A reader from Portugal raised a question I hadn't thought of before: "Can God satisfy our infinite desire if God is a being among beings?" This question presupposes that our desire is in some sense infinite. I will explain and defend this presupposition in a moment. Now if our desire is infinite, then it is arguable that only a truly infinite object could satisfy it, and that such an object cannot be a being among beings, not even a being supreme among beings, but must be an absolute reality, that is, God as Being itself. To put it another way, the ultimate good for man cannot be a good thing among good things, not even the best of all good things, but must be Goodness itself. Anything less would be a sort of high-class idol. So let's start with an analysis of idolatry.
I
What is idolatry? I suggest that the essence of idolatry lies in the illicit absolutizing of the relative. A finite good becomes an idol when it is treated as if it were an infinite good, i.e., one capable of satisfying our infinite desire. But is our desire infinite?
That our desire is infinite is shown by the fact that it is never fully satisfied by any finite object or series of finite objects. Not even an infinite series of finite objects could satisfy it since what we really want is not an endless series of finite satisfactions — say a different black-eyed virgin every night as in popular Islam's depiction of paradise — but a satisfaction in which one could finally rest. "Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee." (Augustine) What we really want, though we don't know it, is the absolute good which is goodness itself, namely God. This idea is common to Plato, Augustine, Malebranche, and Simone Weil.
For thinkers of this stripe, all desire is ultimately desire for the Absolute. A desire that understood itself would understand this. But our deluded desire does not understand this. Our deluded desire is played for a fool by the trinkets and bagatelles of this fleeting world. It thinks it can find satisfaction in the finite. Therein lies the root of idolatry.
Buddha understood this very well: he saw that desire is infinite in that it desires its own ultimate quenching or extinguishing, its own nibbana, but that finite quenchings are unsatisfactory in that they only exacerbate desire by giving birth to new desires endlessly. No desire is finally sated; each is reborn in a later desire. Thus the enjoyment of virgin A does not put an end to lust; the next night or the next morning you are hot for virgin B, and so on, back to A or on to C, D, . . . and around and around on the wheel of Samsara. The more you dive into the flesh looking for the ultimate satisfaction, the more frustrated you become. You are looking for Love in all the wrong places.
So Buddha understood the nature of desire as infinite. But since he had convinced himself that there is no Absolute, no Atman, nothing possessing self-nature, he made a drastic move: he preached salvation through the extirpation of desire itself. Desire itself is at the root of suffering, dukkha, not desire for the wrong objects; so the way to salvation is not via redirection of desire upon the right Object, but via an uprooting of desire itself.
In Buddhist terms, we could say that idolatry is the treating of something that is anatta, devoid of self-nature, as if it were atta, possessive of self-nature. Idolatry arises when some finite foreground object, a man or a woman say, is falsely ascribed the power to provide ultimate satisfaction. This sort of delusion is betrayed in practically every love song ever written. Here are some typical lyrics (trivia question: name the song, the singer, the date):
You are my world, you're every move I make You are my world, you're every breath I take.
There are thousands more lyrics like them, and anyone who has been in love knows that they capture the peculiar madness of the lover, the delectable madness of taking the finite for infinite.
Or will you deny that this is madness, a very deep philosophical and perhaps also religious mistake? I say it is madness whether or not an absolute good exists. Whether or not an absolute good exists, reason suggests that we should love the finite as finite, that our love should be ordered to, and commensurate with, its object. Finite love for finite objects, and for all objects if there is no infinite Object.
II
Suppose you accept what I just wrote about desire being infinite and ultimately unsatisfiable by any finite object. Would this show that God cannot be a being among beings? Not obviously! The supreme being theists could agree that infinite desire is ultimately satisfiable only by an infinite object, but that the omni-qualified supreme being fills the bill. Furthermore, they could argue, plausibly, that talk of Goodness itself and Being itself, which imply the divine simplicity, is just incoherent to the discursive intellect. To which one response is: so much the worse for the discursive intellect. The ultimate goal is attainable only by transcending it.
You seem to hold that, if God is identical to his existence, then God is Existence itself. Why think that? Why not think instead that, if God is identical to his existence, then he is identical to his 'parcel' of existence, as it were?
This is an entirely reasonable question. I will try to answer it.
First of all, when we say that God is identical to his existence, we mean that there is no real distinction in God between essence (nature) and existence in the way in which there is a real distinction in Socrates (our representative creature) between essence (nature) and existence. It is the real distinction in Socrates that grounds his metaphysical contingency, while it is the lack of such a distinction in God that grounds his metaphysical necessity.
This is to say that God, unlike creatures, is ontologically simple. In a slogan of St Augustine, God is what he has. Thus he has his existence by being his existence. Why must God be simple? Because he is the absolute reality. If your god is not the absolute reality, then your god is not God but an idol. The absolute cannot depend on anything else for its nature or existence on pain of ceasing to be the absolute. It must possess aseity, from-itself-ness.
Now Existence is in some way common to everything that exists, though it is not common in the manner of a property or a concept. Thus God and Socrates have Existence in common. If God is not identical to Existence, then he is like Socrates and must depend on Existence as something other than himself to exist. But this violates the divine aseity.
Therefore, God is not only identical to his existence, he is identical to Existence itself.
Objection: "If God is identical to Existence, then God alone exists, which flies in the face of the evident fact that there is a plurality of non-divine existents."
Reply: The objection succeeds only if there are no different ways of existing. But if God exists-underivatively and creatures exist-derivatively, then God's identity with Existence does not entail that God alone exists; it entails that God alone exists-underivatively.
The picture is this. Existence is that which makes derivative existents exist. If Existence did not itself exist, then nothing would exist. So Existence itself exists. It is identical to God. God is the unsourced Source of everything distinct from God. God, as Existence itself, is the Paradigm Existent. God is at once both Existence and the prime case of Existence.
In this respect, God is like a Platonic Form in which all else participates. (It is worth recalling in this connection that Aquinas speaks of God as forma formarum, the form of all forms.) God is self-existent Existence; creatures are not self-existent, but derive their existence from self-existent Existence.
Objection: "This scheme issues in something like the dreaded Third Man Regress. If Socrates and Plato both exist by participating in Existence, which exists, then there are three things that exist, Socrates, Plato, and Existence, each of which exists by participation. If so, there must be a second Existence, Existence-2 that Socrates, Plato and Existence-1 participate in. But then an infinite regress is up and running, one that is, moreover, vicious."
Response: The Third Man Regress is easily blocked by distinguishing the way Existence exists and the way derivative existents exist. Socrates exists by participating in Existence; Existence exists, not by participation, but by being (identical to) Existence.
There is exactly one case in which existence = self-identity. This is the case of the Paradigm Existent, which is Existence itself, which is God. In every other case, existence is not self-identity. No doubt Socrates is self-identical; but his self-identity is not the ground of his existence.
The thesis under examination as expressed by Diogenes Allen: "The world plus God is not more than God alone. God less the world is not less than God alone." Is this a defensible position? Let's consider both sides of the question.
A. First, a crisp little argument against the view.
Consider two possible scenarios. In the first, God alone exists. In the second, God exists and creates a world. On a classical view of God, according to which he is libertarianly free, both scenarios are indeed possible. There is no necessity that God create; his creating is free in the 'could have done otherwise' sense. Clearly, the scenarios are different. But if God + World = God, then there is no difference between the two scenarios. For on that supposition, God alone exists in both scenarios. Therefore,it is not the case that God + World = God.
To extend the argument:
If God is Being itself, ipsum esse subsistens, Being in its plenitude and infinity, then how could there be anything else? If God is Being itself, and thus not a being among beings, how could there be any 'ontological room' for anything else? How is creation so much as possible if God is Being itself? Isn't the Thomist line, as articulated by Diogenes Allen and Etienne Gilson (quoted previously) just obviously mistaken?
After all, it is evident to the senses (though not self-evident, cf. Descartes' Dream Argument) that this material world of time and change exists: it is not nothing. Nor it is a dream or an illusion. Clearly, it is 'better known' that this material world of multiplicity exists than that God exists. But suppose God does exist. Then both the world (creatures) and God exist. Is it not perfectly obvious that the totality of reality is greater with both God and creation than with God alone?
B. Now let's consider what could be said in favor of the view.
Given the force of the arguments for the thesis that God is not a being among beings, arguments we cannot rehearse again here, it is reasonable to hold that God is Being itself. This leaves us with the task of attaching some tolerably clear meaning to 'God + world = God' in the teeth of the argument contra. This cannot be done if there are no modes of Being. For if everything that exists exists in the same way (mode), and if G exists and W exists, and they are numerically distinct, then it is self-evident that there is a totality of existents and that this totality is greater if G and W both exist than if G alone exists.
So we need to bring in modes of Being or existence. To motivate the modes-of-Being doctrine, consider an analogy. I am standing before a mirror looking at my image. How many men? One, not two. I'm a man; my mirror image is not a man. An image, reflection, picture, drawing, sculpture of a man is not a man. And yet my mirror image is not nothing: it exists. I exist and my image exists. Both exist, but in different ways. I exist whether or not any mirror image of me exists; but no mirror image of me exists unless I exist. Note too that the mirror image is dependent on me for its existence at each moment of its existence, unlike a photograph or a sculpture. (Herein an analogy with creatio continuans.)
It is also worth noting that there is a correspondence between the visual properties of the man and the visual properties displayed in the image. (This fact is what allows a dentist to do precision work on a tooth without looking at it directly.) Now we cannot say that the seen man and his image instantiate the same quidditative properties since, e.g., the man is bearded but his image is not. But we can say that the same visual properties instantiated by the man are displayed in the image. While the image is not bearded, it is an image of a bearded man. There are two different properties, but they are related: being bearded, being of something bearded, where the 'of' is an an objective genitive.
Man and image both exist. Yet there is an important difference. I say it is a difference in mode of existence. The image, unlike the man, exists dependently or derivatively, and it depends existentially on the very original of which it is the image. Existential dependence is not a quidditative property. This mode of existence is no more a quidditative property than existence is.
So I say we need a tripartite distinction: quiddity (nature, essence in the broad sense); general or quantificational existence, the existence expressed by the particular quantifier; mode of existence.
Now it makes a certain amount of sense to say that Man + Mirror Image = Man. This could be explained by saying that there is no totality of independent existents that has both me and my mirror image in it. If we are adding and subtracting over a domain of independent existents, then it is true that Man + Image = Man.
Accordingly, 'God + World = God' could be explained by saying that there is no totality of a se existents that has both God and creatures in it.
C. Aporetic Conclusion
The argument I gave in section A will strike many as compelling. But what I said in section B shows that it is not compelling. If one holds that God exists in a different way than creatures, then there is no totality in reality to which God and creatures all belong. One can of course say that something is (identically) God and that something is (identically) Socrates and that *Something is (identically) ____* has exactly the same sense, no matter what you throw into the gap: no matter what its mode of Being. But that implies only that there is a merely conceptual totality to which God and creatures all belong. In this merely excogitated conceptual totality, however, abstraction is made from the real existence of the things in question, and their different modes of Being.
I grant that God and Socrates both exist in the quantificational sense of 'exists,' a sense univocal across all existential sentences regardless of subject matter; but that is consistent with there being no commonality in reality between God and creatures to warrant talk of a totality in reality containing both.
My interim conclusion is aporetic: both positions on our question are reasonably maintained. They cannot both be true, but they can both be reasonably upheld.
I would be satisfied if Dale Tuggy and the 'supreme (miniscule) being theists' would agree with me and other '(majuscule) Being theists' that it is a stand-off.
Chad McIntosh spotted the sloppiness in something I posted the other day. A retraction is in order. And then a repair.
A Retraction
I wrote,
The simple atheist — to give him a name — cannot countenance anything as God that is not ontologically simple. That is, he buys all the arguments classical theists give for the divine simplicity. It is just that he finds the notion of an ontologically simple being incoherent. He accepts, among others, all of Plantinga's arguments on the latter score. His signature argument runs as follows:
1. If God exists, then God is simple. 2. Nothing is or can be simple. Therefore 3. God does not exist.
First of all, one could be a simple atheist (simplicity atheist) as I have defined him without holding that nothing is ontologically simple. Surely there is nothing in the nature of atheism to require that an atheist eschew every ontologically simple item. And the same goes for the character I called the ontic theist, Dale Tuggy being an example of one. Surely there is nothing in the nature of ontic theism, according to which God is not ontologically simple, to require that an ontic theist eschew every ontologically simple item.
Second, while Alvin Plantinga does argue against the divine simplicity in Does God Have a Nature? (Marquette UP, 1980) he does not (as I recall without checking) argue that nothing is ontologically simple.
There is no little irony in my sloppiness inasmuch as in my SEP entry on the divine simplicity I adduce tropes as ontologically simple items to soften up readers for the divine simplicity:
We have surveyed some but not all of the problems DDS faces, and have considered some of the ways of addressing them. We conclude by noting a parallel between the simplicity of God and the simplicity of a popular contemporary philosophical posit: tropes.
Tropes are ontologically simple entities. On trope theory, properties are assayed not as universals but as particulars: the redness of a tomato is as particular, as unrepeatable, as the tomato. Thus a tomato is red, not in virtue of exemplifying a universal, but by having a redness trope as one of its constituents (on one version of trope theory) or by being a substratum in which a redness trope inheres (on a second theory). A trope is a simple entity in that there is no distinction between it and the property it ‘has.’ Thus a redness trope is red , but it is not red by instantiating redness, or by having redness as a constituent, but by being (a bit of) redness. So a trope is what it has. It has redness by being identical to (a bit of) redness. In this respect it is like God who is what he has. God has omniscience by being (identical to) omniscience. Just as there is no distinction between God and his omniscience, there is no distinction in a redness trope between the trope and its redness. And just as the simple God is not a particular exemplifying universals, a trope is not a particular exemplifying a universal. In both cases we have a particular that is also a property, a subject of predication that is also a predicable entity, where the predicable entity is predicated of itself. Given that God is omniscience, he is predicable of himself. Given that a redness trope is a redness, it is predicable of itself. An important difference, of course, is that whereas God is unique, tropes are not: there is and can be only one God, but there are many redness tropes.
Not only is each trope identical to the property it has, in each trope there is an identity of essence and existence. A trope is neither a bare particular nor an uninstantiated property. It is a property-instance, an indissoluble unity of a property and itself as instance of itself. As property, it is an essence; as instance, it is the existence of that essence. Because it is simple, essence and existence are identical in it. Tropes are thus necessary beings (beings whose very possibility entails their actuality) as they must be if they are to serve as the ontological building blocks of everything else (on the dominant one-category version of trope theory). In the necessity of their existence, tropes resemble God.
If one can bring oneself to countenance tropes, then one cannot object to the simple God on the ground that (i) nothing can be identical to its properties, or (ii) in nothing are essence and existence identical. For tropes are counterexamples to (i) and (ii).
A Repair
Matters are quickly set right if I 'simply' ascribe to the simplicity atheist the following less committal argument:
1. If God exists, then God is simple. 2*. God cannot be simple. Therefore 3. God does not exist.
To the ontic theist we may ascribe:
2*. God cannot be simple. ~3. God exists. Therefore ~1. It is not the case that if God exists, then God is simple.
Question 1: Has anyone ever argued along the lines of the simplicity atheist? Have I stumbled upon a new argument here?
Question 2: Can you think of any non-divine ontologically simple items other than tropes?
The simple atheist — to give him a name — cannot countenance anything as God that is not ontologically simple. That is, he buys all the arguments classical theists give for the divine simplicity. It is just that he finds the notion of an ontologically simple being incoherent. He accepts, among others, all of Plantinga's arguments on the latter score. His signature argument runs as follows:
1. If God exists, then God is simple. 2. Nothing is or can be simple. Therefore 3. God does not exist.
The classical theist makes a modus ponens of the above modus tollens, arguing:
1. If God exists, then God is simple. ~3. God exists. Therefore ~2. Something is and can be simple.
The ontic theist — to give him a name — holds that God is a being among beings. He argues:
2. Nothing is or can be simple. ~3. God exists. Therefore ~1. It is not the case that if God exists, then God is simple.
The following entry draws heavily upon W. Matthews Grant, "Divine Simplicity, Contingent Truths, and Extrinsic Models of Divine Knowing," Faith and Philosophy, vol. 29, no. 3, July 2012, pp. 254-274.
It also bears upon my discussion with Professor Dale Tuggy. He holds that God is a being among beings. I deny that God is a being among beings, holding instead that God is Being itself. This is not to deny that God is; but it does entail affirming that God is in a radically unique way distinct from the way creatures are. We can call this radically unique way or mode of Being, simplicity. So my denial, and Dale's affirmation, that God is a being among beings is logically equivalent to my affirming, and Dale's denying, the doctrine of divine simplicity.
A particularly vexing problem for defenders of the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) is to explain how an ontologically simple God could know contingent truths.
The problem may be cast in the mold of an aporetic tetrad:
1. God is simple: there is nothing intrinsic to God that is distinct from God.
2. God knows some contingent truths.
3. Necessarily, if God knows some truth t, then (i) there an item intrinsic to God such as a mental act or a belief state (ii) whereby God knows t.
4. God exists necessarily.
The plausibility of (3) may be appreciated as follows. Whatever else knowledge is, it is plausibly regarded as a species of true belief. A belief is an intrinsic state of a subject. Moreover, beliefs are individuated by their contents: beliefs or believings with different contents are different beliefs or believings. It cannot be that one and the same act of believing has different contents at different times or in different possible worlds.
That the tetrad is inconsistent can be seen as follows. Suppose God, who knows everything there is to be known, knows some contingent truth t. He knows, for example, that I have two cats. It follows from (3) that there is some item intrinsic to God such as a belief state whereby God knows t. Given (1), this state, as intrinsic to God, is not distinct from God. Given (4), the state whereby God knows t exists necessarily. But then t is necessarily true. This contradicts (2) according to which t is contingent.
Opponents of the divine simplicity will turn the tetrad into an argument against (1). They will argue from the conjunction of (2) & (3) & (4) to the negation of (1). The classical theist, however, accepts (1), (2), and (4). If he is to solve the tetrad, he needs to find a way to reject (3). He needs to find a way to reject the idea that when a knower knows something, there is, intrinsic to the knower, some mediating item that is individuated by the object known.
So consider an externalist conception of knowledge. I see a cat and seeing it I know it — that it is and what it is. Now the cat is not in my head; but it could be in my mind on an externalist theory of mind. My awareness of the cat somehow 'bodily' includes the cat, the whole cat, all 25 lbs of him, fur, dander, and all. Knowledge is immediate, not mediated by sense data, representations, mental acts, occurrent believings, or any other sort of epistemic intermediary or deputy. Seeing a cat, I see the cat itself directly, not indirectly via some other items that I see directly such as an Husserlian noema, a Castanedan ontological guise, a Meinongian incomplete object, or any other sort of merely intentional object. On this sort of scheme, the mind is not a container, hence has no contents in the strict sense of this term. The mind is directly at the things themselves.
If this externalism is coherent, then then we can say of God's knowledge that it does not involve any intrinsic states of God that would be different were God to know different things than he does know. For example, God knows that I have two cats. That I have two cats is an actual, but contingent fact. If God's knowledge of this fact were mediated by an item intrinsic to God, a mental act say, an item individuated by its accusative, then given the divine simplicity, this item could not be distinct from God with the consequence that the act and its accusative would be necessary. This consequence is blocked if there is nothing intrinsic to God whereby he knows that I have two cats.
We will have to take a closer look at externalism. But if it is coherent, then the aporetic tetrad can be solved by rejecting (3).
I'm on a bit of a Jewish jag at the moment, in part under the influence of my Jewish friend Peter who turned me on to Soloveitchik. But Peter should labor under no false expectation that he will convert me to any version of Judaism; it is more likely that I shall get him out on the Rio Salado on a truck tire inner tube whereupon I shall baptize him in nomine Patris et Fillii, et Spiritus Sancti, and indeed by full immersion, not by the 'watered down' Roman rite.
Joking aside, here is an interesting passage from Moses Maimonides (The Guide to the Perplexed, Dover, p. 80) which is related to my ongoing conversation with Dale Tuggy, the Protestant theistic personalist:
It is known that existence is an accident appertaining to all things, and therefore an element superadded to their essence. This must evidently be the case as regards everything the existence of which is due to some cause: its existence is an element superadded to its essence. But as regards a being whose existence is not due to any cause — God alone is that being, for His existence, as we have said, is absolute — existence and essence are perfectly identical; He is not a substance to which existence is joined as an accident, as an additional element. His existence is always absolute, and has never been a new element or an accident in Him. Consequently God exists without possessing the attribute of existence. Similarly He lives, without possessing the attribute of life; knows, without possessing the attribute of knowledge; is omnipotent without possessing the attribute of omnipotence; is wise, without possessing the attribute of wisdom: all this reduces itself to one and the same entity; there is no plurality in Him, as will be shown.
Question: Could existence be an accident of all things that are due to some cause? And if it is not an accident, is it essential to them?
Max, a cat of my acquaintance, exists and exists contingently: there is no broadly logical necessity that he exist. His nonexistence is broadly logically possible. So one may be tempted to say that existence is to Max as accident to substance. One may be tempted to say that existence is accidental to Max. In general, the temptation is to say that existence is an accidental property of contingent beings, and that this accidentality is what makes them contingent.
But this can't be right. On a standard definition, if P is an accidental property of x, then x can exist without P. So if existence were an accidental property of Max, then, Max could exist without existing. Contradiction.
Ought we conclude that existence is an essential property of Max? If P is an essential property of x, then x cannot exist without P. So if existence were an essential property of Max, then Max cannot exist without existing. The consequent of the conditional is true, but tautologically so.
From this one can infer either that (i) Max is a necessary being (because he has existence essentially) or that (ii) existence construed as an essential property is not the genuine article. Now Max is surely not a necessary being. It is true that if he exists, then he exists, but from this one cannot validly infer that he exists. Suppose existence is a first-level property. Then it would makes sense to say that existence is an essential property of everything. (Plantinga says this.) After all, in every possible world in which Max exists, he exists! But all this shows is that existence construed as an essential property is not gen-u-ine, pound-the-table existence. Gen-u-ine existence, the only kind I care to have truck with, is existence that makes a thing be or exist, and, to be sure: outside the mind, outside language and its logic, outside its causes, outside of nothing. With a quasi-poetic, Heideggerian flourish: existence is that which establishes a thing in its Aufstand gegen das Nichts, its insurrection against Nothingness.
We ought to conclude that existence is neither accidental to a contingent thing, nor essential to it. No contingent thing is such that existence follows from its essence. And no contingent thing is such that its contingency can be understood by thinking of its existence as an accidental property of it. The contingency of Max's being sleepy can be understood in terms of his instantiation of an accidental property; but the contingency of his very existence cannot be so understood.
If every first-level property is either accidental or essential, then existence is not a first-level-property. But, as I have argued many times, it does not follow that existence is a second-level property. The Fregean tradition went off the rails: existence cannot be a second-level property. Instantiation is a second-level property, but not existence. And of course it cannot be a second-level property if one takes the real distinction seriously, this being a distinction between essence and existence 'in' the thing or 'at' the thing.
Where does this leave us? Max exists. Pace Russell, saying that Max exists is NOT like saying that Max is numerous. 'Exists,' unlike 'numerous,' has a legitimate first-level use. So existence belongs to Max. It belongs to him without being a property of him. One argument has already been sketched. To put it explicitly: Every first-level property is either essential or accidental; Existence is neither an essential nor an accidental first-level property; ergo, Existence is not a first-level property.
Existence belongs to Max without being a property of him. How is existence 'related' to Max if it is not a property of him?
My existence book essays an answer, but it too has its difficulties.
Herewith, a second response to Aidan Kimel. He writes,
The claim that God is a being among beings is immediately ruled out, so it seems to me, by the classical understanding of divine transcendence: if all beings have been created from nothing by the self-existent One, then this One cannot be classified as one of them, as sharing a world with them. To think of God as a being would thus represent nothing less than a return to paganism. We would be back at Mt Carmel with Elijah and the priests of Ba’al.
I myself incline to the view that the divine transcendence entails that God cannot be a being among beings. But I do not see in the passage above a good argument for the view to which I incline. Fr. Kimel's argument appears to be this:
1. All beings have been created from nothing by the self-existent One.
Therefore
2. The self-existent One cannot be a being among beings.
This argument is valid in point of logical form — the conclusion follows from the premise — but the premise is false. If all beings have been created ex nihilo by the self-existent One, then, given that the One cannot create itself, it follows that the One does not exist and thus cannot be self-existent. The premise is self-refuting.
But let us be charitable. Perhaps what Fr. Kimel intends is the following argument:
1*. All beings other than the self-existent One have been created from nothing by the self-existent One.
Therefore
2. The self-existent One cannot be a being among beings.
The premise is now true, but the conclusion does not follow — or at least it is not clear how the conclusion is supposed to follow. Why cannot it be like this? God, the self-existent One, creates beings distinct from himself. These beings 'now' (either temporally or logically) form with God a collection of beings. So although God has all sorts of properties that make him the supreme being such as omniscience, and the rest of the omni-attributes, he remains a being among beings.
It is a simple point of logic that one can give a bad argument for a true conclusion. This is what Fr. Kimel does above. I agree with his conclusion, but I reject his reasoning as confused. He in effect confuses the two arguments displayed. The first is valid with a false premise; the second is invalid with a true premise.
At his weblog Eclectic Orthodoxy, Fr. Aidan Kimel references the discussion Dale Tuggy and I are having about whether God is a being among beings, or Being itself. Fr. Kimel writes,
That God, as conceived by Christians (and I’m not really interested in any other God), is not a being among beings is so utterly obvious to me that I honestly do not know how to argue against it. One of the very first theology books I read back in the 70s was He Who Isby Eric Lionel Mascall. When I look back now on my theological development since then, I have come to realize how profoundly he influenced my understanding of God, even though it was decades later before I read even a little Aquinas. My paperback copy of the book is filled with underlining (ditto for my copy of Existence and Analogy). Here’s one passage that I underlined:
We cannot lump together in one genus God and everything else, as if the word “being” applied to them all in precisely the same sense, and then pick out God as the supreme one. For if God is the Supreme Being, in the sense in which Christian theology uses the term, “being” as applied to him is not just one more instance of what “being” means when applied to anything else. So far from being just one item, albeit the supreme one, in a class of beings, he is the source from which their being is derived; he is not in their class but above it. … In the technical term, when we apply to God a term which is normally used of other beings, we are using it not univocally but analogically; for he is not just one member of a class with them, but their ground and archetype. (p. 9)
Although I incline to the view that God is not a being among beings, I don't think it is at all obvious that this is so. We all agree that God is the source of the Being or existence of everything other than God. What exists other than God exists because God has created it, and would not exist if God had not created it. So far, so good. But how is it supposed to follow that God is not a being among beings? How is it supposed to follow that God is not a being in the very same sense in which Socrates is a being? I think my friends Dale Tuggy and Alan Rhoda – theistic personalists to slap a label on them — are on solid ground here. They could reply to Fr. Kimel that the following is a non sequitur:
1. Everything other than God has been created by God ex nihilo and so depends on God for its very existence.
Therefore
2. 'Exists' in 'God exists' and 'Socrates exists' cannot be taken in the precisely the same (univocal) sense.
Dale and Alan might plausibly maintain that while (1) is true, (2) does not follow because the negation of (2) is consistent with (1). The theistic personalist might reasonably insist that 'exists' in both of the above occurrences has exactly the same sense — this is a semantic point — and that the corresponding ontological point holds as well, namely, that God and Socrates exist in the very same way.
So we are in need of some supplemental premise to mediate a valid transition from (1) to (2). Note that Mascall above uses the phrase "ground and archetype." I think Dale and Alan could be brought to accept the term 'ground' as in 'ultimate metaphysical real-ground or first cause.' Surely God is that. But archetype? Here Dale and Alan might reasonably balk at this Plato talk. 'Archetype' suggests that God is more than an efficient cause, but a formal cause as well, something like a Platonic Form. (I recall a passage wherein Aquinas speaks of God as forma formarum, form of all forms.) Now if God is something like a Platonic Form, then the relation of creatures and creator is something like Platonic participation (methexis): Socrates, a being, an ens, is by participating in the divine Being or To Be (esse). The Latin ens is the present participle of the Latin infinitive esse (to be), and this linguistic relation suggests the metaphysical relation of participation.
Now if God is something like a Platonic Form, then he is the Being of creatures. But God also is. Now if God is Being (esse) and God is, then God is self-subsistent Being, ipsum esse subsistens. That is, God is Being (esse) and being (ens). Both! But then it follows that God is not a being among beings, a being on a par with other beings. Why not? Well, the other beings, creatures, are not identical to their Being (esse) whereas God is the being that is also Being. In God and God alone, esse and ens 'coalesce' if you will: they are one in reality; they are not really distinct ever though we perhaps cannot think of them except as distinct. In Socrates, however, esse and ens are really distinct, distinct in reality, outside the mind.
As St. Augustine says, "God is what he has." So God has Being by being (identical to) Being.
God cannot be a being because that implies that he is just one of an actual or possible plurality of beings. God is rather the being who is also Being. God is Being or Existence (Deus est esse), and Existence itself exists. This is why in my book I speak of Existence as the Paradigm Existent.
Thus we have at least two ways of Being, the creaturely way and the divine way. But they are connected: creatures participate in divine Being. Thus we have an analogia entis, not an aequivocatio entis.
Now what could Dale and Alan say in rebuttal of this? They could say that there is no justification, scriptural or philosophical, for thinking of God as an archetype, to use Mascall's word. Thomists typically invoke Exodus 3:14, "I am who am" which suggests to some of us that God is referring to himself as Being itself. In conversation, Dale told me he rejects this reading and said (if I understood him) that the Hebrew just means that God is telling Moses that he is and will remain constant. Dale and Alan could say that the God of the Bible is nothing like a Platonic Form.
Conclusions
1. It is not obvious that God is not a being among beings. (Contra Fr. Kimel)
2. It is not obvious that God is a being among beings. (Contra Drs. Tuggy and Rhoda)
3. In general, "It ain't obvious what's obvious." (Hilary Putnam) Leastways, not in philosophy.
4. For Dale and Alan, God is a being among beings in the precise sense I attached to that phrase in my first post in this series. They are mistaken if they think that can show that God is not a being among beings by making such obvious points as that God creates everything distinct from himself or that God is unique or that God has properties that nothing else has, or that God is a metaphysically necessary being, etc. Those sorts of points are logically consistent with God's being a being among beings.
5. 'Being among beings' is a technical phrase; it doesn't mean whatever one wants it to mean. Nor is it a 'dirty' or pejorative phrase. It is not a 'kosher' move in a philosophical discussion, once a term or phrase has been defined, to ignore the definition and use it in some other sense.
6. The question whether God is a being among beings or rather ipsum esse subsistens is a very difficult one with no easy answer.
7. The question cannot be answered apart from a deep-going inquiry into general metaphysics. One has to tackle head-on such questions as What is existence? What are properties? What is property-possession? What is creation? What is the difference between primary and secondary causation and how are they related? and plenty of others besides.
8. It may well be that the problem whether or not God is being among beings is insoluble, a genuine aporia, and that the arguments on both sides cancel out.
If I understand Duns Scotus on the divine simplicity, his view in one sentence is that the divine attributes are really identical in God but formally distinct. (Cf. Richard Cross, Duns Scotus on God, Ashgate 2005, p. 111) I can understand this if I can understand the formal distinction (distinctio formalis) and how it differs from the real distinction (distinctio realis). This will be the cynosure of my interest in this post.
There appear to be two ways of construing 'real distinction.' On the first construal, the real distinction is plainly different from the formal distinction. On a second construal, it is not so clear what the difference is. I have no worked-out view. In this entry I am merely trying to understand the difference between these two sorts of distinction and how they bear upon the divine simplicity, though I will not say anything more about the latter in this installment.
First Construal of 'Real Distinction'
On the first construal, the real distinction is to be understood in terms of separability. But 'separable' has several senses. Here are my definitions of the relevant senses. I am not trying to exposit Thomas or any scholastic. I am merely trying to get to the truth of the matter.
D1. Individuals x, y are mutually separable =df it is broadly logically possible that x exist without y, and y exist without x.
Example. The separability of my eyeglasses and my head is mutual: each can (in a number of different senses of 'can' including the broadly logical sense) exist without the other. This distinction is called real because it has a basis in extramental and extralinguistic reality. It is not a merely verbal distinction like that between 'eyeglasses' and 'spectacles.'
D2. Properties F, G are mutually separable =df it is broadly logically possible that F be instantiated by x without G being instantiated by x, and vice versa.
Example. Socrates is both seated and speaking. But he is possibly such as to be the one without the other, and the other without the one. He can sit without speaking, and speak without sitting. The properties of being seated and speaking, though co-instantiated by Socrates, are mutually separable. Of course, this does not imply that these properties can exist uninstantiated.
D3. Individuals x, y are unilaterally separable =df it is broadly logically possible that one of the pair x, y exist without the other, but not the other without the one.
Example. A (primary) substance S and one of its accidents A. Both are individuals, unrepeatables. But while A cannot exist without S, S can exist without A. Second example. Consider a fetus prior to viability. It is not an accident of the mother, but a substance in its own right. Yet it cannot exist apart from the mother, while the mother can exist apart from it. So what we seem to have here are two individuals that are unilaterally separable.
D4. Properties F, G are unilaterally separable =df it is broadly logically possible that one of the pair F, G be instantiated by x without the other being instantiated, but not the other without the one.
Example. Suppose Socrates is on his feet, running. His being on his feet and his running are unilaterally separable in that he can be on his feet wthout running, but he cannot be running without being on his feet.
D5. Items (whether individuals or properties) I, J are weakly separable =df I, J are either mutually separable or unilaterally separable.
On the first construal of 'real distinction,' it comes to this:
D6. Items (whether individuals or properties), I, J are really distinct =df I, J are weakly separable.
My impression is that when Scotists speak of the real distinction they mean something identical to or very close to my (D6). Real distinctness is weak separability. Two items, whether individuals or properties, are really distinct if and only if they are either mutually separable or unilaterally separable. According to Alan B. Wolter ("The Formal Distinction" in John Duns Scotus, 1265-1965, eds. Ryan and Bonansea, CUA Press, 1965, pp. 45-60),
In the works of Aquinas, for example, the term ['real distinction'] seems to have two basically different meanings, only one of which corresponds to the usage of Scotus, Ockham, or Suarez. For the latter, the real distinction is that which exists between individuals, be they substances or some individual accident or property. It invariably implies the possibility of separating one really distinct thing from another to the extent that one of the two at least may exist apart from the other. (p. 46)
Second Construal of 'Real Distinction'
On a Thomist view, my essence and my existence are not really distinct on the first construal of 'real distinction' because they are mutually inseparable: neither can be without the other. This strikes me as entirely reasonable. My individual essence is nothing without existence, and there are no cases of pure existence. I am not now and never have been an existence-less essence, nor a bit of essence-less existence. And yet Thomists refer to the distinction between (indvidual) essence and existence in finite concrete individuals as a real distinction. So 'real distinction' must have a second basic meaning, one that does not require that really distinct items be either mutually or unilaterally separable. What is this second basic meaning? And how does it differ from the Scotistic formal distinction?
Seeking an answer to the first question, I turn to Feser's manual where, on p. 74, we read:
But separability is not the only mark of a real distinction. Another is contrariety of the concepts under which things fall . . . . For example, being material and being immaterial obviously exclude one another, so that there must be a real distinction between a material thing and an immaterial thing. A third mark sometimes suggested is efficient causality . . . .
In this passage, Feser seems to be saying that there is one disinction called the real distinction, but that it has more than one mark. He does not appear to be maintaining that 'real distinction' has two different meanings, one that requires separability and another that does not. On the next page, however, Feser makes a distinction between a "real physical distinction" and a "real metaphysical distinction" where the former requires separability but the latter does not. He goes on to say that for Scotus and Suarez a necessary condition of any real distinction in created things is that the items distinguished be separable: "a distinction is real only when it entails separability." (75)
The Formal Distinction
I asked: "What is the second basic meaning of 'real distinction'?" The answer I glean from Feser is that the second meaning is real metaphysical distinction, a distinction that does not require separability. Now for my second question: How does this real metaphysical distinction differ from the formal distinction? According to Cross, "the formal distinction is the kind of distinction that obtains between (inseparable) properties on the assumption that nominalism about properties is false." (108) Feser describes it as a third and intermediate kind of disinction that is neither logical nor real. (75) Both what Cross and Feser say comport well with my understanding of the formal distinction.
Consider the distinction between a man's animality and his rationality. They are clearly distinct because there are animals that are not rational, and there are rational beings that are not animals. It is also clear that the distinction is not purely logical: the distinction is not generated by our thinking or speaking, but has a basis in extramental and extralinguistic reality. Is it then a real distinction? Not if such a distinction entails separability. For it is not broadly logically possible that the rationality of Socrates exist without his animality, or his animality without his rationality. Anything that is both animal and rational is essentially both animal and rational. (Whereas it is not the case that anything that is both sitting and speaking is essentially both sitting and speaking.) So the Scotist, for whom the reality of a real distinction entails separability, says that what we have here is a formal distinction, a distinction between two 'formalities,' animality and rationality, that are really inseparable but formally distinct.
My second question, again, is this: How does the real metaphysical distinction differ from the formal distinction? In both cases, the distinction is not purely logical, i.e., a mere distinctio rationis. So in both cases the distinction has a basis in reality. Further, in both cases there is no separability of the terms of the distinction. Socrates cannot be rational without being an animal, and he cannot be an animal without being rational. Similarly, he cannot exist without having an essence, and he cannot have an essence without existing.
So what is the difference between the real metaphysical distinction (that Feser distinguishes from the real physical distinction) and the formal distinction? If I understand Feser, his view is that the formal distinction collapses into the virtual distinction, which is a logical distinction, hence not a real distinction, whereas the real metaphysical distinction is a real distinction despite its not requiring separability. But what is the virtual distinction?
The Virtual Distinction
Feser tells us that a logical distinction is virtual "when it has some foundation in reality." (73) A virtual distinction is a logical distinction that is more than a merely verbal distinction. He gives the example of a man's nature which, despite its being one thing, can be viewed under two aspects, the aspect of rationality and the aspect of animality. The distinction between the two aspects is not real but virtual. The virtual distinction thus appears to be identical to the formal distinction.
Accordingly, the difference between the real metaphysical distinction and the formal distinction is that the first is real despite its not entailing separability while the second is logical despite having a foundation in reality. I hope I will be forgiven for not discerning a genuine difference between these two kinds of distinction. Feser suggests that the difference may only be a matter of emphasis, with the Thomist emphasizing the logical side of the virtual/formal distinction and the Scotist emphasizing the real side. (76)
Should we then irenically conclude that the metaphysical real distinction of the Thomists (or, to be cautious, of Feser the Thomist) is the same as the formal distinction of (some of) the Scotists?
Essence and Existence Again
I am afraid that matters are much messier. Suppose you agree that essence and existence in Socrates are neither mutually nor unilaterally separable. Suppose you also agree that Socrates is a contingent being: he exists (speaking tenselessly) but there is no broadly logical necessity that he exist. The second supposition implies that Socates does not exist just by virtue of his essence: his existence does not follow from his nature. Nor is his existence identical to his essence or nature, as it is in the ontologically simple God. So they must be distinct in reality. But — and here comes trouble — this real distinction in Socrates as between his essence and his existence cannot be a distinction between inseparable aspects. Animality and rationality are inseparable aspects of Socrates' nature; but essence and existence cannot be inseparable aspects of him. If they were inseparable, then Socrates would exist by his every nature or essence. This seems to imply that the metaphysical real distinction is not the same as the formal distinction. For the metaphysical real distinction between essence and existence requires separability of essence and existence in creatures.
Aporetic Conclusion
It looks like we are in a pickle. We got to the conclusion that the real metaphysical distinction is the same as the formal distinction. But now we see that they cannot be the same. Some may not 'relish' it, but the 'pickle' can be savored as an aporetic polyad:
1. Socrates is a metaphysically contingent being.
2. Metaphysical contingency entails weak separability (as defined above) of essence and existence.
3. Nothing is such that its essence and existence are weakly separable.
The triad is logically inconsistent.
Solution by (1)-denial. One cannot of course maintain that Socrates is metaphysically necessary. But one could deny the presupposition upon which (1) rests, namely, the constituent-ontological assumption that Socrates is compounded of essence and existence. On a relation ontology, essence-existence composition makes no sense.
Solution by (2)-denial. One could try to show that contingency has an explanation that does not require weak separability of essence and existence.
Solution by (3)-denial. One could argue that the individual essence of Socrates can be wthout being exemplified along the lines of Plantinga's haecceity properties.
Each of these putative solutions brings trouble of its own.
In your Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy divine simplicity article you draw a helpful comparison toward the end between trope theory and divine simplicity. However it left me wondering in what way the claim that 1) God is simple differs from the claim that 2) God is just a trope of divinity?
Excellent question. But can I answer it? Here is what I said in the SEP entry:
Tropes are ontologically simple entities. On trope theory, properties are assayed not as universals but as particulars: the redness of a tomato is as particular, as unrepeatable, as the tomato. Thus a tomato is red, not in virtue of exemplifying a universal, but by having a redness trope as one of its constituents (on one version of trope theory) or by being a substratum in which a redness trope inheres (on a second theory). A trope is a simple entity in that there is no distinction between it and the property it ‘has.’ Thus a redness trope is red, but it is not red by instantiating redness, or by having redness as a constituent, but by being (a bit of) redness. So a trope is what it has. It has redness by being identical to (a bit of) redness. In this respect it is like God who is what he has. God has omniscience by being (identical to) omniscience. Just as there is no distinction between God and his omniscience, there is no distinction in a redness trope between the trope and its redness. And just as the simple God is not a particular exemplifying universals, a trope is not a particular exemplifying a universal. In both cases we have a particular that is also a property, a subject of predication that is also a predicable entity, where the predicable entity is predicated of itself. Given that God is omniscience, he is predicable of himself. Given that a redness trope is a redness, it is predicable of itself. An important difference, of course, is that whereas God is unique, tropes are not: there is and can be only one God, but there are many redness tropes.
Not only is each trope identical to the property it has, in each trope there is an identity of essence and existence. A trope is neither a bare particular nor an uninstantiated property. It is a property-instance, an indissoluble unity of a property and itself as instance of itself. As property, it is an essence, as instance, it is the existence of that essence. Because it is simple, essence and existence are identical in it. Tropes are thus necessary beings (beings whose very possibility entails their actuality) as they must be if they are to serve as the ontological building blocks of everything else (on the dominant one-category version of trope theory). In the necessity of their existence, tropes resemble God.
If one can bring oneself to countenance tropes, then one cannot object to the simple God on the ground that (i) nothing can be identical to its properties, or (ii) in nothing are essence and existence identical. For tropes are counterexamples to (i) and (ii).
In the SEP article I was merely trying to "to soften up the contemporary reader for the possible coherence of DDS . . . by adducing some garden variety examples of contemporary philosophical posits that are ontologically simple in one or more of the ways in which God is said to be simple." I was not suggesting that God is a divinity trope.
But perhaps this suggestion can be developed. Perhaps God can be usefully viewed as analogous to a trope, as a divinity trope. One thing is clear and must be borne in mind. God is a stupendously rich reality, the ne plus ultra of absoluteness, transcendence, and alterity. He cannot easily be brought within the human conceptual horizon. If you are not thinking of God in these terms, you are probably thinking like an atheist, as if God is just one more being among beings. God, however, is nothing like that famous piece of (hypothetical) space junk, Russell's teapot.
Given the divine transcendence and absoluteness, one cannot expect God to fit easily into any presupposed ontological framework developed for the purpose of understanding 'sublunary' items. God is not a trope among tropes any more than he is a substance among substances or a concrete particular among concrete particulars. Two points. First, there are indefinitely many redness tropes, but there cannot be indefinitely many divinity tropes. If God is a trope, then he is an absolutely unique trope. Second, no concrete 'sublunary' item is identical to a single trope. (I trust my astute readers understand my use of 'sublunary' here.) Many tropes enter into the constitution of any ordinary particular. But if God is a trope he must be absolutely unitary, enfolding all of his reality in his radical unity. So 'trope' needs some analogical stretching to fit the divine reality.
To answer the reader's question, God cannot be a trope among tropes. But an analogical extension of the trope conception in the direction of deity may be worth pursuing.
A Sketch of the Difference between Two Ontological Styles
What it is for a thing to have a property? Ostrich nominalism aside, it is a Moorean fact that things have properties, but the nature of the having is a philosophical problem. The ordinary language 'have' does not wear it correct ontological analysis on its sleeve. My cup is blue. Does the cup have the property of being blue by standing in a relation to it — the relation of exemplification — or by containing it as an ontological or metaphysical part or constituent? The root issue that divides constituent ontologists (C-ontologists) and those that N. Wolterstorff calls, rather infelicitously, "relation ontologists" (R-ontologists) is whether or not ordinary particulars have ontological or metaphysical parts.
C-ontologists maintain that (i) ordinary particulars have such parts in addition to their commonsense parts; (ii) that among these ontological parts are (some of) the properties of the ordinary particular; and (iii) that the particular has (some of) its properties by having them as proper parts. R-ontologists deny that ordinary particulars have ontological parts, and consequently deny that ordinary particulars have any of their properties by having them as parts. Of course, R-ontologists do not deny that (most) ordinary particulars have commonsense parts.
Drawing on some graphic images from D. M. Armstrong, we can say that for C-ontologists ordinary particulars are "layer cakes" while for R-ontologists they are "blobs." 'Blob' conveys the idea that ordinary particulars lack ontological structure in addition to such commonsense structure as spatial structure.
The distinction between these two styles of ontology or two approaches to ontology is not entirely clear, but, I think, clear enough. To take an example, is the blueness of my blue coffee cup an abstract object off in a platonic or quasi-platonic realm apart and only related to the cup I drink from by the external asymmetrical relation of exemplification? That, I take it, is van Inwagen's view. I find it hard to swallow. After all, I see (with the eyes of the head, not the eye of the mind) the blueness at the cup, where the cup is. Phenomenologically, I see (some) properties. So some properties are literally visible. No abstract objects (as PvI and others influenced by Quine use 'abstract objects') are literally visible. Ergo, some properties are not abstract objects.
Here is a second argument. Some properties are either wholly or partially located at the places where the things that have the properties are located. No abstract objects are either wholly or partially located at the places where the things that have the properties are located. Therefore, some properties are not abstract objects. So I am inclined to say that the blueness of my cup is in some unmereological and hard-to-explain sense an ontological proper part or constituent of the cup. It is obviously not the whole of the cup since the cup has other properties. Ordinary particulars are not ontologically structureless 'blobs.'
Needless to say, these two quick little arguments do not decide the matter in favor of C-ontology. And the other arguments I could add won't decide the matter either. But taken cumulatively these arguments give one good reason to reject R-ontology.
It is also worth observing that an ontological constituent needn't be a property. Gustav Bergmann's bare particulars and Armstrong's thin particulars are ontological constituents of ordinary or 'thick' particulars but they are not properties of those particulars. The materia signata of the Thomists is a constituent of material particulars, but not a property of such particulars. So, C-ontology is not just a thesis about properties and how they are had by the things that have them.
So much for ontological background. For more on the two ontological approaches, see my article, "Constituent versus Relational Ontology," Studia Neoaristotelica: A Journal of Analytical Scholasticism, vol. 10, no, 1, 2013, pp. 99-115. Now what relevance does this have for the classically theist doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS)? But first: What is DDS?
The Doctrine of Divine Simplicity
To put it as 'simply' as possible, DDS is the thesis that God is without (proper) parts. (If you want to say that God is an improper part of himself, I'll let that slide.) Being without parts, God is without composition of any sort. It is obvious that God is not a region of space, nor does he occupy a region of space. So he cannot have spatial or material parts. If God is eternal, then he cannot have temporal parts. (And if there are no temporal parts, then God cannot have them even if he is everlasting or omnitemporal.) But he also lacks ontological parts. So the divine attributes cannot be different parts of him in the way that my attributes can be different parts of me on a C-ontology. We can put this by saying that in God there is no real distinction between him and his omni-attributes. He is each attribute, which implies that each attribute is every other attribute. Indeed, there is no distinction in God between God and any of his intrinsic properties. (Each omni-attribute is an intrinsic property, but not conversely.) What's more, there can be no distinction in God between essence and existence, form and matter, act and potency. Since God is in no way composite, he is simple.
And why must God be simple? Because he is absolute, and nothing absolute can be depend for its existence or nature on anything distinct from it. An absolute is what it has. It cannot be compounded of anything that is not absolute or dependent on anything that is not absolute. Why must God be absolute? Because anything less would not be God, a worship-worthy being. These answers are quick and catechetical, but I must invoke my blogospheric privilege and move one.
Plantinga's Critique Misses the Mark
Perhaps the best-known attack on the coherence of DDS is that of A. Plantinga in his Does God Have a Nature? The attack fails because Plantinga foists on the DDS an R-ontology that is foreign to the thought of DDS defenders. If properties are abstract objects, and God is a concrete particular, then of course it would be incoherent to maintain that God and omnsicience are one and the same. For if omniscience is a property, and properties are abstract objects, and abstract objects are causally inert, then the identification of God and omniscience would either render God causally inert — which would contradict his being concrete — or it would render omniscience causally active — in contradiction to its being abstract. More simply, if you think of concreta and abstracta as denizens of radically disjoint realms, as R-ontologists do, then it would be something like a Rylean category mistake to maintain that God is identical to his properties.
More simply still, if God is causally active and no property is causally active (or passive for that matter), would it not be supremely stupid to assert that there is no distinction in reality between God and his properties? Could Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Avicenna, et al. have been that stupid? I don't think so. Aquinas was as little Quinean in his understanding of abstracta as Quine was Aquinian. Philosophical theologians under the spell of Quine such as Plantinga and van Inwagen are not well situated to understand such tenets of classical theism as DDS.
It is obvious, then, that DDS is incoherent when read in the light of R-ontology. It is also uncharitable in excelsis to read Aquinas et al. in that light because so reading them makes nonsense of what they say.
Does C-ontology Help with Coherence?
One of the entailments of DDS is that God does not exemplify his nature; he just is his nature. We have seen that this makes no coherent sense on (any version of) R-ontology. But it does make coherent sense on (some versions of) C-ontology. For if God is purely actual with no admixture of potency, wholly immaterial, and free of accidents, then what is left for God to be but his nature? To understand this, one must bear in mind that the divine nature is absolutely unique. As such it is not repeatable: it is not a universal. It is therefore unrepeatable, a particular. What is to prevent it from being identical to God and from being causally active?
If you say that God is an instance of a multiply exemplifiable divine nature, they you are simply reverting to R-ontology and failing to take in the point I just made. God cannot be an instance of a kind, else he would depend on that kind to be what he is. God transcends the distinction between instance and kind. And if you persist in thinking that natures are causally inert abstract objects, then you are simply refusing to think in C-ontological terms.
If you say that I beg the question against the denier of DDS when I say that God transcends the instance-kind distinction, then you miss the point. The concern here is not whether DDS is true or whether there are non-question-begging arguments for it; the concern is whether it makes coherent sense as opposed to being quickly dismissable as guilty of a category mistake.
Another objection one might make is that the divine nature is not simple but complex, and that if God is his nature, then God is complex too. For Plantinga, the nature of a thing is a conjunctive property the conjuncts of which are those properties the thing exemplifies in every possible world in which it exists. On this approach, the divine nature is 'cobbled together' or constructed out of God's essential properties. But then the divine nature is logically and ontologically posterior to those properties. Clearly, no defender of DDS will think of natures in the Plantingian way. He will think of the divine nature as logically and ontologically prior to the properties, and of the properties as manifestations of that unitary nature, a nature the radical unity of which cannot be made sense of on Plantinga's approach.
There are other problematic entailments of DDS. One is that in God, nature and existence are one and the same. On an R-ontology, this makes no coherent sense. But it can be made sense on a C-ontological approach. A fit topic for a separate post.
Ken Hochstetter of the College of Southern Nevada kindly sent me some comments on my SEP Divine Simplicity entry. They are thoughtful and challenging and deserve a careful reply. My remarks are in blue. I have added some subheadings.
The editors of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy want me to revise my Divine Simplicity entry by July 2nd. Written in 2006, it has been revised once, in 2010. This will be the third revision. If anyone who knows this subject has any constructive comments on the style, content, coverage, or organization of the present entry, I'd like to hear them. In particular, references to recent literature not included in the present bibliography would be helpful.
I pose a problem, offer without endorsing a solution, and then evaluate Paul Manata's objection to the solution.
Suppose a creaturely agent freely performs an action A. He files his tax return, say, by the April 15th deadline. Suppose that the freedom involved is not the compatibilist "freedom of the turnspit" (to borrow Kant's derisive phrase) but the robust freedom that implies both that the agent is the unsourced source of the action and that the agent could have done otherwise. The performance of A makes true a number of contingent propositions, all of them known by God in his omniscience. Now if S knows that p, and p is contingent, then S's knowing that p is an accidental (as opposed to essential) property of S. If God is omniscient, then he knows every (non-indexical) truth, including every contingent truth. It seems to follow that God has at least as many accidental properties as there are contingent truths. Surely some of these are not properties with which God could be identical, as the simplicity doctrine requires.
Consider the property of knowing that Tom freely files his tax return on April 14th, 2014. Assuming that Tom actually performs the action in question, this property is an intrinsic property contingently had by God. (A property can be intrinsic without being accidental.) If God were identical to this property, then he could not be a se. For if God were identical to the property, then God would be dependent on something — Tom's libertarianly free action — that is external to God and beyond his control. Now anything that compromises the divine aseity will compromise the divine simplicity, the latter being an entailment of the former. So it seems that an omniscient God cannot be simple if there are free creaturely agents.
The problem is expressible as an aporetic triad:
1. Every free agent is a libertarianly-free (L-free) agent.
2. God is ontologically simple (where simplicity is an entailment of aseity and vice versa).
3. There are contingent items of divine all-knowledge that do not (wholly) depend on divine creation, but do (partially) depend on creaturely freedom.
Each limb of the above triad has a strong, though not irresistible, claim on a classical theist's acceptance. As for (1), if God is L-free, as he must be on classical theism, then it is reasonable to maintain that every free agent is L-free. For if 'could have done otherwise' is an essential ingredient in the analysis of 'Agent A freely performs action X,' then it is highly plausible to maintain that this is so whether the agent is God or Socrates. Otherwise, 'free' will means something different in the two cases. Furthermore, if man is made in the image and likeness of God, then surely part of what this means is that man is a spiritual being who is libertarianly free just as God is. If a man is a deterministic system, then one wonders in what sense man is in the image of God.
As for (2), some reasons were given earlier for thinking that a theism that understands itself must uphold God's ontological simplicity inasmuch as it is implied by the divine aseity.
An example of (3) is Oswald's shooting of Kennedy. The act was freely performed by Oswald, and the proposition that records it is a contingent truth known by God in his omniscience.
But although each of (1)-(3) is plausibly maintained and is typically maintained by theists who uphold the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS), they cannot all be true. Therein resides the problem. Any two limbs imply the negation of the third. Thus: (1) & (3) –> ~(2); (1) & (2) –> ~(3); (2) & (3) –> ~(1).
To illustrate, let us consider how (1) and (3), taken together, entail the negation of (2). Being omniscient, God knows that Oswald freely chose to kill Kennedy. But Oswald's L-freedom precludes us from saying that God's knowledge of this contingent fact depends solely on the divine will. For it also depends on Oswald's L-free authorship of his evil deed, an authorship that God cannot prevent or override once he has created L-free agents. But this is inconsistent with the divine aseity. For to say that God is a se is to say that God is not dependent on anything distinct from himself for his existence or intrinsic properties. But God has the property of being such that he knows that Oswald freely chose to kill Kennedy, and his having this property depends on something outside of God's control, namely, Oswald's L-free choice. In this way the divine aseity is compromised, and with it the divine simplicity.
It seems, then, that our aporetic triad is an inconsistent triad. The problem it represents can be solved by denying either (1) or (2) or (3). Since (3) cannot be plausibly denied, this leaves (1) and (2). Some will deny the divine simplicity. But an upholder of the divine simplicity has the option of denying (1) and maintaining that, while God is L-free, creaturely agents are free only in a compatibilist sense. If creaturely agents are C-free, but not L-free, then Oswald could not have done otherwise, and it is possible for the upholder of divine simplicity to say that that Oswald's C-free choice is no more a threat to the divine aseity than the fact that God knows the contingent truth that creaturely agents exist. The latter is not a threat to the divine aseity because the existence of creaturely agents derives from God in a way that Oswald's L-free choice does not derive from God.
The proposal, then, is that we abandon (1) and maintain instead that only God is L-free, creatures being all of them C-free. And this despite the reasons adduced for accepting (1), reasons that are admittedly not absolutely compelling. But Paul Manata, in an e-mail, raises an objection to the proposed solution:
I was wondering what you think about this argument that such a solution might not be possible. It goes like this:
Libertarian free will = Incompatibilism + someone is free (does a free action)
Compatibilism = determinism is true in some world w, and someone is free (does a free action) in w.
Incompatibilism = there does not exist a world, w, where determinism is true in w and someone is free (does a free act) in w.
With this quick set up, we can see that compatibilism and incompatibilism contradict each other (the former is scoped by '<>' and the later scoped by '~<>').
Thus, to affirm both <>(S is free in some w and determinism is true in w) and ~<>(S is free in some w and determinism is true in w) is not possible. But that is what the solution affirms, i.e., it affirms incompatibilism by affirming that God has LFW and it affirms compatibilism by affirming we have compatibilism freedom.
This was quick and there's more to say, but that's the gist of the idea. Thoughts?
The essence of Manata's criticism is that the above proposal issues in a contradiction inasmuch as it implies that incompatibilism and compatibilism are consistent, when they are obviously inconsistent. For if God is L-free, then, given that God is a necessary being, God is L-free in every world, whence it follows (given Manata's definition of libertarian free will) that incompatibilism is true in every world. But this is inconsistent with the claim that there is a world (such as the actual world) in which compatibilism is true.
This is a worthy and thought-provoking objection but perhaps it can be side-stepped if we bear the following points in mind. God is a supernatural agent. As such, he is no part of the natural order. He is rather the transcendent creator of that order. Not being part of the natural order, he is not subject to nature's determinism if nature is deterministic. Nor is God subject to nature's indeterminism if nature is indeterministic. It follows that God's freedom is neither compatible with determinism nor incompatible with determinism. Since God is transcendent of nature, the alternative does not arise for him. Only creaturely freedom faces this alternative.
Given the foregoing, we may define LFW as follows:
An agent X is libertarianly free =df X is the agent-cause of some of its actions.
This definition is neutral as between supernatural and natural agents. Now suppose nature is deterministic and every creaturely agent is subject to this determinism. Then the only way a creature could be free would be in the compatibilist sense.
The claim that free creatures are C-free seems logically consistent with the claim that God alone is L-free.
