Sect. 63The Simplicity of GodThe Simplicity of God
I. The physical Simplicity, or, in other words, the immateriality and incorporeity, of God is included in His absolute Simplicity, and may be proved by the same arguments. It may be also demonstrated by special proofs; and there are certain special difficulties to which it gives rise, and which demand solution.
1. The Divine immateriality, or spirituality, is practically set forth in the Old Testament by the prohibition of material representations of God (Deut. 4:16). Our Lord Himself says: “God is a Spirit, and they that adore Him must adore Him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). Wherever Scripture speaks of God as invisible, infinite, immutable, omnipresent, and the rest, His immateriality is evidently implied. And from the earliest days of the Church this attribute was laid down as a fundamental dogma against the pagans, as may be seen in the writings of the Apologists. Tertullian and Lactantius indeed ascribed to God a body, or spoke of His form and figure; but they did so in opposition to the Gnostics, or to the pantheism of the Stoics, who maintained that the Divine Substance was indefinite, vague, empty, and formless, like the air, and thus perverted the true notion of spirituality.
2. The proofs from reason for the Divine Simplicity are most conclusive, but they need not be dwelt on here. The first active principle of all things cannot be itself capable of resolution into simpler elements, because the latter ought to be anterior to it in time or at least in nature, and moreover would require an external cause to bring them together. Again, the attributes of pure actuality, infinity, omnipresence, and the rest, which flow from the nature of the first principle, are all incompatible with physical composition.
II. The attribute of metaphysical Simplicity excludes from God every kind of composition, and consequently every difference between potentiality and actuality, or between realities completing each other. Hence this attribute requires that God should not only possess all that is perfect, but that He should also be His perfection, and that all that is real in Him should be one indivisible reality: “One Supreme Thing” (Fourth Lateran Council, Cap. Damnamus). Conversely, if God is one indivisible reality, it follows that no composition exists in Him. Even before the Fourth Lateran Council, this doctrine was defined more in detail by Eugenius III. in the Council of Rheims against Gilbert.
1. Holy Scripture teaches the absolute simplicity of God when it says that God is the Life, Truth, Wisdom, Light, Love, not that He has these qualities. There is no reason for not taking these expressions in their literal sense; on the contrary, the literal sense is required by the peculiar nature of God. Besides, Scripture uses them to point out that God is the sole original possessor of these perfections. It could not say with truth that “God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness,” if He were not Light in its greatest purity and perfection—that is, if the perfections connoted by the term “Light” were not all one and the same identical perfection, as indeed is expressed by the very name Jehovah.
2. Internal reasons for the Divine Simplicity were also given by the Fathers. Without absolute Simplicity, they say, God could neither be absolutely infinite nor absolutely immutable. And again, Simplicity is in itself a great perfection, because it connotes the excellence of the perfection of which it is predicated, and the completeness and thoroughness of the manner in which it is possessed. Aseity and absolute necessity can only belong to a Being absolutely simple, because the several parts of a composite being would be dependent on each other. God being absolutely independent and self-sufficient, we cannot conceive Him as a subject perfected and completed by anything whatsoever. See these arguments developed by St. Anselm, Monolog., cc. xvi., xvii.; St. Thomas, I., q. 3, a. 7; Scotus in I. Sent. d. 8; St. Bernard, De. Consid., l. v., c. 7.
III. We subjoin a list of the kinds of composition excluded by the metaphysical Simplicity of God, but which are found even in spiritual creatures.
1. Composition of essence and existence, is excluded because the Essence of God is to exist. In created things this kind of composition is the source of all other kinds of composition. Its exclusion from God is in like manner the source of the exclusion of all composition from Him.
2. The composition of essence and hypostatic characters is also excluded; that is to say, the Divine Essence is not determined by any individual character, as, for instance, the human essence is determined by special marks or characters in each human individual.
3. There is likewise excluded the composition of substance and its various accidents.
4. Lastly, the Divine Simplicity excludes any composition that might result from the real difference between several activities, such as between knowing, willing, and acting, between immanent and transient operation, and between necessary and contingent acts. All activity in God is one simple act.
IV. Physical simplicity is not exclusively proper to God; it also belongs to all created spirits, and constitutes their likeness to the Creator. Metaphysical simplicity, on the contrary, belongs to God alone. Created spirits, elevated by grace, may be made, to some extent, partakers of the simplicity of the Divine Life, but their elevation itself implies a composition of a peculiar kind, viz. that of a spiritual substance with an external accidental perfection. The simplicity of the life by which the created spirit shares supernaturally in the Simplicity of the Divine Life, consists in its being freed from the influence of creatures; and being enabled to know God immediately in Himself, and to know and love everything else in Him and for Him.
V. The attribute of Simplicity excludes from the Divine Substance everything that implies composition. If there were no other distinctions but such as entail composition, distinction could no more be attributed to God than composition. There are, however, distinctions which do not imply composition, but are based upon and are necessitated by the very simplicity and perfection of their object. Thus in God distinctions may be established which do not conflict with His Simplicity, because they are made, not between separate elements, but between different ways of looking at one and the same perfection. Such differences are even necessary in God, for without them the real distinction between the three Persons, and the essential difference of attitude in God’s activity within and without could not exist. An exaggerated notion of the Divine Simplicity was condemned by Pope John XXII. See Denzinger, lxvi. 23, 24.
Distinctions of the kind last mentioned are called in theological language Mental distinctions (distinctiones rationis) because the thing distinguished, although objectively one and the same, is represented in our mind by different conceptions. Such distinctions, therefore, really exist only in our mind; but they are not mere subjective fictions, because the perfection of the object furnishes an objective foundation for them. Hence they are called “distinctiones rationis ratiocinatæ,” or “cum fundamento in re.” They thus occupy a position between Real distinctions implying objective composition, and Merely-mental distinctions having no objective value (distinctiones rationis ratiocinantis).
I. The physical Simplicity, or, in other words, the immateriality and incorporeity, of God is included in His absolute Simplicity, and may be proved by the same arguments. It may be also demonstrated by special proofs; and there are certain special difficulties to which it gives rise, and which demand solution.
1. The Divine immateriality, or spirituality, is practically set forth in the Old Testament by the prohibition of material representations of God (Deut. 4:16). Our Lord Himself says: “God is a Spirit, and they that adore Him must adore Him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). Wherever Scripture speaks of God as invisible, infinite, immutable, omnipresent, and the rest, His immateriality is evidently implied. And from the earliest days of the Church this attribute was laid down as a fundamental dogma against the pagans, as may be seen in the writings of the Apologists. Tertullian and Lactantius indeed ascribed to God a body, or spoke of His form and figure; but they did so in opposition to the Gnostics, or to the pantheism of the Stoics, who maintained that the Divine Substance was indefinite, vague, empty, and formless, like the air, and thus perverted the true notion of spirituality.
2. The proofs from reason for the Divine Simplicity are most conclusive, but they need not be dwelt on here. The first active principle of all things cannot be itself capable of resolution into simpler elements, because the latter ought to be anterior to it in time or at least in nature, and moreover would require an external cause to bring them together. Again, the attributes of pure actuality, infinity, omnipresence, and the rest, which flow from the nature of the first principle, are all incompatible with physical composition.
II. The attribute of metaphysical Simplicity excludes from God every kind of composition, and consequently every difference between potentiality and actuality, or between realities completing each other. Hence this attribute requires that God should not only possess all that is perfect, but that He should also be His perfection, and that all that is real in Him should be one indivisible reality: “One Supreme Thing” (Fourth Lateran Council, Cap. Damnamus). Conversely, if God is one indivisible reality, it follows that no composition exists in Him. Even before the Fourth Lateran Council, this doctrine was defined more in detail by Eugenius III. in the Council of Rheims against Gilbert.
1. Holy Scripture teaches the absolute simplicity of God when it says that God is the Life, Truth, Wisdom, Light, Love, not that He has these qualities. There is no reason for not taking these expressions in their literal sense; on the contrary, the literal sense is required by the peculiar nature of God. Besides, Scripture uses them to point out that God is the sole original possessor of these perfections. It could not say with truth that “God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness,” if He were not Light in its greatest purity and perfection—that is, if the perfections connoted by the term “Light” were not all one and the same identical perfection, as indeed is expressed by the very name Jehovah.
2. Internal reasons for the Divine Simplicity were also given by the Fathers. Without absolute Simplicity, they say, God could neither be absolutely infinite nor absolutely immutable. And again, Simplicity is in itself a great perfection, because it connotes the excellence of the perfection of which it is predicated, and the completeness and thoroughness of the manner in which it is possessed. Aseity and absolute necessity can only belong to a Being absolutely simple, because the several parts of a composite being would be dependent on each other. God being absolutely independent and self-sufficient, we cannot conceive Him as a subject perfected and completed by anything whatsoever. See these arguments developed by St. Anselm, Monolog., cc. xvi., xvii.; St. Thomas, I., q. 3, a. 7; Scotus in I. Sent. d. 8; St. Bernard, De. Consid., l. v., c. 7.
III. We subjoin a list of the kinds of composition excluded by the metaphysical Simplicity of God, but which are found even in spiritual creatures.
1. Composition of essence and existence, is excluded because the Essence of God is to exist. In created things this kind of composition is the source of all other kinds of composition. Its exclusion from God is in like manner the source of the exclusion of all composition from Him.
2. The composition of essence and hypostatic characters is also excluded; that is to say, the Divine Essence is not determined by any individual character, as, for instance, the human essence is determined by special marks or characters in each human individual.
3. There is likewise excluded the composition of substance and its various accidents.
4. Lastly, the Divine Simplicity excludes any composition that might result from the real difference between several activities, such as between knowing, willing, and acting, between immanent and transient operation, and between necessary and contingent acts. All activity in God is one simple act.
IV. Physical simplicity is not exclusively proper to God; it also belongs to all created spirits, and constitutes their likeness to the Creator. Metaphysical simplicity, on the contrary, belongs to God alone. Created spirits, elevated by grace, may be made, to some extent, partakers of the simplicity of the Divine Life, but their elevation itself implies a composition of a peculiar kind, viz. that of a spiritual substance with an external accidental perfection. The simplicity of the life by which the created spirit shares supernaturally in the Simplicity of the Divine Life, consists in its being freed from the influence of creatures; and being enabled to know God immediately in Himself, and to know and love everything else in Him and for Him.
V. The attribute of Simplicity excludes from the Divine Substance everything that implies composition. If there were no other distinctions but such as entail composition, distinction could no more be attributed to God than composition. There are, however, distinctions which do not imply composition, but are based upon and are necessitated by the very simplicity and perfection of their object. Thus in God distinctions may be established which do not conflict with His Simplicity, because they are made, not between separate elements, but between different ways of looking at one and the same perfection. Such differences are even necessary in God, for without them the real distinction between the three Persons, and the essential difference of attitude in God’s activity within and without could not exist. An exaggerated notion of the Divine Simplicity was condemned by Pope John XXII. See Denzinger, lxvi. 23, 24.
Distinctions of the kind last mentioned are called in theological language Mental distinctions (distinctiones rationis) because the thing distinguished, although objectively one and the same, is represented in our mind by different conceptions. Such distinctions, therefore, really exist only in our mind; but they are not mere subjective fictions, because the perfection of the object furnishes an objective foundation for them. Hence they are called “distinctiones rationis ratiocinatæ,” or “cum fundamento in re.” They thus occupy a position between Real distinctions implying objective composition, and Merely-mental distinctions having no objective value (distinctiones rationis ratiocinantis).
Seção 22% da obra, de A Manual of Catholic Theology (Wilhelm & Scannell, sobre a Dogmatik de Scheeben). Ver o original.