God Without Parts

Chapter 7: Simplicity and the Difficulty of Divine Freedom

IT IS A PECULIAR difficulty for the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity

DDS to account for the relationship between God’s simplicity and his

freedom to create or not create the world, or even to create a different

possible world altogether. If he is pure act and ipsum esse subsistens,

how can one continue to confess that he is “most free” (WCF 2.1)? For

many critics of the DDS this is the Achilles heel of the doctrine.

The Christian tradition insists that the existence of all non-divine things

is the result of God’s freely willing them to be. But if God is pure act it

is difficult to conceive how he could have freely chosen this contingent

world instead of some other possible world. Does pure actuality leave

any space for choosing between alternative courses of action? To

complicate matters, the Identity Account of the DDS requires one to say

that God is essentially and existentially identical with his act of free will.

Yet, if the world could have been other than it is, it seems that God’s

very nature and existence could have been different as well. But then

God would be mutable, even if only accidentally, and most certainly

would be composed of act and potency. Eleonore Stump does not

exaggerate when she observes, “The most recalcitrant difficulties

generated by the doctrine of simplicity are those that result from

combining the doctrine with the traditional ascription to God of free

will.”1 Many scholars feel compelled to resolve the dilemma by either

denying or severely minimizing one side or other.

2

Thomas states in SCG II.23 [1], “God acts, in the realm of created

things, not by necessity of His nature, but by the free choice of His will.”

Similarly, in ST I.19.10 he writes, “Since then God necessarily wills His

own goodness, but other things not necessarily . . . He has free will with

respect to what He does not necessarily will.” While these statements

themselves are broadly agreeable with Christian conviction, they do

seem to pose a dilemma for the DDS inasmuch as they seem to suggest a

real distinction in God between the necessary willing of himself and the

contingent willing of other things.3

Indeed, without this real distinction in God’s will and between God and

his will generally, there seems to be no way to account for how God

could freely have chosen any other possible world. Stump distills the

essence of this difficulty: “Since no one whose will is bound to just one

set of acts of will makes real choices among alternative acts, it looks as

if accepting God’s absolute simplicity as a datum leads to the conclusion

that God has no alternative to doing what he does.”4 Prima facie, the

DDS appears to undermine divine contra-causal freedom.

Though primarily criticizing the strong account of divine immutability,

Richard Cross asks a pertinent question that also applies, by extension,

to the DDS: “How can the notion of contra-causal freedom have any

purchase in the context of complete immutability?”5 His point is that

without some change in God from a state of “could will A or B” to a

state of “wills A or B” the notion that God could have done otherwise

with respect to creation seems nonsensical. Brian Leftow highlights this

difficulty by noting how it is bound up with yet another feature of God’s

simplicity, namely, atemporal eternity:

If P is only conditionally necessary, ¬P could have been true: ¬P

was possible, though it is no longer. From God’s timeless

standpoint, when “was” it possible that He not create? If God

timelessly limits the possible to worlds in which He creates,

“when” were non-creation worlds possible? At God’s timeless

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standpoint, God has already—timelessly—eliminated non-creative

worlds from possibility. It is not possible that He do other than

create; the best Thomas can do, it seems, is claim that non-creation

worlds are only contingently impossible, and are so due to God’s

choice. More worrying, the same applies to worlds in which God

creates any other than what were actually the initial creatures. On

Thomas’s account, it was never possible that God do other than

create what He initially did; it merely could have been possible.

Those who’ve thought God free to do other than create what he has

have usually meant that other alternatives are open to Him in a

thicker sense than this.6

This is a powerful observation and one that has prompted some modern

philosophers and theologians to either diminish the claims of divine

freedom (in order to preserve simplicity) or, as is more often the case,

abandon the traditional DDS (in order to preserve freedom). In this

connection we shall consider a representative of each position.

Norman Kretzmann, who endorses Aquinas’s DDS, is unconvinced that

God’s single act of will can be both necessary (with respect to himself)

and free (with respect to other things). If God is simple and is the end of

all his willing, his will to create seems to be naturally necessary.

Accordingly, Kretzmann declares, “I see no way of avoiding the

inconsistency (or, at least, ambivalence) in Aquinas’s account as it

stands.”7 In particular, Kretzmann finds Thomas’s insistence that God

creates non-divine things because of the self-diffusive nature of his

goodness to flatly contradict his view that God could freely have chosen

not to create anything at all.8 If goodness is necessarily diffusive of

itself it would seem that creation is naturally necessary for a God who is

identical with his goodness (which is entailed in the DDS). God could

not have willed otherwise without being otherwise in himself. But

Thomas insists that he could have willed otherwise.9 This tension

between necessitarianism and voluntarism, Kretzmann explains, is not

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due to Thomas’s synthesis of Hebrew theology and Greek philosophy, as

many have supposed, but rather stems from his synthesis of Platonic

self-diffusiveness and Aristotelian self-sufficiency in his

characterizations of God.10 Thomas employs both of these perspectives

to advance seemingly contradictory claims: (1) God’s goodness moves

him, as it were, to share his divine life with others (and these could only

be creatures), while (2) his self-sufficiency requires that he stand in no

necessary relation to those creatures. …

Jay Richards identifies the same apparent tension between God’s free

will and simplicity as Kretzmann does, though he tacks in the opposite

direction. For him, it is the demands of classical simplicity that must be

lessened, not divine libertarian free will. Departing from the DDS’s

long-standing claim that God possesses no accidents, Richards appeals

to divine free will as one indicator that God possesses accidental

properties:

If saying that God is free has any real sense, then choice among

alternatives—in the sense that God could have done otherwise—

must be one of its necessary elements, even if it is not a sufficient

one. This implies that God will have contingent or accidental

properties, that is, properties that could change. These contingent

properties concerning God’s relation to a contingent creation are

the expression of his freedom, as are all his contingent properties;

so they do not imply any significant ontological dependence of

God on the world.19

Richards’s final comment is true enough insofar as he is concerned to

maintain that God could not be changed by others. But at the same time

he wants to affirm that God changes himself in his exercise of free will

and is, in a softened sense, accidentally (i.e., non-essentially) mutable.

For Richards, nothing that God freely wills, including his relation as

Creator to the world, counts as a necessary or immutable attribute of his.

Of divine knowledge, for instance, he writes, “[E]ven if in the actual

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world God’s knowledge is unchanging, it does not follow that it is

impossible that God’s knowledge change.”20 But the classical DDS,

with its concomitant doctrine of divine immutability, argues that God’s

knowledge is not only unchanging in the actual world, but from all

eternity. Intellectual changeability in God necessarily precludes the

strong sense of divine simplicity. Of course, Richards would reply that

the strong DDS undermines the “real sense” of divine freedom and the

meaningful affirmation that God could have created other possible

worlds.

In a challenging passage, Richards further argues for a real distinction

between act and potency in God in order to accommodate his contra-

causal freedom:

We need to make these distinctions [between act and potency], not

because of requirements extrinsic to the doctrine of God or from

penchant for novelty in theology, but simply because Christians

speak of the gratuity and freedom of God’s creating, and a fortiori

of the contingency of creation itself. For instance, if God is free in

creating the actual world (wa), then he could have refrained from

doing so or could have created a world different from the one he

has created. But in such a case, God exists with countless

possibilities, that is, unactualized possibilities, which are just those

things he could choose to do but does not, and those things

precluded because of the choices he does take. So if God could

have created a world wd different from and incompossible with the

world he actually created (wa) then he has a potentiality to create

wd which can never be realized, since it is precluded by his

actually creating wa.21

On the face of it Richards makes a compelling argument and we might

wonder how any orthodox Christian could fail to find it persuasive. The

one troubling feature, though, is that he does not make any attempt to

characterize the modal sense of “could have” with respect to God. He

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treats the notion of “possibility” as if it meant the same thing for God as

it does for creatures. But surely classical Christian theists disallow such

univocity when they qualify God’s free will as eternal and immutable.

For Richards’s argument to succeed he would also need to dispense with

immutability and eternity as well, and not merely with the act-potency

denial of the DDS. But if he refuses to banish those commitments, then

it seems that he does not have a solid reason to banish divine actus purus

either.

In a final salvo against the classical DDS, Richards argues that denial of

act-potency composition in God yields a truncated notion of his

freedom: “So what exactly is the problem with God exercising choices

and making decisions? Quite clearly, the problem is that they are

inconsistent with a type of simplicity that denies the distinctions of

essence and accident and actual and potential in God. So the person

enamored by strong simplicity must settle for a truncated definition of

divine freedom.”22 We may say, alternatively, that the person enamored

by strong libertarian freedom must settle, as Richards seems willing to

do, for a truncated definition of divine simplicity.23 True, this does not

remove the challenge of his remarks. But it does call into question why

Richards grants hegemony to his notion of libertarian freedom over that

of divine simplicity. Apparently he does so to protect the divine power

of contrary choice. But he does not attempt to explain the nature of such

a choice in light of other equally orthodox and biblical doctrines, most

importantly, God’s eternality and immutability. Rather, he is content to

map onto God a human psychology of libertarian freedom and insist that

God’s freedom is only significant and plausible if it measures up to that

creaturely conception: “Mere freedom of choice may not be sufficient to

express divine freedom, but certainly it is necessary. Surely God is at

least as free as we are when we exercise freedom (assuming, as I do, that

we sometimes exercise libertarian freedom).”24

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Both Kretzmann and Richards identify a difficulty in affirming both

divine simplicity and contra-causal freedom, but they are at odds on how

to resolve the tension. Kretzmann rejects the strong account of God’s

freedom while Richards discards the strong account of God’s simplicity.

ELEONORE STUMP’S (PROBLEMATIC) RESOLUTION

The great challenge for DDS adherents, as well as for all who hold to the

immutability and atemporality of God’s knowledge and will, is to

explain the status of the modal operator “could have” when it is used to

express God’s freedom with respect to creation. What does it mean to

say “God could have __________” in the context of also confessing him

as eternal, immutable, and pure act? To be sure, DDS proponents

historically have not devoted extensive attention to this question. Yet the

tendency among modern DDS opponents to grant controlling status to

the counterfactual expression, “God could have done otherwise,” calls

for a response. Does such an expression make sense in a classical

Christian doctrine of God and, furthermore, does it accurately represent

what Christians have historically meant in affirming that God exercises

free will in his creation of the world? There seem to be two directions in

which the DDS subscriber may go in answer to this question. First, some

answer by formulating a scheme in which God could conceivably be

really different than he is by having created a world different from this

one. Such difference, it is argued, does not fall in the category of either

accidental or substantial change and so does not threaten the DDS.

Second, others answer by denying that openness to alternatives (or

counterfactual possibility) is an adequate explanation of divine free will.

Eleonore Stump aims to meet the challenge of divine free will according

to first approach, by proposing a scheme in which God is intrinsically

different in different possible worlds without necessarily acquiring

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accidental properties.25 Her basic premise is that when Thomas denies

that God possesses accidents he means God cannot change over time.

But, Stump explains, this does not mean that God could not be otherwise

given the existence of a different possible world. Thomas, she observes,

frames his denial of divine accidents within a discussion of God’s

immutability, chiefly emphasizing the impossibility that any of his

attributes be corrupted. This emphasis upon incorruptibility suggests that

Thomas could be first one way and then another over time and within

the same world. Her goal is to preserve some place for an affirmation of

divine contra-causal freedom with respect to possible worlds.

The critical element enabling Stump to claim that God’s intrinsic

difference across different possible worlds is within Thomistic bounds is

her explanation of how Thomas views accidents. According to Stump,

Thomas denies accidents in God because of the incomplete nature of any

accident.27 Recall from the discussion above in chapter 2 that no

accident is sufficient for its own esse; it only is by inherence in some

substance and thereby acquires inesse, and not esse properly speaking.

Stump insists that if we can avoid saying that God is incomplete in any

of those possible worlds in which he may exist, then we will have

satisfied all of Thomas’s concerns about accidents. We need not suppose

that the denial of accidents was ever intended to proscribe all possibility

that God be intrinsically other than he is. “If this is right,” Stump

remarks, “then this is the sense that we should understand that God has

no accidents—not that God is exactly the same in all possible worlds in

which he exists but that there is nothing at all that is incomplete or

insubstantial about God in any respect, even though God is not the same

in all possible worlds.”28 …

But Stump’s account is fraught with difficulties. The question

immediately comes to mind: What is it about God that is “not the same”

in different possible worlds? Furthermore, if this divine difference is

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intrinsic yet not accidental, is it not then substantial or essential? Simply

saying that God is not “insubstantial” in any possible world in which he

exists is not the same as saying that he is substantially or essentially the

same in every possible world. God might be one complete substance or

essence in world A and a different complete substance or essence in

world B. Either way there is nothing “insubstantial” about him. If this is

what Stump’s explanation amounts to then it is hard to square with

Thomas’s actus purus conception of God’s simplicity. Surely Aquinas

did not simply mean to say that God is pure act in whatever world he

happens to create but that he could have been a different pure act if he

had chosen to create a different possible world. Pure act simply will not

allow one to introduce differentia into the divine essence and existence.

Stump ignores the connection between the denial of accidents in God

and the strong existential account of the actus purus doctrine. The reason

God cannot possess accidents is not merely because there is nothing

“insubstantial” in him, but because all accidents are determinations to

being and God is ispsum esse subsistens. It is this commitment that

makes Thomas’s account radically incompatible with Stump’s proposal.

Her God who is “not the same” in all possible worlds seems to require

some additional determination of being (via his free will?) in order to be

meaningfully different in each world. Simply denying that this

determination is an accident in God does not make her position any

more agreeable to the classical DDS.

In sum, Stump’s notion of non-accidental difference as something God

could have willed for himself seems to leave no alternative but to

conclude that God could have been essentially or substantially different.

Assuming that Stump does not allow this conclusion, it is difficult to

conceive how God could have been really different from what he is

without that difference being either accidental or essential/substantial.

Moreover, if the way God actually is in this world is really different

from how he might have been, then it would seem that there is some

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differentia in God that makes this the case. How is this differentia not an

accident?30 Seeking to preserve God’s simplicity by concurring with

Thomas’s denial of divine accidents, while at the same time trying to

uphold divine contra-causal free will by affirming that God is really

different in this world from the way he would have been in another,

appears to be an impossible explanation. Katherin Rogers perceptively

expresses the difficulty of Stump’s solution:

If Stump and Kretzmann have Aquinas right, there is some sense in

which “there are possible worlds in which God wills not to create .

. .” But it is very difficult to see how God in the actual world could

be the same being as God in some other possible world, if (1) God

in the actual world is identical to His eternal and immutable act in

the world, (2) God in a different possible world is identical to His

act in that world, and (3) God’s act in the actual world is not

identical to His act in the other possible world. One could suppose

that the principle of the transitivity of identity (if A is identical to

B and B is identical to C, then A is identical to C) does not hold at

the divine level across possible worlds, but I take it this entails the

view that we probably can’t say anything about what might be

possible for God, in which case we have not solved the difficulty

of distinguishing the necessary from the contingent in the divine

nature.31

FREE WILL WITHOUT COUNTERFACTUAL OPENNESS

Most adherents to the DDS have historically attempted to reconcile

God’s simplicity and free will by arguing for a conception of freedom

that does not require God to stand deliberatively before a range of

possibilities. Of course, this understanding tends to militate against

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general assumptions about human free will in which the nature of

freedom is located primarily in the agent’s power to do otherwise, the

ability to change course and to actualize counterfactuals. To suggest that

God might not possess his volitional power in the same way that humans

do seems, prima facie, to place restrictions on God and to weaken the

power of his will. Now, a human’s ability to choose among options is

regarded as a power precisely because it enables a person to either (1)

begin on a desirable course of action or (2) to change course from one

less desirous to one more beneficial. The counterfactual power of

volitional freedom in this context is meaningful because it assumes that

the one choosing is changeable, or mutable. But, in an agent without any

real possibility for beginning or change, it is not clear that freedom

needs to be construed as the possibility of doing otherwise.

Consequently, choice would not need to be explained as movement from

“could choose this or that” to “chooses this or that,” that is, as the

reduction of volitional potency to act.

Given that adherents to the classical DDS are also firmly committed to

God’s atemporal eternity and absolute immutability, it is not surprising

that they tend to characterize God’s volitional freedom in a manner

wholly unsuited to temporal and mutable free creatures.32 The modality

of volitional freedom cannot be abstracted from the nature of the

volitional agent and, thus, the modality of human freedom cannot be

univocally attributed to God’s exercise of free will. Herman Bavinck,

accordingly, ties the unique modality of God’s free will to his absolute

simplicity and thereby concludes that God does not possess “choice” as

one might ordinarily understand it:

We can almost never tell why God willed one thing rather than

another, and are therefore compelled to believe that he could just

as well have willed one thing as another. But in God there is

actually no such thing as choice inasmuch as it always presupposes

uncertainty, doubt, and deliberation. He, however, knows what he

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wills—eternally, firmly, and immutably. Every hint of

arbitrariness, contingency, or uncertainty is alien to his will, which

is eternally determinate and unchanging. Contingency

characterizes creatures and—let it be said in all reverence—not

even God can deprive the creature of this characteristic. In God

alone existence and essence are of one piece; by virtue of its very

nature a creature is such that it could also not have existed.33

That God cannot alter his will is not a weakness in him as it would be in

us.34 As composite and contingent creatures, it is fitting that our

volitional freedom consists in the power to will counterfactuals. But our

free willing must function in the context of our ontological mutability

and contingency. Such a freedom for God would actually signal a

weakness in him inasmuch as it would make him dependent upon

accidental acts of volition, with which he is not strictly identical, in

order to actually possess the will he possesses. In other words, he would

not have his will entirely in and through himself. His will would have a

beginning and would inhere in him as accident determining him to be

this or that way. Human free will, even in its strongest moments, cannot

be most absolute inasmuch and it might come and go. God’s will,

though, is most absolute, without beginning or end, because it is

identical with his very act of existence.

Some have gone so far as to deny that God’s will is a distinct faculty in

him as it is in humans. God’s free will is most absolute because it is

identical with his essence. Stephen Charnock concludes, via the DDS,

that God’s will is nothing other than “God willing” …

What are we to say, then, about the modal status of “could have” in

statements affirming that God “could have” willed differently than he

has? Do these affirmations not suggest some intrinsic ontological

contingency in God?39 Many DDS subscribers have concluded that such

statements are simply imprecise ways of expressing the non-absolute

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necessity of the actual world. God’s essence would not have been

different, they contend, if he had willed some other possible world.40

Others go further by explicitly stipulating that such modal contingencies

are not really applicable to God. Barry Miller, for instance, devises a

formula for ensuring that the contingency of “could have” is applied to

the non-divine things God wills and not to God himself.41 …

Thomas Aquinas makes a distinction between the absolute necessity in

God’s willing of himself and the suppositional necessity in his willing of

other things. Non-divine things are only necessary because God wills

them and do not, in themselves, require or coerce God to choose them.

Consider Thomas’s explanation: “[E]verything eternal is necessary.

Now, that God should will some effect to be is eternal, for, like His

being, so, too, His willing is measured by eternity, and is therefore

necessary. But it is not necessary considered absolutely, because the will

of God does not have a necessary relation to this willed object.

Therefore, it is necessary by supposition.”46 Again, because God’s end

of his own goodness and glory does not depend upon the non-divine

things he wills, they cannot be considered as absolutely necessary to him

in the way that his own nature is. Nevertheless, we cannot say that God’s

free will could have actually been otherwise since it is eternally and

immutably actual in just the way it is. Thus, Thomas writes:

Furthermore, whatever God could He can, for His power is not

decreased, as neither is His essence. But He cannot now not will

what He is posited as having willed, because His will cannot be

changed. Therefore, at no time could He not will what He has

willed. It is therefore necessary by supposition that He willed

whatever He willed, and also that He wills it; neither, however, is

absolutely necessary, but, rather, possible in the aforementioned

way.47

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Undoubtedly, this sort of “possibility” cannot but fail to inspire those for

whom free will is essentially characterized by an agent’s actual openness

to counterfactuals.48 The precise character of a free will that never

moves from “could will” to “does will” seems to be beyond all human

analysis. Indeed, the DDS adherent readily owns such inscrutability

inasmuch as it is of a single piece with the incomprehensibility of God

as ipsum esse subsistens or actus purus.49 But this impenetrability is no

conclusive argument against the necessity and usefulness of these

doctrines for confessing God as “most absolute.”

SIMPLICITY AND FREEDOM BEYOND ANALYSIS

There has never been a temporal or logical “moment” in the divine life

in which God stood volitionally open to other possible worlds. The

actual world is conditionally necessary and every other possible world is

conditionally impossible by virtue of the fact that God has eternally

willed just this particular world.50 His will for the world is free

inasmuch as it is not required in order for God to be God or to fulfill

perfectly his end, the enjoyment of his own goodness and glory. Had he

willed some other possible world or no world at all, he would not have

been in the least bit hindered in his final purpose. Even so, there does

seem to be biblical and theological warrant for saying that God could do

things other than he does. Insofar as the DDS insists upon the eternal

pure actuality of his will it is incumbent upon DDS subscribers to make

some sense of God’s knowledge of and power for counterfactuals.

Thomas proves God’s power to do otherwise from the words of Jesus in

Matthew 26:53: “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he

will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” But Christ

neither makes this request nor does the Father perform the action.

Thomas concludes, “Therefore God can do what He does not.”51 This

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affirmation is qualified in two ways. First, against those who hold that

all of God’s actions are performed by a natural necessity, it is argued

that the present course of things follows from God’s free will and not

any necessity in his nature “so that other things could not happen.”52

Second, Thomas responds to those who hold that since God’s wisdom

and justice cannot be otherwise, and God’s will is identical in him with

his wisdom and justice, his free will could not be otherwise. This

incorrectly presumes that the present creation is adequate to God’s

wisdom such that “the divine wisdom should be restricted to this present

order of things.” Furthermore, this view assumes that the things created

are adequate to the end for which they were created, namely, God. But if

God is the end of all things and is infinite in himself, then no finite order

of things could possibly be proportionate to its end. Thomas observes,

“[T]he divine goodness is an end exceeding beyond all proportion things

created.” Only an infinite creation could be adequate to the end of God

himself and an infinite creation is, by definition, impossible.

“Wherefore,” Thomas concludes, “we must simply say that God can do

other things than those He has done.”53

The difficulty is in understanding how such power to do otherwise can

be reconciled with the denial that God exhibits any sense of passive

potency. It would seem that some measure of volitional openness is

necessary in order for the “power to do otherwise” to make sense. But in

stressing God’s power to do otherwise Thomas’s concern is not so much

in locating a point in the divine life in which God chooses among

equally open alternatives, but rather to highlight that the world he has

eternally chosen is not absolutely necessary according to his nature. The

world is dependent upon God and not vice versa. Thus, it is the

contingency of the world that is the primary focus when affirming divine

contra-causal power. Moreover, it is important to recognize that contra-

causal power is not to be equated with contra-causal openness in God’s

volition. In fact, Thomas insists that power is not properly attributed to

God’s will at all, but to his nature: “God does things because He wills so

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to do; yet the power to do them does not come from His will, but from

His nature.”54 In locating God’s absolute power in his nature rather than

in his will, Thomas removes any need for volitional openness in God.

God’s power for counterfactuals is not a power of his will as such.

For all this, though, we are still faced with the fact that there seems to be

something in God that is less than absolutely necessary, namely, his will

to create this particular world. Surely, critics contend, this indicates at

least one area in which divine simplicity subverts divine absoluteness,

namely, the absoluteness of his freedom. God’s ontological absoluteness

appears to be endangered if one insists that God is not free in his act of

willing the world. If he wills the world with absolute necessity then

something non-divine would be necessary to him and he would be

correlative in being and essence. God would depend upon something

outside himself for his end and purpose.

Whether his will for the universe is free or necessary, then, it seems that

the doctrine of divine absoluteness is doomed. If God’s will is free then

seemingly he must be composed of act and potency, and thus cannot be

existentially absolute (which requires that he be eternally pure act). If his

will for the world is absolutely necessary then his nature requires the

world and thus God cannot be essentially absolute. For Christians, both

of these alternatives are unacceptable. If divine absoluteness is doomed,

so is any prospect of offering a sufficient reason for the existence of

anything at all.

It must be reiterated at this point that only that which is identical with its

own existence is ultimately sufficient to account for itself or anything

else. For this reason the first cause of being must be subsistent pure act

(and all that is entailed in actus purus such as being a se, indivisibly one,

infinite, immutable, and eternal). Moreover, the first cause of being must

be free in his production of other things since, if he were not, he would

stand in existential need of those things in order to be fully actualized in

his nature. But then he would not be pure act apart from his production

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of creatures. God would need the world for his being and the world

would need him for its being. Such a pantheistic tautology spells the end

of ever offering a sufficient reason for the universe. Needless to say, if

one is to uphold the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo then it is

crucial to confess God as both simple pure act and free in his act of

willing the world.

It should be readily confessed that the exact function of free will in God

who is himself pure act is beyond the scope of human knowledge. Just

as we cannot comprehend God as ipsum esse subsistens, we cannot

comprehend the identity between God as eternal, immutable, pure act

and his will for the world as free and uncoerced. 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.55 In fact, this confession of ignorance is precisely what one finds

in the Thomist and Reformed traditions.

CONCLUSION

The difficulty that divine freedom poses for God’s simplicity is not such

as to render the DDS impossible or necessarily incoherent. Certainly,

one must readily acknowledge the incomprehensibility of the divine

nature (WCF 2.1) if both are to be maintained. But the inability to say

how it is that God is both simple and free does not necessarily obviate

the fact that he is both. Indeed, the absoluteness of the first cause of

being demands a firm affirmation of his simplicity and freedom.

Moreover, for whatever tension there appears to be in this affirmation, it

should also be emphasized that it is God’s simplicity that ensures his

will is genuinely free from dependence upon creatures.

18

Dolezal, James E.. God without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the

Metaphysics of God's Absoluteness (p. 212). Pickwick Publications, An

Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Jame Dolezal comments by e-mail:

Here is a longish reply to your post (begging your indulgence for my

rambling). I am grateful for your interaction with my book. It seems that

we are agreed on many points. In answer to your main question—“Does

he make a mysterian move?”—I confess that I am hesitant to accept the

label “mysterian” without significant qualification. Not all appeals to

mystery are equally well grounded, it seems. Broadly speaking, there

appear to be two different varieties of mysterianism on offer (here I am

following some remarks made by Ed Feser; see (1) ontologically

grounded mysterianism; and (2) mentally grounded mysterianism.

As a Christian who confesses God’s incomprehensibility based upon his

pure actuality, I cannot see how I can avoid appealing to mystery in the

sense of (1). Yet there seem to be good reasons for this appeal. Most

notably, as pure act God is beyond all categorical being and thus beyond

definition in any scientific sense. (Hence, my commitment to analogical

predication about God) It is God as ipsum esse subsistens (or, in biblical

terms, as “I AM”) that chiefly accounts for his incomprehensibility and

the mystery that permeates any discussion of his existence, essence, or

triunity. This is rather unlike that more popular form of mysterianism

that locates the ground of mystery in the human mind’s evolutionary

situation (as urged, for instance, by Colin McGinn).

Mysterianism that is explained in terms of God’s non-categorical being

(i.e., as pure act) does not seem to necessarily entail theological

skepticism or the undermining of reason as such. It explains reason’s

inability to comprehend God in terms of God’s own nature; reason

19

should not expect to comprehend God because of what God is.

(Obviously, I don’t equate true theological knowledge with

comprehension.) To the extent that reason is deployed in the science of

theology it is for the purpose of offering a well-ordered account of

divine mystery (which it achieves predominantly through a process of

negation, as in chapter 2 of my book).

Anyhow, option (1) should allow us to maintain both the general

soundness of reason and the mystery of God’s being. Option (2), on the

other hand, seems to push us toward skepticism to the extent that it

locates reason’s inability to understand in some internal cognitive

deficiency rather than in God’s reality external to us (again, see Feser’s

comments in the above link). This form of mysterianism threatens the

general reliability of reason itself, even in the domain in which reason

may be expected to attain some level of comprehension, i.e., the material

world. Thus, I take materialist mysterianism to be a genuine threat to

reason, since it appeals to mystery precisely where reason might have

been expected to offer some explanation. Theological mysterianism that

is rooted in God’s simplicity, on the other hand, actually denies that

reason could have, under more favorable conditions, defined and

comprehended God. Theological mystery is not predicated upon the

assumption that our reasoning apparatus is impaired or underdeveloped.

Some might suppose that the Christian doctrine of noetic depravity

amounts to the same thing as (2). I’m not sure that it does. While it’s

true that noetic depravity contributes much to man’s present ignorance

of God, this depravity is not the ground of theological mystery or divine

incomprehensibility. Even if man’s mind were not impaired by sin, God

would still be incomprehensible and mysterious to him on account of his

ontological status as actus purus. Simply put, theological mystery and

divine incomprehensibility are grounded in God’s own being and not the

current state of the human mind’s development (or lack thereof). Maybe

we could think of this as a realist account of divine mystery as opposed

to a conceptualist account. In this connection, I prefer to distinguish

between theological ignorance rooted in God’s being and theological

20

ignorance rooted in man’s present cognitive circumstances. The latter

may be overcome in some measure through regeneration, deeper

reflection over time, and ultimately in the beatific vision; the former

cannot be overcome, or even diminished, in this life or the next (since

only an intellect that is itself purely actual can possess an isomorphically

adequate comprehension of God’s existence, including the modalities of

his necessity and freedom).

With respect to the difficulty of explaining how God is both free and

simple (point 4 of your post), I would not locate the mystery primarily

in the “conjunction” of the terms, but in the terms themselves. Yes, the

conjunction is mysterious and I, like you, am not convinced by the

numerous theistic attempts to overcome it. But, if I do indeed make a

“mysterian move” it is not made at the end of a process in which I have

grasped all the terms involved and simply cannot figure out how to link

them together. Rather, I confess divine mystery at the outset, at the

moment I conceive of God as pure act (as “I AM”). Admittedly, I did

not make this as clear as I should have in chapter 7 of my book. The

mystery of the conjunction follows from the mystery of God’s purely

actual existence. Indeed, the mystery of divine freedom itself follows

from the same. It is for this reason that I don’t expect (or even desire)

“resolution” to the difficulty; such resolution could only be achieved by

eradicating the ontological distinction between God and his creatures

(which I would regard as impossible since God cannot produce a purely

actual being distinct from himself). In this regard the “cognitive

limitation” of humans is be located not in the circumstances of their

present mental development or non-development, but in the fact of their

ontological and intellectual compositeness.

***

Perhaps the following procedure will help to locate the mystery more

precisely:

(1)The existence of creatures in which esse and essentia are really

distinct can only be accounted for by an agent whose esse and essentia

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are really identical, by one who is pure act, ipsum esse subsistens, God.

Moreover, there can only be one such agent.

(2)The real distinction in creatures is itself an indicator of their

dependence upon another, and thus of their ontological contingency or

non-absoluteness. Moreover, the simple agent who produces them

cannot do so of absolute necessity. There are several reasons for this,

but one stands out. If God produced the world by an absolute necessity

then his very being as God would be correlative to the world’s existence.

But such correlativity would obviate his pure actuality, i.e., he would be

made actual in some sense by something other than himself and

consequently would fail to satisfy the requirements for an agent that is

pure act. In other words, he couldn’t be the absolutely sufficient

explanation for the world’s existence if he were in any way correlative

to the world.

(3)It seems to follow, then, that if an absolutely simple God is going to

create (and only a simple God satisfies the requirements for creation ex

nihilo) he must do so freely. As actus purus, anything God produces in

distinction from himself must be produced freely. A couple thoughts

worth noting in this connection are: (1) anything that is caused to be

must exhibit a real distinction between esse and essetia and thus cannot

be identical with God; (2) As pure act, God can neither produce himself

nor something else that is pure act but distinct from himself (because

then God and the second purely actual thing would have to differ in

some real way, thus indicating a lack of actuality in one or both of

them). Back to our point. The world requires a simple Creator and the

pure actuality of the Creator requires that any creation be produced

freely. Ergo, God must be free in creating the world.

(4)But what to make of this freedom? How shall we characterize it?

I am hesitant to move too quickly in the direction of “libertarian

freedom” before considering other ways in which divine freedom might

be expressed. Perhaps most importantly, if divine simplicity means that

God’s is the primary object and final end of all his knowing and willing

22

(as I argue in chapter 6 of my book), then he is first and foremost free in

that older Aristotelian sense of the one who is “for himself.” As pure act,

he must be most “for himself” and thus most free, absolutely free of

dependence upon all things not identical with him. I think that this is one

sense of divine freedom that is often lost sight of in the modern stress

upon power for counterfactuals.

Still, you are right to raise the question of God’s power for

counterfactuals. How shall I explain the modality of such freedom? I

confess that I cannot. I have no idea how to adequately express the

modality of a free choice made by an agent who is pure act. And yet

his pure actuality requires that his will for the world’s existence be

free. I would not hesitate to affirm that human libertarian freedom is an

analogue of this divine liberty; but it fails to convey the precise modality

of that freedom as it is in God. Human acts of knowledge are also

analogues of the divine act of knowledge and they too do not disclose an

adequate (or univocal) notion of the modality of God’s knowledge. As I

cannot form a univocal notion of God’s pure actuality, neither can I form

a univocal notion of all he does in that actuality (knowing, willing,

relating among the divine persons, creating, etc.).

I’m not sure that this answer meets the challenges of your first and third

objections, but it might explain somewhat why I seem to be avoiding the

questions.

***

Regarding your equations ("God + world = God" & "God - world =

God"), I would agree if what you mean is something akin to Aquinas's

insistence that world does not make a "real" difference to God, that its

existence or non-existence doesn't introduce some differentia into God's

own actuality. Still, I do hesitate to to employ the "+", "-", and "="

symbols inasmuch as these might suggest a single continuous realm of

existence. The ontological distinction between God and the world cannot

be characterized as a proper "numeric duality" since numeric addition

23

and subtraction presuppose multiplicity within a single series (119n84 in

my book). It seems that only if God and the world were thought to exist

together in some such series would the world come out as an

"ontological zero." I would prefer to maintain two (non-numeric)

distinct orders of being and accept the mystery implicit in such a view,

than to move in an eliminativist direction respecting the world's ontic

reality. Anyhow, these are my initial reactions. I will have to think a bit

more about your question.

***

You raise some significant and challenging issues and I appreciate your

thoughtfulness. Before offering a few thoughts in response, I should note

that in my book I do not characterize God’s free will as “libertarianly

free.” Such language is too often associated with volitional

counterfactual openness and so I purposely avoid it.

As I understand your proposal, it is similar to that of Norman

Kretzmann: God is not free to refrain from creating a world (as it springs

naturally and necessarily from his own actuality and goodness); rather,

his freedom lies in choosing which, how many, for how long, etc.

particular beings populate the world. Furthermore, you appear to be

saying that the natural and necessary springing forth of the world from

God’s being and goodness does not have any bearing upon our

confession of his pure actuality. I disagree. As your account of the

world’s existence seems to blend a non-gratuitous emanationism and a

gratuitous creationism, it is difficult to know exactly how to respond.

But I’ll offer an initial reaction.

The one basic misgiving that I have about your proposal is that it seems

to compromise God’s pure actuality with respect either to his will, his

knowledge, or possibly both. Consider the following:

1. If the world “springs into being” as the natural overflow of God’s

actuality, perfection and goodness, then God must will its existence with

the same non-gratuitous absoluteness with which he wills himself.

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Accordingly, the world would seem to constitute an end for God’s

willing, and presuming that the world is in no measure identical with

God, it would be an end for his will that is really distinct from himself.

As the end of any act of will supplies the will's raison d'être the actuality

of God’s will for the world would depend upon something other than

himself. Thus, he could not be pure act.

If we say, on the other hand, that God does not will the world as an end

separate from himself, that the world is not identical with God, and that

it is naturally necessary in virtue of God’s actuality, then he must will it

as a means to his end. But then God would only possess himself as the

end of all his willing by passing through something not identical to him.

He would need the world in order to possess himself as his own end.

This also undermines his pure actuality inasmuch as it supposes a real

distinction between God as willer and God as willed. As pure act, God’s

will for himself cannot require means, that is to say, all non-gratuitous

necessities that are distinct from God’s own existence are ruled out. If

the world’s existence can’t be a separate end of God’s will, and if it

can’t be a requisite means to God’s end of willing himself, then

seemingly it can’t be willed by God, either naturally or gratuitously.

2. Thus, suppose we seek to overcome the first objection by saying that

the world springs forth from God naturally, but that God does not

actually will it to be. This creates a problem first for the actuality of

God’s will inasmuch as there would be some actual goodness (the

existing world) that God did not desire, and his will would presumably

be open to further actuality (i.e., it would not be perfect since there

would exist something desirable, the world’s esse, that God did not

desire). Second, if we deny that God wills the world’s existence but that

he knows its existence we would have to conclude that his knowledge of

the world’s existence is something that he acquires from the world itself

as it springs forth from him. Thus his knowledge of the world would be

made actual by something other than his own nature. Moreover, if the

world did not proceed from God’s will, whether considered as natural or

gratuitous, but did proceed from his actuality and perfection, we would

25

have to conclude that there is some real distinction in God between his

nature and his volitional actuality (that his, his nature could produce

something that his will did not desire, and thus his will would not be

adequate to his nature).

Anyhow, these are my initial reactions to your proposal. For these

reasons (among others) I stand by my conclusion that God’s pure

actuality requires that his will for the world’s existence be gratuitous.

***

The Aporetics of Divine Simplicity

My questions concern divine simplicity and divine knowledge, two nuts that I've lately been making every effort to crack. First, do you think that theism can be salvaged without absolute divine simplicity? I know that there are many theists who don't believe that God is simple, but is such a concept of Deity coherent?

I believe a case can be made, pace Alvin Plantinga and other theistic deniers of

divine simplicity, that to deny the absolute ontological simplicity of God is to deny

theism itself. For what we mean by 'God' is an absolute reality, something

metaphysically ultimate, "that than which no greater can be conceived."

(Anselm) Now an absolute reality cannot depend for its existence or nature or

value upon anything distinct from itself. It must be from itself alone, or a

se. Nothing could count as divine, or worthy of worship, or be an object of our

ultimate concern, or be maximally great, if it lacked the property of aseity. But

the divine aseity, once it is granted, seems straightaway to entail the divine

simplicity, as Aquinas argues in ST. For if God is not dependent on anything else

for his existence, nature, and value, then God is not a whole of parts, for a whole

of parts depends on its parts to be and to be what it is. So if God is a se, then he

is not a composite being, but a simple being. This implies that in God there is no

real distinction between: existence and essence, form and matter, act and

potency, individual and attribute, attribute and attribute. In sum, if God is God,

then God is simple. To deny the simplicity of God is to deny the existence of

26

God. It is therefore possible for an atheist to argue: Nothing can be ontologically

simple, therefore, God cannot exist.

A theist who denies divine simplicity might conceivably be taxed with idolatry

inasmuch as he sets up something as God that falls short of the exacting

requirements of deity. The divine transcendence would seem to require that God

cannot be a being among beings, but must in some sense be Being itself . (Deus

est ipsum esse subsistens: God is not an existent but self-subsisting Existence

itself.) On the other hand, a theist who affirms divine simplicity can be taxed, and

has been taxed, with incoherence. As an aporetician first and foremost, I seek to

lay bare the problem in all its complexity under suspension of the natural urge for

a quick solution.

Second, if my understanding is correct, then according to the doctrine of divine simplicity, God has no intrinsic accidents. How is that compatible with divine freedom? I know it's trite, but I haven't seen a good answer to the question of how God could have properties such as having created mankind or having declined to create elves without their being just as necessary to Him as His benevolence and omnipotence (especially if He is what He does).

This is indeed a problem. On classical theism, God is libertarianly free: although he exists in every metaphysically possible world, he does not create in every such world, and he creates different things in the different worlds in which he does create. Thus the following are accidental properties of God: the property of creating something-or-other, and the property of creating human beings. But surely God cannot be identical to these properties as the simplicity doctrine seems to require. It cannot be inscribed into the very nature of God that he create Socrates given that he freely creates Socrates. Some writers have attempted to solve this problem, but I don't know of a good solution.

Even if there's a solution to that problem, what's to be said about God's knowledge? Isn't His knowledge an intrinsic property of His? But, since the truth of a proposition like the planet Mars exists is contingent, isn't God's knowing it an accidental property, and, furthermore, an intrinsic accidental property?

Well, this too is a problem. If S knows that p, and p is contingent, then S's knowing that p is an accidental (as opposed to essential) property of S. Now if God is omniscient, then he knows every (non-indexical) truth, including every

27

contingent truth. It seems to follow that God has at least as many accidental properties as there are contingent truths. Surely these are not properties with which God could be identical, as the simplicity doctrine seems to require. Now there must be some contingent truths in consequence of the divine freedom; but this is hard to square with the divine simplicity. And if it is in fact the case that God's knowledge is the cause of things, then how are we to understand His knowledge of the free actions of creatures? I know that God is supposed to be the final cause of these actions, as well as their ultimate efficient cause, but the issue is still unclear to me.

This is also a problem. The simplicity doctrine implies that God is identical to

what he knows. It follows that what he knows cannot vary from world to

world. In the actual world A, Oswald shoots Kennedy at time t. If that was a

libertarianly free action, then there is a world W in which Oswald does not shoot

Kennedy at t. Since God exists in very world, and knows what happens in every

world, he knows that in A, Oswald shoots Kennedy at t and in W that Oswald does

not shoot Kennedy at t. But this contradicts the simplicity doctrine, according to

which what God knows does not vary from world to world. The simplicity

doctrine thus appears to collide both with divine and human freedom.

I sincerely look forward to your addressing these questions. Thank you in advance for your consideration of these weighty matters.

I have addressed them, but not solved them. Solutions have been proffered, but

they give rise to problems of their own -- something to be pursued in future posts.

***

28

Davies on divine simplicity and freedom

One of the objections often raised against the doctrine of divine simplicity (and

hence against classical theism) is that it seems incompatible with the notion that

God acted freely in creating the world. In a recent post on divine simplicity, Bill

Vallicella summarizes the objection this way:

On classical theism, God is libertarianly free: although he exists in every

metaphysically possible world, he does not create in every such world, and he

creates different things in the different worlds in which he does create. Thus the

following are accidental properties of God: the property of creating something-or-

other, and the property of creating human beings. But surely God cannot be

identical to these properties as the simplicity doctrine seems to require. It cannot

be inscribed into the very nature of God that he create Socrates given that he

freely creates Socrates. Some writers have attempted to solve this problem, but I

don't know of a good solution.

Davies’ response to this sort of objection in the Cambridge Companion article is to

suggest that it rests on a misunderstanding of the claim that God is free, at least

as that claim is understood by a thinker like Aquinas. When we say of a human

being that he is, for example, free to read or to refrain from reading the rest of

this blog post, we are making a claim that entails that his history as a spatio-

temporal individual could take one of at least two alternative courses. But that

cannot be what it means to say that God is free, because (for Aquinas and the

Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition in general, anyway) God is changeless and eternal,

existing entirely outside the spatio-temporal order. Nor does it mean that God

may or may not acquire some contingent property. For Davies, the claim that God

creates freely ought instead to be understood as a statement of negative

theology, a claim about what God is not rather than a claim about what He is. In

particular, to say that God is free either to create or not create Socrates is to say,

29

first, that God is not compelled either by His own nature or by anything external

to Him either to create or not create Socrates, and second, that neither the

notion of Socrates’ existing nor that of Socrates’ not existing entails any sort of

contradiction or inherent impossibility. And that’s it. The suggestion that divine

simplicity is incompatible with divine freedom thus rests on a tendency to

attribute to God anthropomorphic qualities that are precisely what the doctrine

of divine simplicity denies of Him.

It seems to me that Davies’ point about negative theology here is correct as far as

it goes, though incomplete. (In general, it seems to me that Davies’ work perhaps

overemphasizes negative theology a bit – as I argue in Aquinas, I think this is true,

for example, of his reading of Aquinas’s doctrine that God’s essence and existence

are identical.) More could be said in response to the claim that divine simplicity

and freedom and incompatible. For example, as I explained in the earlier post on

divine simplicity, God’s creating the universe (or just Socrates for that matter) is

what Barry Miller (following the lead of Peter Geach) calls a “Cambridge property”

of God, and the doctrine of divine simplicity does not rule out God’s having

accidental Cambridge properties. (In fairness to Davies, though, he does make

similar points in his other writings on this subject.)

There is also to be considered the Scholastic distinction between that which is

necessary absolutely and that which is necessary only by supposition. For

example, it is not absolutely necessary that I write this blog post – I could have

decided to do something else instead – but on the supposition that I am in fact

writing it, it is necessary that I am. Similarly, it is not absolutely necessary that

God wills to create just the world He has in fact created, but on the supposition

that He has willed to create it, it is necessary that He does. There is this crucial

difference between my will and God’s, though: Whereas I, being changeable,

might in the course of writing this post change my mind and will to do something

else instead, God is immutable, and thus cannot change what He has willed from

all eternity to create. In short, since by supposition He has willed to create this

world, being immutable He cannot do otherwise; but since absolutely He could

have willed to create another world or no world at all, He is nevertheless free.

30

We might also emphasize a point that, while somewhat tangential to the aspect

of divine freedom Bill Vallicella is concerned with, is still crucial to understanding

that freedom and very much in the spirit of Davies’ approach. Modern writers,

largely under the massive but largely unrecognized influence of Ockham’s

voluntarism and nominalism (about which I plan to devote a post in the near

future) tend to think of a free will as one that is inherently indifferent to the ends

it might choose. But for Thomists, the will of its nature is oriented to the good;

even when we do evil, it is always because we mistakenly regard it as at least in

some sense good. (I say more about this in chapter 5 of Aquinas.) It is true that in

human beings, freely choosing a life of virtue typically involves change, but that is

because we have weaknesses to overcome and ignorance about what is truly

good that needs to be remedied. And these are not marks of freedom, but rather

of its relative absence. God, in whom there is no weakness or ignorance, cannot

possibly do evil; and this makes Him, not less free than we are, but more free.

Again, this does not speak directly to the issue Bill raises, but it does illustrate

how, as Davies emphasizes, properly to understand divine freedom we have to

avoid anthropomorphism.

***

Is God Identical To His Thoughts?

31

Atheism and Ontological Simplicity

Neither the Existence Nor the Nonexistence of God is Provable

God and Proof

God: A Being among Beings or Being Itself?

What is Potentiality? An Exploration

From the Laws of Logic to the Existence of God

Knowing God Through Experience

Does the Atheist Deny What the Theist Affirms?

A Paradigm Theory of Existence

The PSR & Modal Collapse

The Aristotelian Proof & Free Will

Classical Theists vs Theistic Personalists

Two Failed Arguments for Divine Simplicity

Descartes and the Problem of Error