-
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
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the
Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
.http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars,
researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information
technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new
formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please
contact [email protected].
.
Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend access to ReligiousStudies.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014
10:51:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
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
This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014
10:51:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
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.
This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014
10:51:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
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.
This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014
10:51:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
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.)
This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014
10:51:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
DIVINE SIMPLICITY 169
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.
This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014
10:51:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
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.
This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014
10:51:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
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.
This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014
10:51:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
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'.
This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014
10:51:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
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,
This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014
10:51:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
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.
This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014
10:51:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
DIVINE SIMPLICITY I 75
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.
This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014
10:51:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
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.
This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014
10:51:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
DIVINE SIMPLICITY 177
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.
This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014
10:51:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
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.
This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014
10:51:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
DIVINE SIMPLICITY I 79
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.
This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014
10:51:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
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.
This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014
10:51:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
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.
This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014
10:51:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
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.
This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014
10:51:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
DIVINE SIMPLICITY 183
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.
This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014
10:51:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
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.
This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014
10:51:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
DIVINE SIMPLICITY 185
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.
This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014
10:51:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
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.
This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014
10:51:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Article Contentsp. [165]p. 166p. 167p. 168p. 169p. 170p. 171p.
172p. 173p. 174p. 175p. 176p. 177p. 178p. 179p. 180p. 181p. 182p.
183p. 184p. 185p. 186
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