Does the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity Identify God with a Property?

The doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) says that God is not composed of parts or is in anyway divisible. This means that each of God’s attributes cannot be considered as separate individual properties, but instead have to be considered as all being identical to each other; God’s attribute of omnipotence is identical to God’s attribute of omniscience, and both of these identical to God Himself, etc. This way of understanding God was the position of the majority of the church fathers and medievals, as well as that of the compilers of the reformation confessions. 

The first article of the Anglican church states:

There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions… (39 articles, BCP)

Equally, the Westminster divines concluded in the second chapter of their confession:

There is but one only living, and true God: who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions…

There were strong reasons for why the church held to DDS. First, if God was composed of parts, then He could not be considered to be pure act, for any composite has the potential to be divided into the parts that compose it. This leads to the second concern with divine complexity; namely, that it would weaken God’s essential nature. God would have the potential to be separated into His parts; and even if this possibility is never actualised, it still weakens God’s essential nature as a being who can say ‘I am who I am’ (Ex. 3.14). Third, it would make God dependent upon His parts, as any composite is dependent upon the parts that compose it; for instance, a mosaic is dependent upon the individual coloured pieces that make it up. Fourth, complexity would entail that God is not the first of all things, for these parts would precede God, even if just logically. 

While these reasons have for many been convincing, especially if one rejects nominalism, contemporary philosophers have had serious doubts about DDS. The reason given that simplicity comes with too high a metaphysical cost to justify its benefits. One of the alleged metaphysical costs is that it would make God to be identical to a property. And since a property is inert and impersonal, and God is active and personal, God cannot be identified with a property and thus cannot be simple. Moreover, if God is one property, we would not be able to distinguish between God’s properties. However, since we can, God cannot be just one property.

A key proponent of this criticism is Alvin Plantinga, who lays out these criticisms in his paper 'Does God Have a Nature' (Marquette University Press, 1980)’. Plantinga says,

[God] doesn’t merely have a nature or essence; he just is that nature, … [and] each of his properties is identical with each of his properties…so that God has but one property.” But this “seems flatly incompatible with the obvious fact that God has several properties; he has power and mercifulness, say, neither of which is identical with the other. (pp. 46–47).

He further says,

No property could have created the world; no property could be omniscient, or, indeed, know anything at all. If God is a property, then he isn’t a person but a mere abstract object; he has no knowledge, awareness, power, love or life. So taken, the simplicity doctrine seems an utter mistake. (47)

What could we say in response to Plantinga’s criticism? The most common response is that Plantinga has misunderstood the metaphysics of those who hold to DDS. James Dolezal and Lawrence Dewan argue that a property is something that inheres in something imperfectly. (God without Parts, Pickwick Publications, 2011) All creatures have limited power, knowledge, goodness, etc. and so inhere these things as properties. God, however, has perfect power, perfect knowledge, and perfect goodness. This means that God does not inhere these things as properties but is instead identical to them.

The crux of Dolezal and Dewan’s argument can be explained as follows. No creature can be said to be identical to the attributes of power, knowledge, and goodness, since if they were identical to these attributes, then they could not be said to have these attributes in a limited way, which all creatures do. To explain this, let us consider what it is to be human. A human is identical to the human nature; this means that while humans can be more fully or less fully human - they might lose a leg or something, it can never be said that a human is less human. A human is a human in so far is it has the essence of a human, and they possess this essence in so far as they exist as a human. No human could be less than a human; that would be absurd. So, when I have imperfect knowledge within me, it cannot be identical to me but must inhere inside of me as something conceptually separate. This, Dolezal and Lawrence, argue, is a property. God, however, is identical with all His attributes and holds them perfectly. God thus does not inhere his attributes as properties; rather, God is the perfection of the attributes that creatures inhere as properties. Dolezal thus concludes: ‘We attribute to God the perfections but not the inherence’.

The way that this addresses Plantinga’s concern is that it allows for us to say God is not a property. This means that God can only be allegorically ascribed properties. Francis Turretin sums up gist this argument well: 

Attributes are not ascribed to God properly as something superadded to his essence (something accidental to the subject), making it perfect and really distinct from himself; but improperly and transumptively inasmuch as they indicate perfections essential to the divine nature conceived by us as properties (IET. 3.5.2)

If God is not a property, then it does not follow that God is necessarily inert and impersonal by being identical to His attributes. 

However, while this solution has the advantage of showing the difference between man and God and shows that it is wrong to say DDS makes God a property, it yet leaves how God is to be personal as unexplained and mysterious, nor does it explain how God can be ascribed different attributes. Of course, this mysteriousness does not exclude the possibility that God is a person. Nevertheless, there is a further response that can be given that makes things more clear. 

On the classical theist understanding, God is said to be pure act. Katherine A. Rodgers, by appealing to David Hume, believes that  understanding God as pure act can elucidate DDS. (Perfect Being Theology, Edinburgh University Press, 2000, p. 30.) Hume argued that we do not perceive our own properties; rather, we only perceive our own acting and experiencing as a result of these properties. So, I do not experience myself as a subject with the property of rationality; I only experience myself as thinking. The same can be said with power. I do not experience the property of power, but only its exercise in things. In other words, we only ever experience ourselves as acting, our acts. This experience of acting can serve as an analogy to how God is pure act. Additionally, we can do things that have multiple aspects to them. For example, by the single act of knowing that Anselm existed in 1033, I know various pieces of information: what existence means, what 1033 means, etc. Similarly, in one act God can be said to know all things. 

And since most theists believe that thinking is the same as acting within God, in knowing all things God can be said to be doing all that He knows. Hence, God in a single act is knowing all He does and doing all He does. It is in this way in which we can call God to be powerful and knowledgable, although in an allegorical way to how we predicate these terms in man.

Understanding God as act also helps us grasp in some sense the way we can call God personal. Of course, since God is fundamentally different to us in many aspects, existing outside of time, being immutable, the way we call God a personal can only be an allegorical predication. Nevertheless, a vital aspect needed for a personal relationship is interaction. I cannot have a personal relationship with a rock since a rock cannot interact and respond to anything I say or do to it. If God was a mere abstract property, then the same could be said of God - it is difficult to see how God could be interacting and responding to the things I do. However, if God is pure act, then God can respond and interact with me; from His eternal standpoint He can be acting to effect a change at t2 in response to something I do at t1; God can be acting to respond to my prayer at 12noon yesterday, and thinking/doing of the response at 12noon today.