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 (with minor updates on 02/01/2025)

SSGO: A Unified Worldview of the Triune God

In this introductory piece, we pursue two intertwined objectives. First, we explore how to reconcile divine simplicity with the genuine, eternal plurality of Persons in the Trinity—a central claim of orthodox theology. Second, we elucidate the meaning of divine simplicity as revealed through the Self‑Standing Givenness Ontology (SSGO), drawing on the full integration of classical theism, Saint Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine of simplicity, Jiri Benovsky’s insights on metaphysical primitives, and an inspiring nod to Jean‑Luc Marion’s notion of givenness. SSGO is presented as a comprehensive framework—a re‑visioned expression of timeless truths concerning God’s absolute unity and His tri‑personal self‑communication.

Part I – The Foundation

We begin with the unassailable premise that God is absolutely one and utterly simple. Catholic teaching—exemplified in the Catechism (sections 200–202) and Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae—declares that God has no composition: there are no physical parts, no form–matter dualism, and no separation between essence and existence as found in created beings. Scripture itself testifies in Deuteronomy 6:4 that “The LORD is one,” signifying a Being wholly actual, unburdened by any addable or subtractable parts; for if God were composite, He would be dependent on something external, contradicting His identity as the absolute, uncaused principle.

Yet, the same tradition affirms the real, co‑eternal, and co‑equal distinctions among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These are not fleeting roles but genuine hypostases that fully embody, share, and dispense the one divine essence. From the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed onward, the distinct language of begetting and procession—commanding baptism “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”—underscores the biblical insistence on true personal distinction. While the Church has long rejected both tritheism and modalism, it upholds that any perceived multiplicity does not imply partitioning the divine substance; rather, it reveals the profound mystery of a one God expressed in three self‑giving relational modes.

A central insight from Jiri Benovsky’s metaphysics provides a corrective and clarifying resource here. Benovsky teaches that primitives—irreducible relational elements—allow us to understand identity and compresence without appealing to a composite framework. In SSGO, these primitives are recognized as “relational modes”—the fundamental, non‑compositional ways in which the one divine essence is fully self‑expressed. Following Aquinas’s language of subsistent relations, SSGO articulates that:

The Father is the mode of self‑standing begetter;
The Son is the mode of self‑standing begotten; and
The Holy Spirit is the mode of self‑standing procession.

These modes are not additional parts of God; they are the very manners in which the undivided essence is manifested. As the Catechism (para. 255) affirms, each Person is wholly God (consubstantial), with genuine distinctions arising solely from their unique relational origins. Thus, we reconcile personal diversity and divine simplicity: the relational distinctions inherent in self‑givenness do not divide God’s essence but reveal its dynamic, unfragmented expression.

Part II – A Concise Expression of Divine Simplicity

Divine simplicity, as understood within SSGO, is encapsulated by four core claims:

No Composition: God is entirely without parts—nothing in Him can be added or subtracted, whether physically, metaphysically, or conceptually.
Absolute Unity: God’s essence is fully one and undivided; everything in God is simply God.
No Multiplication of Attributes: Any apparent distinctions in God’s attributes are merely conceptual, not indicative of a partition of His essence.
Complete Self‑Sufficiency: God is fully actualized, devoid of any unrealized potential that would imply a need for an external principle.

By treating the divine Persons as self‑standing relational modes of one simple essence, SSGO upholds both the fullness of divine simplicity and the genuine, eternal distinctions within the Trinity. This model shows that the tri‑personal life of God is not a composite of parts, but the manifestation of one undivided, self‑donating Being.

Part III – SSGO’s Premise

Please note: The following is my original contribution to philosophical theology—a premise for understanding divine simplicity through the lens of relational self‑givenness. Accept no substitutes.

A. Beyond Authority and Onto Relation as a Proposal
My approach employs contemporary metaphysical tools—specifically, the notion of relation and relationality—to transcend mere appeals to authority. It is intuitive that a relation can embody the entirety of being from a given vantage. Here, God’s self‑disclosure in Christ reveals a unique perspective that bypasses an infinite dissection of His nature, fusing Catholic tradition, Aquinas’s insights, and the modern tools offered by Benovsky and Marion into a forward‑looking presentation of divine simplicity.

B. What Is “Relation” in SSGO?
Critics might dismiss relational modes as reiterations of old debates on eternal relations, but in SSGO, “relation” is elevated to a robust philosophical category. A divine Person is not merely a fragment of God but the complete, fully actualized expression of the one essence from a unique relational vantage. This proposal goes beyond “trust me” theology by offering a clear criterion for non‑compositionality, where each self‑standing relational mode is the entire exercise of the divine essence—not an added attribute.

C. A Proposed Premise for Genuine Disagreement
From the standpoint of moderate realism and relational ontology, each self‑standing relational mode is not an incomplete fragment but the total, irreducible expression of the divine essence from its own unique stance. For example, the Father’s identity is not a mere clustering of attributes but an expression of unbegottenness that fully embodies the divine reality. SSGO thus enables a robust “monarchy of the Father” model that secures the integrity of tri‑une self‑givenness without reducing the divine to derivative or finite categories. In this way, the synthesis of Marion’s insights, Benovsky’s metaphysical primitives, and the re‑interpretation of classical tradition coalesce into an original and compelling articulation of divine simplicity. Enjoy!

Questions #0: Is Divine Simplicity Biblical? And Trinity & Simplicity together, really?

Question #1: In light of Catholic teaching on God as actus purus (cf. CCC 268–271) and Creator of all things, how can God be genuinely free to create or not create when He has no unactualized potential?

Question #2: Within a Catholic framework that affirms God’s sovereignty (cf. CCC 303), if God chooses not to create, does this imply that God “could have” created and thus had some unrealized potential, seeming to contradict divine simplicity?

Question #3: How can the classical (Thomistic) understanding of God’s freedom, as endorsed by major Catholic theologians (e.g., Aquinas in Summa Theologiae I.19), be reconciled with the claim in Catholic doctrine that God has no unactualized potential?

Question #4: If, according to Catholic tradition, God is free to bring about a universe different from ours (cf. CCC 295), does this possibility suggest God possesses unactualized potential, challenging the Church’s affirmation of divine simplicity?

Question #5: Is the classical claim–widely accepted in Catholic scholasticism–that God has no unactualized potential consistent with the Church’s teaching on divine freedom (Denzinger references on omnipotence)?

Question #6: How can the Catholic affirmation that all of God’s acts are ultimately one simple act (cf. ST I.3.7; CCC 202) be compatible with the teaching that God freely wills diverse ends (e.g., creating vs. not creating)?

Question #7: Given the Church’s distinction between God’s necessary existence and His free creative act (cf. Lateran IV, DS 800), how do we reconcile the assertion that God’s creative act is identical to His essence with the belief that creation is contingent?

Question #8: Does identifying God’s act of creation with His very being (as Catholic tradition often implies) risk implying that creation, like God, is absolutely necessary, contradicting the Church’s teaching that the world is created “freely out of nothing” (CCC 296–298)?

Question #9: If God’s creative act and His existence share the same necessity (cf. ST I.45.2), does this mean that, from a Catholic perspective, God could not do otherwise, thus undermining free creation?

Question #10: Is the Catholic assertion (DS 3002, on God’s absolute sovereignty) that God is free to create or not create consistent with the classical-theist idea that in God there is only one, necessary act?

Question #11: How does the Church’s Trinitarian dogma–three distinct persons, one divine essence (CCC 249–256)–square with the claim of divine simplicity that “all that is in God is God”?

Question #12: If Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each fully God (Council of Florence, DS 1330–31) and thus identical with the divine essence, how does Catholic theology maintain their genuine personal distinction while upholding simplicity?

Question #13: Does the transitive nature of identity, as applied in classical metaphysics, imply (if the Father is God and the Son is God) that Father = Son, undermining the Church’s dogmatic insistence on Trinitarian distinction (DS 804)?

Question #14: Can the Catholic claim that anything intrinsic to God is identical to the divine essence be reconciled with the real distinction of persons proclaimed by the Church (e.g., the Fourth Lateran Council)?

Question #15: What Catholic theological responses exist to the objection that divine simplicity is incompatible with the Trinity, and how effectively do they preserve both doctrines as taught in Church tradition (cf. Augustine, De Trinitate)?

Question #16: Does the doctrine of divine simplicity–so crucial to Catholic scholasticism–render God “unintelligible” or overly abstract, and how does the Church address concerns that this might distance believers from a personal God (cf. CCC 279–301)?

Question #17: Does Thomistic simplicity, upheld by many Doctors of the Church, reduce God to a mere property, conflicting with the Church’s affirmation that God is the living, personal Creator and Father (CCC 239)?

Question #18: Does the classical (Thomistic) teaching endorsed in Catholic theology risk leading to modal collapse–implying all possible worlds are identical–thereby negating contingency and free will (cf. DS 3005 on human freedom and divine providence)?

Question #19: How, within a Catholic metaphysical framework, does the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals avoid making God’s creative act necessary, thus preserving the Church’s insistence on creation’s contingency (CCC 296–298)?

Question #20: Given Leibniz’s Law and the Catholic acceptance of God’s simplicity, how does one reconcile God’s identity with His creative act while ensuring that creation remains a free, contingent gift (DS 3025)?

Question #21: How can Catholic thought distinguish between God’s absolutely necessary existence (Lateran IV, DS 800) and the contingent nature of His creative acts, ensuring the world is not necessitated by His essence?

Question #22: How does Catholic theology, especially Aquinas’s concept of actus purus, reconcile God’s pure actuality with the freedom to create, thereby preserving divine simplicity (CCC 295–296) without introducing unrealized potentials into God?

Question #23: In a deeply Catholic view, how can we uphold God’s freedom and intentionality in creation while avoiding modal collapse–does an indeterministic link between God’s one simple act and its effects compromise divine intentionality?

Question #24: How does Catholic theology address the concern that “God’s creative act = God Himself” implies a metaphysical necessity of creation, given the Church’s constant teaching on the free and contingent nature of the world (DS 3025)?

Question #25: Does divine simplicity conflict with the scriptural and magisterial portrayal of God’s emotional expressions (e.g., love, mercy, wrath), and how does the Church preserve these attributes (CCC 210–211)?

Question #26: How does divine simplicity, as taught in Catholic scholastic tradition (cf. Aquinas), intersect with the “problem of evil,” in light of God’s sovereign goodness (CCC 309–314)?

Question #27: Can divine simplicity (holding that God is utterly one) truly accommodate the relational dimension of Trinitarian theology–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–without lapsing into modalism or subordinationism (cf. DS 804)?

Question #28: How does divine simplicity reinforce or complicate the Catholic teaching on divine impassibility (CCC 370, 600) which states that God does not undergo emotional changes as creatures do?

Question #29: What are the best ways, within the Catholic intellectual tradition, to communicate the philosophical depth of divine simplicity to contemporary believers without diluting the Church’s dogmatic content (CCC 156–159)?

Question #30: How does a “relational ontology” approach (e.g., self-standing givenness theory) harmonize God’s dynamic interaction with creation, as upheld in Catholic spirituality and magisterial teaching, with the classical principle of simplicity affirmed by the Church?

Question #31: In light of the ‘modal collapse’ argument, how do we preserve God’s real freedom and the contingency of creation and redemption, while simultaneously affirming the classical doctrine of divine simplicity?

Question #32: How do the Old and New Testaments’ ‘I AM’ statements jointly reveal a single, tri-personal God?

Question #33: How can the singularly unique, simple God immutable and impassible become incarnate in Jesus Christ, truly assuming a finite, passible human nature, yet remain uncompromised in His divine simplicity?

Question #34: If someone posits that the Trinity has three distinct wills (one per Person), how does this claim conflict with christian teaching on the single divine will, divine simplicity, and the unity of Christ’s two wills (divine and human)?

Question #35: How can the God who appears in the Old Testament (e.g., “El Shaddai” seen by the patriarchs) be the same Father whom Jesus says no one has ever seen (John 1:18), if Catholic theology also insists on one undivided divine essence and three distinct Persons?

Question #36: Is SSGO Biblical?

Question #37: Is SSGO computational?

Question #38: What exactly is the Self-Standing Givenness Ontology (SSGO), and how does it defend divine simplicity?

Question #39: What’s a “mode” and “vantage” in divine simplicity, especially in the Self-Standing Givenness Ontology (SSGO)?

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?

Q #42: How does κοινωνία (koinōnía) and πλήρωμα (plērōma) demonstrate divine simplicity? (Scriptural Testimony: κοινωνία (koinōnía) and πλήρωμα (plērōma))

Q #43: Given #42, WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO SAY GOD HAS NO PARTS?

Question #44: How can Hebrews 1 simultaneously assert the Son’s full deity and distinct Personhood from the Father while preserving the one undivided essence of God?

Question #45: How does Romans 11:36 speak of divine simplicity?

Question #46: Can SSGO’s relational horizon approach or meet Thomistic concerns and tests, specifically can it preserve each Person as a full subsisting Divine ‘Who’ identical with the one simple divine essence?

Q. #47: Does the relational context precede the Persons?

Q. 48: Is God a Self or Personally Simple?

Q. #49: What does it mean to count the Persons in a simple God?

Q. #50: Does hyperintensionality challenge divine simplicity?

Question #51: How can the one, undivided divine essence be fully expressed in the Monarchy of the Father and his Person without implying any composition or fragmentation in God?

Q. 52: How is divine simplicity realized?

Q. 53: What is a good analogy for how the harmony of Trinity and Simplicity are explained?

The argument set forth above, contextualized within the claim that by grounding each Person in a self‑standing relational mode of the one divine essence, we uphold both divine oneness and the real, eternal distinctions among the Persons, is and as central to the SSGO way of doing theology. A self‑standing relational mode is the foundational concept that describes how each divine Person (Father, Son, Spirit) fully embodies the one simple essence without any added “parts.” In this framework, the distinct identity of each Person arises precisely from the way the essence is possessed—its relational mode—rather than from partitioning the essence into separate pieces.