TRINITY DOCTRINE, PLAIN AND SIMPLE
THOMAS H. MCCALL
I. INTRODUCTION
“Most Christians have not even heard of the doctrine of divine simplicity,” observes one recent theological textbook.1 The authors of this textbook go on to assert that the doctrine of divine simplicity “has been the biggest reason why the Trinity has been presented as an impenetrable mystery of faith . . . and why most Christians finally tend toward a unipersonal view of God — typically associated with the Father.”2 They are convinced that the doctrine of divine simplicity does not cohere well with the doctrine of the Trinity; indeed it has “no real biblical basis and has in fact worked to defeat the resources of a full-fledged trinitarianism.”3 My guess is that these theologians are correct in their assessment of the current state of affairs; from my own experience, among many evangelical Protestant Christians at least, there indeed is widespread ignorance. I also think that they speak for many contemporary theologians who have encountered the doctrine and have given it some thought — surely many theologians take it to be obvious that the doctrine of divine simplicity is not consistent with the doctrine of the Trinity. The alternatives seem both obvious and stark: either the doctrine of simplicity or the doctrine of the Trinity. The right choice also seems plainly obvious to most contemporary Christians: go with the doctrine of the Trinity. Christians are supposed to be trinitarians, right? So if the doctrine of divine simplicity clashes with the doctrine of the Trinity, then so much the worse for simplicity doctrine. What is there even to talk about?
But it wasn’t always so. The doctrine of divine simplicity — in some version or other — has been a staple ingredient of Christian theology for centuries. At its most basic the denial that God is made up of parts or pieces, it runs from patristic theology (both Greek and Latin) through medieval scholasticism right into the early modern era. Along with the doctrine of the Trinity, it is inscribed in various creeds and confessions (Protestant as well as Roman Catholic). For centuries, Christians have held firmly to belief in both the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of divine simplicity, and they have done so in the face of challenges (challenges to both doctrines and their fittingness for one another). Across the broad Christian tradition, it seems as if the doctrine of simplicity is just there, and many times it is used as support for the doctrine of the Trinity. Today, however, there is widespread rejection of the doctrine of divine simplicity — and much of this rejection is based on the assumption that Trinity and simplicity are incompatible.
Before proceeding let me confess that as a Christian, I am committed to the doctrine of the Trinity. So if there is genuine conflict between this doctrine and the doctrine of simplicity, then I’ll gladly be a trinitarian. But is there such conflict? Are the two doctrines really incompatible? Here I should make another confession: I find implausible the notion that virtually the entire church was so wrong — and, if the critics are right, so obviously wrong, and so obviously and devastatingly wrong — about something so central. At any rate, I think this question deserves sustained and rigorous analysis.
I cannot provide all that needed analysis here, but I hope we can make some headway. So this is what I will try to do: I will offer a piece of “retrieval theology.”4 First, I will look at some important patristic and medieval efforts to hold the doctrines together (and to do so in the face of important challenges), and I will relate this work to some important contemporary challenges to the doctrine of divine simplicity (hereafter: DDS). Second, I will use this historical background as I seek to press these insights into constructive service; here I will develop several accounts of the doctrine of simplicity and relate them to the desiderata of Trinitarian theology. While I readily admit that what I am doing here is more tentative and exploratory than final or definitive, I think we can make some genuine progress. I will show that there is more than one version of the DDS in the tradition,5 and I will argue that there are at least two versions of the doctrine that are consistent with the doctrine of the Trinity.
II. YESTERDAY AND TODAY: SOME THEOLOGICAL BACKGROUND
A. YESTERDAY: TRINITY AND SIMPLICITY IN THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION
Richard A. Muller states that “from the time of the fathers onward, divine simplicity was understood as a support of the doctrine of the Trinity.”6 The theology of Gregory of Nyssa serves as a case in point.7 Gregory clearly affirms the doctrine (at least some version of it). When speaking of the divine nature, he insists that it does not “possess the good by acquisition, or participate only in the goodness of some good which lies above it: in its own essence it is good . . . it is simple [ἁπλή] and uniform [μονοειδήϛ].”8 For “where a compound is assumed, there the dissolution of that compound must be admitted.”9 God just is “all his attributes always,” and “we must remember that God is not a compound; whatever he is is the whole of him.”10 God is “by nature simple, uncompounded, and indivisible.”11
More specifically, Gregory denies that there are any distinctions in the divine nature “that would divide that divine and transcendent nature within itself by any degrees of intensity or remission, so as to be altered from itself by being more or less. Because we firmly believe that it is simple [ἁπλή] and uniform [μονοειδήϛ] . . . we see in it no complicity or composition of dissimilars.”12 While it may not seem to us as though “the Good” is the same as “the Wise,” “the Mighty,” or “the Righteous,” yet in God “the thing to which all the attributes point is one; and, when you speak of God, you signify the same whom you understood by the other attributes.”13
Gregory is deeply convinced of the truth of the doctrine, and he employs it polemically against the theology of the “Eunomians” (or “Neo-Arians”).14 Eunomius of Cyzicus (along with Aetius and others) argued that the Son is “like [the Father] according to will, different according to ousia.”15 The Eunomians were convinced that names reveal the essence of things; thus, on Michael E. Butler’s terse summary, “agennetos = God, gennetos = Son.”16 Because names reveal the divine essence, God can be known exhaustively.17 Ingenerateness is thus the basic and exhaustive definition of God; because “agennetos exhaustively defines the essence of God,” the “divine essence is absolutely simple and beyond all comparison or analogy.”18 The Son, therefore, is heteroousios rather than homoousios (or even homoios). As Hanson concludes, “in short, for Eunomius generatedness and ousia are inseparable, because the Son is generated his ousia cannot but be different to the Father.”19 All this entails, of course, that the Son is radically and ontologically subordinate to the Father, with the Holy Spirit subordinate to both Father and Son. As Lewis Ayres puts it, “the Son has a clearly subordinate status; Eunomius assumes that ingenerate defines God in a unique way: God’s unity and simplicity imply that ingenerate is the only characteristic of God.”20
Note that the Eunomians wield the DDS against the pro-Nicenes. They are certain that the divine nature is simple, and because it is simple it admits of no distinctions. Obviously, then, there is no room whatsoever for (what the tradition comes to refer to as) personal distinctions. God — the high God, that is, the proto-Father — is alone supreme and sovereign, and the divine essence just is his ingenerateness. By any reckoning, the Son is generated, so it is abundantly clear that the Son does not share the utterly simple divine essence. As Gregory rehearses the view, Eunomius holds that “they say that God is declared to be without generation, that the Godhead is by nature simple, and that which is simple admits of no composition. If, then, God who is declared to be without generation is by his nature without composition, his title of ungenerate must belong to his very nature, and that nature is identical with ungeneracy.”21
So Eunomius (and the “Neo-Arians”) hold that the Son and Spirit are hierarchically ranked, with the Father “on top” as supreme over all while the Son is under him and the Holy Spirit beneath both Father and Son. Thus the divine persons differ from one another “in magnitude and in subordination of their dignities;” they also possess natures that are “foreign and unfamiliar to each other.”22 All this is supported by appeal to the DDS. At the risk of oversimplification, for our purposes his argument may be summarized as follows:
(1) If the DDS is true, then there can be no distinction between ingenerate and generate in the divine nature;23
(2) the DDS is true;
(3) therefore, there can be no distinction between ingenerate and generate in the divine nature.
For Eunomius, the conclusion follows directly and is incontrovertible. If we accept the DDS, then the Son and Spirit must be alien to the divine nature of the Father — they are heteroousios rather than homoousios. And since the truth of the DDS is obvious, the debate is over and Eunomius can claim swift and easy victory.
Or can he? It might seem that the obvious thing to do here would be to reject the DDS; indeed, it might seem that denial of (2) is the only way forward for the pro-Nicene. But this is not what Gregory does. He does not reject (2). Instead, he rejects (1); here he draws an important distinction between the divine nature (which is simple) and the divine persons who subsist in that nature. As he puts it, “things that are identical on the score of being [οὐσίας] will not all agree equally in definition on the score of personality [ὑποστάσεων].”24 He continues to hold to the DDS, but he denies that it erases all distinctions. The genuine personal distinctions are not distinctions of nature. This means that if we interpret Gregory as positing a generic divine essence (as in this context his example of Peter, James, and John might suggest),25 then we should think of the divine nature as something like the full set of properties that are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for inclusion in the kind-essence divinity.26 The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all share this essence; they all have it in its entirety. In fact, given the DDS, it couldn’t be otherwise, for if the Son (or Spirit) has the divine essence, he couldn’t fail to have all divine attributes.
On the other hand, if we take Gregory as a kind of trope theorist (as overall seems more likely as an interpretation of Gregory),27 then the divine nature is a concrete particular. In this case, the divine persons all repeat it — they all share the numerically identical divine nature three times over. As distinct persons, of course, they repeat it in ways that are appropriate to their personal distinctions; thus they differ in the mode or manner in which each person possesses the divine nature. Either way, Gregory retains the DDS. But either way, his version of the DDS differs significantly from Eunomius’s take on the doctrine. For taken either way, Gregory’s view needs a genuine distinction between person and nature.
Gregory does not rest content with a rejection of Eunomius’s argument. Instead, he launches a counterattack that also appeals to the DDS. Again risking oversimplification, the relevant elements of his argument may be summarized as:
(4) If the DDS is true, then there can be no gradations of divinity or divisions within the divine nature;
(5) the DDS is true;
(6) therefore, there can be no gradations of divinity or divisions within the divine nature.
Given the DDS, Gregory sees trouble for the Eunomians. As he puts it, “it will be clear, upon the very slightest reflection, that this view of the supreme being as simple, however finely they may talk of it, is quite inconsistent with the system they have elaborated.”28 For “simplicity in the case of the Holy Trinity admits of no degrees.”29 He explains further:
Nothing which possesses wisdom or power or any other good, not as an external gift, but rooted in its nature, can suffer diminution in it; so that if any one says that he detects Beings greater and smaller in the divine nature, he is unconsciously establishing a composite and heterogeneous deity, and thinking of the subject as one thing, and the quality . . . as another.30
He continues by saying that “if he [i.e., Eunomius] truly conceived of the essence as ‘simple and altogether one,’ being good in virtue of what it is and not coming to be so by acquisition, he would not have considered greater and lesser in connection with it.”31 Given the DDS, there can be no gradations of divinity. If some person is divine, then that person is fully and completely divine. Given the DDS, being “kinda divine” or “divineish” or of a lesser divinity is not even a possibility.
Gregory presses this objection in defense of his Christology.32 Where Eunomius insists that the Son has inferior qualities and thus deserves less honor, Gregory argues that the DDS makes this impossible. For given the DDS, there “is no greater and smaller in power, or glory, or wisdom, or love, or of any other imaginable good whatever, but the good which the Son has is the Father’s also.”33 The Son, if divine, cannot be a created being who is inferior to the Father in power and knowledge. The suggestion that the Father has a higher-quality divinity is unthinkable; “for that which is simple in nature is not parted asunder into contradictory attributes.”34 If the Son is “divine,” then the Son has the entire set of divine attributes, and he has these attributes maximally.
Gregory argues similarly with respect to the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Again, he denies that there are any distinctions in the divine nature “that would divide that divine and transcendent nature within itself by any degrees of intensity and remission, so as to be altered from itself by being more or less. Because we firmly believe that it is simple, uniform, incomposite, because we see in it no complicity or composition of dissimilars . . . we accept by the implication of that very name the perfection in it of every conceivable thing that befits the deity.”35 As divine, the Holy Spirit must be as fully and completely divine as the Father and Son; “simple in every respect equally,” there can be no “diminution or essential variation” in the divine nature.36 Given the DDS, it isn’t so much as possible that the Spirit has an inferior level of divinity. Thus “you will find no falling off whatever in dignity, or glory, or omnipotence, such as to constitute him capable of increase by addition, or of diminution by subtraction.” For “being wholly and entirely perfect” — as perfect as the Father and Son in virtue of sharing the same nature — “he admits diminution in nothing.”37
We can summarize Gregory’s DDS as follows: it is the absence of any properties that could threaten contradiction or dissolution within the divine essence. It is the “absence of contradiction;” it is the “indivisibility of God.”38 As Krivocheine says, on Gregory’s DDS the divine nature is not subject to “internal contradictions;” the divine nature has “no parts, consequently [is not] dissoluable or decomposable.”39 Following the masterful work of Andrew Radde-Gallwitz, we can say that for Gregory, “we are far from holding that divine simplicity entails that God only has a single property or that God has no properties — so far in fact that, in his hands, the doctrine of simplicity actually comes to entail that God has multiple properties.”40 How, we might wonder, is this still a doctrine of simplicity? Radde-Gallwitz continues to explain that
because it is the perfect virtues that are reciprocally entailing. And being a perfect virtue is just being a virtue without any admixture of that virtue’s opposite. And this way of being unmixed, in turn, is one of Gregory’s fundamental ways of describing the state of being simple. So, if God is good and God is simple, then God’s goodness is unmixed with its opposite — and, consequently, God is also powerful, just, wise, and so forth.41
So Gregory endorses the DDS, but he does not think that this rules out all distinctions. To the contrary, as Krivocheine puts it, for Gregory it is “impossible to speak about the simplicity of the divine nature without referring it to the distinctions which are discernible in God.”42 The Holy Trinity is “consummately perfect and incomprehensibly excellent, yet as containing clear distinctions within itself which reside in the peculiarities of each of the persons [and] differentiated by the unique character of each person.”43 For “when we confess three persons [τρεῖς ὑποστάσεις] we say that there is one goodness [μίαν ἀγαθότητα], and one power [μίαν δύναμιν], and one Godhead [μίαν θεότητα].”44 The divine nature does not admit of the kinds of distinctions that would divide the persons or that would admit of greater or lesser degrees. To put it crudely, whatever is properly predicated of the divine nature is a sort of unbreakable package. To put it slightly less crudely, the divine attributes are mutually and necessarily coextensive. Are there distinct properties within the divine essence according to Gregory’s doctrine? Yes, indeed. Are there “parts” within God? Not at all. While there are genuine distinctions between the divine persons and between the divine essence and the divine persons, such distinctions do not threaten the DDS (on Gregory’s version of the doctrine).45 Nor do they threaten the doctrine of the Trinity — to the contrary, Gregory wields this DDS in support of pro-Nicene trinitarianism.
With this summary in view, we can briefly recapitulate Gregory’s argument. As he sees things, it isn’t Gregory’s view that violates the DDS; it turns out that it is Eunomius’s doctrine that does so. For given the DDS, it is unthinkable that the divinity of the Son could be inferior to that of the Father. It simply is not possible for there to be gradations of divinity within the life of the one God. Against Eunomius, Gregory is arguing that his position is inherently unstable: he cannot have a Son who is of a lesser divinity and still be a monotheist. The only options are, on the one hand, a doctrine according to which monotheism is secure but the Son is not divine, or, on the other hand, the polytheism that is entailed by the Eunomian doctrine that there are three divine persons who do not share a common divinity.
So for Gregory (as opposed to the Eunomians), the Father does not have A+ divinity, while the Son has A divinity and the Spirit is relegated to A- divinity. There is only one divinity (on pain of polytheism), and either you have it or you don’t. If we read Gregory as positing a generic or abstractist account, then this set of mutually entailing divine properties is possessed by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The divine nature is thus an “absolutely indivisible unity, not capable of increase by addition or of diminution by subtraction.”46 Each of the persons is divine — fully divine. If we interpret Gregory as holding to a concretist account, then the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all share the numerically identical trope of divinity. Again, all are divine — fully divine. Given commitment to monotheism and the DDS along with the biblical witness to the distinction and divinity of the persons, it couldn’t be otherwise.
Other examples from the tradition can readily be adduced, and in this tradition we can see both varying versions of the DDS and different uses of the doctrine. , for example, devotes considerable and sustained attention to the question “Whether the Trinity Can Exist Together with the Highest Simplicity?”47 But for our scholastic representative let us turn our attention to the lesser-known account of John Duns Scotus (with a brief look at the more familiar DDS of Thomas Aquinas as background). Famously, Thomas Aquinas (and others) issues a series of denials on account of the DDS: God is not composed of extended parts (God does not have a body), God is not composed of substantial form and form-receiving matter, God is not composed of act and potency, God is not composed of essence and existence, God is not composed of subject and accidents, God is not composed of God-plus-anything-else.48 God is not, then, made up of parts or pieces more fundamental than God; indeed, God is not made up of parts or pieces at all. Other than the real distinctions that are the real relations internal to God’s nature, there are no real distinctions. On the contrary, the only distinctions that we can posit are those that we must admit are merely provisional and from our side.
Scotus, however, takes a decidedly different view. He sees conceptual space between “real distinctions” (between independent things) and merely conceptual distinctions; here he locates his controversial “formal distinction.” The formal distinction falls short of a real distinction; a formal distinction is not a distinction between different things of the same essence or different things of different essences, nor is it a distinction between separable parts of the same thing. But neither is it a merely conceptual distinction; it isn’t something invented by us for our convenience or ease of reference. Instead, the formal distinction is “such that exists between two (or more) formal aspects of the essence of a thing.”49 For Scotus, two entities are formally distinct if the distinction is genuine (that is, it is within the thing itself and not merely rational or mental) but not between two different essences or between separable parts or pieces of the same thing. In other words, two entities are formally distinct if (and only if) they are both really identical and genuinely distinct on account of the distinction within itself.
The key here, once again, is inseparability; separation is logically impossible, it is not even logically possible for the entities in question to be separated and still to exist. So two entities can be formally distinct — that is, genuinely distinct but not really distinct (in the technical sense of “real” in play here) — if they are both really inseparable and genuinely distinct on account of distinctions found in themselves.50 Scotus employs the formal distinction in several ways: the divine attributes are formally distinct from one another, the divine attributes are formally distinct from the divine essence, and the divine persons are formally — though not “absolutely” — distinct from the divine essence.51 When it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity, while Scotus will also employ the more traditional language of real distinctions between the divine persons, he holds that the divine persons are “fully real, subsistent entities” who are, in the words of Richard Cross, “necessarily interdependent.”52 Thus the persons are genuinely distinct, and modalism is avoided. But the divine persons are also really — even logically — inseparable, thus polytheism is avoided as well.
To this point we have seen how the DDS relates to the doctrine of the Trinity in two representatives of the Christian tradition. For all their differences — one is, after all, a Greek patristic theologian while the other is the quintessential Latin scholastic — they believe that God is both simple and triune. Moreover, they are convinced that the DDS not only coheres well with the doctrine of the Trinity but indeed provides support to it. But is there promise here? Or is this all nothing more than a big distraction? Are there resources here for a way forward today? Or are these alternatives dead-ends too? To consider such questions, we need to make sure that we are understanding the contemporary worries and criticisms.
B. TODAY: CHALLENGES TO THE DOCTRINE OF DIVINE SIMPLICITY
We can safely say that the venerable doctrine of divine simplicity is somewhat less than wildly popular in contemporary theology. It is confronted with questions and objections from several angles. To mention a few of the most common and most pressing, Alvin Plantinga famously has argued that Aquinas’s doctrine faces both a “substantial” objection and a “monumental” objection. The substantial objection is this: “if God is identical with each of his properties, then 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.”53 The monumental objection is this: “if God is identical with each of his properties, then, since each of his properties is a property, he is a property . . . but 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 at all but a mere abstract object.”54 Ryan T. Mullins adds an extremely important charge (among others); he alleges that the doctrine of simplicity entails the loss of divine freedom and thus modal collapse. To get the basic idea, his argument may be summarized as:
(7) If the DDS is true, then God cannot be free (in any meaningful or theologically robust sense of freedom);
(8) God is free;
(9) Therefore, the DDS is not true.55
Because we are most directly interested in the doctrine of the Trinity, I won’t have much to say about these criticisms. I think that some of them are based on misunderstandings of the traditional doctrine,56 some of them do not take sufficient notice of variety within the traditional affirmations (and may be fatal to some versions of the doctrine but not to others), and others can be met head-on.57 The criticisms deserve serious and sustained engagement, and surely further work remains. Such work would take us too far afield. For present purposes, however, the most important criticism is this: the charge that the doctrine of the Trinity is logically inconsistent with the doctrine of divine simplicity.
III. TODAY AND TOMORROW: ON BEHALF OF SIMPLE TRINITARIANISM
So how are we to think about these issues? Are the critics right that the doctrine of the Trinity is simply inconsistent with the DDS? Or is the venerable doctrine defensible and believable for trinitarian Christians?
A. SIMPLICITY NOT SO SIMPLE: INITIAL STEPS TOWARD CLARITY
Throughout I’ve been referring to various versions of the DDS; now it might help to distinguish between three possible formulations of the DDS (I’m sure that there are others, and these might be Chisholmed out further, but this is a start). Often the doctrine is considered only as “Strict Simplicity,” which we can summarize as:
(S-DDS) God is simple in the sense that within God (i) there is no composition whereby God is made up of parts or pieces that are ontologically prior to or more basic than God; (ii) there is no metaphysical or moral complexity of any kind; (iii) there are no genuine distinctions within God, and (iv) everything in God is identical (divine properties are identical with one another, and the divine persons are all identical with the divine essence).
Or we might consider the doctrine in a somewhat more nuanced sense. In honor of Scotus, let us refer to this as “Formal Simplicity”:
(F-DDS) God is simple in the sense that within God (i) there is no composition whereby God is made up of parts or pieces that are ontologically prior to or more basic than God; (ii) there is no metaphysical complexity that would threaten divine unity or moral complexity of any kind; (iii) there are no genuine distinctions within God other than formal distinctions (recall: inseparability); and (iv) all divine perfections are really identical.
More modestly yet, and taking a cue from Gregory,58 we might conceive of it as “Generic Simplicity:”
(G-DDS) God is simple in the sense that within God (i) there is no composition whereby God is made up of parts or pieces that are ontologically prior to or more basic than God; (ii) there is no metaphysical complexity that would bring contradiction or moral complexity of any kind; (iii) there are genuine distinctions within the divine nature; and (iv) all essential divine attributes are mutually entailing and coextensive.59
B. GENERIC SIMPLICITY AND THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
Taking these in reverse order, let’s start with Generic Simplicity. Is there anything about this doctrine that would be inconsistent with trinitarian theology? It is not obvious that there is, or indeed that there might be anything problematic here. Consider (i); surely there is nothing here that would contradict any important desiderata of trinitarian theology. The divine persons are not parts or pieces of God, and on no tolerably orthodox doctrine of the Trinity are the divine persons in any sense ontologically prior to God. Since it is not so much as possible that any of the divine persons exist without the others or apart from the divine essence, they are not, strictly speaking, parts of God.60 So far as I can see, (ii) is no threat at all to the doctrine of the Trinity, and (iii) coheres very well with what the trinitarian theologian should wish to say. Meanwhile, (iv) actually brings support to the trinitarian, as it serves to definitively rule out all versions of Arianism (at least for the monotheist). Maybe G-DDS doesn’t really do enough for the trinitarian, and some may protest that it looks like simplicity “on the cheap.” Some will think that it really turns out to be an account of divine unity rather than simplicity (preferring to reserve the label “simplicity” for more robust versions). And maybe it is rendered moot by essentialism.61 But it surely looks consistent with the doctrine of the Trinity.
C. FORMAL SIMPLICITY AND THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
What about F-DDS? So far as I can see, there is nothing here that would bring the doctrine of the Trinity into conflict with simplicity. On (i), God is not composed or built up out of parts or pieces that are somehow more basic than God. Any traditionally-minded trinitarian can affirm this. According to (ii), there is no metaphysical complexity that would destroy or threaten divine unity as well as no moral ambiguity or complexity within God. Again, the trinitarian — even the social trinitarian — should say this much.
The important element here, so far as I can see, is (iii). According to (iii), the only genuine distinctions are formal distinctions. Recalling that, according to the formal distinction, separation is logically impossible; it is not so much as logically possible for the entities in question to be separated and still to exist. Whatever other work the distinction might (or might not) do, it works well indeed for the trinitarian here, for is not this exactly what the trinitarian wants to say? According to classical trinitarian doctrine, the divine persons are genuinely and irreducibly distinct. They are also, on classical accounts, ontologically and logically inseparable. So it appears that F-DDS coheres well with the doctrine of the Trinity. Indeed, it offers an account of irreducible distinction-within-inseparability. Far from being antithetical to (or even in tension with) the doctrine of the Trinity, it actually supports the doctrine. Of course this doctrine of simplicity itself is not without critics (both traditional and contemporary), and it may be that the common criticisms will turn out to be fatal. My point here is rather modest: it is only that F-DDS is a version of the DDS that coheres well with the doctrine of the Trinity.
D. STRICT SIMPLICITY AND THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
What about “Strict Simplicity?” I fear that this version of the doctrine truly may be inconsistent with trinitarian theology. If there are no distinctions within God, then the divine persons cannot be distinct. But if the divine persons cannot be distinct, then we do not have any doctrine of the Trinity.
Some traditional statements of the doctrine affirm real distinctions between the divine persons but deny all other distinctions. On some statements of “simple trinitarianism,” the Father is said to be identical to the divine essence, the Son is said to be identical to the divine essence, and the Holy Spirit is said to be identical to the divine essence — while, of course (and on pain of modalism) the divine persons are not identical to one another. The immediate — and immediately damning — problem is obvious on standard accounts of identity. Identity, as an equivalence relation that satisfies “Leibniz’s Law” of the Indiscernibility of Identicals, is reflexive, symmetrical, and transitive. Transitivity is crucial. As William Hasker explains, “if A is identical with B, and B with C, then A is identical with C.”62 But then the claims that the Father is identical with the divine essence and the Son is identical with the divine essence just entail that the Father is identical to the Son. The doctrine of the Trinity gives us
(10) the Father is not identical to the Son.
Meanwhile, some versions of the DDS give us both
(11) the Father is identical to the divine essence;63 and
(12) the Son is identical to the divine essence.
Given the fact that identity is symmetrical and transitive,
(13) the Father is identical to the Son
is strictly entailed by the conjunction of (11) and (12). But (13) is the direct and explicit denial of (10), and as such it is in direct contradiction to orthodox trinitarianism. This entailment is heretical, of course, but it follows inexorably from the identity of both the Father and the Son with the divine essence. If the divine persons are all identical with the divine essence, then (on the argument from (10) to (13)) the divine persons will be identical with one another. Such a doctrine seems hopeless for trinitarian theology.
In a recent article, James Dolezal remonstrates in defense of S-DDS (or something close to it). He sees that there is some problem in the neighborhood, for he says that the claim that “there can be real identity between the essence, which is one, and the divine persons, which are three,” surely “seems to contravene the law of identity.”64 So far as I can see, his defense amounts to an appeal to an analogical (rather than univocal) account of religious language. But it isn’t obvious to me that this appeal can do enough work to address the concern. For even if we deny that the notion of “person” is univocal and allow for the traditional kinds of qualified differences between human persons and divine persons, we nonetheless are left with the argument. Nothing about this argument (from (10) to (13)) depends on a univocal account of personhood, nor does it assume that the divine persons are “modern individuals.” For whatever they are, if the Father is identical to the divine essence, which is also identical with the Son, then the Father and the Son are identical. Moreover, even Dolezal’s defense (here following Turretin) appeals to what can only appear to be differences in properties between the essence and the persons: the essence is absolute and communicable, while the persons are relative and incommunicable.65 But if the divine essence has the properties being communicable and being non-relative, while the persons have the properties being incommunicable and being relative, then they clearly have different properties. And if the divine essence and the divine persons have different properties (presumably of necessity), then they are not really identical after all.
In summary, I fear that I cannot see a way forward for S-DDS.66 This is not to say that there could be no way forward. It is possible that my theological myopia is the only real problem here. Perhaps an appeal to numerical sameness without identity can help here, or maybe there are other ways forward.67 Any such possibility warrants further consideration. Nonetheless, it should be clear that the challenges look daunting.
IV. CONCLUSION
Much of the Christian tradition has taken the doctrines of the Trinity and divine simplicity to be coherent and indeed true. The situation is very different today. The doctrine of divine simplicity faces many questions, challenges, and objections. It is charged with denying that there are any genuine distinctions in God, with reducing God to a property, and with entailing modal collapse and thus (among other problems) the loss of divine aseity. I realize that I have done nothing to advance the discussion of these important issues, nor have I offered any analysis of the factors that might motivate the doctrine. My own view — and here I part company with some of my historically respectful theological colleagues — is that these questions deserve responses and the challenges deserve careful consideration. We cannot simply brush off the concerns of the critics with hand-waving dismissals about historical (mis) understanding. To the contrary, I also think — and here I part company with some of my colleagues in analytic theology — that the case against the doctrine of simplicity has not yet been shown to be decisive. Surely there is more work to be done.
What I hope to have done here is something rather modest: I hope to have reopened conversation about the relation of the DDS to the doctrine of the Trinity. So far as I can see, this conversation should remain open. For there are at least two versions of the doctrine of simplicity that appear to cohere well with trinitarian theology. Indeed, for major theologians in the Christian tradition, the DDS offered help to the trinitarian Christian. Perhaps the contemporary theologian who wishes to embrace classical orthodoxy and remain a monotheist may learn from this tradition. If I can encourage this conversation, this exercise has been a success.
1. Richard J. Plantinga, Thomas R. Thompson, and Matthew D. Lundberg, An Introduction to Christian Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 104.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. I borrow the term from John Webster, “Theologies of Retrieval,” in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology (eds. John Webster, Kathryn Tanner, and Iain Torrance; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 583 – 99.
5. Christopher Stead warns us that “we must not think that simplicity is itself a simple notion”; see “Divine Simplicity as a Problem for Orthodoxy,” in The Making of Orthodoxy: Essays in Honor of Henry Chadwick (ed. Rowan Williams; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 256.
6. Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca.1725; vol. 3: The Divine Essence and Attributes (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 276.
7. Andrew Radde-Gallwtiz observes that Gregory uses the DDS against “anti-Nicene Christians like Eunomius, opponents of the Spirit’s divinity, and Greek polytheists”; see his Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Transformation of Divine Simplicity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 212. Interestingly, Stephen R. Holmes sees the DDS employed by Gregory against the Macedonians but not against Eunomius, e.g., in The Quest for the Trinity: The Doctrine of God in Scripture, History, and Modernity (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2012), 108. It should be obvious that my interpretation of Nyssa is much closer to that of Radde-Gallwitz.
8. Against Eunomius, Book I.22, PG 45:336A; NPNF2, 5:61.
9. Against Eunomius, Book I.22, PG 45:341A; NPNF2, 5:62.
10. Against Eunomius, Book I.38, PG 45:433D; NPNF2, 5:90.
11. Against Eunomius, Book X.4, PG 45:848A; NPNF2, 5:226.
12. “On the Holy Spirit,” GNO III.1, p. 91; NPNF2, 5:316.
13. “On the Holy Trinity,” GNO III.1, p. 8; NPNF2, 5:327.
14. For a detailed look at the life and career of Eunomius, see Richard Paul Vaggione, Eunomius of Cyzicus and the Nicene Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). For a mislabeled, somewhat dated, but still helpful account of the theology of “Neo-Arianism,” see Thomas Kopacek, A History of Neo-Arianism (2 vols.; Cambridge, MA: Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, 1979). For more recent and generally more helpful descriptions, see Michel Barnes, The Power of God: Δυναμις in Gregory of Nyssa’s Trinitarian Theology (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2001); idem, “Eunomius of Cyzicus and Gregory of Nyssa: Two Traditions of Transcendent Causality,” VC 52 (1998): 59 – 87; Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 144 – 49; and Khaled Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), esp. 72 – 76, 158 – 94.
15. R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy ca. 318 – 381 A. D. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), 635.
16. Michael E. Butler, “Neo-Arianism: Its Antecedents and Tenets,” SVTQ 36 (1992): 370.
17. See Hanson, Search, 629; and Graham A. Keith, “Our Knowledge of God: The Relevance of the Debate between Eunomius and the Cappadocians,” TynBul 41 (1990): 60 – 88.
18. Butler, “Neo-Arianism,” 370.
19. Hanson, Search, 626.
20. Ayres, Nicaea, 147.
21. “Answer to Eunomius’s Second Book,” NPNF2, 5:252.
22. Against Eunomius, I.19, PG 45:317D; NPNF2, 5:56.
23. E.g., “Answer to Eunomius’s Second Book,” NPNF2, 5:252.
24. Against Eunomius, I.19, PG 45:320B; NPNF2, 5:56.
25. See, e.g., Nathan Jacobs, “On ‘Not Three Gods’ — Again: Can a Primary-Secondary Substance Reading of Ousia and Hypostasis Avoid Tritheism?” MTh (2008): 331 – 58; and Johannes Zachhuber, Human Nature in Gregory of Nyssa (Leiden: Brill, 2000), and “Once Again: Gregory of Nyssa on Universals,” JTS 55 (2005): 75 – 98.
26. E.g., Thomas V. Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986).
27. E.g., Richard Cross, “Gregory of Nyssa on Universals,” VC (2002): 372 – 410; and William Hasker, Metaphysics and the Tri-Personal God (Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology; eds. Michael C. Rea and Oliver D. Crisp; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), esp. 62 – 67.
28. Against Eunomius, I.19, PG 45:321B; NPNF2, 5:57.
29. Against Eunomius, I.19, PG 45:321B; NPNF2, 5:57.
30. Against Eunomius, I.19, PG 45:321B; NPNF2, 5:57.
31. Against Eunomius, I.19, PG 45:321C-D; here I adopt the translation of Radde-Gallwitz, Basil of Caesarea, 205.
32. Basil Krivocheine says that Gregory employs the DDS “regularly” in theological debate, “Simplicity of the Divine Nature and the Distinctions in God, According to St. Gregory of Nyssa,” SVTQ 23 (1979): 80.
33. Against Eunomius, I.24, PG 45:356B; NPNF2, 5:66.
34.τὸ γὰρ ἁπλοῦν τῇ φύσει πρὸς τὰ ἐναντία τῶν ἰδιωμάτων οὐ διασχίζεται, Against Eunomius, X.4, PG 45:847C; NPNF2, 5:227.
35. “On the Holy Spirit,” GNO III.1, p. 91; NPNF2, 5:316.
36. “On the Holy Spirit,” GNO III.1, p. 92; NPNF2, 5:317.
37. “On the Holy Spirit,” GNO III.1, p. 93; NPNF2, 5:318.
38. Krivocheine, “Simplicity of the Divine Nature,” 91, 93.
39. Ibid., 103.
40. Radde-Gallwitz, Basil of Caesarea, 212. Cf. Joseph O’Leary, “Divine Simplicity and the Plurality of Attributes,” in Gregory of Nyssa: Contra Eunomium II, An English Translation with Supporting Studies, Proceedings of the 10th International Colloquium on Gregory of Nyssa (eds. Lenka Karfikova, Scot Douglas, and Johannes Zachhuber; Leiden: Brill, 2007), 327 – 28.
41. Radde-Gallwitz, Basil of Caesarea, 212.
42. Krivocheine, “Simplicity of the Divine Nature,” 76. Radde-Gallwitz has convinced me (against such defenders as David Bradshaw and Basil Krivocheine and such detractors as Christopher Stead) that we should not read Gregory as a “proto-Palamite” (cf. Basil of Caesarea, 221 – 24).
43. Against Eunomius, PG 45:336B; NPNF2, 5:61.
44. “On the Holy Trinity,” GNO III.1, p. 5; NPNF2, 5:326 – 27.
45. Against Eunomius, I.35, PG 45:405B (ὑποστάσιον ἰδιότητα), NPNF2, 5:81.
46. Ad Ablabium, PG 45:120B; NPNF2, 5:332.
47. Bonaventure, Works of Saint Bonaventure III: Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity (ed. George Marcil, OFM; introduction and trans. by Zachary Hayes, OFM; New York: Franciscan Institute, 1979), 159 – 83.
48. ST Ia.3. For detailed discussion of Aquinas’s DDS, see especially Christopher Hughes, A Complex Theory of a Simple God: An Investigation in Aquinas’ Philosophical Theology (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989); and Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (New York: Routledge, 2003), 92 – 130; idem, “God’s Simplicity,” in The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas (eds. Eleonore Stump and Brian Davies; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 135 – 46.
49. Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985), 93 – 94. For Duns Scotus’s use of this distinction, see God and Creatures: The Quodlibetal Questions (trans. with an intro., notes, and glossary by Felix Alluntis and Allan B. Wolter; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), esp. 505 – 7.
50. This summary draws from Thomas H. McCall and Keith D. Stanglin, Jacob Arminius: Theologian of Grace (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 54.
51. For helpful discussion, see Richard Cross, Duns Scotus on God (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 154.
52. Ibid., 154 – 55.
53. Alvin Plantinga, Does God Have A Nature? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1980), 47.
54. Ibid.
55. Ryan T. Mullins, “Simply Impossible: A Case against Divine Simplicity,” JRT 7 (2013): 181 – 203. Cf. idem, “Divine Perfection and Creation,” HeyJ 52 (2011): 1 – 13. This is a very serious objection, and it deserves serious consideration.
56. E.g., Stump, Aquinas, 108 – 15; Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 3:40 n.63. Stump argues that “accident” does not mean for Aquinas what the critics of the DDS usually take it to mean; Muller argues that Plantinga does not adequately understand Aquinas’s meaning.
57. E.g., Jeffrey E. Brower, “Simplicity and Aseity,” in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology (eds. Thomas P. Flint and Michael C. Rea; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 105 – 28; and Alexander R. Pruss, “On Two Problems of Divine Simplicity,” Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion (ed. Jonathan L. Knanvig; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 1:150 – 67.
58. Radde-Gallwitz points out that “Gregory merely asserts the simplicity of the divine nature, rather than adequately responding to Eunomius,” and he concludes that a charitable reading sees Gregory’s “attempt to reconcile simplicity with trinitarianism as an incomplete task rather than as a logical blunder,” Basil of Caesarea, 217 – 18.
59. Cf. Jay Wesley Richards, The Untamed God: A Philosophical Exploration of Divine Perfection, Simplicity, and Immutability (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 217 – 24.
60. Although William Lane Craig does propose a mereological model of the Trinity, e.g., J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 589 – 95.
61. I am grateful to Oliver Crisp’s Beard for pressing me on this point (uncomfortable though the encounter was).
62. William Hasker, Metaphysics and the Tri-Personal God (Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology; ed. Michael C. Rea and Oliver D. Crisp; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 59.
63. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, ST I, q.39.1.
64. James E. Dolezal, “Trinity, Simplicity and the Status of God’s Personal Relations,” IJST 15 (2013): 10.
65. Ibid., 17.
66. The extent to which the version I’m calling S-DDS actually reflects most tradition-based (Latin) versions of the doctrine is an open question. I readily grant that Thomas Aquinas and others sometimes say things that sound much like it, but Aquinas also insists that the divine persons are really distinct (e.g., ST Ia.28.3, resp.). Muller argues that both defenders (e.g., William Mann) and critics (e.g., Plantinga) of the DDS often mistakenly assume S-DDS (or something like it); see Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 3:40 – 41. See, e.g., William Mann, “Simplicity and Immutability in God,” in The Concept of God (ed. Thomas V. Morris; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 253 – 67.
67. Relative Identity strikes me as the most promising way forward.