## 1. Motivation



What could motivate such a strange and seemingly incoherent doctrine?
One central consideration in its favor derives from the Anselmian
definition of God as maximally perfect, as that than which no greater
can be conceived. A God who was less than maximally perfect would not
be an absolute reality and an appropriate object of worship. A God who
was less than ultimate and absolute would be an idol. Now an absolute
reality must be *a se*, from itself, and so not dependent on
anything distinct from itself either for its nature or for its
existence. If God had properties in the way creatures have them,
however, he would be distinct from them and so dependent on them. This
is the case whether one thinks of a property of *x* as a
constituent of *x*, or as an entity external to *x* to
which *x* is tied by the asymmetrical relation (or
nonrelational tie) of instantiation. If the properties of *x*
are constituents or ontological (proper) parts of *x*, then
*x* will depend on them in the same way that any whole composed
of parts depends on its parts. But if *x* is tied to its
properties by the asymmetrical relation of instantiation, it is still
the case that *x* will depend on them: if *x* is
*F* in virtue of *x*'s instantiation of
*F*-ness, then *F*-ness is a logically prior condition
of *x*'s being *F*. In sum, the divine aseity
would seem to require that God *be* rather than *have*
his attributes.



One can also arrive at the simplicity doctrine via the divine
necessity. As maximally perfect, as that than which no greater can be
conceived, God must be a metaphysically necessary being, one that
cannot not exist. A necessary being is one whose possibility entails
its existence, and whose nonexistence entails its impossibility. But
what could be the ground of this necessity of existence if not the
identity in God of essence and existence, possibility and actuality?
Saying that God exists in all metaphysically possible worlds does not
provide a ground, but merely a graphic Leibnizian representation, of
the notion of necessary being. The possible worlds representation also
does not distinguish the necessity of God from that of an abstract
object such as the set of even primes. God is not just another
necessary being among necessary beings; he is uniquely necessary as
the source and ground of everything distinct from himself, including
all non-divine necessary beings. Indeed, God is uniquely unique, i.e.,
unique in his mode of uniqueness, in that he is not one of a kind, or
necessarily one of a kind, but unique in transcending the
kind-instance difference altogether. A divine being cannot possess
contingent modal status: if God exists, then he is necessary, and if
he does not exist, then he is impossible. So if God exists, then there
is a very tight connection between the divine nature and the divine
existence. The simplicity doctrine in its traditional and strongest
form assays this 'tightness' as identity. The divine
simplicity thus grounds the divine necessity. God is necessary because
he is simple. It is easy to see that the divine simplicity also
grounds God's possession of essential properties. God has his
attributes essentially because he is identical to his attributes.
Nothing is more essential to a thing than something to which it is
identical.



A third motivation for DDS lies in the fact that it provides a
solution to the ancient Euthyphro dilemma first presented by Plato in
his eponymous dialog. Does God command the good because it is good,
and forbid the bad because it is bad, or is the good good and the bad
bad because God commands/forbids it? If the former, God's
willing would be subject to an external standard logically antecedent
to God to the detriment of the divine sovereignty. If the latter, the
content of morality would be arbitrary because subject to God's
free will. On DDS, however, the dilemma is a false alternative. If God
is goodness itself in its prime instance, then he is not subject to a
standard; he is the standard. And if God, being simple, just is his
willing, then he cannot will anything other than the good and the
appearance of arbitrarity vanishes. See Feser (2009, 129) who draws on
Stump (2003).



Note that while the traditional approach to divine simplicity is in
terms of identity, this approach is open to what Dolezal (2011,
136-144) calls the "harmonist challenge" according
to which, on one variation, that of Immink (1987), the divine
attributes are not identical but necessarily equivalent. Dolezal also
counts Swinburne (1994) among the harmonists. Harmonism will not be
discussed further in this entry. See Dolezal (2011) for competent
critique of harmonism and for an overall excellent defense of DDS.



Besides perfection and necessity, immateriality, eternity, and
immutability also seem to point to simplicity as their ground. Because
God is simple, he cannot have parts and so cannot have material or
temporal parts. And because God is simple, he cannot harbor any
unrealized potentialities, and so must be immutable. The centrality of
DDS to medieval philosophical theology is shown by its position in the
order of topics in Aquinas' *Summa Theologica*. It occurs
as Question 3 right after Question 2 on the existence of God.



Finally, the triune nature of the God of classical Christian theism
may also be taken as motivating DDS within Christian theology, and
this despite the initial suspicion that Trinity is incompatible with
divine simplicity. According to Wedgeworth (2019, 62),
"Athanasius of Alexandria consistently used the doctrine of
divine simplicity to argue that the Son's eternal Generation
from the Father proved his absolute deity ...." To pursue
this further lies beyond the scope of this entry.


## 2. The Question of Coherence



The very notion of an ontologically simple being will be dismissed by
many as self-evidently incoherent. Among theists, there are those who
will argue that DDS does not cohere with some other theistic
commitment such as the doctrine of the Trinity. The main concern of
this article is not with such intramural coherence questions, but with
the question of whether or not DDS is coherent at all. This broad
coherence question is not whether the doctrine is true, or even
possibly true; the question is whether it is possible for us to think
it without obvious contradictions and category mistakes. Ultimately,
the broad coherence question concerns the sort of general metaphysical
framework that would allow DDS to be discussed as a live option as
opposed to being dismissed as incoherent from the outset.



A central threat to coherence is the question of how a thing could be
identical to its properties. Alvin Plantinga (1980, 47) maintains that
if God is identical to his properties, then he is a property, and they
are a single property, in which case God is a single property. Given
that properties are abstract entities, and abstracta are causally
inert, then God is abstract and causally inert -- which is of
course inconsistent with the core tenet of classical theism according
to which God is the personal creator and sustainer of every contingent
being. No abstract object is either a person or a causal agent. No
abstract object can be omniscient, or indeed know anything at all.
More fundamentally, no abstract entity can be identical to any
concrete entity. God as person and creator is concrete. Abstracta and
concreta are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive. Nothing can be
both. Objections similar to Plantinga's have been raised by
Richard Gale (1991, 23 ff.), William Hasker (2016, 703) and
others.



It is easy to see that Plantinga-style objections will not appear
decisive to those who reject his metaphysical framework. Indeed,
Plantinga's accusations of category mistake may strike students
of the main medieval proponents of DDS as so many misunderstandings
based on a foisting of a foreign framework on their ideas. Plantinga,
along with many other philosophers, thinks of individuals and
properties as belonging to disjoint categories connected by an
external relation of exemplification. Individuals are causally
efficacious concreta whereas properties are causally impotent
abstracta. Such an approach to ontology renders the divine simplicity
inconceivable from the outset. For if God is a concrete individual and
his nature (conceived perhaps as the conjunction of his
omni-attributes) is an abstract property, then the general ontology
rules out any identity or sameness of God and his nature. Any such
identity or sameness would violate the separateness of the two
categories. To identify an unexemplifiable concretum with an
exemplifiable abstractum would amount to a category mistake. At most,
a Plantinga-style approach allows for God's
*exemplification* of his nature where the (first-level)
exemplification relation, unlike the identity relation, is
asymmetrical and irreflexive and so enforces the non-identity of its
relata. In short, if God exemplifies his nature, then God must be
distinct from his nature, just as Socrates must be distinct from his
nature. God's nature is then something he has, by
exemplification, not, *pace* Augustine, something he is by some
form of identity or sameness.


## 3. Constituent Versus Nonconstituent Ontology



Since a Plantinga-type approach to ontology rules out DDS from the
outset, no sophisticated adherent of the doctrine will adopt such an
approach. The DDS defender will embrace an ontology that accommodates
an ontologically simple being. Indeed, as Nicholas Wolterstorff (1991)
notes, classical proponents of DDS such as Aquinas had a radically
different ontological style, one that allowed for the coherent
conceivability of DDS. They did not think of individuals as related to
their properties as to abstracta external to them, but as having
properties as ontological constituents. They, and some atheist
contemporaries as well, think in terms of a "constituent
ontology" as opposed to what Wolterstorff calls a
"relation ontology" or what might be called a
"nonconstituent ontology". Bundle theories are
contemporary examples of constituent ontology. If properties are
assayed as tropes and a concrete particular as a bundle of tropes,
then these tropes or abstract particulars are parts of concrete
particulars when suitably bundled. Properties so assayed are brought
from Plato's heaven to earth. The togetherness or compresence of
tropes in a trope bundle is not formal identity but a kind of
contingent sameness. Thus a redness trope and a sweetness trope in an
apple are not identical but contingently compresent as parts of the
same whole. A model such as this allows for an extrapolation to a
necessary compresence of the divine attributes in the case of God.
Aquinas, the greatest of the medieval proponents of DDS, is of course
an Aristotelian, not a trope theorist. But he too is a constituent
ontologist. Form and matter, act and potency, and essence and
existence are constituents of primary substances. Essence and
existence in sublunary substances such as Socrates are really distinct
but inseparably together. Their unity is contingent. This model
permits an extrapolation to the case of a being in which essence and
existence are necessarily together or compresent. Constituent
ontology, as murky as it must remain on a sketch such as this, at
least provides a framework in which DDS is somewhat intelligible as
opposed to a Plantinga-style framework on which DDS remains wholly
unintelligible. The arguments for DDS amount to arguments against the
nonconstituent ontological framework.



Adopting a constituent ontology will not, by itself, bring DDS into
the clear. Suppose properties (whether assayed as universals or as
tropes) are ontological parts of the ordinary (thick) particulars that
have them and that this having is understood quasi-mereologically as a
kind of part-whole relation rather than as an exemplification relation
that spans the abstract-concrete divide. This would still leave us
with the puzzle of how a whole could be identical to one of its proper
parts, and the related puzzle of how two distinct proper parts could
be identical to each other. Construing properties as parts of the
things that have them does not, by itself, show how there could be a
simple being. But if properties are parts, then at least
Plantinga's dismissal of DDS on the ground that nothing concrete
can be identical to anything abstract can itself be dismissed.



What is needed to render DDS coherent is a particular version of
constituent ontology according to which a thing's nature is a
unitary concrete item and a constituent of the thing. In the case of
material beings, the nature will be together with some individuating
constituent such as signate or designated matter (*materia
signata*). Material beings are individuated and diversified by
their signate matter. Thus Socrates and Plato, though the same in
nature, differ numerically in virtue of their different portions of
*materia signata*. Matter makes them individuals, and matter
makes them numerically diverse individuals. God, however, being
immaterial, is not individuated by anything distinct from his nature,
and so can be said to be a self-individuating nature. As
self-individuating, there is no real distinction between God and his
nature. In Thomist terms, in God nature and *suppositum* are
identical.(*ST* I, q. 3, art. 3) The divine nature is not an
abstract object related across an ontological chasm to a concrete
individual;the divine nature is a self-individuating concrete unitary
nature. 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 this 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. None of this is spectacularly clear, and
plenty of questions remain; but it is not obviously incoherent as DDS
would be on the approach of Plantinga. And our question, you will
recall, is concerned solely with coherence.


### 3.1 God and His Nature



One can see from the foregoing that Plantinga-type objections are not
compelling. The reason, again, is that DDS cannot be made sense of
within a nonconstituent ontology. It can be made sense of, assuming it
can be made sense of, only within a constituent ontology, the style of
ontology presupposed by its main defender, Aquinas. A nonconstituent
ontologist like Plantinga may be represented as arguing by Modus
Ponens: If God exemplifies his nature, then he is distinct from it;
God exemplifies his nature; ergo, God is distinct from his nature, and
DDS is false. But the constituent ontologist is justified in switching
to Modus Tollens: If God exemplifies his nature, then he is distinct
from it; God is not distinct from his nature; ergo, God does not
exemplify his nature but has his nature by being identical with
it.



We have just seen how God can be identical to his nature where
"can be" is elliptical for "can be conceived without
obvious incoherence." But there are two other problems that also
pose a serious threat to the coherence of DDS. One concerns how God
can be identical to his existence, the other how the divine attributes
can be identical to each other.


### 3.2 God and His Existence



Taking the first question first, on a Plantinga-style approach, it
makes no sense to say that God is identical either to existence or to
*his* existence. For Plantinga, existence is a first-level
property that everything exemplifies. Given that
"exemplifies" picks out a two-term irreflexive and
asymmetrical relation, God cannot be identical with existence. Nor can
God be identical to *his* existence. The latter is presumably a
state of affairs, an abstract object, and no concretum can be
identical with an abstractum on pain of violating the separateness of
the concrete and abstract realms. There are, however, plenty of
reasons (Vallicella 2002, Ch. 2) to reject the view that existence is
a first-level property and the ontological schemes that entail it. One
intuition that many share is that existence is not one of an
individual's properties, but that in virtue of which it has any
properties in the first place: it is more like the unity or cohesion
of an individual's properties (Vallicella 2002, Ch. 6).



Another route to the identity of God with his existence is via the
divine necessity. Although it is true to say that a contingent being
is one that exists in some, but not all, metaphysically possible
worlds, that is not what makes a contingent being contingent. What
makes a contingent being contingent is the real distinction in it
between essence and existence. What makes an absolutely necessary
being necessary, then, is the lack of such a distinction. God, who has
his necessity from himself and not from another, is therefore
identical to his existence. One can say, if one likes, that God exists
in all metaphysically possible worlds, but that is true only because
in God essence and existence are the same. The divine simplicity is
the ground of the divine necessity. Given the way our minds work, we
cannot think of God without distinguishing between essence and
existence; but that is our affair and not God's. In reality, God
is his existence.


### 3.3 The Identity of the Divine Attributes



The foregoing may explain how it is conceivable without obvious
incoherence that God and his nature and God and his existence be
identical, but how does it answer the second question? How does it
explain the conceivability without obvious incoherence of the identity
of the divine attributes with each other? If each attribute is
identical to God, then each attribute is identical to each other by
the Transitivity of Identity. For example, if God = omniscience, and
God = omnipotence, then omniscience = omnipotence. But how could each
attribute be identical to God? If we can understand how each attribute
can be identical to God, then we can understand how every attribute
can be identical to every other one.



We have already seen how, if we embrace a constituent approach to
ontology, the divine nature can be coherently conceived as identical
to God. Being immaterial, there is nothing in God to distinguish him
from his nature. So he is identical to his nature. The divine nature
is, or can be thought of as, a property. So there is at least one
property that is self-instantiating: it has itself as its sole
instance, and indeed as its sole possible instance. If this is
coherently conceivable, then the same will be true of perfect
knowledge, perfect power, and so on: if instantiated, these attributes
are self-instantiated in every possible world and by the same thing in
every possible world (Vallicella 1992). Thus not only is the divine
nature identical to an individual, each divine perfection is identical
to an individual, namely God, whence it follows that each perfection
is identical to every other one.



A structurally similar approach is suggested by Christopher Hughes.
Think of first-level properties as David Lewis (1986, 50 ff.) does: as
sets of actual and possible individuals. Then the property of being
red will be the set of all actual and possible red individuals and the
property of being perfectly powerful will be the set consisting of all
actual and possible perfectly powerful individuals. But there is only
one such individual, God. Only God is perfectly powerful and only God
can be perfectly powerful. So perfect power = {God}. As Hughes (1989,
65) notes, Quine holds that a singleton and its member are identical.
If so, then perfect power = {God} = God. It should be added that if we
have already abandoned nonconstituent ontology with its rigid
bifurcation of the concrete and the abstract according to which the
two realms are disjoint, then we no longer have a reason to argue that
a concrete individual and its singleton must be distinct on the ground
that the former is concrete while the latter is abstract. Constituent
ontology allows for a sort of 'coalescence' of the
concrete and the abstract, the particular and the universal. Indeed,
such a coalescence is what we find in the simple God who is in some
sense both concrete and abstract in that he is a nature that is its
own suppositum.



Thus there appears to be justification for the move from perfect power
= {God} to perfect power = God. And similarly for perfect knowledge,
etc. In this way one can render coherent the notion that the
perfections constitutive of the divine nature are identical with one
another. For if each is identical to God, then each is identical to
every other one.


### 3.4 God and Mann: DDS and Property-Instances



William Mann cites a couple of difficulties that arise if the divine
attributes are said to be identical to each other. The first is that
if God = wisdom, and God = life, then wisdom = life. But wisdom and
life are not even extensionally equivalent, let alone identical. If
Tom is alive, it doesn't follow that Tom is wise (Mann 2015,
23). The second difficulty is that if God is wisdom, and Socrates is
wise by participating in wisdom, then Socrates is wise by
participating in God. But this smacks of heresy. No creature
participates in God (Mann 2015, 23). The problem arises if the divine
attributes are thought to be universals.



Enter property instances. It is one thing to say that God is wisdom,
quite another to say that God is *God's wisdom*.
God's wisdom is an example of a property instance. And similarly
for the other divine attributes. God is not identical to life; God is
identical to *his* life. Suppose we say that God = God's
wisdom, and God = God's life. It would then follow that
God's wisdom = God's life, but not that God = wisdom or
that wisdom = life. So if we construe identity with properties as
identity with property instances, then we can evade both of the above
difficulties. Mann's idea, then, is that the identity claims
made within DDS should be taken as Deity-instance identities (e.g.,
God is his omniscience) and as instance-instance identities (e.g.,
God's omniscience is God's omnipotence), but not as
Deity-property identities (e.g., God is omniscience) or as
property-property identities (e.g., omniscience is omnipotence).
Support for Mann's approach is readily available in the texts of
the *doctor angelicus* (Mann 2015, 24). Aquinas says things
like, *Deus est sua bonitas*, "God is his
goodness."



But what exactly is a property instance? If the concrete individual
Socrates instantiates the abstract universal property wisdom, then two
further putative items come into consideration. One is the
(Chisholmian-Plantingian as opposed to Bergmannian-Armstrongian) state
of affairs, Socrates' being wise. Such items are abstract, i.e.,
not in space or time. The other is the property instance, the wisdom
of Socrates. Mann rightly holds that they are distinct. All abstract
states of affairs exist, but only some of them obtain or are actual.
By contrast, all property instances are actual: they cannot exist
without being actual. The wisdom of Socrates is a particular, an
unrepeatable item, just as Socrates is, and the wisdom of Socrates is
concrete (in space and/or time) just as Socrates is. If we admit
property instances into our ontology, then the above two difficulties
can be circumvented. Or so Mann maintains.



But then other problems loom. One is this. If the F-ness of God = God,
if, for example, the wisdom of God = God, then God is a property
instance. But God is a person. How could a person be a property
instance? From the frying pan into the fire? How could the stupendous
and super-eminent reality of God be reduced to something as
ontologically flimsy as a property instance? The problem displayed as
an inconsistent triad: (a) God is a property instance; (b) God is a
person; (c) No person is a property instance.



Mann solves the triad by denying (c) (2015, 37). Some persons are
property instances. Indeed, Mann argues that every person is a
property instance because everything is a property instance. (2015,
38) God is a person and therefore a property instance. If you object
that persons are concrete while property instances are abstract,
Mann's response is that both are concrete (2015, 37). To be
concrete is to be in space and/or time (2015, 37). Socrates is
concrete in this sense, but so is his being sunburned.



If you object that persons are substances and thus independent items
while property instances are not substances but dependent on
substances, Mann's response will be that the point holds for
accidental property instances but not for essential property
instances. Socrates may lose his wisdom but he cannot lose his
humanity. Now all of God's properties are essential: God is
essentially omniscient, omnipotent, etc. So it seems to Mann that
"the omniscience of God is not any more dependent on God than
God is on the omniscience of God: should either cease to be, the other
would also." (2015, 37) This is scarcely compelling: x can
depend on y even if both are necessary beings. Both the set whose sole
member is the number 7 and the number 7 itself are necessary beings,
but the set depends on its member both for its existence and its
necessity, and not vice versa. Closer to home, Aquinas held that some
necessary beings have their necessity from another while one has its
necessity in itself. I should think that the omniscience of God is
dependent on God, and not vice versa. Mann's view, however, is
not unreasonable. Intuitions vary.



Mann's argument for the thesis that everything is a property
instance involves the notion of a rich property. The rich property of
an individual *x* is a conjunctive property the conjuncts of
which are all and only the essential and accidental properties, some
of them temporally indexed, instantiated by *x* throughout
*x*'s career (2015, 38). Mann tells us that for anything
whatsoever there is a corresponding rich property. From this he
concludes that "everything is a property instance of some rich
property or other" (38). It follows that every person is a
property instance. The argument seems to be this: (a) For every
concrete individual *x*, there is a corresponding rich property
*R*. Therefore, (b) for every concrete individual *x*,
*x* is a property instance of some rich property or other.
Therefore, (c) For every concrete individual *x*, if *x*
is a person, then *x* is a property instance.



Vallicella (2016, 379) argues that the move from (a) to (b) smacks of
a non sequitur absent some auxiliary premise. Let it be granted
*arguendo* that for each concrete individual *x* there
is a corresponding rich property *R*. And let it be granted
that there are property instances. So, in addition to Socrates and
wisdom, there is the wisdom of Socrates. Recall that this property
instance is not to be confused with the abstract state of affairs,
Socrates' being wise. From what has been granted it follows that
for each x there is the rich property instance, the *R*-ness of
*x*. But how is it supposed to follow that everything is a
property instance? Everything instantiates properties, and in this
sense everything is an instance of properties; but this is not to say
that everything is a property instance. Socrates instantiates a rich
property, and so is an instance of a property, but it doesn't
follow that Socrates is a property instance. Something seems to be
missing in Mann's argument.



There is of course no chance that Mann is confusing being an instance
of a property with being a property instance. If *a*
instantiates *F*-ness, then *a* is an instance of the
property *F*-ness; but *a* is not a property instance as
philosophers use this phrase: the *F*-ness of *a* is a
property instance. So what do we have to add to Mann's argument
for it to generate the conclusion that every concrete individual is a
property instance? How do we validate the inferential move from (a) to
(b)? Let '*Rs*' stand for
Socrates' rich property. We have to add the claim that there is
nothing one could point to that could distinguish Socrates from the
property instance generated when Socrates instantiates
*Rs*. Rich property instances are a special case of
property instances. Socrates cannot be identical to his wisdom because
he can exist even if his wisdom does not exist. And he cannot be
identical to his humanity because there is more to Socrates that his
humanity, even though he cannot exist without it. But since
Socrates' rich property instance includes all his property
instances, why can't Socrates be identical to this rich property
instance? And so Mann's thought seems to be that there is
nothing that could distinguish Socrates from his rich property
instance. So they are identical. And likewise for every other
individual. But it is arguable that it is a mistake to hold that every
person is a property instance. Here (Vallicella 2016 379-380) is
one argument.



*Rich Properties and Haecceity Properties.* Socrates can exist
without his rich property; ergo, he can exist without his rich
property instance; ergo, Socrates cannot be a rich property instance
or any property instance. The truth of the initial premise is fallout
from the definition of 'rich property.' The *R* of
*x* is a conjunctive property each conjunct of which is a
property of *x*. Thus Socrates' rich property includes
(has as a conjunct) the property of being married to Xanthippe. But
Socrates might not have had that property, whence it follows that he
might not have had *R*. (If *R* has *C* as a
conjunct, then necessarily *R* has *C* as a conjunct,
which implies that *R* cannot be what it is without having
exactly the conjuncts it in fact has. An analog of mereological
essentialism holds for conjunctive properties.) And because Socrates
might not have had *R*, he might not have had the property
instance of *R*. So Socrates cannot be identical to this
property instance. What Mann needs is not a rich property, but an
haecceity property: one that individuates Socrates across every
possible world in which he exists. His rich property, by contrast,
individuates him in only the actual world. In different worlds,
Socrates has different rich properties. And in different worlds,
Socrates has different rich property instances. It follows that
Socrates cannot be identical to, or even necessarily equivalent to,
any rich property instance. An haecceity property, however, is a
property Socrates has in every world in which he exists, and which he
alone has in every world in which he exists. Now if there are such
haecceity properties as identity-with-Socrates, then perhaps we can
say that Socrates is identical to a property instance, namely, the
identity-with-Socrates of Socrates. Unfortunately, there are powerful
arguments for rejecting haecceity properties (Vallicella 2002,
99-104). So we ought to conclude that concrete individuals
cannot be identified with property instances, whence follows the
perhaps obvious proposition that no person is a property instance, not
God, not me, not Socrates.


### 3.5 God and McCann: DDS and Concrete States of Affairs



To conceptualize a simple God it seems we must assign him to some
familiar category or other. But how is this possible if, as DDS
implies, God is utterly *sui generis* and unique in his very
mode of uniqueness? It might not be possible at all, in which case
silence might be the most appropriate response. But let's not
give up just yet. Vallicella (1992) suggests that God is assimilable
to a self-exemplifying property, a Platonic Form. Hughes goes
nominalist with his idea that God is something like a singleton set.
Mann assimilates God to a property instance or trope. Hugh McCann,
rejecting Mann's view, proposes that we think of God as a
concrete state of affairs. Such are to be distinguished from abstract
states of affairs. Contrast *Booth's assassinating
Lincoln* with *Booth assassinating Lincoln.* Both are
states of affairs, but only the former is concrete in the sense of
causally active/passive. Whereas the former is an act (act-token), the
latter is an act-type. The former was causally efficacious; the latter
is disbarred from causal efficacy by its ontological category.
McCann's proposal, then, is that God be thought of as a concrete
state of affairs along the lines of *Michaelangelo's creating
of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling.*



Thus is concretion secured, but whither simplicity? A concrete state
of affairs such as Socrates' being pale is a complex both the
subject and the property constituent of which are necessary for its
identity. Property instance or tropes, by contrast, are simples: the
paleness trope in Socrates, though it cannot 'migrate' to
Plato, does not have Socrates as a constituent and so is not tied to
the philosopher for its identity. Now McCann is well aware that the
ontological complexity of concrete states of affairs does not comport
well with divine simplicity. But he thinks it is the best we can
do.



Although McCann doesn't say it, it seems to follow from his
whole approach that God cannot be a member of any extant ontological
category: he cannot be a universal or a set or a trope ... or a
concrete state of affairs. Indeed, if he is absolutely sovereign, then
God must somehow be the creative source of the ontological categories
themselves, how many they are and what they are, and not merely the
source of the natures (essences) of the members of categories. God
must transcend all categories. Taken to the limit, absolute
sovereignty would seem to imply absolute transcendence-- and
absolute ineffability. Clearly, this is what the simplicity doctrine
culminates in and is meant to preserve. So there is a tension here if
not a contradiction: it cannot be true both that God is beyond all
ontological categories and is a member of the category of concrete
states of affairs. But if we are to have any conception of God at all,
we must force him into some extant category or other, and for McCann
the category of concrete state of affairs is the best we can do. One
walks a tightrope when one attempts to avoid negative theology with
its "nothing can be said positively about God." Citing
various texts of Aquinas, Eleonore Stump (2016, 195-198) shows
that radical agnosticism about the divine nature is unwarranted. To
know what God is not, one must have some knowledge of what God is. The
claim that God is not a body, for example, rests on such affirmations
as that God is the prime mover and is purely actual.


## 4. Preserving Divine Transcendence While Avoiding Negative Theology



So far we have explored how God can be (i) identical to his nature,
(ii) identical to his existence, and (iii) such that his
omni-attributes are identical to one another. But a very serious
problem remains, a problem that arises when we consider properties in
some sense shared by God and creatures. It is obvious that the divine
perfections cannot be shared with creatures: only God is perfectly
powerful, wise, good, and so on. Socrates is at best imperfectly
powerful, wise, good, and so on. But there must be some properties
that God and creatures share if God is not to be a wholly other than
creatures and out of all relation to them. These shared properties,
however, pose a threat to DDS as we shall see in a moment. The problem
in a nutshell is to reconcile the divine transcendence, of which DDS
is an expression, with the need for some commensurability between God
and creatures. The problem, in other words, is to find a way of
preserving transcendence while avoiding a self-vitiating negative
theology according to which nothing can be positively affirmed of God,
not even that he exists.



God is powerful, but so is Socrates. The use of 'powerful'
in 'God is powerful' and 'Socrates is
powerful' is not equivocal. That God is perfectly powerful while
Socrates is imperfectly powerful does not alter the fact that both are
powerful. Whether a thing is perfectly powerful or imperfectly
powerful, it is powerful. There is a difference in degree of power,
but the difference in degree seems to presuppose (and thus entail) a
sameness in respect of being powerful. Now if God and Socrates are
both powerful, then God has a property with which he is not identical,
namely, the property of being powerful, and this contradicts DDS. For
if God is identical with the property of being powerful, then he
cannot share this property with Socrates. The argument, then, is
this:


1. Necessarily, for any *x*, if *x* is perfectly
(maximally) *F*, then *x* is *F*.



From (1) together with the premise that God is perfectly powerful, it
follows that


2. God is powerful.



But among creatures we also find agents of varying degrees of power,
so it is also true that


3. Socrates is powerful.



It follows from (2) and (3) that


4. There are properties that God and creatures share.



If *x* and *y* share a property *P*, then
*P* is distinct from both *x* and *y*.
Therefore,


5. There are properties of God with which God is not identical, which
implies that DDS is false.


### 4.1 Proposal One: Sameness of Predicate No Guarantee of Sameness of Property



Graham Oppy (2003) suggests a way to defeat the foregoing argument.
Oppy (in effect) rejects the inference from (2) and (3) to (4). Given
the truth of 'God is powerful' and 'Socrates is
powerful,' it does not follow that there is a property expressed
by the predicate 'powerful' that is shared by God and
Socrates. On Oppy's approach, both sentences are true, and the
predicate 'powerful' has the same sense in both sentences.
There is no equivocation and no analogy either. It is just that there
is no one property that is expressed by the predicate in its two
occurrences. If this right, then there is no warrant for (4) and the
above argument against DDS collapses.



Oppy is not denying that many predicates express properties; he is
denying that all do. Taking a page from David Armstrong (1978), he is
saying that predicates and their senses provide no sure guidance as to
what properties (Armstrongian immanent universals) the world contains.
It follows that the ontological structure of the truth-maker of a true
sentence cannot be read off from the syntactic structure of the
sentence of which it is the truth-maker. Therefore, the fact that our
two sentences (3) and (4) have the form *a is F* does not
warrant the conclusion that the respective truth-makers have the
structure: particular-exemplifying-same universal. Oppy writes:



> 
> That two sentences of the form '*a* is red' and
> '*b* is red' are both true does not entail that
> there is some universal that plays a role in making both of these
> sentences true; it is possible that none of the universals that play a
> role in making true the sentence '*a* is red' have
> any role in making true the sentence '*b* is red.'
> (This point is supported by those lines of thought which suggest that,
> from a scientific standpoint, 'redness' constitutes a
> highly gerrymandered and heterogeneous 'kind.') (Oppy
> 2003, p. 15)
> 



The idea is essentially this. Suppose that something is an *H*
if and only if it is either an *F* or a *G*. One can
easily see that if *a* is *H* and *b* is
*H*, it does not follow that there is some one property that
they share. For it might be that *a* is *H* in virtue of
*a*'s exemplifying *F*-ness and *b* is
*H* in virtue of *b*'s exemplifying
*G*-ness. Applied to Socrates and the simple God: Socrates is
powerful in virtue of exemplifying *P*1 while God is
powerful in virtue of exemplifying *P*2. Thus there
is no one property, the property of being powerful, that both
exemplify. So (4) above is false, and the argument against DDS
collapses. Since a full defense of Oppy's defense of DDS is
beyond the scope of the present entry, we shall focus on a second way
of defusing the objection.


### 4.2 Proposal Two: 'Perfect' as an *Alienans* Adjective



The above argument against DDS requires the assumption that if
*x* is perfectly *F*, then *x* is *F*.
This is highly plausible but not quite obvious, since as Barry Miller
(1996, Ch. 5) argues, 'perfect' might be an
*alienans* adjective. An *alienans* adjective is one
that shifts, alters, alienates, the sense of the noun that it
modifies. Thus 'decoy' in 'decoy duck' is an
*alienans* adjective: from the fact that a thing is a decoy
duck one cannot infer that it is a duck in the way in which one can
infer from the fact that a thing is a male duck that it is a duck. So
if 'perfectly' in 'perfectly powerful' is an
*alienans* adjective, then God can be perfectly powerful
without being powerful, and the above objection to DDS collapses.



At first glance, this may appear to be a senseless suggestion. Power
is an attribute that admits of degrees. Perfect power is therefore
quite naturally viewed as the maximal degree of power. So viewed,
perfect power is generically identical with any submaximal degree of
power. According to Miller, however, there is an important distinction
between a limit simpliciter and a limit case. A limit simpliciter
differs merely in degree from that of which it is the limit
simpliciter, whereas a limit case differs absolutely from that of
which it is the limit case. Thus the limit simpliciter of an
*F* is an *F*, while the limit case of an *F* is
not an *F*. What Miller argues is that the divine perfections
are limit cases, not limits simpliciter, of such properties as power
and knowledge. As such, they have nothing generically in common with
the corresponding attributes in creatures.



To appreciate the limit simpliciter/limit case distinction, consider
the speed of moving bodies. It has an upper limit, the speed of light.
This is a limit simpliciter. But the lower limit, namely the speed 0
km/sec, is a limit case and not a limit simpliciter. Whereas the upper
limit simpliciter is a speed, the lower limit case is not a speed. A
particle moving at 0 km/sec is not moving. For a second example,
consider the series: 3-place predicable, 2-place predicable, 1-place
predicable. Since a predicable (e.g., "\_\_\_ is wise") must
have at least one place to be a predicable, a 1-place predicable is a
limit *simpliciter* of the ordered series of predicables.
Although talk of zero-place predicables comes naturally, as when we
speak of a proposition as a zero-place predicable, a zero-place
predicable is no more a predicable than negative growth is growth.
"Zero-place" is an alienans adjective like
"negative" in "negative growth." So a
zero-place predicable is not a limit simpliciter of the series in
question, but a limit *case* of this series: it is not a member
of the series of which it is the limit case. It nevertheless stands in
some relation to the members of the series inasmuch as they and the
way they are ordered *point* to the limit case (Miller 1996, p.
8).



The idea, then, is that God's power is not the maximum, or limit
simpliciter, of an ordered series of instances of power, but the limit
*case* of power. This implies that God's power is not an
instance of power any more than a zero-place predicable is a
predicable. No doubt this will surprise the perfect-being theologians,
but, in mitigation, it can be said that God's power, though not
an instance of power, is that to which the ordered series of
power-instances *points*, and is therefore something to which
the members of that series stand in a definite relation.



Miller's approach allows us to reject the premise of the above
argument. The premise stated in effect that anything that is perfectly
powerful is powerful. But if Miller is right, and God's power is
not the limit simpliciter of an ordered series of instances of power,
and thus itself an instance of power, but is instead a limit
*case* of power, then what is perfectly powerful need not be an
instance of power.


### 4.3 Dolezal's Mysterian Move



God is the absolute. An absolute cannot lack anything nor does it have
any need to develop itself: it is, eternally, all that it can be. This
implies that there is no act-potency distinction in God, no unrealized
powers or potentialities. In the classical phrase, God is *actus
purus*, pure act, wholly actual. James Dolezal puts it very well
when he writes, "The consideration of God as *ipsum esse
subsistens* and *actus purus* is crucial for any confession
of God's absolute existence" (Dolezal 2011, 214).



But to uphold the divine absoluteness, it is also necessary that God
be libertarianly free in his production of creatures. He must be free
either to create or not to create. For suppose that the divine nature
is such that God must create. Then God would depend on the created
world to be himself and to be fully actual. He would need what is
other than himself to be himself. This entanglement with the relative
would compromise the divine absoluteness. God would need the world as
much as the world needs God. Each would require the other to be what
it is. But then God would not be absolute (Dolezal, 210) Therefore,
God must be free to either create or not create



So God must be both simple and free to be absolute. But it is very
difficult to understand how a simple being could be free in the
unconditional 'could have done otherwise' sense. If God is
simple, then he is pure act, as was explained at the beginning of this
entry. It follows that God is devoid of unrealized powers,
potentialities, or *de re* possibilities. To act freely,
however is to act in such a way that one (unconditionally) could have
done otherwise, which implies unrealized possibilities of divine
action. Now Dolezal's view is that it is not only difficult to
reconcile simplicity and (libertarian) freedom, but impossible for us,
at least in our present state. "Though we discover strong
reasons for confessing both simplicity and freedom in God, we cannot
form an isomorphically adequate notion of how this is the case"
(210). In footnote 55 on the same page, Dolezal brings up
wave-particle duality: light behaves both like a particle and like a
wave. We have good reason to believe that it is both despite the
difficulty or impossibility of understanding how it could be both. On
the basis of the quotation and the footnote it seems fair to Dolezal
to pin the label 'mysterian' on him, at least with respect
to the simplicity-freedom problem which is only one sub-problem within
the divine simplicity constellation of problems. God is both simple
and free, and he must be both to be God; it is a mystery, however, how
he could be both.



If we have good reason to believe that *p* is true, and good
reason to believe that *q* is true, then we have good reason to
believe that *p* and *q* are logically consistent (with
each other) despite an absence of understanding as to *how*
they could be mutually consistent. What is actual is possible whether
or not one can render intelligible how it is possible. For example,
motion is actual, hence possible, despite one's inability in the
teeth of Zenonian considerations to understand how it is possible.
Many similar examples could be given.



And so a mysterian move suggests itself: We are justified in
maintaining both that God is simple and that God is free despite the
fact that after protracted effort we cannot make logical sense of this
conjunction. If we have good arguments for both limbs of what appears
to be a logically contradictory dyad, it could be that the
contradiction is merely apparent. The fact that the conjunction
-- God is simple and God is free -- appears to us, and
perhaps even necessarily appears to us, to be or rather entail an
explicit logical contradiction is not a compelling reason to reject
the conjunction. It is a reason, perhaps even a good reason, but not a
rationally *compelling* one. For it may be that our cognitive
architecture saddles us with irremediable cognitive limitations that
make it impossible for us to understand how God could be both simple
and libertarianly free. The mysterian is not a dialetheist: the
mysterian does not claim that there are true contradictions. Like the
rest of us, the mysterian eschews them like the plague. The mysterian
point is rather that a proposition's non-episodic and chronic
seeming to be a contradiction does not suffice for its rejection. For
it may well be that certain truths are inaccessible to us due to our
mental limitations and defects, and that among these truths are some
that appear to us only in the guise of contradictions, and must so
appear in this life. The religious mysterian can bolster the point by
referencing the Fall. Sin, after all, may be expected to have noetic
consequences. Of course, Dolezal's mysterian move cannot be
reasonably made unless the extant attempts to reconcile simplicity and
freedom are failures. That they are failures is not difficult to
believe. So mysterianism is up and running despite its own problems.
What might these be?



First, if a (conjunctive) proposition's seeming, after careful
and repeated scrutiny, to be or entail an explicit logical
contradiction is not sufficient, or at least good enough, evidence of
its being a contradiction, what would be? To put it another way,
one's inability to explain how it could be true both that
*p* and that *q* does seem to be pretty good
(non-demonstrative) evidence that *p* and *q* are not
both true. Now it was noted above that the actual is possible whether
or not one can explain how it is possible. Granted, but if one cannot
explain the 'how,' doubt is cast on the actuality. The
tables can be turned. How adjudicate between these opposing lines of
argument: A: Because *X* is actual, *X* is possible,
whether or not anyone can explain how it is possible! B: Because no
one can explain how it is possible, it is not possible, and therefore
not actual!



Second, if all extant attempts to reconcile simplicity and freedom
fail, it does not follow that there isn't a solution right over
the horizon. How can a mysterian rule out the possibility of a future
solution? The mysterian seems committed to saying that it is
impossible (at least in this life) that there be a solution. How can
he be sure of this?



Third, if a proposition appears under careful scrutiny to be or entail
a contradiction, then is there even a proposition before the mind? If
you require for *x*'s salvation that *x* believe
that God is one and God is three, what exactly are you demanding that
*x* believe? Before *x* can affirm a proposition as true
*x* must understand it, but how can *x* affirm as true a
proposition that appears necessarily false? Such a
'proposition' is arguably not a proposition at all.
*God is simple but free* appears to be in like case. As a
matter of pure logic, there are of course necessarily false
propositions: take the members of a contradictory pair of propositions
and conjoin them, e.g., *snow is white & snow is not
white.* This necessarily false proposition is arguably not a
possible object of belief because of our charitable tendency to
re-interpret blatant contradictions in some innocuous way. When our
hermeneutical charity is thwarted, however, we suspend belief, not in
a proposition, but in a putative proposition's being a
proposition, or in a verbal formula's expressing a
proposition.


### 4.4 Stump's Quantum Metaphysics



Like Dolezal, Eleonore Stump thinks of God as self-subsistent Being
(*esse*). If God is absolutely simple, and not just simple in
the uncontroversial sense of lacking material parts, then God must be
self-subsistent Being. God is at once both Being and something that
is. He has to be both. If he were Being (*esse*) but not a
being (*id quod est*), he could not enter into causal
relations. He could not do anything such as create the world,
intervene in its operations, or interact with human persons. Such a
God would be "religiously pernicious" (Stump 2016, 199).
Indeed, if God were Being but not a being, then one could not sensibly
maintain that God exists. For if Being is other than every being, then
Being is not. (It is instructive to note that Martin Heidegger, the
famous critic of onto-theology, who holds to the "ontological
difference" of Being (*Sein*) from every being
(*Seiendes*) ends up assimilating Being to Nothing
(*Nichts*).) On the other hand, if God were a being among
beings who merely has Being but is not (identically) Being, then he
would not be absolutely transcendent, worthy of worship, or ineffable.
Such a God would be "comfortingly familiar" but
"discomfitingly anthropomorphic" (Miller 1996, 3). It is
not clear that DDS is susceptible of a satisfactory articulation
acceptable to most theists. There is no reason to be sanguine. But if
such could be achieved then we would have a *via media* between
the Scylla of negative theology according to which nothing can be
truly said or known about God and the Charybdis of an anthropomorphic
theology according to which "... God's properties are
merely human ones, albeit extended to the maximum degree
possible" (Miller, 1996, 3).



The problem, of course, is to explain how God can be both Being
(*esse)* and something that is (*ens)*. This is
unintelligible to the discursive intellect. Either Being is other than
beings or it is not. If Being is other than beings, then Being cannot
itself be. That would imply that God, who must be Being itself to be
absolute, cannot be. If, on the other hand, Being just is beings taken
collectively, then God could only be a being among beings and not the
absolute reality. To the discursive intellect the notion of
self-subsistent Being is contradictory. For the idea here is that
Being itself is a being, a very special being no doubt, but
nonetheless a being, something that is. One response to the
contradiction is simply to deny divine simplicity. That is a
reasonable response, no doubt. But might it not also be reasonable to
admit that there are things that human reason cannot understand, and
that one of these things is the divine nature? "Human reason can
see that human reason cannot comprehend the *quid est* of
God." (Stump 2016, 205)



On one reading of Stump, she, like Dolezal, makes a mysterian move,
and she, like Dolezal (2011, 210, fn 55), invokes wave-particle
duality. We cannot understand how light can be both a wave phenomenon
and also particulate in nature, and yet it is both:



> 
> What kind of thing is it which has to be understood both as a wave and
> as a particle? We do not know. That is, we do not know the *quid
> est* of light. [...] Analogously, we can ask: What kind of
> thing is it which can be both *esse* and *id quod est*?
> We do not know. The idea of simplicity is that at the ultimate
> *metaphysical* foundation of reality is something that has to
> be understood as *esse* --but also as *id quod
> est*. We do not know what this kind of thing is either. (Stump
> 2016, 202)
> 


### 4.5 Hasker *contra* Dolezal and Stump



If the defender of DDS is driven to mysterianism, many will consider
this a desperate jump from the frying pan into the fire. Dolezal, for
example, holds that God must be both simple and libertarianly free to
be absolute despite the apparent contradiction. How God can be both
simple and free must remain a mystery. William Hasker balks:
"This won't do, of course" (2016, 19). His "of
course" is of course a bit of bluster, but one feels his pain.
"The argument Dolezal has given quite straightforwardly entails
that the doctrine of divine simplicity is false ..." (2016,
19). This is not an unreasonable thing to say, but is it compelling?
Does it force a rational person to abandon DDS? Is it so compelling
that DDS can be dismissed as a *mistake*, a correctable error
in reasoning that one falls into due, perhaps, to inattention to
certain obvious truths? Not quite.



Hasker takes the apparent contradiction to be real. But can he exclude
the possibility that the contradiction is merely apparent? His view
comports well with the notion that God is a being among beings. But
for those who hold that the divine transcendence requires that God
transcend beings in his mode of existence, his mode of
property-possession, his mode of necessity, and his mode of
uniqueness, it may seem more likely that the apparent contradictions
that arise when we think about God reflect our structural inability to
think of him as anything other than a very special being among
beings.



For Stump, God is *esse* and God is also *id quod est.*
These claims, though apparently contradictory, must both be affirmed.
The apparent contradiction arises because of a "deficiency in
our mode of speaking" (Stump 2016, 207). She presumably means
that this deficiency is in this life irremediable and ineluctable. In
reality, however, there is no contradiction; the laws of logic apply
to God, "and not just anything can be correctly affirmed of
God" (2016, 207).



Hasker is unimpressed:



> 
> ... we do not, strictly speaking, have here a coherent view of
> God's nature ... . What we have, rather, is a set of
> mutually incompatible propositions, each of which has something to be
> said in its favor, but at least one of which must be false. (Hasker
> 2016, 23, fn 52)
> 



Stump could agree with Hasker that she does not present us with
"a coherent view of God's nature," but then that is
precisely what her position implies cannot be had. Our mode of
speaking about God is necessarily defective and inaccurate. If we
could speak accurately, then ...



> 
> ... we would know the true nature of God. We would know the
> *quid est* of God. But this is precisely what we do not know.
> So although, on Aquinas's view, we can have considerable
> positive knowledge of God, the modes of speaking about God retain
> their inaccuracy in anything having to do with the quiddity of God.
> (Stump 2016, 207)
> 



The issue that divides Hasker and Stump and the parties they represent
is perhaps impossible to resolve. Hasker demands a "coherent
view of God's nature," one that satisfies and *can be
seen to satisfy* the exigencies of the discursive intellect.
Hasker demands that God fit within the discursive framework, which
implies that he have properties the way creatures do, exist the way
creatures do, and so on. Stump could reasonably claim that Hasker is
making an inappropriate demand, one that does not respect the divine
transcendence.


## 5. The Truthmaker Defense



Proponents of DDS affirm such sentences as 'God is his
omniscience' and'God is his omnipotence.' If the
singular terms 'his omniscience' and 'his
omnipotence' in such sentences are taken to refer to properties,
then such sentences assert the identity of God and a property, an
exemplifiable entity. This is unacceptable for the reasons rehearsed
in section 2 above. Briefly, God is an individual and not a property.
If, however, the singular terms in question could be taken to refer to
individuals, then this particular objection to the coherence of DDS
would collapse. Clearly, if 'God' and 'his
omniscience' both refer to an individual, God, then the
coherence of 'God is his omniscience' will be beyond
question.



Enter the truthmaker defense. The truthmaker defense hinges on a
theory of predication that Bergmann and Brower (2006) put as
follows:



> 
> P\*: The truth of *all* true predications, or at least of all
> true predications of the form '*a* is *F*,'
> is to be explained in terms of truthmakers.
> 



P\* is to be understood by contrast to a theory of predication
according to which every true predication of the form
'*a* is *F*' is to be explained in terms of
an individual's exemplifying of a property. Now consider the
essential predication, 'God is omniscient.' Given that a
truthmaker of a truth *t* is an entity whose existence broadly
logically necessitates the truth of *t*, God himself is
plausibly viewed as the truthmaker of 'God is omniscient'
and like essential predications. For in every possible world in which
God exists, these essential predications (or the propositions they
express) are true. In the case of essential as opposed to accidental
predications, truthmakers need not be taken to be concrete states of
affairs, and so need not be taken as involving exemplifiable entities.
Socrates himself is not plausibly taken to be the truthmaker of the
accidental 'Socrates is wise' (or the proposition it
expresses) because there are possible worlds in which Socrates exists
but the predication is not true; Socrates is, however, plausibly taken
to be the truthmaker of the essential 'Socrates is
human.'



Now 'God's omniscience' and 'Socrates'
humanity' are abstract nominalizations of 'God is
omniscient' and 'Socrates is human,' respectively.
So given that God and Socrates are the truthmakers of the respective
essential predications, the nominalizations can be taken to refer, not
to properties, but to these very same truthmakers. Accordingly, to say
that God is identical to his omniscience is just to say that God is
identical to the truthmaker of 'God is omniscient.' And
that amounts to saying that God is identical to God. In this way one
avoids the absurdity of saying that God is identical to a property.
What God is identical to is not the property of omniscience but the
referent of 'God's omniscience,' which turns out to
be God himself. And similarly for the rest of God's intrinsic
and essential attributes.


## 6. Is Divine Simplicity Compatible with Creaturely Freedom and God's Contingent Knowledge?



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 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 subject *S* knows that
proposition *p*, and *p* is contingent, then it would
seem that *S*'s knowing that *p* is or involves an
accidental (as opposed to essential) *intrinsic* state 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 intrinsic states as there are
contingent truths. But this contradicts DDS according to which there
is nothing intrinsic to God that is distinct from God.



Consider the mental state God is in when he knows that Tom freely
files his tax return on April 14th, 2014. This divine mental state is
an intrinsic state God is in contingently. If God were identical to
this state, then he could not be *a se*. For if God were
identical to the state, 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 and God knows what they
do and leave undone. There is also the problem that if the divine
mental state in question were identical to God, then the truth God
knows when he knows that Tom files on April 14th would be
necessarily true.



The problem is expressible as an aporetic pentad:


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): there is nothing intrinsic to God that is
distinct from God.
3. There are contingent items of divine all-knowledge that do not
(wholly) depend on divine creation, but do (partially) depend on
creaturely freedom.
4. 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.
5. God exists necessarily.



Each limb of the above pentad 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 it
is surely arguable if not obvious that 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.



The plausibility of (4) 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, to unpack the
second clause of (3), beliefs are individuated by their contents:
beliefs or believings with different contents are different beliefs.
It cannot be that one and the same act of believing has different
contents at different times or in different possible worlds.



(5), if not obvious on its own, could be taken as an entailment of
(2). If in God essence and existence are one, then God cannot not
exist.



But although each limb of the pentad is plausibly maintained and is
typically maintained by theists who uphold DDS, they cannot all be
true. Any four limbs, taken together, entail the negation of the
remaining one.



To illustrate, let us consider how the limbs of the pentad, excepting
(2), 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 or states. But, by (4), God is in the state of knowing that
Oswald freely chose to kill Kennedy, and his being in this state
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 pentad is an inconsistent pentad.
The defender of DDS cannot deny either the divine simplicity or the
divine necessity, which is an entailment of 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 ('*C*-free'). 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.



A second and perhaps better response would be to reject (4) in one of
the ways canvassed by W. M. Grant (2012). Here are two ways that
appear promising. On what Grant calls the Belief Model, God's
knowledge is a species of true belief, but God's beliefs are not
intrinsic states of God. They are not mental acts or episodes. Beliefs
are relational. To have a belief is to be related to a proposition,
where propositions are not contents of belief states, but abstract
entities that exist independently of the subjects who believe them.
For God to believe that Oswald killed Kennedy is for God to stand in a
relation to a proposition without it being the case that there is
anything intrinsic to God that grounds his standing in the belief
relation to the Oswald proposition as opposed to any other
proposition. Believing, at least in the case of God, is an external
relation, not an internal relation grounded in an intrinsic feature of
the believer. Various objections can be brought against this Belief
Model of divine cognition, but if they can be turned aside, then (4)
falls and the pentad is solved.



A second way to reject (4) is by adopting what Grant calls an
Immediate Cognition Model of divine knowing. Accordingly, God's
knowledge is not mediated by propositions or anything else, but is
directly of contingent realities. God's knowledge of Socrates
has as an essential constituent Socrates himself, warts and all. On
this externalist model, as on the Belief Model, there nothing internal
to God and intrinsic to him in virtue of which he possesses contingent
knowledge, and thus nothing contingent in him to compromise his
simplicity.



One ought to ask, however, whether either model preserves the divine
aseity which is a main motive for the divine simplicity (Brower 2009).
If the simple God's knowing of Socrates includes the man himself
in his bodily reality, this would seem to make God dependent on
something other than himself. Brower thinks the problem can be defused
by observing that God is the cause of the contingent entities on which
his contingent knowledge depends. Grant (2012, 267), however, thinks
that neither externalist model poses a problem for aseity whether or
not God causes the contingent objects he knows. If God exists from
himself, then he is *a se*. But the existence of a thing is
intrinsic to it, not relational. So it suffices for the divine aseity
that God not depend on anything else for what he is intrinsically.
That God's knowing of Socrates depends on Socrates is not to the
point: this knowing is purely relational and not intrinsic to God.


## 7. The Modal Collapse Objection to DDS


### 7.1 Introduction to the Problem



This final section elaborates a problem posed but not pursued in the
preceding section: the problem of reconciling the simplicity of God
with the contingency of creatures and the states of affairs into which
they enter. If the simple God knows that Tom files his income taxes on
April 14th, how do we avoid the conclusion that Tom and his filing are
modally necessary? In the last few years, numerous articles have
appeared pressing, and responding to, the claim that the commitments
of DDS entail the collapse of modal distinctions. One way to present
the problem of modal collapse is as a tension between two commitments
of classical Christian theism. The one commitment is to DDS. The other
is to the contingency of creatures. Simplicity of God and contingency
of creatures form a dyad the logical consistency of which is in
question. Call it the problematic dyad. The gist of the modal collapse
argument (MCA) is that DDS entails the absolute metaphysical necessity
of creatures. If God is simple, then he is of course also absolutely
necessary (not possibly nonexistent) and this for the reason that, on
DDS, essence and existence in God are one. It also seems to follow
from the divine simplicity that any creative action that God performs,
he necessarily performs, and this for the reason that the simple God
is pure act harboring no unrealized potentialities. (Indeed, he
harbors no *realized* potentialities either since, as *actus
purus*, he harbors no potentialities at all.) Given that God
created our universe U, it follows that he could not have failed to
create some universe and indeed the very one he did create, namely U.
Bear in mind that the validity of the MCA requires the auxiliary
premise that, given divine omnipotence, divine creation cannot fail to
succeed. Thus there cannot be anything indeterministic about it: it
cannot be that the divine creative act is absolutely necessary while
the effect of that act, U, is modally contingent. (The truth of this
auxiliary premise is questioned by some, as we shall see.) Therefore,
U cannot not exist given that God has created it, whence it follows
that U and everything in it exists of absolute metaphysical necessity
just as God does. But then the first classical commitment, DDS,
collides with the second, the contingency of creatures, and the
distinction between necessity and contingency collapses. Both God and
the universe end up being absolutely necessary. If MCA succeeds, then
modal collapse is upon us, the problematic dyad is inconsistent, and
one of the classical commitments must be rejected, either the
simplicity of God or the contingency of creatures. If, on the other
hand, MCA fails, then the dyad is presumably consistent and both
commitments may be upheld.


### 7.2 Terminology and Terrain



To begin, some terminology and a rough map of the aporetic terrain.
Terminological regimentation in excess of that already provided in
this entry is necessary to bring MCA into proper focus, especially
given the need to accommodate Islamic Neoplatonist responses to the
problem. A *traditional theist* is one whose definition of
'God' includes omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence,
necessary existence, and being the creator of every concrete item
distinct from itself, but does not include or exclude DDS. Traditional
theists thus divide into those who accept, and those who reject DDS. A
traditional theist who accepts DDS may be termed a *classical
theist*. Classical theists divide into those who accept and those
who reject the modal contingency of concrete creatures. An item is
*modally contingent* just in case both its existence and its
nonexistence are broadly logically possible. The modally contingent is
not the same as the existentially dependent. For creatures are
existentially dependent on God but need not be modally contingent.
So-called abstract objects (the denizens of the Platonic menagerie
such as numbers and mathematical sets) are modally necessary beings
and yet they are plausibly taken to be creatures in the sense that if,
*per impossibile*, God did not exist, then they would not exist
either. They depend on God for their existence despite their modal
necessity. They exist in every (metaphysically or broadly logically)
possible world and they depend on God for their existence in every
such possible world. The modally contingent and that which is
existentially dependent on God are therefore notionally or
conceptually distinct. A *concrete* creature is any creature
that is not abstract, in the way 'abstract' is (mis)used
by contemporary analytic philosophers to cover the inhabitants of the
Platonic menagerie.



The classical theists who accept both DDS and the modal contingency of
concrete creatures further divide into those who maintain that the MCA
can be successfully answered by showing that the limbs of the
problematic dyad mentioned above are logically consistent, and those
who maintain that the MCA cannot be successfully answered but that,
nevertheless, both the simplicity limb and the contingency limb are to
be accepted. Among those for whom the MCA can be successfully rebutted
we find Greeley (2019), Nemes (2020), Schmid (2022), and Waldrop
(2022) et al. Among those who for whom the MCA cannot be successfully
rebutted but who nevertheless embrace both limbs of the problematic
dyad we find the mysterian Dolezal (2011). See section 4.3 above.



The classical theists who accept DDS but reject the modal contingency
of concrete creatures turn aside the MCA by rejecting the contingency
limb of the problematic dyad. Among them we find both Christian and
non-Christian classical theists. An *Islamic Neoplatonist*
theist is a classical theist who upholds DDS but does not uphold the
modal contingency of concrete creatures. Such a non-Christian
classical theist takes an emanationist approach to divine creation. On
emanationism, as we find it in Ibn Sina (Avicenna), for example, God
eternally and necessarily brings into existence things wholly distinct
from himself and in such a way that the things created share in the
modal necessity of the Creator and his creative will despite the
existential dependence of the creatures upon the Creator. (Andani,
2022, 11) More on the Islamic Neoplatonist view below. There are also
Christian classical theists who accept DDS but reject the modal
contingency of concrete creatures, affirming instead their
hypothetical necessity. (Pedersen and Lilley 2022) Both types of
classical theist who accept DDS but reject the modal contingency of
concrete creatures exploit the putative distinction between absolute
(unconditional) and hypothetical (conditional) necessity. God alone
exists of absolute metaphysical necessity *in se*; creatures
are necessary *ab alio*, from another, namely, from God. This
hypothetical necessity holds for both abstract and concrete
creatures.



Finally, we have those traditional theists who reject DDS but accept
the modal contingency of creatures. Among them we find Moreland and
Craig (2003), Plantinga (1980), and Hasker (2016).



The assumption thus far is that the MCA is a (genuine) problem for
classical theists who accept the modal contingency of concrete
creatures in the sense that the MCA does not arise from some easily
detectable fallacy, confusion, or misuse of language. Tomaszewski
(2019), however, alleges that the MCA in all variants succumbs to one
or more modal fallacies. This charge has not held up well under
scrutiny. Waldrop (2022) shows convincingly that at least three
variants of the MCA are free of logical error, the variants of
Moreland and Craig (2003), Leftow (2015), and Mullins (2016).


### 7.3 Solutions to the Problem of Modal Collapse



(0) Reject theism. One might argue as follows.


1. Nothing could count as God that is not simple.
2. Divine simplicity is logically contradictory.
3. Whatever is logically contradictory cannot exist.
4. Therefore, God does not exist.


Solution by dissolution.



(1) Accept traditional theism but reject DDS. Many if not most
Christian theists, Protestants especially, will simply deny the divine
simplicity. Alvin Plantinga, for example, is a Christian theist who
rejects DDS. (Plantinga, 1980) He is followed in this by many others
(Moreland and Craig 2003, Hasker 2016).



(2) Accept DDS, but reject the commitment to the modal contingency of
concrete creatures, either in a Christian way (Pedersen and Lilley
2022) or in an Islamic way (Andani 2022). The Islamic way is further
specified in (5) below.



(3) Accept both limbs of the problematic dyad, despite their apparent
inconsistency, either by (a) holding that there are true
contradictions or, less drastically, by (b) holding that while there
are no true contradictions, we in our present state are prevented by
our cognitive architecture from understanding *how* the limbs
of the problematic dyad could both be true. Both of these options may
be dubbed *mysterian*. The first could be called
*extreme*, the second *moderate*. The mysterianism of
Dolezal (2011, 210) seems to be of the moderate type. (See section 4.3
above.) It must remain a mystery in this life how it could be true
both that God is simple and that concrete creatures are modally
contingent. And yet both *are* true without violation of the
law of non-contradiction.



(4) Accept DDS, but hold that "the only necessity or possibility
applicable to God is not *de re* but *de dicto*."
(Miller 1996, 13) The problem arises if we think that the modal
contingency of concrete creatures requires that God have the ability
to do otherwise than what he has done. But if the only modality
applicable to God is *de dicto*, then it is false to say *of
God* (*de deo*) that he could have done otherwise, and the
problem is supposedly avoided.



(5) Accept DDS, but hold that creatures are really distinct from divine
creating and thus can have a different modal status from that of the
divine acts whereby they are created. Nathan Greeley writes,



> 
> 
> ... to say that God's activity of knowing and willing exist
> necessarily is not to say that created objects of his knowing and
> willing must also exist necessarily. As long as these created objects
> are considered *really distinct* from the acts by which they
> are known and willed, then the objects in themselves, need not have
> the same modal status as these acts. [...] God, one can then say,
> necessarily knows and necessarily wills in an absolute manner, but at
> least some of the particular objects of his knowledge are contingent.
> (Greeley 2019, 237)
> 
> 
> 



The idea here is that what God necessarily creates, and thus could not
have failed to create, can nevertheless be contingent, i.e., possibly
nonexistent. How might this be true? Here is one way. Suppose that
God's creating of a thing simultaneously releases it into
ontological independence. The divine creative act makes the thing
exist, but once it exists, it exists on its own, 'by its own
power' without divine assistance. In other words, when God
creates a thing, he creates it in such a way that its existence,
moment by moment, does not depend on God's ongoing creative
sustenance after the initial creative action. It continues by
'existential intertia.' If this is the nature of creation,
then the created entity could very well be contingent despite the
creative act's being necessary. For the created entity to exist
in the first place it would be necessary that God create it, but after
he does so the entity exists contingently. On this scheme, there is
*creatio originans* (originating creation), but no *creatio
continuans* (continuing creation). This allows what is originally
caused to exist to be contingent.



Unfortunately, this understanding of creation is foreign to classical
theism. On classical theism, creation is both originating and
continuing. In addition, classical theism need not insist on the
reality of the originating-continuing distinction. For even if the
world (the created realm) has an infinite past and always existed, it
could nonetheless have creaturely status. If that were the case, then
there would be no real distinction between originating and continuing
creation. If, on the other hand, the world had a beginning in time,
then, on classical theism, it still needs to be kept in being moment
by moment. The stratagem proposed by Greeley above does not appear to
allow the proponent of divine simplicity to evade the conclusion that,
if the simple God creates, then the product of his creative act
necessarily exists.



(6) Accept both DDS and the modal contingency of creatures, but reject
what Steven Nemes calls the *difference principle* (DP)
according to which "A difference in the effect presupposes a
difference in the cause." (Nemes 2020, 109) If the created and
ongoingly sustained universe U is contingent, then U might never have
existed, and at any given time t at which U exists it might not have
existed at t. (God could, so to speak, 'pull the plug' on
the world at any time.) By DP, the difference in the effect (U's
existing versus U's not existing) presupposes and thus entails a
difference in the cause, namely, God. So on the DP, had God not
created U, then there would have had to have been a difference in the
cause (God's actually creating U versus God's possibly not
creating U). But then God would not be *actus purus*, pure
actuality bare of all potency. "It is clear, therefore, that the
difference principle is at the heart of the argument from modal
collapse." (Nemes 2020, 110) Therefore, to uphold both DDS and
the modal contingency of concrete creatures, the DP must be rejected.
Accordingly, there is no difference within the simple God between his
creating U1 and his creating the numerically different U2, and no
difference between either and God's creating nothing at all. The
difference between some U existing and no U existing on the current
proposal reflects no difference in the divine cause. It is all the
same to God whether a universe exists or no universe exists. If God is
identical to his creating of something, and God is identical to his
creating of nothing, then God's creating of something is
identical to God's creating of nothing. That is, had God not
created our universe U, he would not have been any different than he
is is given that he has created U. God + U = God. God [?] U =
God.



The most obvious objection to this attempt at turning aside the MCA is
that it is merely *ad hoc*. If in every other conceivable case
of agent causation the DP holds, then to deny its application in the
case of divine agent causation has no motivation except to avoid the
difficulty that MCA presents. But this allegation of
'*ad-hoc*-ness' is not decisive since Nemes and Co.
are free to assert that the divine case is *sui generis*.
Furthermore, if one can bring oneself to accept both DDS and the
contingency of concrete creatures, then why balk at the rejection of
DP? Everyone ought to admit that DDS is a 'hard saying'
despite the good, though not absolutely compelling, arguments for it.
There are good reasons to accept both limbs of the problematic dyad,
DDS and the modal contingency of concrete creatures. If the only way
to uphold both is by rejecting DP, then so be it and one must
'bite the bullet.' But then divine agent causation is so
unlike ordinary agent causation that we lose our grip on the former:
it threatens to peter out into unintelligibility. So it looks as if
the acceptors and the rejectors of the DP are in a stand-off. Suppose
the following are individually plausible but collectively
inconsistent: DDS, DP, and the modal contingency of concrete
creatures. Suppose further that there are no true contradictions. Then
one of the propositions must be rejected. Some theists will reject
DDS; some will reject DP; some will reject the modal contingency of
concrete creatures. We now turn to a solution via rejection of the
third proposition.



(7) Accept DDS but deny the modal contingency of creatures by holding
an emanationist view of creation along Avicennian lines according to
which God must create, so that whatever is created is necessary, but
not necessary in the way that God is necessary. (Andani 2022) On this
approach, the original modal collapse problem is solved by rejection
of the second limb of the problematic dyad, namely, the modal
contingency of concrete creatures. But a kind of modal difference is
preserved in that the divine necessity is held to be absolute whereas
the necessity of concrete creatures is held to be from another,
namely, from God who alone is absolutely necessary. The key idea here
is that *all* creatures are modally necessary, not just the
abstract ones. (Andani 2022, 15)



We have already noted that a classical theist can easily allow for a
difference between the divine necessity and the necessity of
*some* creatures, namely, those that are co-eternal with God.
Eternal objects other than God such as numbers possess necessary
existence through another. What classical Christian theists cannot
say, however, given their commitment to the creation of the material
world *ex nihilo*, is that *all* creatures possess
necessary existence through another. For if they said that, then the
modal contingency of concrete creatures would go by the boards, and it
would then not be the case that God might not have created a material
universe. Not being emanationists, classical Christian theists uphold
the possibility that God not create any material beings at all.
Islamic neoplatonists, however, being emanationists, do not adhere to
*creatio ex nihilo* but to *creatio ex deo* . This
allows them to lump together "metaphysically necessary
beings" and "actual necessary beings: temporal material
substances." (Andani 2022, 13) Among the latter we find such
concrete items as cats and tables. These are temporal material
substances in Aristotle's sense of *prote ousiai*.
Because their existence is necessitated by God, they are necessary
from another, unlike God who is not caused by another and is therefore
necessary in himself. "Although God and His creation are
logically necessary and exist across all possible worlds, they retain
different modal categories within Ibn Sina's [Avicenna's]
modal framework." (Andani 2022, 15) Thus "... there
is no *real* modal collapse for the Islamic philosopher working
within the broader Islamic Neoplatonic tradition." (Andani 2022,
13, emphasis in original) To further spell it out, there are three
classes of necessary beings, where a necessary being is one that
exists in all broadly logically possible worlds, namely, God who
exists *a se*, eternal beings other than God that depend for
their existence on God and thus exist *ab alio*, and thirdly
"temporal existents actualized and necessary through
another" which also exist *ab alio*.(Andani 2022, 30)



And so the Islamic Neoplatonist *accepts* the modal collapse
that most Christian classical theists fear by positively affirming
that *everything* is necessary in the 'possible
worlds' sense. But "there is no *real* modal
collapse for the Islamic philosopher" (Andani 2022, 13) because
absolute necessity is understood as ontological independence and
contingency is understood as ontological (existential) dependence.
There is no collapse because of the deep difference between two modes
of existence, existence *a se* and existence *ab alio*.
Thus God and Socrates differ in the way they exist. The essence of
Socrates, considered in and of itself, may or may not exist. It is
"possible in itself." Since this essence, so considered,
may or may not exist, if it does come to exist in actuality, it must
have a cause or causes of its coming to exist in actuality. These
causes *necessitate* its existence. "Therefore, the
possible in itself -- when it actually exists -- has the
modal status of 'necessary existence through another'
(*wajib al-wujud li-ghayrihi*) and [is therefore] dependent
upon a distinct cause for its existence." (Andani 2022, 10.)


### 7.4 Concluding Aporetic Postscript



None of the above responses to the modal collapse objection to divine
simplicity is without problems. And so it is fitting that we end on an
aporetic note. If there is a way beyond the impasse it will have to
involve a deeper dive into the metaphysics of divine action in its
relation to the metaphysics of modality. How are to to understand
divine creation? Does God create out of nothing? Out of himself? Out
of pre-given possibilities? The MCA's main value is as a
concrete point of entry into this constellation of difficult
questions.



What holds for MCA holds also for all the problems surrounding DDS
detailed above. This final subsection therefore serves as a fitting
conclusion to the entire entry.