have revised it…

  • Van Til on Divine Simplicity and the One and the Many

    (Edits added 2/10/19) Cornelius Van Til rightly distinguishes in God between the unity of singularity and the unity of simplicity.  The first refers to God's numerical oneness. "There is and can be only one God." (The Defense of the Faith, 4th ed., p. 31) The second refers to God's absolute simplicity or lack of compositeness:…

  • Contingency and Composition

    Joe, who describes himself as "a high school student with a passion for philosophy of religion and metaphysics," asked me a long series of  difficult questions. Here is one of them: After reading [Edward] Feser's Five Proofs, I have had difficulties with the concept of sustaining causes. First, Feser argues  that composites require a sustaining…

  • Rationalistic Fideism, Mysterianism, Misology, and Divine Simplicity

    I want to thank the perspicacious Lukas Novak for helping me in my endless quest to know myself.  Professor Novak comments: Is Bill a Gnostic? Well, I am not sure about the precise meaning of this epithet, but to me Bill appears as a strange amalgam of a rationalist and a fideist. The rationalist comes…

  • God, Simplicity, Freedom, and Two Senses of ‘Contingency’

    Fr. Aidan Kimel wants me to comment on his recent series of posts about divine simplicity, freedom, and the contingency of creation. In the third of his entries, he provides the following quotation: As Matthew Levering puts it: “God could be God without creatures, and so his willing of creatures cannot have the absolute necessity that his…