Some Thoughts on Divine Simplicity

God’s simplicity as formulated by theologians and philosophers is not something that can be readily inferred from Scriptural revelation (although I wouldn’t discount the idea that it is contained in the unwritten tradition), but this does not mean that it is contrary to it, or among the topics that St. John of Damascus says that we should not pry into. I think the key idea that determines God’s simplicity is that his essence and existence are not distinct: the fact that he does not have existence, but is existence; Absolute Being is then one and unity itself without duality. This is the domain of pure metaphysics. The confusion then arises when we try to apply this view to the realm of particulars and contingency, for metaphysical statements like God’s act is singular or God has no relation to creatures don’t line up with our experience of God, but this is due to our limited point of view which is conditioned by multiplicity.

I believe these sorts of difficulties are why Orthodox apologists and polemicists so often fail to understand Catholicism. They cannot accept the place of a purely metaphysical view, and then they curiously neglect that in Catholicism God resides in the heart of man.

To compensate for this inability, the modern Orthodox will then try to qualify the simplicity of God with further distinctions, all this really does is lower the view of God from pure metaphysics down a few notches on the chain of contingency.  

This all leads me to think that God’s simplicity should probably be left as an esoteric teaching, as it is something that is nearly impossible to sufficiently grasp without proper training, and can easily lead to error and misconceptions. I certainly do not understand this doctrine (noone completely can), but I’m not going to jump to the conclusion that this renders God inert and inaccessible to man, neither will I try to qualify the Divine Essence to make it fit more easily into my rational mind. These are the faults of Orthodox apologists who try to dismantle the doctrine of simplicity, a doctrine which is regarded as a metaphysical axiom in the traditions of both East and West. In contrast, Catholicism preserves the mystery.