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5 - Divine simplicity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2010

Nicholas Wolterstorff
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
Terence Cuneo
Affiliation:
University of Vermont
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Summary

Once upon a time, back in the so-called middle ages, theologians, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim alike, in developing their doctrine of God, gave extraordinary prominence to the attribute of simplicity. God, they said, is simple; in God there are no distinctions whatsoever. I am not aware of any theologian in these three traditions contending that God's simplicity ought to be prominent in one's religious consciousness, in the way, for example, that it appears to have been prominent in the religious consciousness of Plotinus. It was, instead, theoretical prominence that they gave it.

For one thing, they recognized its theoretical fecundity. If one grants God's simplicity, then one also has to grant a large number of other divine attributes: immateriality, eternity, immutability, having no unrealized potentialities, etc. Aquinas, in his earlier Summa contra gentiles, still argued for God's eternity, immateriality, and lack of passive potency before he introduced God's simplicity. By the time he wrote his later Summa Theologiae he had fully recognized the theoretical fecundity of this attribute and moved it up to the top of the list, introducing it immediately after he had established the existence of a first mover. Secondly, the doctrine of divine simplicity had, for the medievals, extraordinary framework significance. If one grants that God is simple, one's interpretation of all God's other attributes will have to be formed in the light of that conviction.

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Inquiring about God , pp. 91 - 111
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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