The Dilemma of Divine Simplicity and Divine Freedom

David BradshawDepartment of PhilosophyUniversity of Kentucky

Lexington, Kentucky 40506dbradsh@uky.edu

September 2003

Eastern Regional Meeting Society of Christian Philosophers

December 4-6, 2003 Asbury College

Wilmore, Kentucky

The doctrine of divine simplicity is one of the most

difficult, and, at the same time, one of the most deeply embedded

tenets of classical theism. Anyone familiar with the natural

theology of authors such as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas will

recognize at once how central it is to their thought. In recent

years considerable progress has been made in understanding the

doctrine and in clarifying the difficulties that it raises.

Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann have pointed out that the core

of the doctrine, at least as it is found in Aquinas, is the

conception of God as pure act. Given this conception there is

little difficulty in understanding how God, being simple, can

perform a variety of temporal actions and possess a variety of

properties. As they explain: "The atemporal pure actuality that

is God can have various manifestations and effects in time . . . .

Of course God's talking to Cain is not the same as God's talking

to Abraham, but that undoubted distinction does not compromise

God's absolute simplicity because those events are to be

understood as various temporal effects of the single eternal act

identical with God."1 A similar line of thought answers the

question of how a simple being can possess many distinct

properties. "What human beings call God's omnipotence or God's

omniscience is the single eternal action [of God] considered under

descriptions they find variously illuminating, or recognized by

them under different kinds of effects or manifestations of it.

[Designations of the divine attributes] . . . are all identical in2

reference but different in sense, referring in various ways to the

one actual entity which is God himself . . . "2 This means that

divine simplicity need not fall prey to the accusation sometimes

levelled against it, that it has the ridiculous implication that

the properties exemplified by God are identical tout court. As Stump

and Kretzmann lucidly observe, "'Perfect power is identical with

perfect knowledge' does not entail that power is identical with

knowledge any more than the fact that the summit of a mountain's

east slope is identical with the summit of its west slope entails

the identity of the slopes."3

Having dispelled these two prima facie difficulties, Stump

and Kretzmann turn to one they regard as much more serious. This

is the compatibility of divine simplicity with divine freedom. It

would appear that, if God is free to act otherwise than He does,

then identifying Him with His activity means that He has

contingent properties. Since He also has necessary properties,

there will thus be a distinction within the divine being. Stump

and Kretzmann attempt to resolve this difficulty by appealing to

the notion of conditional necessity. It is not necessary that God

will, say, to create or to talk to Abraham, but given that He does

so, the single eternal act that is God necessarily includes His

creating and His speaking to Abraham. As they put it, there is a

logical distinction between things that God necessarily wills (such

as His own goodness) and those that He contingently wills (such as

to create), but this does not require a metaphysical distinction

within the single divine act. Stump and Kretzmann offer here the 3

analogy of looking into a mirror. Assuming that the glance is

straight-on, one necessarily sees oneself but only contingently

sees, say, the chair in the background, since the background might

have been different. Yet the act of looking is a single act.4

Ingenious though it is, this solution fails to resolve the

difficulty. Stump and Kretzmann do not tell us precisely what

they mean by a "metaphysical" as opposed to a logical distinction.

Surely one plausible way of understanding the term is that two

things are metaphysically distinct if one could exist without the

other. (This would correspond to what the scholastics called a

“real distinction.”) On Stump and Kretzmann's account, God's act

of willing His own goodness could exist without His act of

creating, and similarly the two together could exist without His

act of speaking to Abraham. So it would seem that there are

metaphysical distinctions within the single divine act after all.

I take it that the analogy with looking into a mirror actually

supports this contention. The act of looking into a mirror

likewise includes elements that could exist separately; it is a

single act, but not on that account a simple one.

In reality Stump and Kretzmann’s conception of simplicity is

much less stringent than that of Aquinas himself, and it is only

this fact that enables them to mount their defense. The

difference emerges when they write:

When Thomas maintains that there is only necessity in

God, and that whatever is true of him is essentially 4

true of him, we take him to mean the following: Within

any initial state-set of possible worlds God’s nature

is fully and immutably determinate, and is so as a

consequence of the single, timeless act of will in

which God wills goodness (himself) and whatever else

(if anything) he wills for the sake of goodness in that

initial-state set.5

This is simply not Aquinas’s view. Aquinas nowhere relativizes

the determinate content of God’s nature to a subset of possible

worlds, and one suspects that he would have recoiled at the

thought of doing so. Several other authors, in replying to Stump

and Kretzmann, have made precisely this criticism or others

closely related to it.6

1. Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, "Absolute Simplicity," Faithand Philosophy 2 (1985), 353-82, at 356. 2. Ibid.3. Ibid., 357.4. Ibid., 371-73.55. Ibid., 369.

66. See William Hasker, “Simplicity and Freedom: A Response to Stump and Kretzmann,” Faith and Philosophy 3 (1986), 192-201; RobertBurns, “The Divine Simplicity in St. Thomas,” Religious Studies 25 (1989), 271-93, at 281 and 284; Katherin Rogers, "The TraditionalDoctrine of Divine Simplicity," Religious Studies 32 (1996), 165-86, at 179.

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Another problem facing the traditional doctrine has recently

been given prominence by Katherin Rogers. This is the problem

posed by human freedom. Suppose that John and Mary bring a child,

Jane, into the world. The single eternal divine act includes that

of knowing Jane and sustaining her in existence. Yet it is up to

John and Mary whether Jane exists. Thus the content of the divine

act would seem to be partially determined by John and Mary.7 Here

again we encounter a reason to distinguish between necessary and

contingent aspects of God. Indeed, not only is divine simplicity

at risk; so is divine aseity. Given the conjunction of

simplicity with human freedom, the free choices of human agents

turn out to be partly constitutive of God's being.

One possible reply is to abandon human freedom, or at least a

libertarian construal of it. Rogers takes this to be the solution

of Augustine and Aquinas. She does not endorse it, for abandoning

libertarian freedom seems a very high price to pay, especially

given the constraints imposed by the problem of evil. Her own

solution is to relativize human freedom to what she calls “the

human perspective.” She writes:

From the divine point of view there is only one possibleworld, the actual world. From the human perspective, assuming libertarian freedom, it is quite true to say, ‘I could have done otherwise’. But from God's perspective in eternity all choices are made. Using thepopular medieval analogy of the eternal God as the

7. See Rogers, "The Traditional Doctrine of Divine Simplicity," 180.

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centre point producing and equally present to all of thecircumference of a circle which represents the temporal world, we can say that there is only one possible ‘circle’ since it has ‘already’ been drawn . . . . It isonly the temporal and limited point of view which allowsdiscussion of other possible worlds. God inevitably does the best taking into account the free choices of His creatures, and He knows eternally exactly what He will do. That is, He knows eternally what world He willmake in response to free choices. But since a world notmade by God is not a possible world (in the tradition under consideration), from God's perspective, obviously the best perspective, there is only one possible world, and that is the actual world.8

It is not clear that this account does indeed save libertarian

freedom. From God's perspective, “obviously the best

perspective,” we cannot do otherwise than we do. From our

perspective we can do otherwise, but why should that matter?

Surely, in any case where God's belief differs from our own, His

is the true one. However, let us waive this objection. Supposing

that this account does preserve the libertarian freedom of

creatures, what becomes of divine simplicity and aseity? If God

“knows eternally what world He will make in response to free

choices,” and His activity is identical to His essence, clearly we

are still left with the conclusion that creatures partly determine

God’s being. Not only is this unacceptable in its own right, it

also violates the requirement that there be no distinction within

God between that which is necessary and that which is contingent.

8. Ibid., 185.7

Other attempts have been made to reconcile divine simplicity

with divine and human freedom. Rather than belabor the matter

further, here I will merely state my belief that such attempts

fail.9 In the remainder of this paper I will offer a different

way of approaching the issue—one that is equally (and in fact

more) traditional than that we have been discussing, and that

preserves everything worth preserving in the notion that God is

simple, but avoids even a prima facie conflict with either divine

or human freedom.

I begin with a quotation from St. Basil the Great. Basil is

responding to the views of Eunomius, an Arian of the late fourth

century. Eunomius had a simple argument for Arianism: the

essence of God is to be unbegotten (agennetos), so since the Son is

not unbegotten, He cannot be God. Basil’s Contra Eunomium defends

the orthodox position that the essence of God is beyond human

knowledge. In the following passage, from Basil's Epistle 234, we

find Eunomius (or perhaps an imaginary objector arguing on his

behalf) attempting to buttress his case by appealing to divine

simplicity.

We say that we know the greatness of God, His power, Hiswisdom, His goodness, His providence over us, and the

99. For further discussion see Chapter 9 of the forthcoming work from which the present essay is largely drawn, Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom (Cambridge University Press).

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justness of His judgment, but not His very essence (ousia) . . . . He [Eunomius] says that God is simple, and whatever attribute of Him you have reckoned as knowable is of His essence. The absurdities involved inthis sophism are innumerable. When all these high attributes have been enumerated, are they all names of His essence? Is there the same mutual force (isodunamei allēlois) in His awfulness and loving-kindness, His justiceand creative power, His providence and foreknowledge, His bestowal of rewards and punishments? . . . . The operations (energeiai) are various, and the essence simple, but we say that we know our God from His operations, but do not undertake to approach near to Hisessence. His operations come down to us, but His essence remains beyond our reach.10

It is striking how far Basil seems to be from the Thomistic

position. Aquinas holds that to speak of God's power, wisdom, and

goodness is to refer in different ways to the single act that is

God, that is, the divine essence itself. Basil distinguishes

sharply between these attributes—or, to use his own term,

operations (energeiai)—which “come down to us,” and the essence,

which “remains beyond our reach.” He locates simplicity at the

level of the essence while allowing multiplicity among the

operations.

Could the difference be merely verbal? One possible

reconciliation would be to take the divine operations as solely

God's effects in the created order. Perhaps I was too hasty in 10. Basil, Epistle 234. Tanslation slightly modified from Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983), Second Series, vol. 8, 274. For the Greek see the Loeb edition of Basil's letters.

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identifying them with God's power, wisdom, and goodness; perhaps

they are rather the effects from which we infer God's power, wisdom,

and goodness. We would then be free to identify the latter, in

Thomistic fashion, with the divine essence. Granted, the whole

drift of the passage is to insist on a distinction between such

attributes and the essence itself. But perhaps Basil, if pressed,

would allow that the distinction is merely quoad nos. In this way

Basil might be reconciled with Aquinas. Precisely such an

interpretation has been offered by Thomistically-inclined

historians.11

I believe that it is untenable. What makes it untenable is

the role the divine operations play in Basil's Trinitarian

theology. Basil and the other Cappadocian Fathers, St. Gregory of

Nyssa and St. Gregory Nazianzen, argue repeatedly and at length

that it is only the unity of operations among the three persons of

the Trinity that licenses us in inferring that the Three are one

God. By “unity of operations” they have in mind more than the

cooperation of separate agents in a joint enterprise, like that of

carpenter and plumber in building a house. In such a case one can

distinguish the separate parts or stages of the activity performed

by each agent. In the case of the Trinity no such distinction can

11. For example, Jean-Philippe Houdret, "Palamas et les Cappadociens," Istina 19 (1974), 260-71. It is likely that Aquinas himself would have interpreted Basil in this way. See his discussion of the teaching of St. John of Damascus that theos is the name of an operation, where it becomes clear that he regards operatio as equivalent to effectus (S.T. I, Q. 13, art. 8).

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be made. As Gregory of Nyssa puts it, “the action of each

concerning anything is not separate and peculiar, but whatever

comes to pass, in reference either to the acts of His providence

for us, or to the government and constitution of the universe,

comes to pass by the action of the Three, yet what comes to pass

is not three things.”12 For example, Scripture speaks of life as a

gift, sometimes of the Father, sometimes of the Son, sometimes of

the Holy Spirit; yet clearly we are not given three lives. Other

examples include the acts of creation, judgment, providential

oversight, salvation, and blessing with the gifts of the Spirit.13

At this point the argument can proceed in either of two ways.

The weaker form argues (as does Basil in Epistle 234) that, given

the unknowability of the divine essence, all knowledge of God must

arise from His operations. Since there is no way of identifying

divinity other than by recognizing its characteristic energeiai, and

since the Son and Holy Spirit share a common energeia with the

Father, it follows that they also share a common divinity. The

stronger form also begins from the unknowability of the divine

essence, but adopts the more radical stance that not only can the

essence not be known directly, it cannot even be named. Names

12. Gregory of Nyssa, "On Not Three Gods," NPNF Second Series, vol.5, 334.13. Gregory, "On Not Three Gods," passim. A more detailed Scriptural exegesis in support of these claims can be found in theletters of St. Athanasius to Serapion defending the divinity of the Holy Spirit, translated as The Letters of St. Athanasius Concerning the Holy Spirit, tr. C.R.B. Shapland (London: Epworth Press, 1951).

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such as ‘God’ refer rather to one of the operations, such as that

of providential oversight.14 As Gregory of Nyssa writes: “we

suppose that Godhead, or theotēs, is so called from thea, or

beholding, and that He who is our theatēs or beholder, by customary

use and by the instruction of the Scriptures, is called theos, or

God.”15 Since theotēs is the name of an operation, the fact that

the Son and Holy Spirit share the operation of the Father

establishes even more readily than in the weaker form of the

argument that they share with Him a common Godhead.

Let us, for our present purposes, concede these arguments.

What would become of them if the energeiai were merely effects from

which we infer the divine attributes? First, the claim that all

reference to God is in fact reference to one of the energeiai would

be bizarre. Surely the Cappadocians cannot believe that the terms

theotēs and theos name a kind of effect. More fundamentally, if all

that the claim of a common energeia amounts to is the claim of

common effects, nothing would rule out the possibility that the

Father acts in all things through the Son and the Spirit, who yet

were created by Him and remain subordinate to Him in essence. At

the time the Cappadocians were writing, theologies of this sort

had been proposed by Origen, Eusebius, and Eunomius, among

others.16 This was precisely the sort of option that they were

trying to rule out. We would have to suppose that they were 1414. The derivation of theos from divine activity was a commonplace among the Greeks; cf. Plato, Cratylus 397c-d.

15. Gregory, “On Not Three Gods,” 334.12

remarkably inept, and that the entire eastern patristic tradition,

which took their Trinitarian writings as authoritative, somehow

failed to notice their error.

Fortunately, a little attention to the history and

associations of the terms involved points to a better

interpretation. Consider the “theory of two acts” of Plotinus.

Plotinus holds that for every substance (ousia) there is an

internal act (energeia tēs ousias, literally “activity of the

substance”) and an external act (energeia ek tēs ousias, literally

“activity out from the substance”). Roughly speaking, the

internal act corresponds to the form, whereas the external act is

the causal manifestation of the substance outward into the world.

Plotinus developed this theory on the basis of various

Aristotelian antecedents that need not concern us here.17 His

favorite examples are substances such as fire, snow, and perfume.

Each has an attribute (heat, cold, and scent, respectively) that

in one respect is constitutive of its being, and in another is

what it gives forth into the world. The theory is not limited,

however, to substances such as these that seem intuitively to be

self-diffusive. Another example mentioned by Plotinus is drugs.

Drugs are not self-diffusive like fire or snow; their effects do

not resemble them in a non-trivial way. Yet they do “act on

something else in a way corresponding to their own nature,” and

thereby illustrate the general rule that all things “impart

16. See J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 128-32, 225-26, 249.

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themselves to others as far as they can.”18 What Plotinus calls

the external act is this self-imparting, the replication of the

thing's nature or internal structure through its causal activity.

I do not mention Plotinus in order to claim that he directly

influenced the Cappadocians.19 I mention him rather as

illustrative of the close connection between ousia and energeia. In

the Greek of late antiquity, every ousia may be assumed to have an

energeia—that which it characteristically does, by which it gives

itself forth into the world, and by which it can be, if not fully

known, at least named and recognized.20 Another author who

illustrates this connection (one who undoubtedly did influence the

Cappadocians!) is St. Paul. St. Paul describes himself as

“striving according to his [Christ's] working, which worketh in me

mightily”—agōnizomenos kata tēn energeian autou tēn energoumenēn en emoi en

dunamei (Col. 1:29). What precisely is the energeia of Christ that

is at work in St. Paul? Is it simply the effects of Christ's

action? Or is it rather the living presence of Christ, Christ

himself as he has made himself known to Paul through all the toil

17. See A.C. Lloyd, "Plotinus on the Genesis of Thought and Existence," Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 5 (1987), 155-86. I devote a chapter to the theory of two acts in Aristotle East and West.18. See Enneads V.4.1.

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and struggle of the apostle's long career? The answer is surely

the latter; as Paul elsewhere proclaims, “I am crucified with

Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me”

(Gal. 2:20). Yet Paul is clearly not claiming to partake of the

essence of Christ. The energeia at work in him manifests the ousia,

draws Paul toward it, makes it present, indeed, is its presence—but

all this is possible only because the ousia and energeia remain

distinct. “His energeiai come down to us, but his ousia remains

beyond our reach.”21

Returning now to Basil's Epistle 234, we can begin to

understand how all the various divine energeiai—God’s power, wisdom,

goodness, providence, foreknowledge, creative act, and judgement,

as well as others that Basil does not mention—can be really

distinct, both among themselves and in relation to the divine

essence, without violating divine simplicity. The relationship of

the ousia to the energeiai is not that of two distinct parts or

countable entities. Nor is it that of matter to form, nor of any

other kind of potency to its act—for both ousia and energeiai are

fully actual. It is rather that of a source to its manifestation.

This means that God is simple, but not in a way that can be

described through a string of identities. His simplicity is not

that of a point existing in splendid self-identity, but more like

that of the sun, a roaring furnace that gives of itself naturally,

continually, and without diminution.

Much later, in the fourteenth century, a Byzantine theologian

named St. Gregory Palamas would hearken back to the thought of the15

Cappadocians. So far as I know he is the first writer to take the

question of divine simplicity in relation to the distinction of

ousia and energeiai beyond where the Cappadocians had left it. A

glance at him will further amplify the point I have been making.

According to Palamas, “it is not acting and energy (to energein kai hē

energeia) but being acted upon and passivity which constitute 19. It is true, however, that all three of the Cappadocians read at least parts of the Enneads (crucial selections from which were readily available in The Preparation of the Gospel by Eusebius). See John Rist, "Basil's 'Neoplatonism': Its Background and Nature" inBasil of Caesarea: Christian, Humanist, Ascetic, ed. Paul J. Fedwick (Toronto:Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1981), 137-220.20. Besides Plotinus, another author who may helpfully be consulted on this score is Galen. Galen distinguishes two senses of the word energeia. One he defines as "active motion," kinēsis drastikē, where the force of drastikē is to limit the term to cases where the motion arises from within the thing itself. The other is "a motion in accordance with nature," kata phusin tina kinēsin. In both senses energeia is opposed to a corresponding sense of pathos: the first to pathos as a change passively undergone, the second to pathos as a motion contrary to nature. Galen gives examples of each of the resulting four possibilities. The regular pulsation of the heart is an energeia in both senses, for it both originates in the heart and is in accordance with nature. A palpitation of the heart is an energeia in the first sense (for it originates in the heart) but a pathos in the second (for it is contrary to nature). The movement of the legs in walking is a pathos in the first sense (for it does not originate in the legs) but an energeiain the second (for it is in accordance with nature). Finally, affections of the soul such as anger and fear are pathē in both senses, for they come upon the ruling part of the soul from without (i.e., the spirited part) and are contrary to nature. SeeGalen, De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, ed. and tr. Phillip De Lacy (Berlin: Akademie, 1978-1984), vol. 2, 362. Although Galen is more precise than most writers, his two definitions well

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composition. But God acts without being acted upon and without

undergoing change. Therefore, he will not be composite on account

of the energy."22 The reason being acted upon is indicative of

composition is that when something acquires a new quality by being

acted upon the quality comes "from outside," as it were, and is

therefore a new element in relation to the previous being.23 God,

of course, is free of such passivity. It is important to note

that nothing in this argument prevents God from manifesting

Himself spontaneously and of His own initiative through a new

energeia.

Let us return now to the question of divine freedom. As we

saw in discussing Aquinas, what is needed is a framework that

allows God's creative activity (as well as more particular acts,

such as that of speaking to Abraham) to be contingent, while

allowing other divine attributes--the divine wisdom, power, and

goodness, for example--to be necessary. That is precisely what

illustrate the close connection between a thing's energeia and its substance. For further discussion see Michel R. Barnes, "The Background and Use of Eunomius' Causal Language" in Arianism after Arius: Essays on the Development of the Fourth-Century Trinitarian Conflicts, ed. Michel R. Barnes and Daniel H. Williams (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993), 217-36.21. For other Biblical references to the divine energeia, see II Macc. 3:29, III Macc. 4:21, 5:12, 5:28, Wisdom 7:26, Eph. 1:19, 3:7, 4:16, Phil. 3:21, and Col. 2:12; also occurrences of the verb energein, of which I Cor. 12:6, 11, Phil. 2:13, and I Thess. 2:13 are the most relevant. For the divine energeia in the Church Fathers before St. Basil, see G.L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London: S.P.C.K., 1964), 70-71; Barnes, "The Background and Useof Eunomius' Causal Language.”

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the Cappadocians’ view provides. Basil makes it clear that not

all the divine energeiai are on the same metaphysical footing. Some

are fully coeternal with God, such as the divine wisdom, power,

and goodness; some have a beginning, such as God's creative and

sustaining activities and His distribution of the gifts of the

Spirit; some have no beginning but will have an end, such as

God's providential foresight, which is necessary only under the

current temporal dispensation.24 Those of the latter two types are

the products of free choice; indeed, Basil says explicitly that

God is free not to create.25 This in no way conflicts with the

model of divine simplicity sketched above. It remains the case

that all the divine energeiai are expressions of the divine nature

and related to it as manifestations to source, even though some

could have been different in some respects, or even could not have

been at all.

The other problem we noted in Aquinas was that of human

freedom. Consider again the case of John and Mary. On the model

proposed here, by having a child they do indeed influence God's

creative and sustaining energeiai, but their doing so does not in

any way touch the divine essence. It is much like the way the

light of the sun is affected when one holds up a piece of colored

22. Gregory Palamas, The One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, ed. and tr. Robert Sinkewicz (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1988), 251.23. See Gregory Palamas, Dialogue between an Orthodox and a Barlaamite, tr.Rein Ferwerda (Binghamton, NY: Global Publications/CEMERS, 1999),89-90.

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glass and causes it to cast a colored shadow. One does not

thereby affect the sun; one merely causes it to manifest itself

in a different way, by inserting something new within the scope of

its manifestation. Creatures with libertarian freedom present

something “new” to God, something that He does not causally

determine. By doing so they condition the way in which He

manifests Himself. Yet this leaves the divine essence unchanged.

In closing, I note that in some ways the Greek understanding

of divine simplicity and that of Aquinas are not too far apart.

We saw that Aquinas thinks of God as a single eternal act. There

is something right about this—something that the Greek Fathers

endorse when they insist that the divine operations are God. The

trouble is that, due to the poverty of his vocabulary—the lack of

a distinction corresponding to that between ousia and energeia—

Aquinas is unable to state the identity of God with His action in

a way that would prevent the divine essence from encompassing

24. See Basil, On the Holy Spirit VIII.21 (goodness "concurrent" withthe divine essence), XVI.37 (gifts of the Spirit), XIX.49(creation); Hexaemeron I (God began to create in time). Cf.Gregory Palamas, One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, 199-201; Triads, tr.Nicholas Gendle (New York: Paulist Press, 1983), 94, 96.25. "Among those who have imagined that the world co-existed withGod from all eternity, many have denied that it was created byGod, but say that it exists spontaneously, as the shadow of thispower. God, they say, is the cause of it, but an involuntarycause, as the body is the cause of the shadow and the flame is thecause of the brightness. It is to correct this error that theprophet states with so much precision, 'In the beginning Godcreated.'" Hexaemeron I (NPNF Second Series, vol. 8, 56).

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contingent states of affairs. That is why, at least on the

present issue, it is necessary to go back beyond him to an earlier

and more flexible tradition.

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