Denial of Simplicity is Atheism

Is the Denial of Simplicity Tantamount to Atheism?

With a handful of sentences, David Bentley Hart revived a neglected corner of theology and philosophy, the doctrine of divine simplicity:

“Almost invariably, moreover, the departure from traditional metaphysical claims is prompted by a vaguely Fregean style of thinking, casually applied even where it has no discernible relevance. To take a particularly important example: There is an ancient metaphysical doctrine that the source of all things—God, that is—must be essentially simple; that is, God cannot possess distinct parts, or even distinct properties, and in himself does not allow even of a distinction between essence and existence. I shall discuss this idea below, very soon. Here I shall only record my conviction that the idea is not open to dispute if one believes that God stands at the end of reason’s journey toward the truth of all things; it seems obvious to me that a denial of divine simplicity is tantamount to atheism, and the vast preponderance of metaphysical tradition concurs with that judgment. And yet there are today Christian philosophers of an analytic bent who are quite content to cast the doctrine aside, either in whole or in part.” (Hart, Being, Consciousness, Bliss, 128)

That paragraph struck a match and the dry kindling took. Readers who had quietly relegated simplicity to the museum of obsolete doctrines suddenly felt heat again. Hart did not merely defend a venerable thesis; he sharpened it into a verdict. If God is what reason finally arrives at when it follows its own journey to the end, then to deny simplicity is not just to adjust a theory about God. It is to disqualify the very kind of reality that can count as God in the first place. On this view, the denial of simplicity is “tantamount to atheism” because it replaces the unconditioned source with a conditioned being, a highest item inside an order rather than the underived source of the order as such.

This essay stays with the flame rather than the smoke. I treat the doctrine of simplicity as an accomplishment, not an heirloom: a worked standard of ultimacy forged by Aristotle’s analysis of pure actuality and the cause of unity, Aquinas’s proof that every composite is posterior and caused and that God is not in a genus, Avicenna’s account of the Necessary Existent without added quiddity, and Maimonides’ disciplined speech that guards unity by refusing to smuggle a plurality of essential attributes into God. Taken together, these are not pious axioms but philosophical achievements. They yield a precise profile of what it is for something to be the first principle. Hart’s judgment stands or falls with that profile.

The first task of the essay is therefore deliberately modest and philosophical. I assemble what I call six principles of ultimacy from Aristotle, Aquinas, Avicenna, and Maimonides. Each principle is argued in its own right. If they succeed, they interlock to show that any genuine first cause must be simple, necessary, and not in a genus, with no added quiddity and no inner plurality that requires a unifier. On that basis alone, without appeal to specifically Christian revelation, Hart’s claim can be made precise: to deny such simplicity is to change the referent of the term “God.” One no longer speaks of the unconditioned first principle at the end of reason’s journey, but of a very impressive being whose unity and being depend on more basic principles. In Hart’s sense, that is already a kind of atheism.

A seventh principle enters only later, and it is important to say so at the outset. The six principles suffice for the Hart-style verdict. They are the shared core that a classical Jew, Muslim, or philosophical theist can in principle affirm. They secure the “God-as-first-principle” that Hart has in view when he speaks of reason’s journey. The seventh principle is not required in order to claim that denial of simplicity amounts to atheism in this strict metaphysical sense. It is added for a different reason: to show how, within a deeply informed Catholic ordering, this same simple first principle is confessed as the triune God whose inner life is act-of-relation-as-gift.

Put differently, Principles 1–6 answer the question, “What must the first cause be if there is one at all?” Principle 7 answers the further, specifically Christian question, “How can that same first cause be Father, Son, and Spirit without violating the accomplished standard of ultimacy?” The seventh principle, drawn from Gregory of Nazianzus, Augustine, Anselm, Bonaventure, and Aquinas, is the thesis that in God real distinction exists only as subsistent relations of origin, and that these relations are not accidents added to an underlying subject but are the divine essence itself subsisting. It is the Christian primitive: the simple act that reason reaches is, in its inner life, an eternal act of self-diffusive goodness, a pure provenance of giver, given, and shared fruition.

This layering matters for the structure of the argument. Hart’s sentence, read strictly, is a statement about what reason can and must say of the first principle before one ever opens a catechism. That is why the first half of the essay operates on shared philosophical ground. It traces a line from Aristotle’s unmoved mover, through Avicenna’s Necessary Existent and Maimonides’ unity, to Aquinas’s doctrine of pure act and divine simplicity. The outcome is a sixfold standard. Pure actuality removes potency at the source. The demand for a cause of unity removes the hope of a composite first without a composer. The priority of the first removes dependence on parts. The not-in-a-genus rule removes any higher measure that could rank the first alongside others. Avicenna removes quiddity and with it the last footholds for addition. Maimonides removes the temptation to multiply essential attributes as if they were extra pieces inside God. Taken together, these moves do not thin God out; they name the plenary act by which anything can be at all.

Within that frame the thesis is straightforward. To deny simplicity in this strong, classical sense is to change the referent of the word “God” on the terms reason itself has previously accomplished. One no longer speaks of an uncaused, noncomposite act of being that is not in a genus and has no added quiddity. One speaks instead of a bearer of many distinct properties, a structured whole whose unity is derivative, or an agent whose perfections stand together by some priority structure more basic than the act of being itself. In each case the result is a conditioned being, however exalted. Its unity and being depend on principles more fundamental than itself. That replacement is a kind of atheism with respect to God, not because it refuses every deity, but because it refuses the only one that reason can reach when it follows its own path to the end.

Once that philosophical work is done, the essay turns in two directions. First, it tests several contemporary escape routes against the six-principle standard, focusing on attempts to conserve a maximal God while discarding or diluting simplicity. Proposals that trade identity for grounding priority, or that replace strict identity with a looser inseparability of distinct divine perfections, are examined in the light of the earlier accomplishment. The verdict is not that they are incoherent as such, but that they are no longer accounts of a first principle in the strong sense. They reintroduce composition and common measure at the summit and therefore cannot preserve Hart’s claim that denial of simplicity leaves one with something less than God.

Second, the essay introduces the seventh principle to show how the Catholic tradition receives this same first principle. Here Hart’s sentence not only survives but flourishes. For the Catholic theologian, the God whom reason reaches as pure act and simple source is the same God who reveals Himself as Father, Son, and Spirit. The doctrine of subsistent relations of origin does not sit alongside simplicity as an additional doctrine; it is a way of reading pure act as eternal gift. The one act of being is not a static monad, but an unceasing provenance of source, reception-and-return, and shared communion. In this context, Hart’s identification of the first principle with “being, consciousness, bliss” receives a sharper specification. The first principle is not only simple and not in a genus. It is, in itself, an act-of-relation-as-gift, and the refusal of simplicity becomes at once a metaphysical and a theological refusal.

The Accomplishment

Let us begin, then, with the accomplishment itself and with what the following pages attempt by revisiting this formidable complex. In brief, the next sections review each thinker’s contribution to the history of reason. If their contributions succeed one by one, they interlock. If they interlock, they support the end Hart infers in the passage above: that the denial of simplicity is tantamount to atheism in the strict sense that it abandons God-as-first-principle. To clarify terms, “classical theism” is a modern convenience and, strictly speaking, anachronistic. What follows does not trade on that banner. It traces a rigorous line of reasoning from Aristotle through the medievals about God as the absolutely first cause, the unmoved mover, or Necessary Existent. The voice here is metaphysical, focusing on the structural requirements of ultimacy.

The claim is that six principles drawn from core texts each stand on their own and, taken together, entail a first cause that is simple, necessary, and one. In the final movement, a seventh, explicitly Christian principle is added to show how, within a Catholic ordering, this simple first cause is at once the God of reason and the triune God of faith. The conclusion sketches how this framework yields not only familiar divine attributes such as immutability and eternity, but also a specific logic of distinction that allows the One to be Love without ceasing to be Simple. It is only a rough core within a much larger premodern achievement, but I hope that an educated reader will see it as a useful one, and will see that Hart’s burning sentence lives most fully inside such a Catholic context.

Principle 1: Pure Actuality, No Potentiality

The argument begins with Aristotle’s analysis of motion and causation. From Physics VIII he argues that whatever is in motion is moved by something, an infinite regress of moved movers would explain nothing, therefore one arrives at a first mover that is not itself moved by anything else. He states the key step succinctly: “there must be some first movement that is not itself moved by anything else” (Aristotle 1930, Physics VIII.5). This is not a fideistic assertion but a causal inference. If the explanatory chain of movers had no unmoved first term, the actuality required to account for motion would never be secured. The result is not merely an unmoved mover; it is a mover whose mode of being must fit the work it does. An unmoved mover cannot actualize by being actualized, so it must be actual in itself.

In Metaphysics Λ he makes the metaphysical point explicit. He argues from the continuity of cosmic motion to a principle whose being is actuality through and through. The compressed conclusion reads, “There must, then, be such a principle, whose very essence is actuality” (Aristotle 1933, Metaphysics XII.6, 1071b17–20). This is an ontological deepening of the causal thesis, not a change of subject. If the ultimate source of motion had even a shred of unrealized potency, some further actualizer would be needed to bring that potency to act. The regress would resume. Hence he characterizes the first principle in coordinated notes, “there is something which moves without being moved, being eternal, substance, and actuality” (Aristotle 1933, Metaphysics XII.7, 1072a24–26). Eternal rules out perishing and becoming, substance names what exists in itself, actuality excludes the composition of act with any unrealized potentiality. The first principle is actuality as such.

He also makes an explicit priority claim. He warns that to make potency prior in reality is a mistake, “To suppose potency prior to actuality, then, is in a sense right, and in a sense not” (Aristotle 1933, Metaphysics IX.8, 1050a6–7). Potency is prior in our analysis and in time for sublunary changes, not in substance or causality at the top of the explanatory order. That is why he pairs unmovedness with actuality when driving the point home, “Since there is something which moves while itself unmoved, existing actually, this can in no way be otherwise” (Aristotle 1933, Metaphysics XII.7, 1072a27–30). If the first mover were not already actual, it could not ground the ceaseless actuality of cosmic motion. He notes that such a first mover “exists of necessity” and that this necessity is good and without matter or change. For such a being, actuality is not an added feature but its very way of being (Aristotle 1933, Metaphysics XII.7, 1072b3–10).

Once pure actuality is in view, two further conclusions follow that are vital for the tests used here. First, pure actuality cannot include unrealized powers standing in potency to completion, because that would invite composition by act and potency within the first principle. Second, if the first principle were composed of distinct parts or distinct operative principles, each part would either be in potency relative to the whole, needing completion by others, or would require a cause of unity beyond itself. Either way, the whole would be dependent and thus not ultimate. Aristotle gestures here by insisting that the first mover is without magnitude and indivisible precisely because it is unmoved actuality. A divisible composite would harbor potentials and be moveable (Aristotle 1933, Metaphysics XII.6–7, 1071b6–12; 1073a5–10).

Aquinas takes the result and makes the anti-composition consequence explicit. In Summa theologiae I, q.3, a.7 he argues that composition is incompatible with ultimacy for reasons that bear directly on act and potency. First, “every composite is posterior to its component parts, and is dependent on them.” Second, “every composite has a cause, for things in themselves different cannot unite unless something causes them to unite.” Both conclusions are marshaled in service of divine simplicity, both would be violated if the first principle had really distinct operative parts (Aquinas 1947–48, ST I, q.3, a.7, respondeo). This is not a slogan. Aquinas is drawing out what it means for the first principle to be pure actuality. If the first principle contained act together with unrealized potency, or if it required a unifier to bind distinct constituents, it would depend on either an intrinsic principle of composition or an extrinsic cause of unity. Either option contradicts the role of a first cause.

The purity claim also clarifies why the first principle cannot be measured by a common scale. Anything that falls under a genus is composite of genus and differentia, which entails potency to the generic nature actualized by the specific difference. Aristotle’s analysis that the first principle is actuality and not otherwise forbids genus–difference composition at the top (Aristotle 1933, Metaphysics XII.7, 1072a27–30). Aquinas draws the inference. If God were in a genus, something more general would be prior to him, therefore the first principle is not in a genus (Aquinas 1947–48, ST I, q.3, a.5). The upshot is that the first principle is pure act, so it cannot be a heap of perfections, powers, or faculties whose unity is subsequent to that plurality. If it were, it would not be first.

Quoted passages used above, separated so I can copy and paste them later (don’t mind me 🙂

“there must be some first movent that is not itself moved by anything else” (Aristotle 1930, Physics VIII.5).
“There must, then, be such a principle, whose very essence is actuality” (Aristotle 1933, Metaphysics XII.6, 1071b17–20).

“there is something which moves without being moved, being eternal, substance, and actuality” (Aristotle 1933, Metaphysics XII.7, 1072a24–26).

“To suppose potency prior to actuality, then, is in a sense right, and in a sense not” (Aristotle 1933, Metaphysics IX.8, 1050a6–7).

“Since there is something which moves while itself unmoved, existing actually, this can in no way be otherwise” (Aristotle 1933, Metaphysics XII.7, 1072a27–30).

“The first mover, then, exists of necessity” (Aristotle 1933, Metaphysics XII.7, 1072b3–4).
“every composite is posterior to its component parts, and is dependent on them” (Aquinas 1947–48, Summa Theologiae I, q.3, a.7, respondeo).
“every composite has a cause, for things in themselves different cannot unite unless something causes them to unite” (Aquinas 1947–48, Summa Theologiae I, q.3, a.7, respondeo).

Principle 2: Cause of Unity, Why Any Real Many Is One Only Through a Unifier

Aristotle begins not with a stipulation but with a problem. When a whole is genuinely one rather than a heap, what makes the many to be one? He formulates the question and the thesis together, “To return to the difficulty which has been stated with respect both to definitions and to numbers, what is the cause of their unity? In the case of all things which have several parts and in which the totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something beside the parts, there is a cause, for even in bodies contact is the cause of unity in some cases, and in others viscosity or some other such quality” (Aristotle 1933, Metaphysics VIII.6, 1045a8–12, trans. W. D. Ross). The scope is general. He speaks of definitions and numbers alongside bodies to show that the need for a cause of unity belongs to first philosophy, not just to physics. The illustrations of contact and viscosity are reminders that even in concrete cases the one is explained by something over and above enumeration of parts. The whole is something beside the parts, which means that unity, where it is real, has an explanation.

He does not leave the point at diagnosis. He sketches the pattern of explanation by appeal to formal and efficient causes. After distinguishing what is potentially from what is actually, he resolves the puzzle by assigning to form the work of making the many to be one, and to an agent the work of bringing a potential unity into act, “The difficulty will no longer be thought a difficulty if one element is matter and another is form, and one potentially and the other actually. What, then, causes this, that which was potentially to be actually, except, in the case of things which are generated, the agent” (Aristotle 1933, Metaphysics VIII.6, 1045a33–b7, trans. W. D. Ross). In substances the form is the principle that makes this matter to be one thing rather than a heap, in generated cases an efficient cause is required to reduce potency to act, for intelligible unities each is by nature a kind of unity.

Aquinas turns the insight into a general principle and applies it to the first principle. In Summa theologiae I, q.3, a.7 he argues that the first being cannot be composite, and two of his reasons formalize Aristotle’s claim. First, “every composite is posterior to its component parts, and is dependent on them.” Second, “every composite has a cause, for things in themselves different cannot unite unless something causes them to unite” (Aquinas 1947–48, ST I, q.3, a.7, respondeo, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province). If the first principle were composite, it would require a cause of unity and would therefore not be first. Since the first principle is uncaused, it cannot be composite.

The principle (or as AI likes to call obsessively “axiom”) bears directly on models that posit a plurality of complete operative principles within the one subject. If one proposes that the divine subject contains several complete sets of rational cognitive faculties, each sufficient for personal operation, then by Aristotle’s standard the plurality could be one only because of a unifier. On Aquinas’s formulation, such unity would be caused, which contradicts ultimacy. If one insists the unifier is identical with the subject yet really distinct from the operative faculties, composition persists. If one denies any distinct unifier, the many remains many and the subject is not a single substance. The only way to avoid these horns while retaining ultimacy is to deny a real plurality at the root and affirm identity of operation in the subject, which is the simplicity thesis.

The principle also clarifies why appeals to relational harmony do not solve the metaphysical problem. Unity of love, unity of will, or mutual indwelling can be perfect relations. As relations, they presuppose termini already in act. They do not supply, by themselves, the principle by which several really distinct operative sources belong to one substance without composition. When we explain why a clump of matter is one body rather than a heap, we do not say that it is many but behaves harmoniously, we name the cause of unity, contact, viscosity, or most fundamentally the form. The explanatory demand tightens as one rises higher in analysis. For an ultimate, any appeal to a cause of unity would forfeit ultimacy.

In this way the cause-of-unity principle anchors a neutrality-preserving test for ultimacy. A candidate first principle that includes a real plurality of complete operative sources either depends on a unifying cause, which forfeits ultimacy, or collapses the plurality by identifying the operations in a single simple act. The first option contradicts the status of the first cause as uncaused. The second option is the identity thesis that simplicity articulates. Aristotle’s question, what is the cause of their unity, together with Aquinas’s axiom, every composite has a cause, leave no third way for a genuinely composite ultimate.

Notes (Quotations I’m putting aside for easy access later, don’t mind me):

“What is the cause of their unity? In the case of all things which have several parts and in which the totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something beside the parts, there is a cause, for even in bodies contact is the cause of unity in some cases, and in others viscosity or some other such quality” (Aristotle 1933, Metaphysics VIII.6, 1045a8–12, trans. W. D. Ross).

“The difficulty will no longer be thought a difficulty if one element is matter and another is form, and one potentially and the other actually. What, then, causes this, that which was potentially to be actually, except, in the case of things which are generated, the agent” (Aristotle 1933, Metaphysics VIII.6, 1045a33–b7, trans. W. D. Ross).

“Every composite is posterior to its component parts, and is dependent on them. Thirdly, because every composite has a cause, for things in themselves different cannot unite unless something causes them to unite” (Aquinas 1947–48, Summa Theologiae I, q.3, a.7, respondeo, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province).

Principle 3: Simplicity from Non-Posteriority and Uncausedness

Aquinas’s simplicity proof is the point where the account of unity and causality becomes categorical. He argues that what is first in the order of explanation cannot be composite, because composition necessarily brings with it both ontological posteriority to parts and dependence on a cause of unity. The structure is concentrated in Summa theologiae I, q.3, a.7, where he writes in the respondeo, “every composite is posterior to its component parts, and is dependent on them. … every composite has a cause, for things in themselves different cannot unite unless something causes them to unite.” The syllogism is straightforward. All composites are caused and posterior to their parts, the first principle is uncaused and prior to all, therefore the first principle is not composite. Once first principle has been established as uncaused cause in prior questions, the move to simplicity is immediate. If the first cause were composite, it would fall under the rule that composites require a composer or unifier. It would therefore be an effect. That is a contradiction.

He closes the article with the line, “it is clear that God is nowise composite, but is altogether simple” (Aquinas 1947–48, ST I, q.3, a.7, respondeo). The adverb altogether signals that Aquinas is not merely denying quantitative parts, but any real composition. He ties the result to the previous articles, which have just ruled out, one by one, the principal modes of composition that would introduce dependence or potency into the first principle.

He excludes matter and form, since whatever is in potency to form is not pure act and what is first must be act without potency, “It is impossible that matter should exist in God” (ST I, q.3, a.2, respondeo). He excludes composition of quiddity and subject, since God is not one thing having a nature other than himself, but is identical with his own essence (ST I, q.3, a.3). He denies composition of essence and existence, arguing that “God is not only His own essence … but also His own existence,” since any thing whose existence is other than its essence either receives that existence from constituents or from an exterior cause, neither of which is admissible in the first cause (ST I, q.3, a.4, respondeo). He denies genus and difference, since to be a species in a genus implies a formal composition that imports potency relative to the generic nature, but in God there is no potency (ST I, q.3, a.5). He excludes subject and accident, because accidents bespeak actuality supervening on a subject capable of receiving them, which would reintroduce potency and dependence (ST I, q.3, a.6). The cumulative upshot is the conclusion already quoted, “God is nowise composite, but is altogether simple” (ST I, q.3, a.7).

The two axiom-like commitments in a.7 do some pretty decisive work. The first, that “every composite is posterior to its component parts, and is dependent on them,” states an ontological priority. The second, that “every composite has a cause,” translates Aristotle’s insight about unity into the idiom of efficient causality. Where there is a plurality that is truly one and not a heap, “things in themselves different cannot unite unless something causes them to unite.” The first axiom blocks ultimacy by part priority, the second blocks it by causal priority. In both cases, to ascribe composition to the first cause is to ascribe dependence incompatible with its role as first.

The supporting articles show how each familiar kind of composition would entail such dependence. Matter and form would place God under the regime of potency and act, composition of quiddity and subject would make God a bearer of a nature rather than subsistent nature, composition of essence and existence would demote God to a recipient of existence, composition by genus and difference would place God under a common measure, subject and accident would make God a subject capable of receiving perfections not identical with his essence. With those possibilities eliminated, a.7 binds the results under a general principle. If anything in God were a composite, God would be posterior to parts and caused by a composer, but the first principle is uncaused and prior, therefore he is not composite.

Two clarifications strengthen the proof. First, simplicity is not the claim that God is a thin abstraction. It is the denial that the first principle’s being is the resultant of a prior plurality. When Aquinas says that “God is not only His own essence … but also His own existence,” he excludes composition that would make God stand to existence as recipient to donor. Second, the simplicity conclusion is the terminus of the act and potency analysis that grounds pure actuality. If there were composition in God, there would be a respect in which he is in potency to the unity or actuality of the whole, or a respect in which different principles must be made one. Either contradicts pure act and ultimacy. Hence he can state without qualification that “God is nowise composite, but is altogether simple.”

Principle 4: Not in a Genus, No Common Measure

Aquinas frames the issue directly, “it is clear that God is not in a genus” (Aquinas 1947–48, ST I, q.3, a.5, respondeo). He offers this as the metaphysical upshot of how genera and species account for definitional unity. To be in a genus is to be constituted by genus and difference, so that what the thing is results from a formal structure more general than the thing itself. If anything were first, nothing more general could be prior to it in reality or in thought. Therefore, if the first principle were in a genus, it would be posterior in account to a more general ratio that measures and limits it, which contradicts ultimacy. He underlines this with a sed contra in logical form, “In the mind, genus is prior to what it contains. But nothing is prior to God either really or mentally. Therefore God is not in any genus” (ST I, q.3, a.5, sed contra). He then eliminates the only two ways a thing could be in a genus. There is the way of species under genus, which would force composition of genus and difference and so import potency, and there is the way of reduction, as when principles or privations are reducible to a genus as its foundations, which would limit the first principle’s scope to a particular order. Since both routes are incompatible with ultimacy, neither is available (ST I, q.3, a.5, respondeo).

Aristotle supplies the anchor premise. In analyzing the logical form of predication across the categories, he denies that being or one can function as a genus. The Ross translation reads, “It is not possible that either unity or being should be a single genus … for the differentiae of any genus must each of them both have being and be one” (Aristotle 1933, Metaphysics III.3, 998b22–27). If being were a genus, its differentiae would have to be outside the genus to divide it. There is nothing outside being that could serve as a genuine differentia, non-being cannot exist to do the dividing. The same line applies to unity. Any differentia would itself be one, so it could not stand outside unity to divide it. Thus neither being nor unity is a genus. Aquinas invokes this Aristotelian point in the article, “the Philosopher has shown, Metaph. iii, that being cannot be a genus” (ST I, q.3, a.5, respondeo).

Aquinas makes the act and potency mechanics of genus and difference explicit. A species is constituted by adding a difference to a genus, and “that from which the difference is derived is always related to that which is limited by the difference, as actuality is related to potentiality” (ST I, q.3, a.5, respondeo). The genus contributes what is common and indeterminate, the specific difference actualizes that determinable content into a determinate species nature. In any such constitution there is a real composition corresponding to the logical composition, genus is in potency relative to difference, difference is in act relative to genus. If that kind of structure were found in the first principle, there would be a real composition of potentiality and actuality in what must be pure actuality. The not-in-a-genus conclusion is therefore the logical face of the pure act result.

Two consequences follow and motivate the no-common-measure corollary. First, anything in a genus is comparable with other species under that genus according to a common ratio. If the first principle were similarly comparable under a common measure, it would be limited and rankable alongside other instances. Aquinas rejects this when he meets the objection that God must be a measure for substances. He replies that the only sense in which God is measure is not proportionate or commensurate, but exemplar, “This objection turns upon proportionate measure … Now, God is not a measure proportionate to anything” (ST I, q.3, a.5, ad 2). Things resemble God and so have being by participation, but there is no genus-like yardstick common to God and creatures. Second, because genus–difference composition is a member of the family of compositions excluded in ST I, q.3, a.7, the not-in-a-genus status of the first principle contributes directly to simplicity. Where there is no genus, there is no differentiating constituent added to a common nature, and thus no room for an internal plurality that would require a cause of unity.

The upshot is both conceptual and ontological. Conceptually, it denies that there is any definitional path to God that proceeds by taking a common kind and adding a differentia. Ontologically, it denies any common scale for co-ranking God and creatures. If one attempted to measure divine perfections and creaturely perfections by a single metric, one would posit a genus within which God is a species or instance alongside others. The prohibition on being a genus is the barrier against that move. Either the purported scale is extrinsic to the first principle, in which case the first principle is subordinated to a measure more general than itself, or the scale is nothing but the first principle as exemplar, in which case it ceases to be common. In neither case is there a common measure that treats God and creatures as co-instantiating a genus.

Principle 5: Avicenna’s Necessary Existent, Pure Existence, No Quiddity

Avicenna’s analysis of the Wājib al-Wujūd gives a stringent metaphysical test for ultimacy that converges with, and sharpens, the Aristotelian and Thomistic results. The core claim is a worked thesis about the constitution of the First, the Necessary Existent has no quiddity other than its very being. In Michael E. Marmura’s translation of the Ilāhiyyāt of the Healing, Avicenna states the conclusion in unambiguous terms, “The First has no quiddity other than His individual existence” (Avicenna 2005, Ilāhiyyāt VIII.4, 274). He restates the point to make the modal structure plain, “there is no quiddity for the Necessary Existent other than its being the Necessary Existent. And this is [the thing’s] thatness [inniyya, anniyya]” (Avicenna 2005, Ilāhiyyāt VIII.4, 276–277). He underlines that this thatness excludes any additional differentiating component, “necessary existence has no quiddity that connects with it other than necessary existence” (Avicenna 2005, Ilāhiyyāt VIII.5, 279). He gives the related formulation that ties the First’s priority to its noncomposite status and to the dependence of everything else, “The First, hence, has no quiddity. Those things possessing quiddities have existence emanate on them from Him. He is pure existence [mujarrad al-wujūd] with the condition of negating privation and all other description of Him… everything other than Him has addition [ziyāda]” (Avicenna 2005, Ilāhiyyāt VIII.4, 273–274).

These lines deny essence and existence composition at the first principle. A quiddity answers the what is it question and is shareable, definable, and combinable with differentiae. Where there is a quiddity that is anything other than to be the Necessary Existent, existence is added to that quiddity, what has quiddity in that sense is a recipient of being. By contrast, “The First has no quiddity other than His individual existence” (VIII.4, 274). If the First had a quiddity really distinct from its existence, it would fall under the structure that characterizes possibles, it would stand to existence as to something received, or derivable, but Avicenna has just argued that “those things possessing quiddities have existence emanate on them from Him” (VIII.4, 273–274). The First cannot have a distinct quiddity without ceasing to be first.

The quoted claims entail that the First is not in a genus. Genus and differentia are constituents of quiddity. If “there is no quiddity for the Necessary Existent other than its being the Necessary Existent” (VIII.4, 276–277), then there is nothing for a genus–differentia analysis to seize upon. To place the First under a genus is to assign it a common whatness and then mark it off by a differentia that adds to that common nature. Avicenna denies precisely this. For the First there is no such common whatness other than necessary existence itself. That is why the follow-up line makes the denial general, “necessary existence has no quiddity that connects with it other than necessary existence” (VIII.5, 279). The First cannot be an instance under a more general concept without importing quiddity as an added constituent. The price of genus membership would be loss of ultimacy.

Avicenna’s words exclude internal composition of the First by any plurality of constituents, whether they be parts, properties, or really distinct operative principles. His use of mujarrad al-wujūd is exact, the First is existence stripped of privation and alien description, “everything other than Him has addition” (VIII.4, 273–274). An addition is precisely what would be required for a cluster of distinct features or faculties to stand together in one subject, but the First is defined by the absence of any such addition. Here his framework dovetails with the Aristotelian requirement that a many can be one only by a cause of unity, and with Aquinas’s axiom that every composite has a cause and is posterior to its component parts. In his idiom, whatever has addition is not the First but derives from the First, whatever would require a unifier lies on the side of the caused, not on the side of the uncaused giver of being.

These passages supply a modal reason for the First’s absolute simplicity. If the First had a quiddity other than necessary existence, the First would be a being possible in itself and necessary through another, because a quiddity considered as such does not entail existence. He forestalls that possibility by identifying the thatness of the First with necessary existence itself, “there is no quiddity for the Necessary Existent other than its being the Necessary Existent” (VIII.4, 276–277). Thus the First is necessary in itself not by addition of a necessity-conferring property to an essence, but by being identical with necessary existence. Composition of essence and existence is the modal signature of what is not first.

The inferential structure is straightforward. For possible things there is a real distinction between what they are and that they are. In these, quiddity explains the possibility of existence, not its actuality, “those things possessing quiddities have existence emanate on them from Him” (VIII.4, 273–274). If one ascribed a similar structure to the First, making it a case of quiddity plus existence, one would relocate the First into the class of those that receive existence, which contradicts its status as source. The only escape is to deny that the First has any such quiddity and affirm that for the First, being and thatness are identical. Once that identification is in place, genus membership is excluded by form of speech, and any inner plurality of constituents is excluded, because any such plurality would be an addition and so a mark of derivation. The First is mujarrad al-wujūd, pure existence without added quiddity.

This result carries the same practical upshot as the Aristotelian and Thomistic principles. It blocks the attribute-cluster approach at the root. If one describes the ultimate as a bearer of many really distinct great-making features, one proposes a subject that has addition. That is, one posits a structure in which being belongs by way of added components. The First excludes such addition by definition. Either one collapses the distinct features into identity in the subject, which is simplicity, or one loses ultimacy. Either way, the Necessary Existent is not a composite instance measured by a common scale. It is the simple giver of existence, not a case of essence plus existence.

In John F. Wippel’s The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, he reconstructs Aquinas’s core metaphysical architecture, such as act/potency, the real distinction of essence and existence, participation, causality, and not-in-a-genus, and more, and shows well how these interlock to yield God as ipsum esse subsistens and therefore absolutely simple and uncaused. I note him here because his work on the “not-in-a-genus” and in the domain we’re currently covering, are particularly helpful: “Important for Thomas’s reasoning here is his claim that if some quiddity is identical with its act of being, it is God himself and perfectly simple.” — Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, p. 586.

In sum, the principle is Avicenna’s supervised identity claim. The First’s what it is is nothing other than necessary existence, therefore it is not composed of essence and existence, has no genus or differentia, and does not harbor any plurality that would require a cause of unity. The First is mujarrad al-wujūd, pure existence without addition. “The First has no quiddity other than His individual existence” (Avicenna 2005, Ilāhiyyāt VIII.4, 274), and “necessary existence has no quiddity that connects with it other than necessary existence” (Avicenna 2005, Ilāhiyyāt VIII.5, 279). Everything else, precisely insofar as it has quiddity, has addition and receives existence from him (Avicenna 2005, Ilāhiyyāt VIII.4, 273–274). That is why this treatment decisively closes the door on genus membership and internal aggregation at the level of the first principle.

Principle 6: Maimonides on Attributes and Unity

Maimonides frames the thesis with bluntness in the opening chapter of his treatment of divine attributes. After expelling corporeality from any adequate conception of God, he draws the corollary that so-called essential attributes must go as well. He writes, “you must understand that God has no essential attribute in any form or in any sense whatever, and that the rejection of corporeality implies the rejection of essential attributes. Those who believe that God is One, and that He has many attributes, declare the unity with their lips, and assume plurality in their thoughts” (Maimonides 1904, Guide for the Perplexed I.50, p. 66–67). This is not a terminological caution. It is a metaphysical claim about what would follow if we multiplied perfections in God as really distinct positives. If we treat omniscience, omnipotence, and the like as additional constituents, we no longer have an unqualified unity, but a composite whose supposed oneness would have to be explained by appeal to a cause of unity. That move is excluded for the first principle by the demand that the ultimate be uncaused and posterior to nothing.

The backbone appears in the next chapter, where he states the rule about attributes as such. An attribute is by nature something added on rather than identical with essence, as such it is accidental in the strict sense and signals composition. “For it is a self evident truth that the attribute is not inherent in the object to which it is ascribed, but it is superadded to its essence, and is consequently an accident, … he who merely rejects the appellation accidents in reference to the attributes of God, does not thereby alter their character, for everything superadded to the essence of an object joins it without forming part of its essential properties, and that constitutes an accident. Add to this the logical consequence of admitting many attributes, viz., the existence of many eternal beings” (Maimonides 1904, Guide I.51, p. 69). If predicates are truly attributes, they mark composition and dependence upon either the attribute as a distinct constituent or upon a unifier. If divine attributes are posited as really distinct and eternal, one has as many uncaused beings as there are such attributes. Unity would be destroyed.

From these premises he articulates the positive unity claim that carries the program, “There cannot be any belief in the unity of God except by admitting that He is one simple substance, without any composition or plurality of elements, one from whatever side you view it, and by whatever test you examine it, not divisible into two parts in any way and by any cause, nor capable of any form of plurality either objectively or subjectively” (Maimonides 1904, Guide I.51, p. 69). Simple substance here is not the minimal notion of an immaterial subject that still bears really distinct accidents. It is the maximal thesis that in God there is no composition by any principle, no parts, elements, accidents, differentiating features, or really distinct positives at all. By any cause closes the door on saving unity by appeal to a binder. If unity must be caused, the subject is no longer ultimate.

The methodological corollary follows. Because positive essential predications threaten to multiply what is in God, the only true attributions are negative in form, or else they function as denials of creaturely defect. “The negative attributes of God are the true attributes, they do not include any incorrect notions or any deficiency whatever in reference to God, while positive attributes imply polytheism, and are inadequate, as we have already shown” (Maimonides 1904, Guide I.58, p. 82). The via negativa is a principled device that preserves unity while still allowing us to speak. On this method wise, said of God, does not add an item alongside the essence, rather it denies ignorance and affirms the absence of defect that we name wisdom in a way proportioned to creaturely minds.

Placed within the wider framework, Maimonides’ strictures integrate directly with the earlier principles. If “every composite is posterior to its component parts, and is dependent on them … every composite has a cause,” then a being that is first in the relevant order cannot be composite in any respect (Aquinas 1947–48, ST I, q.3, a.7, respondeo). Maimonides’ analysis of attributes as superadded cashes out, in the special case of divine predication, what that axiom says universally about composites. Where there is a many that is truly one, a unifying factor is in play, and if that unity is caused, the subject is not first. The threat of a plurality of uncaused eternals restates Aquinas’ unifier argument in a theological idiom.

At the same time the via negativa is not quietism. Within the same framework, Aquinas pairs an equally strong simplicity thesis with an account of how affirmative names may still be truly said of God without multiplying essences. The key is that such names are said analogically and signify in God what is identical with the divine essence, not an accident really distinct from it. Thus, when we say God is good, we do not ascribe to God an added determination alongside what God is, but indicate that what goodness positively names in creatures exists in God in a more excellent way. He writes, “these names are applied primarily to God rather than to creatures, because these perfections flow from God to creatures, but as regards the imposition of the names, they are primarily applied by us to creatures which we know first.” He adds that among the perfections, “the first is existence, from which comes this name, HE WHO IS” (Aquinas 1947–48, ST I, q.13, a.5, respondeo). This preserves the prohibition on adding constituents while explaining how language can remain realist rather than purely negative. What is predicated is identical in reality with the simple essence. The plurality lies only in our concepts.

The convergence with Avicenna tightens the net. If “The First has no quiddity other than His individual existence,” then there is nothing in God for an attribute to be added to in the way attributes are added to creaturely essences (Avicenna 2005, Ilāhiyyāt VIII.4, p. 274). The ban on positive essential attributes is not a separate revelation-based restraint, but the theological expression of the same metaphysical insight. The first principle does not stand under a common measure, is not composed by any principle, and so cannot house many really distinct positives without ceasing to be ultimate. To call God wise, good, or powerful without division is to deny defect while recognizing in God, as first cause, the eminent source of the perfections signified by those terms in creatures. That is why Maimonides can say that positive attributes imply polytheism, they would amount to positing many uncaused firsts, and why Aquinas adds that such names are true of God only in a mode that preserves simplicity and not-in-a-genus.

The adequacy test follows. If one proposes a model of deity that enumerates really distinct essential perfections in God as a cluster of positive properties, one faces Maimonides’ dilemma. Either those attributes are genuinely superadded and so yield composition, posteriority, and a cause of unity, or they are not really distinct and collapse into identity in the subject. The first horn abandons ultimacy. The second is simplicity. Maimonides codifies the discipline necessary to avoid the first horn, and Aquinas shows how, within that discipline, affirmative predication can still be retained without generating a plurality in God.

Principle 7: The Christian Primitive—Subsistent Relations and Self-Diffusive Act

For the philosopher of the strict monotheistic tradition, the six principles above constitute a finished architecture. They deliver a First Principle that is pure act, uncaused, and absolutely one. Yet for the Christian theologian, the accomplishment faces a specific crisis. If the First Principle is merely a static monad, the Trinity appears as an incoherent addition—a violation of the rule against added attributes. To secure a deeply informed Catholicism, the system requires a seventh principle that is as primitive as the first six, one that locates distinction within the First without introducing composition. This is the principle of Relatio Subsistens (a term I stole from Ratzinger), formulated by the Cappadocians and brought to metaphysical precision by Aquinas: in the First Principle, real distinction exists solely as relation of origin, and these relations are not accidents added to the essence, but are the Essence itself subsisting. Now with that said, it’s not clear said doctrines are successful. There’s too many issues to get into to justify the Trinitarian approach. And, to be honest it’s not clear that’s the role of Trinitarianism, as we are now getting into a disclosure of God on God’s terms, what is sometimes called revelation. I will present a model, that will flirt with the idea that there is a model of divine simplicity that is arguably compatible with the accomplishment above. However, the accomplishment above should be respected for what it is, a serious human achievement which Hart’s insights have brought back into the consciousness of the modern reader. But, before I present that more speculative approach, let’s briefly review the Trinitarian transition, because, they mostly accept, presume, or anticipate the classical approach above, one way or another.

The foundation is laid by Gregory of Nazianzus. He recognized that if the names Father and Son referred to the essence, there would be two Gods or a divided God. Therefore, the distinction must be located entirely in the “toward-another” of origin. He writes, “‘Father’ is not a name of either an essence or an action, but a relation, and of how the Father stands with reference to the Son, or the Son with reference to the Father” (Gregory of Nazianzus 1994, Oration 29, xvi). He sharpens this by noting that the removal of this relational origin leaves the essence numerically identical: “For in reality, the names ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ do not denote an essence… but they indicate the relationship between the Persons… The Father is Father, and is Unoriginate, for He is of no one; the Son is Son, and is not unoriginate, for He is of the Father. But if you take away the fact that He is from Him, the Essence is the same” (Gregory of Nazianzus 1994, Oration 31, ix).

Augustine secures the metaphysical status of this relation. If God is simple, He cannot have accidents. Yet if Father and Son are distinct, there is something that is not just the essence alone. Augustine solves this by removing relation from the category of accident when applied to God. He argues: “But if the Father is not called Father in respect to himself, but to the Son; and the Son is not called Son in respect to himself, but to the Father; these are called relatively, not substantially… Yet it does not follow that whatever is not said substantially is said exclusively as an accident… For nothing can happen to God in time because He is incapable of change… Therefore, essence implies nothing of relationship, but relationship does not follow the logic of accident” (Augustine 1991, De Trinitate V.5). The relation is real, but it is not a modification of a subject; it is a permanent mode of the eternal reality.

Anselm provides the logical constraint that prevents this distinction from dissolving unity. If the relations are the essence, how can they differ? Anselm answers that they differ only where they oppose one another as giver and receiver. He codifies the supreme rule of unity: “In God, all things are one, except where there is the opposition of a relation” (Anselm 1998, De Processione Spiritus Sancti, i). Where there is no opposition of origin—as in the divine Will or Power—there is no distinction whatsoever. The distinctions are not attributes added to the One; they are the specific logic of the One’s internal life.

Bonaventure connects this relationality back to the Aristotelian notion of Pure Act by identifying Act with the Good. If God is the highest good, He cannot be static self-enclosure; He must be dynamic gift. He writes: “Good is said to be self-diffusive. The highest good, therefore, must be most self-diffusive… But the diffusion that occurred in time… is not immeasurable… Therefore, there must be an eternal and actual diffusion in the highest good… This implies the production of a Divine Person” (Bonaventure 1978, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, vi.2). The “Act” of Principle 1 is revealed here as a “Gift.” God is not just an object that exists; He is an act of generation and spiration.

Finally, Aquinas synthesizes these strands into the rigorous metaphysical definition that locks the system together. He faces the Aristotelian objection that relations are the weakest category of being. Aquinas reverses this. In creatures, relations are accidents. In God, because there are no accidents (Principle 6), the relation must be the substance itself. He concludes: “A relation in God is not as an accident in a subject, but is the Divine Essence itself; and so it is subsistent, for the Divine Essence subsists… Therefore, a Divine Person implies a relation as subsisting” (Aquinas 1947–48, ST I, q.29, a.4, respondeo). And again, regarding the reality of the distinction: “In God, there is no real distinction except according to the relations of origin… Therefore, it must be that the relations are distinguished from each other, but not from the Essence… The relation really existing in God is really the same as the Essence” (Aquinas 1947–48, ST I, q.28, a.2, respondeo).

This seventh attempt of this historical survey in the Christian world is the keystone for the Christian metaphysician, but it’s probably not successful as a mode of reason. And what came out that tradition, was the insight is it shouldn’t be, given the subject at hand is a Logos of something completely Other. However, theology’s contributions seem to be another incredible accomplishment that goes beyond what Hart brings the moder reader into. Here’s some thoughts I think are worth mentioning (honerable mentions)… There is no composition (because Relation is Essence), no added attributes (because Relation is Subsistent), and no potentiality (because the Diffusion is Eternal Act). Identity in God is thus revealed as provenance: the who is defined by the from where, while the what remains the undivided Act of Being.

Synthesis, Speculating on a Seventh Principle:

Principle 7: The Christian Primitive, and the Reasoned Placement of Novelty

Subsistent Relations, Self-Diffusive Act, and Act-of-Gift versus Gift-Term

For the philosopher of the strict monotheistic tradition, the six principles above constitute a finished architecture. They deliver a First Principle that is pure act, uncaused, and absolutely one. Yet for the Christian theologian, the accomplishment meets a particular tension. If the First Principle is conceived as a solitary monad in a manner that renders personal distinction conceptually posterior, then the Trinity can appear as an incoherent addition and therefore as a violation of the rule against added perfections. To secure a deeply informed Catholicism, the transition must be made without introducing composition, without positing a unity-maker behind God, and without relocating creaturely novelty into God. This is the point at which the tradition names a seventh principle that is not a decorative supplement, but a disciplined grammar for locating distinction within the First while preserving the same ultimacy delivered by the classical principles. In the register governing this presentation, the decisive modern witness is Joseph Ratzinger, for whom relation is not a later add-on to substance but a primordial way of naming personal being. The principle may therefore be rendered, in an inherited technical idiom, as relatio subsistens: in the First Principle, real distinction exists solely as relations of origin, and these relations are not accidents added to an underlying essence, but are the divine reality itself as personally subsisting. Aquinas may then be cited only as a secondary precision-witness behind the Ratzingerian control, supplying a classical articulation that shows this grammar is not an innovation but a disciplined reception of the tradition’s constraints.

At the same time, the Trinity is not a conclusion reason must generate in order for the Christian confession to be warranted. The Trinity is a disclosure of faith, a naming of God on God’s own terms. The standard is not to deduce Trinitarian doctrine from metaphysics as though revelation were dispensable. The standard is to press reason as far as it can be pressed toward the boundary, to clarify what must be true of ultimacy if the First Principle is to be truly first, and to show how the disclosed doctrine does not violate those constraints but rather completes them without rupture. In that register, the question becomes how the historical Trinitarian transition can be understood as preserving the accomplishment of reason while refusing both the inert monad picture and any compositional or processive reinterpretation of God.

The foundation is laid by Gregory of Nazianzus. He recognized that if the names Father and Son referred to the essence, there would be two gods or a divided God. Therefore the distinction must be located entirely in the toward-another of origin. He writes, “‘Father’ is not a name of either an essence or an action, but a relation, and of how the Father stands with reference to the Son, or the Son with reference to the Father” (Gregory of Nazianzus 1994, Oration 29, xvi). He sharpens this by noting that removal of the relational origin leaves the essence the same: “For in reality, the names ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ do not denote an essence . . . but they indicate the relationship between the Persons . . . The Father is Father, and is Unoriginate, for He is of no one; the Son is Son, and is not unoriginate, for He is of the Father. But if you take away the fact that He is from Him, the Essence is the same” (Gregory of Nazianzus 1994, Oration 31, ix). This is already a decisive constraint: personal distinction must not be framed as a second layer of divine “stuff,” nor as an added set of attributes.

Augustine secures the metaphysical status of this relation under the pressure of simplicity. If God is simple, God cannot have accidents. Yet if Father and Son are distinct, something is not exhausted by the essence alone as predicated in an abstract manner. Augustine’s solution is to deny that whatever is said relatively must be said as an accident when applied to God. He argues: “But if the Father is not called Father in respect to himself, but to the Son; and the Son is not called Son in respect to himself, but to the Father; these are called relatively, not substantially . . . Yet it does not follow that whatever is not said substantially is said exclusively as an accident . . . For nothing can happen to God in time because He is incapable of change . . . Therefore, essence implies nothing of relationship, but relationship does not follow the logic of accident” (Augustine 1991, De Trinitate V.5). Relation is real, but not as a predicamental modification of a subject. It is permanent, and it does not introduce composition.

Anselm provides the logical constraint that prevents the distinction from dissolving unity. If relations are the essence, how can they differ? Anselm answers that they differ only where they oppose one another as relations of origin. He codifies the rule: “In God, all things are one, except where there is the opposition of a relation” (Anselm 1998, De Processione Spiritus Sancti, i). Where there is no opposition of origin, there is no distinction whatsoever. This blocks the common mistake of multiplying divine centers or principles. Distinction is not introduced by adding attributes. Distinction is introduced only where relational opposition requires it, and nowhere else.

Bonaventure connects this relationality back to the Aristotelian notion of pure act by identifying act with the Good. If God is the highest good, God cannot be conceived as inert self-enclosure. The Good is spoken as self-diffusive. Bonaventure writes: “Good is said to be self diffusive. The highest good, therefore, must be most self diffusive . . . But the diffusion that occurred in time . . . is not immeasurable . . . Therefore, there must be an eternal and actual diffusion in the highest good . . . This implies the production of a Divine Person” (Bonaventure 1978, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, vi.2). This language can be misheard as necessitating ad extra creation. It need not and must not be taken that way. The claim concerns the fullness of divine life in se, not the necessity of any particular ad extra term. In the Christian grammar, self-diffusion names the eternal processions disclosed by faith and the non-deficient fullness of the divine life, while creation remains free in its termini. A robust Catholic ordering insists that the divine goodness is not completed by the world, and therefore is not compelled to create in order to be itself.

Aquinas can then be placed as a secondary precision-witness for the same grammar under the discipline of simplicity. He faces the Aristotelian objection that relations are the weakest category of being. Aquinas reverses the relevance of that objection by distinguishing predicamental relations in creatures from relations of origin in God. In creatures, relations are accidents. In God, because there are no accidents, relation cannot be an added mode in a subject. Therefore relation must be the divine essence itself subsisting. He concludes: “A relation in God is not as an accident in a subject, but is the Divine Essence itself; and so it is subsistent, for the Divine Essence subsists . . . Therefore, a Divine Person implies a relation as subsisting” (Aquinas 1947–48, ST I, q.29, a.4, respondeo). And regarding the reality of the distinction: “In God, there is no real distinction except according to the relations of origin . . . Therefore, it must be that the relations are distinguished from each other, but not from the Essence . . . The relation really existing in God is really the same as the Essence” (Aquinas 1947–48, ST I, q.28, a.2, respondeo).

This Trinitarian grammar is not offered here as a demonstrative proof from reason alone. It is offered as a disciplined compatibility claim: the disclosed doctrine, when stated with classical precision, does not violate the constraints of ultimacy and simplicity, because it locates distinction in relations of origin that are identical with the divine reality rather than in added constituents. There is no composition because relation is not an added feature. There are no added attributes because relation is subsistent. There is no potency because the processions are eternal act, not temporal becoming. Identity in God is thus articulated as provenance. The who is defined by the from-where, while the what remains the undivided act of being.

Synthesis, pressing reason up to the boundary

Principle 7: Ultimacy and the Placement of Novelty, Act-of-Gift and Gift-Term

The six principles above deliver a First Principle whose ultimacy is secured by pure actuality, by the impossibility of regress, by the causal requirement for unity, by the exclusion of genus and common measure, by the identification of the First with subsistent existence, and by the discipline of predication that refuses a plurality of essential attributes in God. Yet the accomplishment still faces a live pressure internal to a Catholic ordering. The Christian confession names God as giver, as creator, as the one from whom all that is receives being and good. If giving were treated as a change in God, ultimacy would be surrendered. If giving were treated as a merely verbal title with no intelligible anchoring in divine perfection, then the grammar of gift would risk becoming thin, as though it tracked only creaturely reception rather than naming anything about the First as First. The aim here is not to deduce the Trinity by reason, but to press reason as far as possible around the faith by fixing where novelty may intelligibly be located if the First Principle is to remain first and yet be truly generous.

At this point a precision control is required, because “giverhood” can silently equivocate. “Giverhood” may be used in at least three ways: as an ad extra predicate grounded in effects, as an in se predicate naming divine plenitude as communicable, and as a personal naming of God’s inner life disclosed by faith. These must be distinguished in order to avoid importing a regress by turning the “tie” between giver and gift into an additional constituent. In what follows, giverhood will be used in two controlled modes within reason’s register. First, giverhood can be affirmed ad extra by extrinsic denomination, since “Creator” and “Lord” are truly said of God on the basis of effects without any intrinsic change in God. Second, giverhood can be affirmed in se in a strong sense only if it does not introduce a new item in God, but names the divine actuality itself under a gift idiom, identical in re though not identical in ratio. The third mode, giverhood as the personal grammar of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, belongs to faith’s disclosure and is not treated as a rational conclusion here, though it must remain compatible with the constraints reason secures.

The principle begins from a demand of ultimacy already implicit in the classical tradition and sharpened by the discipline of simplicity. A first principle cannot become what it is by what is posterior to it, and it cannot require any unity-maker or composer. If God is first, God is not constituted by the world. But to give appears to name a positive profile, not merely a privative denial. It is not only that God is not needy. God is the source of being and the source of perfection. The problem is to locate that positive profile without positing either dependence or composition.

One may formalize the pressure as a controlled exhaustion. If “giver” is said of the first principle in a strong sense, that is, as naming a positive perfection of ultimacy and not merely as a name grounded only in posterior effects, then giverhood must fall under one of three descriptions. Either it is reception-constituted, meaning that the first principle is giver only because a receiver recognizes, completes, or returns the gift, so that giverhood arises through relation to the posterior. Or giverhood is superadded, meaning that giverhood is a distinct intrinsic determination added to what the first principle is, as though giver were an additional constituent beyond the first principle’s own actuality. Or giverhood is identical, meaning that giverhood names the first principle’s own actuality, not as an added feature but as what the first principle is, namely donativity in se, communicable plenitude identical with pure act.

The first horn is excluded by ultimacy itself. A first principle cannot be giver by being given to, or by being completed by recognition, exchange, or return. Such a giver would be posterior to the recipient in precisely the respect that constitutes giverhood. That is not firstness. A first principle may institute responses, but cannot receive its own identity from them.

The second horn is excluded by the same logic that drives the simplicity conclusion. If giverhood is superadded as a distinct intrinsic constituent, then the first principle would be composite, subject plus an added perfection, or essence plus a further determination. But every composite is posterior to its constituents and depends on a cause of unity. A first principle with a superadded giverhood would therefore require either internal composition or a unifier. Either way, it would cease to be ultimate.

A critic may attempt to evade this by proposing not a superadded accident but an intermediate intrinsic distinction, such as a formal difference, a virtual distinction, or a really distinct operative principle. Yet this does not escape the test. It merely changes the name of the addition. Any intrinsic determination that is not identical with the first principle’s actuality introduces a real plurality on the side of what the first principle is. That plurality either demands a unifier, reintroducing the cause-of-unity pressure, or makes the first principle resultant from constituents, reintroducing posteriority. The point is not to deny conceptual plurality in the mode of signifying. It is to deny real plurality in God that would make ultimacy depend on constituents.

At this point, another control must be stated explicitly to prevent overreach. Classical theism already grants a true mode of predication by extrinsic denomination. Creator and Lord can be said truly of God because creatures begin to be and depend, not because God acquires a new intrinsic determination. This is not empty naming. It is a metaphysical account of how true names can be grounded in effects without implying change in God. Therefore the following conditional must govern the remainder. If “giver” is intended only as an extrinsic denomination grounded in effects, then the predicate can be affirmed without requiring that giverhood specify anything intrinsic in God beyond pure act, subsistent being, and causal plenitude. But if “giver” is intended to name a positive profile of ultimacy in the strong sense, to say something true of the First as First and not merely to track posterior terms, then giverhood cannot be reception-constituted and cannot be superadded, and mere extrinsic denomination cannot function as the whole account. Under that strong reading, giverhood must be predicated by identity.

Therefore, under the strong reading, giverhood on the giver’s side is not a perfection God has as an additional constituent. It is the first principle’s own pure actuality, named under a gift idiom. This does not introduce a new qualitative content beyond pure act. It is a redescription of the same actuality under a controlled grammar. Donativity in se names the same divine actuality, identical in re though not identical in ratio. Conceptual distinctions remain permitted. Real composition is forbidden. This is the regress-stopper: the “tie” is not an extra item. It is the act itself named under communicability.

From this follows the governing corollary. Novelty cannot be located in God as a new intrinsic state. Novelty must be located in the term of giving, that is, in the instituted effect as received. The giver-side act is one and simple. The many belongs to the gift-terms. This is the placement verdict.

A further precision is required here, because a predictable objection arises. If the act is identical with God, how can it terminate differently without difference in God? The control here is participation rather than substrate. Distinct gift-terms do not require distinct giver-side acts because differentiation belongs wholly to the effects as received participations. The limitation that yields plurality is in the recipient and in the instituted term, not in the giver-side act. What is one in its source may be many in its receptions by diverse measures of reception. The difference is term-side, not act-side. Distinct termini do not require distinct intrinsic acts because the multiplicity is carried by participated effects, not by a multiplication of the giver-side actuality.

This participation-control also blocks the next objection, namely that different effects require different intrinsic volitions in God. The pressure is answered by the same placement verdict. Distinctions pertain to objects and to effects, not to a plurality of acts in God. One may therefore say, without multiplying divine acts, that the one giver-side actuality is freely and intelligibly ordered to diverse termini, while all differentiation is located in the instituted terms.

This control also resolves modal anxiety. If act-of-gift is identical with what God is, and God is necessary, does it follow that creation is necessary and so collapses contingency? The answer is that necessity and contingency are not tracked by sameness of act but by the determination of termini. God is necessary in se. Effects are contingent because God is free in the specification of what, if anything, is given ad extra. The necessity that follows from God’s willing is necessity of the consequence, not necessity of the consequent. If God freely wills to create, then what is willed follows infallibly. But that God wills to create is not forced by any intrinsic need or unrealized potency in God. The act is one and simple. The free decree concerns the term. Thus modal collapse is blocked without introducing any new intrinsic determination in God.

The upshot is a disciplined placement of novelty that preserves the accomplished profile of ultimacy and opens a coherent space for a gift-ontology grammar. The first principle cannot be giver by reception, for that would make it posterior. The first principle cannot be giver by addition, for that would make it composite and caused. Therefore, if “giver” is meant in the strong sense as naming a positive profile of ultimacy rather than merely tracking posterior effects, giverhood must name the First by identity, that is, it must name the first principle’s own actuality under the gift idiom. From this it follows that the drama of history and creation is not the drama of the first principle’s self-development. It is the drama of gift-terms, the instituted effects that arise by participation in the one simple act and therefore bear multiplicity, contingency, and temporal differentiation. In this sense the seventh principle is not an extra premise appended to the six. It is a precision instrument. It fixes the metaphysical place where novelty may be admitted without forfeiting the first principle as first, and it thereby makes possible a genuinely relational grammar of gift that does not lapse either into deism, which empties giving of reality, or into process, which relocates novelty into God and so abandons simplicity.

Principle 7B: Apophatic Superessentiality and Trinitarian Grammar, Origin without Composition

Principle 7 fixes the placement of novelty. If giverhood is successful in the strong sense, then it cannot be reception-constituted without forfeiting firstness and cannot be superadded without forfeiting simplicity. Therefore on the giver’s side giving must be predicated by identity, while all novelty and multiplicity are located in gift-terms as received and instituted effects. A further tightening follows when the tradition’s apophatic discipline is brought into the same register, not as a retreat from metaphysics but as its completion. The first principle, precisely as first, cannot be named as one being among beings, one instance within a genus, or one member within an inventory. In that sense the first principle can be called no-thing, but this no-thing must be sharply distinguished from absolute non-being.

Two senses of nothing must be separated. Absolute nothing is sheer non-being, an absence that cannot explain, cannot ground, cannot originate, cannot give. It has no actuality and therefore cannot function as origin. By contrast, apophatic nothing is not a claim of absence but a denial of creaturely measure. It denies that God is contained within the categories by which creatures count and classify beings. This apophatic denial is already demanded by the earlier principles: not in a genus, no common measure, and the refusal of superadded attributes. The first principle is no-thing only in the sense that it is not an item alongside items. This denial does not negate actuality. It negates commensuration. Precisely in that sense it protects transcendence.

This apophatic clarification removes a recurrent confusion about simplicity. Simplicity does not render the first principle thin by subtraction. It renders the first principle incomparable by refusing all composition and all commensuration. The first is not the minimal remainder left after removing features. The first is maximal actuality whose unity is not achieved by combining constituents but is original and underived. When the first is named no-thing, the negation is aimed at creaturely modes of being, not at actuality as such. Apophasis therefore stands in the same line as the metaphysical tests: if the first were something measurable, classifiable, or constituted by elements, it would not be first.

Once this is granted, a metaphysical pressure appears that does not replace the six principles but clarifies what the seventh is doing around the boundary of faith. If origin is sheer giver-side actuality and not a mere label imposed from the world, then origin is not inert firstness but self-communication. Yet this self-communication cannot be conceived as a new feature acquired, a new determination added, or a becoming enacted within God, for all such accounts reintroduce composition or posteriority. Therefore if one is to speak of self-communication on the giver’s side at all, it must be spoken as identical with the one simple act. Principle 7 supplied the decisive control: the giver does not become giver by receiving, and the giver does not have giverhood as an added perfection. If giverhood is real in God under the strong sense, it is God, that is, it names the same actuality.

Here the boundary between reason’s deliverance and faith’s disclosure must be stated with discipline. The earlier principles can carry reason to the judgment that the first principle is pure act, uncaused, not in a genus, without common measure, simple, and one. Yet that deliverance remains thin concerning God’s inner life. It determines what ultimacy must be like to be ultimate. It does not determine from reason alone whether ultimacy is internally personal and triune. Faith does not cancel reason’s end. Faith completes it. Faith names the same first principle as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is not the introduction of a second first principle alongside the first, but the disclosure of the first principle’s own inner grammar, disclosed in its own proper terms.

The completion is not irrational. It is governed by the same adequacy constraints. Any disclosed completion must preserve ultimacy and simplicity. Therefore, if faith names God as living self-communication, that self-communication must be intelligible without composition and without becoming. It must name distinction without parts, plurality without aggregation, and communion without a unifier. This is where the tradition’s Trinitarian grammar shows itself fitting, precisely because it locates distinction in relations of origin rather than in added constituents.

One may therefore state the decisive compatibility claim. Simplicity excludes all composition in God. Trinitarian distinction, on the pro-Nicene and classical account received within the Church, does not introduce composition because it is not a distinction by added features. The persons are not three centers of operation requiring a higher unity-maker. Nor are they three bundles of attributes composed into one essence. Rather, the one divine reality subsists in relations of origin. The relations are real, but they are not accidents. They are not superadded determinations of an underlying substrate. They are the divine reality itself, named under relational provenance. In this way simplicity and Trinity are not competing claims. Trinity is not simplicity plus three. Trinity is simplicity itself personally subsisting under origin.

This resolves the apparent tension about structure. Relation in creatures is structural in a predicamental sense because it is an added mode that presupposes and modifies already constituted substances. If that creaturely model is carried into God, relation appears as extra architecture and therefore as composition. The correction is to distinguish predicamental relation from relation of origin in the divine mode. In God relation does not arise as an added accident on top of essence. Relation is identical with the divine reality. The structure is not a constructed framework the essence inhabits. It is the divine reality itself as origin-ordered. The plurality is not in the divine being as if it were made of components. The plurality is in the personal subsistence of the one being according to origin.

From this, a controlled corollary may be stated without pretending to demonstrate the Trinity from reason. If the first principle is origin as pure act, then the first principle admits an internal taxis that is not temporal and not compositional. Origin without dependence corresponds to the Father as unoriginate source. Reception without deficiency corresponds to the Son as begotten, the received who is not a lesser being but the same simple act under the form of reception and redonation. Communion as unity of love corresponds to the Spirit as proceeding, not as a third ingredient added to two, but as the one act’s personal fruition, the in of their unity. Distinction is not introduced by adding something to the divine reality. Distinction is the divine reality itself subsisting in relations of origin.

This tightening also clarifies the apophatic idiom. God is no-thing relative to creaturely being as countable precisely because God is the origin of countable beings. The apophatic nothing registers the failure of creaturely categories to grasp origin as origin. But when origin is understood as giver-side actuality rather than as an item, the no-thing becomes luminous. God is beyond genus not because God is less than being, but because God is the giving of being. And when giving is taken seriously as naming the same divine actuality under a gift idiom, Trinitarian grammar becomes metaphysically apt. It articulates how origin can be fullness without composition, how self-communication can be intrinsic without dependence, and how distinction can be real without parts.

The scope of this corollary must remain sober. It is not a proof of the Trinity from reason alone. It is an adequacy pressure internal to a Catholic ordering. Once ultimacy, simplicity, and giverhood are held together under apophatic discipline, a merely solitary monad can appear metaphysically thin, because it renders giving either merely effect-grounded or conceptually inert. If the world is required for giverhood to be real, giverhood is reception-constituted and ultimacy is lost. If giverhood is reduced to a title tracking effects with no strong sense, then giver as a perfection becomes hard to articulate as anything more than shorthand for causal dependence. Trinitarian confession, by contrast, names giverhood as intrinsic without becoming and distinction as real without composition, precisely by locating distinction in relations of origin identical with the one simple act. That confession is a gift of disclosure, not a deliverance of metaphysical deduction. Yet it also does not violate reason’s constraints. It completes them.

Any implications for attributes and operations follow under the same discipline. Once God is understood as pure act and once giving is spoken as naming the same divine actuality under a gift idiom, the familiar attributes such as immutability and eternity are not evacuated but clarified as the characteristics of living plenitude rather than inert stasis. Divine knowledge and will are not additions. They are identical with the divine reality. The one simple act remains one, while the diversity belongs to the objects known and willed and to the effects that receive being as gift. In that light, to deny simplicity is to surrender ultimacy. To deny subsistent relations is to surrender the Christian naming of God. Together, simplicity and Trinitarian grammar form a single accomplishment that satisfies the demands of metaphysics at its end and the demands of revelation in its disclosure, not by collapsing one into the other, but by keeping each in its proper register and allowing the second to complete the first without rupture.

This principle does not extend the demonstrative reach of reason beyond the six; it fixes the conditions under which reason’s accomplishment can receive the disclosed Trinitarian names without compositional rupture, by locating all novelty in the instituted gift-terms and naming giverhood only as extrinsic denomination or as identity with pure actuality.

Having pressed reason this far up to and around the boundary, the task is to descend back into the concrete without losing the placement verdict. The next step is to show how gift-term history, sacrament, and ecclesial form can be spoken as instituted novelty without reintroducing intrinsic novelty in God, and without making the Church a self-constructing project. That is where inscription, received form, and the grammar of participation become unavoidable. But, that’s for another paper. Again, let’s get back on track .

Objections and Replies (I’ll leave my 7th principle out for the most part going forward to continue to show Hart’s fruits by re-constructing what he meant)

Modal collapse is a common worry. If essence is identical to existence in God, does that make all truths about God necessary and collapse contingency? The reply separates the necessity of the divine existing from the contingency of created termini. God’s single act is simple and eternal; the specification of that act with respect to creatures is free. Contingency resides in creatures whose essence and existence are distinct, not in God. (If you grant me 5 or 6 of the principles these great thinkers accomplished, then I’ve dealt with modal collapse arguments sufficiently here: https://robertdryer.com/defending-divine-simplicity/)

A second worry claims that identity of attributes makes knowledge and love indistinguishable. The response distinguishes reality from our way of understanding. In reality what is in God is identical with God. We arrive at God through effects and abstract different concepts from them. We then predicate those concepts analogically. The plurality of our concepts does not entail a plurality of constituents in God.

A third worry asks how positive God talk is possible if God is not in a genus. The denial that being is a genus removes the common scale, not analogy. Creatures participate in perfections that preexist in God eminently. We name God from those perfections while denying the defects that belong to finite modes. Maimonides’ via negativa and Aquinas’s account of names are complementary. Negative predication shields unity from addition, analogy secures that our words are about the real source of creaturely perfections.

Conclusion

Philosophically, the payoff is a rigorously defined profile of the first cause. On the level of reason alone, the six principles yield a single, sharp result: the first principle is pure act, simple, not in a genus, noncomposite, and necessary. Each of the six is indispensable. Aristotle and Aquinas force pure actuality and unity; once the first cause is unmoved mover and uncaused cause, any admixture of potency or composition collapses its status as first. Avicenna and Maimonides then show that any further “content” introduced as an added quiddity or a plurality of essential attributes would destroy uniqueness. A first that has quiddity beyond existence, or that carries really distinct perfections as extra pieces, is no longer the unconditioned source but a recipient and bearer. Taken together, the six principles answer why simplicity is not a decorative thesis but the metaphysical signature of ultimacy.

On that basis, Hart’s sentence is not a rhetorical flourish but a distilled conclusion. If reason is allowed to follow Aristotle, Avicenna, Maimonides, and Aquinas to the end of their arguments, the thing reached at the end of the journey has a determinate profile: pure act, without parts, not in a genus, without added quiddity, and guarded against internal plurality by a discipline of predication. To deny simplicity in this sense is therefore to deny that such a reality exists. One may keep the word “God,” but the referent shifts to a highest being inside a field, a composite whose unity has a cause, or a bearer of properties that stand together by some further principle. In that strict metaphysical sense, the denial of simplicity is “tantamount to atheism”: not a refusal of every deity, but a refusal of the only kind of reality that can count as God-as-first-principle.

For ongoing debates about divine attributes, modal collapse, and perfect being theism, the six principles function as an adequacy criterion. Any proposed account of God that aims to describe the underived source must meet all six tests. It must honor pure actuality at the summit, refuse composites and their causes of unity, reject any genus or common measure above God, exclude added quiddity at the top, and prevent a plurality of essential attributes from reconstructing God as a cluster of eternals with unity tacked on after the fact. If a model fails one of these, it has not merely tweaked a doctrine; it has stepped outside the God-as-first-principle framework and into a different kind of metaphysics. In sum, the six principles show that if there is an ultimate first cause, it must be as these thinkers say: utterly simple and one. The construction is rooted in close readings of Aristotle, Aquinas, Avicenna, and Maimonides rather than dogmatic assertion, and it explains why Hart’s sentence still burns.

Within a Catholic ordering, the seventh principle adds a further, but different, payoff. It is not needed to establish Hart’s verdict or to secure simplicity as the standard of ultimacy; that work is complete once the six principles are in place. What the seventh principle does is show how this same simple first principle is the God confessed as Father, Son, and Spirit. By identifying the only real distinctions in God as subsistent relations of origin, and by reading pure act as self-diffusive Good, the Catholic tradition receives the philosophical accomplishment rather than undoing it. Simplicity is not relaxed to make room for the Trinity; instead, the Trinity is understood as the inner life of the simple act: one essence, one act of being, eternally expressed as giver, reception-and-return, and shared communion.

That awareness of levels matters. A non-Christian classical theist may affirm the six principles and so stand fully within the Hart-style “not atheism” circle: they acknowledge the unconditioned first principle that reason reaches. A Catholic theologian affirms the same six and then adds the seventh to say who this first principle is in and as self-relation to the reality simplicity makes clear. Deny simplicity, and you lose the first principle altogether. Accept simplicity but deny subsistent relations, and you still have a true first principle, but not yet the Christian God of the creeds. In this way, the seventh principle does not alter the atheism verdict; it shows that Hart’s claim thrives most fully in a Catholic context, where the God whose loss would be equivalent to atheism is also the triune act-of-relation-as-gift.

Measured against this standard of ultimacy—God-as-first-principle—the field of contemporary proposals looks different. In what follows, I test two such alternatives against the six-principle core and as such it entails the Catholic completion: these are models that try to retain a maximal God while downgrading or abandoning simplicity. The aim is not to score dialectical points against them, but to show, with some precision, why each fails the simplicity condition without any compensating gain in explanatory power, and why Hart’s hard sentence continues to mark the fault line between a genuinely unconditioned God and a merely impressive being.

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Appendix A: Quote Bank

[1] Aristotle 1933, Metaphysics XII.6, 1071b17–20, “There must, then, be such a principle, whose very essence is actuality.”

[2] Aristotle 1933, Metaphysics XII.7, 1072a24–26, “…there is something which moves without being moved, being eternal, substance, and actuality.”

[3] Aquinas 1947–48, Summa Theologiae I, q.3, a.7, respondeo, “every composite is posterior to its component parts, and is dependent on them… every composite has a cause.”

[4] Aristotle 1933, Metaphysics VIII.6, 1045a8–12, “What is the cause of their unity?… the whole is something besides the parts, there is a cause.”

[5] Aquinas 1947–48, Summa Theologiae I, q.3, a.5, respondeo, “…being cannot be a genus… It follows then that God is not in a genus.”

[6] Avicenna 2005, Ilāhiyyāt VIII.4, p. 274, “The First has no quiddity other than His individual existence.”

[7] Maimonides 1904, Guide of the Perplexed I.51, p. 69, “There cannot be any belief in the unity of God except by admitting that He is one simple substance, without any composition or plurality of elements…”

[8] Gregory of Nazianzus 1994, Oration 29, xvi, “‘Father’ is not a name of either an essence or an action, but a relation.”

[9] Anselm 1998, De Processione Spiritus Sancti, i, “In God, all things are one, except where there is the opposition of a relation.”

[10] Bonaventure 1978, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, vi.2, “Good is said to be self-diffusive. The highest good, therefore, must be most self-diffusive… This implies the production of a Divine Person.”

[11] Augustine 1991, De Trinitate V.5, “Essence implies nothing of relationship, but relationship does not follow the logic of accident.”

[12] Aquinas 1947–48, Summa Theologiae I, q.29, a.4, respondeo, “A relation in God is not as an accident in a subject, but is the Divine Essence itself; and so it is subsistent.”

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Appendix B: Formal Reconstructions

Pure Act, Principle 1.

• P1: Every change or motion requires a cause that is actual in the relevant respect (Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics).
• P2: The chain of moved movers cannot regress to infinity; therefore there is a first cause.
• P3: The first cause is unmoved—“moves without being moved,” see [2].
• C: Therefore the first cause must be actuality through and through (pure act), with no unrealized potency, see [1].

Cause of Unity, Principle 2.

• P1: In any composite whole, the whole is something over and above its parts (Aristotle, Met. VIII.6).
• P2: Whenever the whole is more than the sum of parts, there is a cause that makes the many to be one—“the whole is something besides the parts, there is a cause,” see [4].
• C: Therefore every real unity of a plurality requires a cause of unity beyond mere aggregation.

Simplicity from Non-Posteriority, Principle 3.

• P1: Every composite thing is ontologically posterior to and dependent on its parts (Aquinas, “posterior to its component parts”), see [3].
• P2: Every composite thing has a cause of its composition (Aquinas, “every composite has a cause”), see [3].
• P3: The first principle is uncaused and prior by definition.
• C: Hence the first principle cannot be a composite; it is absolutely simple.

Not in a Genus, Principle 4.

• P1: If God were contained in a genus, He would be constituted by genus and difference (which entails potency relative to act); and, given ST I, q.3, a.4, God’s essence is identical with His existence.
• P2: Aristotle shows that being (and unity) cannot be a genus, see [5].
• C: Therefore God is not in any genus (Aquinas, ST I, q.3, a.5); what is first admits no common measure.

Necessary Existent’s Pure Existence, Principle 5.

• P1: Possible beings have a quiddity distinct from their existence.
• P2: The Necessary Existent’s existence is of itself (self-subsisting), not received.
• P3: Avicenna: “The First has no quiddity other than His individual existence,” see [6].
• C: Therefore the First’s what-it-is is nothing but existence; there is no essence/existence composition and no genus-membership at the summit.

Unity of God, Principle 6.

• P1: If God had multiple essential attributes as really distinct positives, there would be multiple eternals.
• P2: Maimonides: true belief in divine unity requires that God be one simple substance without composition or plurality, see [7].
• C: Therefore God must be one simple substance. Any plurality of essential attributes is ruled out by Principles 3–5, so unity demands absolute simplicity.

Subsistent Relations (The Christian Primitive), Principle 7.

• P1: The First Principle is Simple (P3) and has no accidents (P6); therefore, whatever is in God is the Essence.
• P2: There are real distinctions in God (Father, Son, Spirit) based on origin (Nazianzus, see [8]).
• P3: Distinction in a simple being is impossible unless it is purely relational opposition (Anselm, see [9]), and relations in a simple being cannot be accidents (Augustine, see [11]).
• C: Therefore, the distinctions in God are relations that subsist as the Essence itself (Relatio Subsistens); the Act is intrinsically Relational (Aquinas, see [12]).

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Appendix C: Terminology Cross-Reference

• energeia (Greek): actuality; opposed to dunamis (potency).
• dunamis (Greek): potentiality.
• actus / potentia (Latin): act / potency (Aquinas).
• wājib al-wujūd (Arabic): Necessary Existent (Avicenna).
• māhiyya (Arabic): quiddity, essence, whatness.
• ʾinniyya / ʾanniyya (Arabic): thatness, individual existence.
• ens / esse (Latin): being / to be; in God these coincide (esse ipsum subsistens).
• genus / differentia: logical framework for classification; genus is determinable, differentia actualizes.
• schesis (Greek): relation, disposition; the term Nazianzus uses to define the Persons.
• relatio subsistens (Latin): subsistent relation; a relation that exists not as an accident in a subject, but as the substance itself (Aquinas).
• bonum diffusivum sui (Latin): good is self-diffusive; the principle that the Good naturally shares itself (Bonaventure).

Two Contemporary Alternatives Tested

In what follows, two contemporary alternatives are tested against the standard of ultimacy already set out, what may be called the God-as-first-principle framework, and it will be shown why each fails the simplicity condition without any compensating explanatory gain. The first is Gregory Fowler’s proposal that substitutes a Schaffer-style priority structure for identity of attributes, the second is Timothy O’Connor’s pluralist model that rejects strict identity while aiming to retain maximal perfection and creative primacy. Both attempt to conserve robust theism without the classical package. Neither reconstructs a God-as-first-principle system. Each proceeds within a framework that presupposes internal plurality and explanatory dependence at the summit, and so neither can satisfy the simplicity, cause-of-unity, and non-genus constraints already in view.

Fowler’s proposal takes as its point of departure a metaphysics of grounding and priority rather than a metaphysics of identity in re. The background is Jonathan Schaffer’s defense of priority monism, on which the fundamental is not an absolutely simple subject but a structured whole in which parts are derivative by priority rather than by elimination of composition. Fowler uses this background to reframe divine aseity and simplicity. Instead of holding that the divine attributes are identical in reality with the divine essence, the move is to say that the divine reality grounds its manifold features without their being really identical. The thought is that dependence can be rendered as a strict order of priority that stops short of identity claims, and that aseity can be preserved because nothing outside God grounds God. On this strategy the classical insistence on identity is replaced by a well-founded order internal to the divine reality, one that promises to keep rich content without collapsing it into a single pure act (Fowler 2014; Schaffer 2010).

Measured by the six principles, the weak point is immediate and it is structural. The earlier principles did not equate simplicity with a refusal of richness but with the denial that what is first is the resultant of a prior many. The axiom that every composite is posterior to its components and has a cause was not proposed as a heuristic for creaturely cases only. It was presented as a categorical bar on locating the first within any dependency that introduces a real plurality needing a unifier. A priority ordering does not remove that bar. It redescribes the bar in a new vocabulary. If the divine subject includes several really distinct positives that are not identical in re, then either they remain many and their belonging to a single subject requires a cause of unity, or they are only conceptually many while being really one. The former contradicts ultimacy, the latter restates the classical thesis. Priority does not make a many to be one. It orders a plurality whose unity still stands in need of explanation.

On the classical account, the only explanation of such unity at the summit that does not forfeit ultimacy is identity in re. Where differentiae or features are truly many in reality, either a unifier is posited or the many are coordinate without a composer. A posited unifier imposes dependence and stepwise priority. A coordinate plurality leaves one with several basics. Both outcomes fail the simplicity and cause-of-unity tests. Fowler’s framework treats order as basic and uses it to underwrite togetherness, but order alone is not a cause of unity. It is a description of how many items stand with respect to one another. Without identity, unity at the summit is derivative or unexplained, and neither derivative nor unexplained unity can belong to what is first.

The non-genus rule reappears with equal force. A priority-structured God is comparable across the distinct items of the structure. Even if the comparison is not cast as species under a literal genus, the order functions as a scheme that measures and relates constituents by common ratios of priority and posteriority. The classical prohibition on placing the first under a common measure was meant to eliminate any such shared scale. It denied that there is a more general framework in terms of which the first is ranked or analyzed. Once the unity and content of the divine are parsed by an internal priority scheme, the divine case is repatriated to an order that compares many by a standard other than identity with the subject. That is the very move the non-genus principle blocks.

The point is clearest in the model’s treatment of attributes. On the classical view, wisdom, power, and goodness name realities that are identical with the essence. The plurality is conceptual and arises from the order of our knowing. On a priority-grounded model, wisdom, power, and goodness are not identical in re. They belong together by virtue of the priority structure. That is a rejection of Maimonides’ rule that what is superadded is accidental in force even if the term is refused, and it is a rejection of Aquinas’s axiom that things in themselves different cannot unite unless something causes them to unite. The dilemma therefore returns in its original form. Either a cause of unity is posited, which entails that the subject is not first, or the structure is declared uncaused, which leaves several uncaused positives at the summit. One option loses ultimacy through dependence, the other loses unity through plurality. Grounding vocabulary does not alter the metaphysics of unity. If the items are really many, a unifier is needed. If a unifier is needed, the subject is not ultimate. If no unifier is needed because the items are not really many, the classical identity thesis is in place under another description.

The deeper mismatch appears when Fowler’s reliance on Schaffer’s monism is set beside the first-principle profile. Schaffer’s target is the cosmos as a concrete whole whose parts are derivative in explanation. The God case, as treated by the classical accomplishment, is not the case of a concrete whole that outruns its parts. It is the case of a subsistent act of being without potency or composition and not measurable by a genus. To make God the most fundamental node in a larger network is to place God inside a common order. That is excluded by the non-genus rule. It also encourages the assimilation of creaturely dependence on God to the dependence of parts on wholes or of the less fundamental on the more fundamental, which confuses participation with internal priority. Participation is a relation to the source of being as such. Internal priority orders items within an already given field. The God-as-first-principle framework does not treat God and creatures as co-members of a single system. It treats creatures as recipients of being from a simple source.

Fowler can insist that the intent is not to put God in a genus nor to deny that God is the source, but to say that divine richness need not be gathered by identity—indeed, he proposes “the doctrine of divine priority … [as] a viable alternative to the doctrine of divine simplicity” (Fowler 2014, 134). The reply available from the earlier principles is that simplicity was affirmed not to economize away richness but to deny that the being of the first is the resultant of a prior plurality. The purity of act, the cause-of-unity requirement, the non-genus rule, and the Avicennian denial of added quiddity jointly ruled out any plurality at the summit that would need a composer. A refusal to use the word composition does not remove the dependence structure the word marked. Fowler’s own framing allows composition at the summit: “assuming that God has proper parts and properties that are distinct from him, those proper parts and properties depend on God for their existence. Furthermore, since dependence is asymmetric, God does not depend on those proper parts and properties for his existence… DDP is consistent with the claim that God exists a se” (Fowler 2014, 123–124). The priority framework brackets the dependence axiom that drove one classical route to simplicity and allows composition at the summit. It is therefore not a first-principle system. It does not show that the six-principle accomplishment fails. It sets aside several of the principles and substitutes an alternative metaphysics in which ultimacy is analyzed as being most fundamental within an order rather than being the unconditioned source—precisely the picture Schaffer commends when he writes: “The core tenet of historical monism is not that the whole has no parts, but rather that the whole is prior to its parts… the world has parts, but the parts are dependent fragments of an integrated whole” (Schaffer 2010, 32). Measured by the earlier standard, the proposal is weak. The reasons that forced identity of attributes are not addressed but bypassed, and the result is either a conditioned highest or a plurality at the summit. Either way the simplicity condition is not met, the God-as-first-principle profile is not recovered, and the explanatory work that simplicity performed is not achieved by the appeal to grounding and priority (Fowler 2014; Schaffer 2010).

O’Connor’s alternative is a more self-conscious departure. It rejects strict identity of essence, existence, and attributes in order to preserve a view of God as an agent with rich mental life and free creative activity. The model, in broad outline, affirms a necessary being whose existence is necessary and who freely wills the existence of contingent reality. Agency is basic and irreducible. Divine reasons are many. Powers are robust. Aseity is affirmed. Priority to creatures is affirmed. The rejection is focused on strict identity and on the non-genus corollaries that follow from it. The aim is to save the maximal perfections without identity claims that appear to flatten divine psychology. The attraction is clear. The model promises to capture the full range of theistic commitments about God’s knowledge, love, and choice while remaining philosophically intelligible, and it takes seriously the Christian requirement of a Trinity of persons. It is not indifferent to simplicity but seeks a diminished version that avoids obvious composition while not collapsing all predicates into a single act (O’Connor 2012).” “Some brief defenses: I have previously argued in favor of the dynamic theory on the grounds that it has marked explanatory advantages over the identity theory. My doubts concerning negative theology as a ground for the identity theory piggyback in part on arguments by Brower, but I give different reasons for the common ground principle. Concerning the properties approach, see the appendix to this paper for a sample of such arguments. Finally, one typically hears the predication theory stated in a form that strikes me as manifestly incorrect (for example, that for God, some predicate true of God is not a property of God but a sentence operator).

Measured by the six principles, the decisive difficulty remains the same. If strict identity of essence, existence, and attributes is denied, then there is a real plurality in God that cannot be removed by appeal to analogy or to our manner of knowing. The plurality is not a feature of our concepts only. It is built into the subject as basic. Once that plurality is admitted, the cause-of-unity question must be faced. Either unity is resultant from the distinct positives, or the positives are resultant from unity, or the positives and unity are coordinate. If unity is resultant, the divine whole is posterior to what composes it. If the positives are resultant, the perfections are not basic after all and derive from something more fundamental, which is at odds with the aim of preserving robust divine perfections. If unity and the positives are coordinate, there is a plurality of basics at the summit. None of the three options satisfies the requirement that what is first is uncaused and not posterior. The classical identity thesis avoided this trilemma by denying a real plurality in the subject. The perfections signified by the terms are identical in re with the essence, the distinctions are conceptual, and the divine act is one. The pluralist model refuses that identity and thus reintroduces the trilemma.

The non-genus concern returns as well. If God is not in a genus, there is no scale on which divine and creaturely perfections are co-ranked. On the classical account, strict identity was one device for making that denial explicit, since it precluded any parsing of the divine by generic content plus differentiating features. If identity is denied, another device is needed to prevent the slide into measuring divine and creaturely predicates by a shared kind. O’Connor emphasizes necessity and aseity and locates the difference in mode rather than in kind. Divine goodness and wisdom are necessary and underived, creaturely goodness and wisdom are contingent and participated. That distinction is significant. It does not secure the non-genus result by itself. If God has goodness and wisdom as distinct positives, the temptation reappears to think of goodness or wisdom as natures that God has under a necessary mode while creatures have them under a contingent mode. That is precisely the comparison the non-genus rule forbids. On the classical account, creatures resemble God because perfections flow from a simple source. God and creatures are not co-instances of a common nature measured by a shared standard. Without strict identity, the burden of blocking the shared-kind reading increases. The appeal to necessity does not by itself block it. The form of predication still treats God as the bearer of many distinct positives.

The Trinitarian case focuses the problem. A model that denies strict identity while affirming real personal distinctions must avoid reifying personal properties into essential parts and must avoid reducing personal distinctions to mere notional differences. The classical solution maintained identity in re for essence, existence, and attributes, affirmed that the personal relations are real and mutually opposed, and employed typed predication to secure that essential names are said of the one substance while personal names are said without introducing essential differences. This kept unity without parts and distinction without division. A pluralist model that denies strict identity does not inherit those safeguards. Once identity is refused, the model must either accept an essential plurality in God, which introduces parts, hierarchy, or a nature over persons, or else supply a new device that prevents essentializing personal properties without leaning on identity in re. If essential plurality is accepted, simplicity is lost by admission. If essential plurality is denied while identity is also denied, the model lacks an explanation of how many positives are in God without being parts. The classical achievement avoided both horns by tying predication to identity in re and by treating personal opposition as real relations that do not multiply essential constituents. The pluralist strategy cannot reproduce the same result without borrowing what it has set aside.

A further motive for rejecting identity is concern over modal collapse and the intelligibility of divine freedom. If God’s act is identical with the divine essence and is single and immutable, it is feared that the contingency of created reality and the variety of divine reasons is endangered. The earlier account already indicated why that fear is misplaced. Contingency resides in creatures whose essence and existence are distinct. The freedom of the divine act concerns the contingency of termini, not a plurality of intrinsic acts in God. The classical account did not need to multiply acts or posit real distinctions in God to capture variety. Variety belongs to effects. On that account, the denial of strict identity does not purchase additional explanatory power. It introduces plurality at the summit to preserve features that were preservable without it, and it does so at the cost of ultimacy. The result is that God is conceived as a bearer of many distinct powers and reasons, a maximal mind to which many predicates apply in reality. Unity must then be caused, or else a plurality of basics must be admitted. Neither alternative satisfies the simplicity, cause-of-unity, and non-genus conditions.

It is sometimes said in reply that identity of attributes is conceptually opaque, that theology ought to be intelligible, and that a modest simplicity will secure dependence results without metaphysical extravagance. The six principles respond directly to that concern. The path to identity did not begin with a taste for abstraction. It began with the claim that what is first is pure act, that every composite is posterior and caused, that there is no common measure prior to the first, that no quiddity is added at the summit, and that a multiplication of really distinct positives in God would either require a composer or multiply basics. Identity then follows as the only way to say that the first is not a resultant. A modest simplicity that allows real distinctions in God is not an alternate route to the same end. It is a different end. It yields a highest being whose unity is derivative with respect to an internal plurality. That is not the God-as-first-principle system accomplished by Aristotle, Avicenna, Maimonides, and Aquinas. It is a different metaphysics that cannot deliver the same ultimacy.

The verdict for both alternatives is therefore architectural rather than tactical. Fowler’s priority structure is not a God-as-first-principle system (Fowler 2014, 124). It fails because it does not answer the cause-of-unity question and because it places God within a scheme of ordering that presupposes the very plurality the classical account denies—viz., a priority ordering of distinct items rather than identity in re (Fowler 2014, 123–124; cf. Schaffer 2010, 31). O’Connor’s pluralism is not a God-as-first-principle system. It fails because it rejects the identity that underwrites the denial of composition—he trades strict identity for ‘inseparability only,’ where divine perfections are grounded in God but not identical with God (O’Connor, ‘A Metaphysical Inquiry into Islamic Theism,’ in Classical Theism: New Essays, 192–193). In each case the classical accomplishment is not refuted but set aside, and what is offered in its place is a different framework that cannot reach the same ultimacy. The earlier thesis stands. To deny simplicity is to change the referent of the term God. The result is a very impressive creature within a shared field, not the unconditioned source reason reaches when it follows its path to the end.

Conclusion: Simplicity or a Different God

What the Argument Delivers

Taken together, the six principles yield a single profile of ultimacy. The first cause, if there is one, is pure act without potency; every composite is posterior to its parts and has a cause of unity; what is first is not in a genus and is not ranked by any common measure; the Necessary Existent has no added quiddity; and divine predication must not smuggle a plurality of really distinct positives into the subject (Aristotle 1933; Aquinas 1947–48; Avicenna 2005; Maimonides 1904). This complex does not thin the divine. It rules out a resultant unity and identifies the source as a plenary, non-derivative act of being in which the perfections signified by our terms are identical in reality with what the first cause is. On that basis, familiar attributes—immutability, eternity, perfect goodness and knowledge—follow as entailments of pure actuality and noncomposite unity, not as add-ons.

Why the Alternatives Miss the Mark

The two tested proposals do not rebuild a God-as-first-principle system. Fowler’s priority template redescribes togetherness by an internal order of grounding while retaining a plurality of really distinct positives at the summit. Priority, however, does not make a many to be one; a cause of unity is still owed, and any caused unity forfeits ultimacy. The model also repatriates the divine case to a comparative scheme that functions like a common measure, contrary to the non-genus rule (Fowler 2014; Schaffer 2010). O’Connor’s pluralism rejects strict identity to preserve a rich divine psychology and libertarian agency, but that rejection reinstates the trilemma: either unity is resultant and posterior, or perfections are derivative and no longer basic, or a plurality of coordinate basics is admitted. None satisfies simplicity, cause-of-unity, or non-genus. The appeal to necessity and aseity does not by itself block the shared-kind reading once really distinct positives are placed in God (O’Connor 2012). In both cases, what is offered is not a correction within the classical framework but a different framework that cannot reach the same ultimacy.

Why Hart’s Charge Holds

On this analysis, the denial of simplicity changes the referent of “God.” The revised subject is either a structured whole whose unity is derivative (Aquinas 1947–48, ST I, q.3, a.7; Aristotle 1933, Metaphysics XII.6–7) or a bearer of many coordinate basics (Maimonides 1904, Guide I.51). In either case, the result is a highest within an order, not the unconditioned source of order (Aristotle 1933, Metaphysics XII.6–7; Aquinas 1947–48, ST I, q.3, a.5). That is why the denial is “tantamount to atheism” in Hart’s sense: not a rejection of all divinity, but a refusal of the only object reason reaches when it completes its path—an absolutely first cause that is simple, not in a genus, and without addition (Hart 2013, 128; Aristotle 1933, Metaphysics XII.6–7; Aquinas 1947–48, ST I, q.3, aa.5, 7; Avicenna 2005, Ilāhiyyāt VIII.4–5; Maimonides 1904, Guide I.51). What remains is an impressive creature, powerful and exalted, yet nested within principles more basic than itself (Hart 2013; Aristotle 1933; Aquinas 1947–48; Avicenna 2005; Maimonides 1904).

Implications and Close

The standard of ultimacy now in view sets a clear adequacy test for future models. Any account that introduces real internal plurality at the summit must supply a cause of unity and so abandons ultimacy, or else posits many basics and so abandons unity. Any account that measures God and creatures by a common scale forfeits the non-genus barrier. Any account that adds quiddity or property to the first places it among recipients rather than at the source. The classical construction shows why simplicity is not an optional aesthetic but the metaphysical signature of the first cause. Where simplicity is denied, the argument concludes, the subject is not the same. Hence Hart’s sentence still burns.

Is a denial of Simplicity tantamount to atheism? Yes. Yes, in the senses that it replaces the unconditioned first principle with only the highest within a comparative explanatory framework—Fowler by relocating the question into a Schaffer-style grounding hierarchy (‘most fundamental’ in a structured whole), and O’Connor by working inside an agency-first, property-pluralist options-space that treats perfections as coordinate basics—rather than with the underived source reason reaches. In stark contrast, the classical complex is not an explanatory framework at all, but a first-principle accomplishment: an interlocking set of demonstrations that yields a constitutive profile of ultimacy and so functions as an ontological standard, not a model among models.

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