Defending Divine Simplicity
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Divine Simplicity, Trinity, and Understanding Simplicity’s Role Through the Relationality
by Robert Moses Dryer Posted on January 10th, 2025.
In this introductory piece, we have two objectives. First, we will explore how to reconcile divine simplicity with a real plurality of Persons in the Trinity (a central orthodox claim). Second, we will summarize what divine simplicity is, especially in light of the Self-Standing Givenness Ontology (or “SSGO” for short), and the work I have done on divine simplicity here at robertdryer.com. Our method in this first part of the paper draws on my general understanding of classical theism, Saint Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine of simplicity, Jiri Benovsky’s view on metaphysical primitives as a nuanced emphasis for understanding the subject here, and we’ll also lean on Jean-Luc Marion’s notion of givenness in a loose sense. The SSGO is this framework all together, if you will. The central claim of the SSGO is that relationality itself is an irreducible mode of God’s one divine essence, thereby preserving God’s absolute simplicity while maintaining the real distinctions among the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. However, at the end of this piece (the third part) I will, in fact, provide a premise to focus on so one can’t claim I’m merely making an assertion or merely leaning on authorities. The reality is the defense of simplicity here, not only has the classical tradition, and a creative use of authorities, but a contribution through a specific premise to which to focus on as we’ll see in Part III.
Part I
First, we begin with the premise that God is absolutely one and simple. In Catholic teaching, for example, particularly as shown in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (sections 200 through 202) and in Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, God has no composition of any kind (see Summa Theologiae I, question 3). There are no physical parts, no form-matter duo, and no distinction of essence and existence that one would find in creatures when it comes to the Christian God. Scripture confirms this when Deuteronomy 6:4 declares that “The LORD is one,” which the Church has normatively taken to mean that God’s being is wholly actual, containing no “parts” that could be multiplied or added. If God were not simple in these senses, He would be dependent on something external, thus contradicting the Church’s assertion in councils such as Lateran IV and Vatican I that God is the one, absolute principle in principle.
On the other hand, this same tradition also insists that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are really distinct, co-eternal, and co-equal Persons. I like to say they fully possess, are, fully give, and share in all that it means to be God, when I’m in an existential and phenomenological frame of mind. But, to be more precise, from the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed to later definitions reaffirmed by councils, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three distinct hypostases (you’ll have to do some googling or research for the jargon here sorry) who are each fully God. This means there is no set of fleeting roles or appearances; rather, there are three genuine Persons. Matthew 28:19 demonstrates this in practice, where the Lord commands baptism in the singular name of Father, Son, and Spirit, and it presupposes or also implies three distinct subjects; and, the consonance of history within the Church such as with patristic voices like Athanasius and Augustine opposed modalism by emphasizing that these distinctions are real. Catholic dogma, moreover, has historically ruled out both tritheism (treating the three Persons as three separate gods) and modalism (one Person acting in three superficial modes). If the Trinity were three separate entities, that would introduce parts into God’s essence. Conversely, denying genuine personal distinction for the sake of preserving unity collapses into one divine Person in three roles. Hence the Church’s dogma upholds absolute simplicity while also affirming that the divine Persons are truly distinct.
A core insight from Jiri Benovsky’s metaphysics helps use here, in the process of solving this apparent conceptual dilemma: identify the irreducible explanatory items, or primitives, that elegantly handle all the conceptual demands. My SSGO framework here, treats these primitives as “relational modes” rather than properties or parts added onto God. This allows us to say that the Persons are each a fundamental, irreducible stance of the one essence, rather than distinct pieces that might compose God. (What we’re doing here is locating simplicity and Trinity in terms of relation.)
Relations help in one sense, and going deeper by following loosely Aquinas’s language and example of subsistent relations, SSGO describes each divine Person as a distinct mode of being the single divine essence. The Father is the mode of self-standing begetter, the Son is the mode of self-standing begotten, and the Spirit is the mode of self-standing procession. Because these modes are purely relational, they introduce no composition into God; they are simply how the single essence is lived and expressed in each Person. No extra “parts” need to be accounted for, since “being Father,” “being Son,” and “being Spirit” are simply irreducible ways of possessing the same essence. The Catechism paragraph 255 affirms that each Person is wholly God (consubstantial), and that any real difference among them must lie in relational origin, not in dividing up God. Hence, we arrive at real distinctions without composition. The Father, Son, and Spirit are genuinely distinct—Father not Son, Son not Father, and so forth—but none is a “piece” of God.
We therefore reconcile the need for real personal diversity (no modalism) with the need for one simple essence (no tritheism). By grounding each Person in a self-standing relational mode of one indivisible essence, I think we have elegantly preserved divine simplicity while acknowledging the real distinctions at the heart of Trinitarian theology.
In short, by relying on Jiri Benovsky’s insight, SSGO posits that relational modes allow us to have irreducible differences in God—namely, Father, Son, and Spirit—while leaving the essence intact and undivided. From the perspective of Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenological emphasis on givenness, these modes also express God’s essence as fully self-given. Each divine Person is wholly God’s essence realized in a particular relational stance, so that no addition or composition can occur.
One important issue relates to modern identity theory, which often reduces identity to strict numerical equivalence in every property (as in Leibniz’s Law). Such a reduction is too narrow for talking about the Trinity, because God is not an object among others susceptible to purely logical, property-based identity checks. The very idea seems incredibly naive to say the least. A more moderate and realistic approach to the realism I’m implying here goes a different route. Many discussions of God’s identity would be stifled by this Leibniz-like world view, since God exists in a non-objectifiable domain, in reality is uniquely a domain incomparable, where what we’re doing is expressing how transcendence and immanence coincide in harmony and balance. Classical and relational models alike treat the Father “is God” and the Son “is God” as co-true without collapsing the Father into the Son, for their distinction is relational, not a set of separate properties. SSGO thus acknowledges that purely numerical identity theory can fail to grasp how irreducible relational modes unify the divine essence without forcing a contradiction. God’s self-disclosure and the phenomena in some sense confer identity. This ensures SSGO approach ensures our relational focus here is not hindered by reductive identity approaches, since the theological claim here transcends the usual categories of “same properties” and “one to one identity.”
Turning to the issue of “no composition” in more detail, we observe that Aquinas’s scholastic approach concludes that God cannot be composed of parts because that would introduce dependency or potentiality. For Aquinas, God is the Uncaused Cause, free from any principle beyond himself, so He must be pure act with no unrealized possibility. Likewise, in SSGO, each Person is the complete, self-standing givenness of God’s essence, so there can be no partial or potential dimension that requires “assembly.” The triune relational life of Father, Son, and Spirit is eternally complete, meaning no compositional framework is possible. Thus, SSGO matches the same depth and logic that Aquinas uses to protect God’s utter noncompositeness but in relational terms as the starting point. However, Aquinas is an option if one needs a more de-facto approach to these issues. So, I’d refer to him if you do not need, nor want really, a more modern way of looking at things as I’m doing here.
Next, we address the classical notion of God as pure act with no potential, where Aquinas reasons that if God had any unrealized potency, God would need some external agent to actualize that potential. SSGO reframes this by insisting that the tri-personal relational existence of God is already fully actual: each Person wholly “is” the single divine life, with nothing left to be added or developed. By way of analogy, humans live much of their lives to be actualized. Since God is perfect and incomparable in this sense of his perfection he is fully actualized always and already in some important senses. But to keep it introductory, and not get too far deep in analogy and metaphor, there is no potential for the Father to be “more Father” or the Son to be “more Son” at some future state; all is fully realized from eternity. God is more fundamental than time because whatever God is, the Trinity, is God’s own self-ordering principally and by definition, for example. Through this relational lens, we reach the same conclusion that God has no potential waiting to be activated.
Returning to identity in a different sense, a more contemporary way to think about od her is with what I call “the essence-as-givenness identity,” where we can see through this point of view how the SSGO accomplishes what Aquinas does with essence equals existence. The essence-as-givenness identity allows us to sidestep a substance based ontology and stay in this relational vibe. Instead of bridging “essence” and “existence” in an Aristotelian sense, SSGO states that the essence is already fully self-given in each Person. As the creed says, God from God, true God from true God. No bridging act is needed to make the essence actual, because the essence just is relational givenness from Father, Son, and Spirit. The relation is a “monarchia” if you like traditional language, like some of the church fathers use to talk. Thus, the same end is served: God is free of any internal gap or composition, and we can emphasize God is fully and freely given.
The same line of reasoning applies to the question of whether God’s attributes might be distinct parts in God. Aquinas resolves that all attributes are identical in God, though distinct in our understanding. SSGO likewise insists that love, justice, and other perfections are simply how we name the one tri-personal self-giving. These attributes do not subdivide God’s essence. Hence, no real partition arises among God’s attributes: maintaining God’s absolute simplicity. Additionally, classical theology holds that there is only one divine will, because will belongs to nature, not to person. SSGO echoes this, claiming that each Person fully embodies the same divine essence, so there cannot be multiple volitional centers. This prevents tritheism, ensuring that Father, Son, and Spirit act via one will, albeit distinct in how each Person appropriates that one divine act.
Turning to the question of how the Father, Son, and Spirit are eternally distinct, classical tradition speaks of unbegottenness, begottenness, and procession as the relations of origin. SSGO calls these irreducible, self-standing relational modes, each wholly embodying the same essence, thereby explaining distinction without composition. In other words, the Father is not a part of God, the Son another part, and the Spirit a third part; each is God’s entire essence in a distinct relational stance. Again, one can see monarchia, and subsistent relations for more if you need more on this from the classical tradition. SSGO is able to use these more contemporary views without getting caught in too many paradoxes or older metaphysics people may not intuitively understand. We’re heavily leaning on contemporary notions that everything is connected and God is not everything, but he gives us a reason to see why as we develop the argument here.
Finally, SSGO demonstrates that there is no contradiction in having three real Persons and one simple essence. Classical theologians say there is no logical inconsistency: the essence is not multiplied, and the persons do not become separate entities. SSGO’s relational ontology confirms that three distinct stances of the essence do not produce division but simply express the one being in irreducibly different ways. Thus, the plurality of Persons and the total simplicity of God cohere without contradiction. So far, we focused on showing that divine simplicity and a real plurality of Persons in the Trinity can be reconciled by treating the Father, Son, and Spirit as self-standing relational modes of one divine essence. Supported by Aquinas’s noncompositeness principle, Benovsky’s metaphysical primitives, Marion’s givenness, and Catholic doctrinal tradition, SSGO affirms that God is not composed of parts, is fully one, and yet exists tri-personally without contradiction. Through a relational ontology, SSGO achieves the same theological outcomes as classical scholastic metaphysics, preserving both the real distinctness of each Person and the indivisible unity of the divine essence.
Part II
Now let’s go on to present a concise expression of divine simplicity. Kind of like answer what it is. There are roughly four claims that constitute divine simplicity in my understanding. First, God has no composition of any kind. There are no “parts” whether physical, metaphysical, or conceptual that form God. Nothing in God can be added or subtracted. Second, God’s essence is fully one and undivided, so that whatever is in God is simply God. Third, no attribute or property in God introduces partition or multiplication; all are conceptual distinctions in us, not real distinctions in God. Fourth, God remains fully self-sufficient, with no unrealized potential. If God had any latent capacity, that would imply a further principle or part within God, contradicting the belief that He is purely actual and depends on nothing external. These four points safeguard the notion that God’s oneness is absolute, undiminished by personal relations or named perfections.
In conclusion to the set up and argument part of this piece, the Self-Standing Givenness Ontology approach, combined with the fun twist of classical Catholic doctrine we’ve been doing here, demonstrates that one can affirm both real plurality of Persons and divine simplicity without contradiction. By treating the Persons as self-standing relational modes of a single essence, SSGO avoids either fragmenting God into three partial beings or collapsing the tri-personality into a single mode. The result is a theologically coherent view that respects Scripture, tradition, and philosophical clarity, while holding to the vital truth that God’s tri-personal life in no way compromises His undivided simplicity. We can now move into a definitional premise that underlies all the above.
Part III SSGO’s Premise
Please note: this next bit of theologizing is a true contribution to philosophical theology and is an original one at that. I am presenting it to the world here on January 10th, 2025. So, if you see other thinkers making a similar claim they got the premise and idea from me. Accept no substitutes. 😜
A. Beyond Authority and Onto Relation as a Proposal
The virtue attempted in answering all the questions raised on divine simplicity on this page below so far has been the appeal to a modern and contemporary set of tools, such as relation and relationality. It is, in fact, intuitive that a relation can be understood as the entirety of being from a genuine vantage, and in this case I am saying that God’s self-disclosure in Christ is a unique and privileged vantage from which we can surpass the notion of dissecting God to a deeper or “deepest” reality. Beyond this sense, whether one adopts or even accepts it, we also employ the Catholic tradition, consult Aquinas, invoke cutting-edge metaphysics such as Benovsky’s primitives, and lean on a prolific thinker of Marion’s caliber. This collective “virtue” provides a context in which to present divine simplicity, a classical idea, in a way that is relevant and connected to the past while remaining open to the future. Whether or not this approach is itself an open question is precisely what makes theology, philosophy, and any science what they are, because arguably no powerful explanation can be wholly free of the question whether its approach or mode of knowing is, in fact, an open question or not. The question-and-answer formatting on my website here arises because the issues are posed and then answered, but of course, whatever one obtains from that approach is itself another vantage I want no control over really.
B. What is “Relation”
Given this, we should clarify what “relation” means in SSGO so that potential complaints–claiming it merely restates the classical problem of describing eternal relations in new language–are addressed, rather than leaving it unclear whether the approach might reduce to reliance on “it’s true because the Church says so.” In part, it is true that the Church declares certain truths, and this is Jesus’s Church; there is no absolute escape from an appeal to authority. However, we are not merely relying on authority, but also on a premise.
That premise is this: rather than leaving a “relational mode” as impossible to dissect further (in some sense), I am trying to elevate it to the entirety of being from vantage X, giving a clear reason why a Person is never just a “piece” of God but always the full divine reality under a unique relational stance. In this sense, I am asking the reader to accept this premise along with, not only, my reliance on authorities. So I am not engaged in mere “trust me bro” theology. Relationality, in my opinion, always entails a dimension of dialogical trust, but there is more to it here. The claim is that a “part” cannot be the entire essence, while a “mode” precisely is that entire essence, wholly possessed in an irreducible vantage. Accepting this premise closes the gap in a way that surpasses a simple classical assertion, because it offers a philosophical criterion for non-part status, letting me rely on more than just authorities and sources.
Critics will of course quote other sources, but that is an endless game. This premise lets us avoid that kind of silly endless regress game of defeater after defeater and either agree or agree to disagree on the premise itself rather than on mere assertions. Hence SSGO makes this bold proposal.
C. This Proposed Premise for a Genuine Point of Disagreement Beyond Assertions and Authorities
In sum, from the standpoint of moderate realism and a relational ontology, each “self-standing relational mode” is not an incomplete fragment of the essence, but the complete exercise of that essence from a unique, irreducibly distinct vantage of relational identity. Here I mean that each divine Person is recognized as a distinct “who” in perfection and by the unique relational stance in which the entire divine essence is possessed, rather than by adding a set of discrete properties. It is akin to a horizon of meaning in which, for example, the Father’s identity does not emerge from a cluster of attributes but from being unbegotten and fully embodying the one essence in that irreducible relational mode. Each Person is, therefore, “the whole essence,” not a partial share, because the difference among Persons arises from how the essence manifests itself as a coherent stance, rather than from which “portion” of reality each one holds. No summation of modes is greater than any single mode, for each mode is the entire essence, simply lived in a distinct way. This premise is also definitional for my general reliance on relationality as primitive too; well, at least for when I reference the divine reality. Creatures in infinite contrast have a range of properties and accidents, and their relations typically come and go, but God’s internal relations (Father, Son, Spirit) are constitutive of who God eternally is. Thus the meanings I will use in the answers is significantly different when applied to creation. Whatever the case this proposed premise the SSGO leans on is the point to which we can have our clarity and consonance or departure.
To be clear my-exact articulation-that is the core premise(s), the synergy of Marion and Benovsky, the focus on each Person as the entire essence from a distinct vantage–is my claim as an original contribution. Obviously, without Jesus, the Bible, Aquinas, and the whole classical tradition this contribution is not even possible. For example, relations of origin within simplicity is itself a feat of the human intellectual spirit that I stand in awe and appreciation of. My little premise is just witty interdisciplinary theologizing that creatively demonstrates Benovsky’s “problem solver” idea actually works, even if it is for a clear disagreement. Hence, the Answers Below Come From this Vantage Philosophically and Theologically. Enjoy!
Questions #0: Is Divine Simplicity Biblical? And Trinity & Simplicity together, really?
Question #36: Is SSGO Biblical?
Question #37: Is SSGO computational?
Question #40: SIMPLICITY AND THE IMAGE OF GOD?
Question #41: WHAT’S ROBERT MOSES DRYER’S VIEW AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE SUBJECT ON DIVINE SIMPLICITY?
The argument at top and that these questions are contextualized within claims that by grounding each Person in a “self-standing relational mode” of the single divine essence, one can uphold both Premise 1 (God’s oneness and simplicity) and Premise 2 (the Trinity’s real, eternal distinctions) while avoiding the contradiction of “parts” in God.
A self-standing relational mode is the foundational concept in SSGO that describes how each divine Person (Father, Son, Spirit) fully embodies the one, simple divine essence without adding “parts.” It is called “self-standing” because the mode itself is not a fragment or property tacked onto God but rather the entire essence “lived” in a particular relational stance (unbegotten, begotten, or proceeding).
By “grounding” each Person in such a mode, the argument means that the real distinction among the Persons arises precisely from these irreducible relational modes, rather than from partitioning God’s essence. That is, the “ground” of each Person’s distinct identity is the way He possesses the essence (e.g., unbegotten for the Father), not a new “piece” added to God’s oneness.