Abstract
Some versions of the doctrine of divine simplicity imply that God lacks really differentiated parts. I present a new argument against these views based on divine beauty. The argument proceeds as follows: (1) God is beautiful. (2) If God is beautiful, then this beauty arises from some structure. (3) If God’s beauty arises from a structure, then God possesses really differentiated parts. If these premises are true, then divine simplicity (so characterized) is false. I argue for each of the argument’s premises and defend it against objections, including an objection based on analogical predication, and an objection that supposes that God is simple while appearing complex.
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Notes
Some philosophers may endorse (DS) because they believe that the only way in which something can have parts is by its having physical parts. I will not address this position; I take it that the interesting debates about divine simplicity occur between those who favor a “constituent ontology” and hence take it that at least some objects have metaphysical parts. See (Wolterstorff 1991) for a discussion of constituent vs. relational ontologies and their implications for the doctrine of divine simplicity.
These examples are for illustration only, and I am not committed to their details—exactly what it takes for something to be a metaphysical part of something else, and what metaphysical parts exist, are difficult questions.
Thomas Aquinas’ view of simplicity, I think, implies (DS), and his view seems predominant in contemporary discussion. See (Aquinas 1947 I, 3) for Aquinas' view. (Stump and Kretzmann 1985) is an influential contemporary work in a similar vein.
Duns Scotus’ view is an example of a divine simplicity view that does not imply (DS); he uses his “formal distinction” to allow for distinctions between God's attributes while endorsing a sort of divine simplicity. See (Cross 1999, p. 42–45). Gregory of Nyssa provides another example; see (RaddeGallwitz 2009, p. 212).
In this respect, I follow Zangwill (2001) in describing beauty as the highest type of aesthetic state, to be contrasted with other aesthetic states such as daintiness.
Perhaps some non-beautiful art objects are artistically superior to some beautiful objects, but this does not imply that those art objects are aesthetically superior to beautiful objects in the sense with which we are concerned.
Or perhaps a maximally excellent being must possess all compossible maximal universal excellences, that is, things which are excellences for anything which possess them. This complication does not matter for our purposes. See (Martin Lembke 2012) for a defense of the notion of a universal excellence.
What about the idea that what is important for an object's beauty is not the structure the object possesses in itself, but the apparent structure apprehended by observers? I am neutral about this issue for objects in general, and talk about features of beautiful objects rather than merely apparent, apprehended features for convenience. In Sect. 3, however, I discuss how someone might try to use the idea that beauty is about appearance to object to my argument, and why I believe such an objection fails.
I will not try to give a historical overview of the view, but perhaps it is worth noting some major supporters. Hutcheson’s advocacy is probably the most well known, but he was far from its only champion. Sartwell (2014, p. 10–12; page numbers are to the PDF version) suggests that the view was common in the ancient period; Aristotle, for example, claims that “order [and] symmetry” are among “the chief forms of beauty” (quoted in (ibid p. 11)). The view was also found among the Stoics (Beardsley 1966, p. 70), with Plato and Plotinus (see below) bucking the trend. David Hoekema has suggested to me in conversation that Kant endorsed Structuralism.
I am drawing on Plotinus' arguments in the 6th Tractate; these arguments are actually targeted not at Structuralism, but at a more specific claim that beauty requires symmetry and being “patterned” (Plotinus 2001, p. 35). So is not clear to me that Plotinus intended for all of his cases to be taken as counterexamples to Structuralism. But they are the sort of cases it is helpful to think through, in any event.
Of course, a color patch is probably not completely unstructured (unless perhaps it is some sort of simple quale). They are experienced as simple, however, which may be what matters for aesthetic considerations (see the final objection in Sect. 3 for a consideration of whether the claim that the aesthetic qualities of things are dependent upon their appearance and not reality is of any help to the divine simplicity theorist.) And at any rate color patches (and similar examples I give) are probably closer to being unstructured and beautiful than anything else we can easily experience or imagine, so the evidence they can give regarding Structuralism is perhaps still part of the best evidence reflection on our experiences can get us.
I'd like to thank David Hunt and an anonymous reviewer for helping me realize I should discuss cases like thoughts, mathematical theorems, and agents.
Plotinus asks whether there can possibly be symmetry in “points of abstract thought” (2001, p. 36).
Plotinus does not seem to consider the beauty of a good character in the 6th Tractate, although he does consider “noble conduct” (2001, p. 36). An agent's conduct, though, is usually spatio-temporal, and obviously structured (in fact, it probably has a kind of structure similar to that attributed in the text to agents—as when the agent sees what ought to be done and does it).
I include divine thoughts here because I believe divine simplicity theorists ought to say that God’s thoughts about the created world are extrinsic to God. On this, see more below; and for a good recent defense of views on which God’s knowledge of contingent matters is extrinsic to God, see (Grant 2012).
Intrinsicness is designed to be compatible with response-dependent theories of beauty, since it does not specify that all necessary conditions for beauty are intrinsic to the beautiful object.
Divine aseity is in fact a main motivation for divine simplicity; see (Vallicella 2010). Sometimes divine aseity plays a role in arguments for divine simplicity. I believe that divine aseity does not require divine simplicity; for some reasons to think this is so, see (Fowler 2015), and my (forthcoming).
I’m assuming that divine thoughts would be (non-identical) metaphysical parts of God. I believe some divine simplicity theorists hold that divine thoughts are not metaphysical parts of God, and hence are consistent with divine simplicity. They might claim that God is structured by virtue of divine thoughts about God (e.g. God’s self-understanding as falling under various concepts). But according to the structuralist view defended in the previous section, it must be the beautiful thing itself that possesses structure; structure cannot be imposed on the object by someone’s thoughts about the thing. This seems inconsistent with the idea that God is beautiful because of God’s thoughts about God.
At this point, someone might want to claim that the individual Persons are beautiful because of their relations with each other. I think this kind of move suffers from two problems. First, it is inconsistent with Instrinsicness, which I think we have some reason to accept (recall that Intrinsicness accounts for the idea that an object is beautiful because of the way it is, rather than because of the way other things are). Second, at least the 1st Person of the Trinity (and perhaps all of them) is typically supposed to have all divine perfections without relying on the other Persons for them. The only thing the Father is typically supposed to “get” from the Son is his Fatherhood. The Father has, in Himself, the whole divine nature, including all the divine perfections (or else he couldn't beget them in the Son). And beauty is a divine perfection, so I don't think that it is promising to suppose that the Father is beautiful because of his begetting relationship with the Son.
Thanks to Matt Frise for suggesting this particular application of the view that divine attributes are limit cases of creaturely perfections. For discussions of analogical predication that take this sort of line, see (Wippel 2000, p. 549) and (Miller 1996, p. 150). A reviewer has suggested that this version may not be so promising after all, on the grounds that a mere limiting case cannot capture the qualitative difference that, according to the doctrine of analogy, holds the between the creaturely and divine perfections. I am not sure that this is correct. Even if it is, this problem has not kept a limit case understanding of analogy from being popular; and in any case, of all the versions of the doctrine I am familiar with, it is the only one which suggests how God's beauty might not involve structure.
Actually, I suspect that it is impossible for their to be a limit case of unity without diversity; a complete lack of diversity is merely identity, which does not seem to be a kind of unity at all (it involves no union, since union always involves diversity of some kind). But I will grant my objector the use of the term “unity” to describe a simple being for the sake of argument.
I would like to thank John Bennett for impressing upon me the need to think about this objection.
For a philosophical discussion of the idea of seeing God, with commentary on the reports of people who have had religious experiences, see (Alston 1991).
I owe this metaphor to Tom Flint, in his (2011, p. 46). Flint uses it in the context of disputes over Molinism.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Matthew Frise, David Hoekema, Ann Jeffrey, Gideon Jeffrey, Adrian Peperzak, Adam Wood, the University of Rochester Analysis Reading Group, and two Society of Christian Philosophers audiences for discussion, and John Bennett, David Hunt, Jannai Shields, Edward Wierenga, and two anonymous reviewers for comments on previous drafts.
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Baddorf, M. An Argument from Divine Beauty Against Divine Simplicity. Topoi 36, 657–664 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-016-9403-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-016-9403-2