The doctrine of divine simplicity, the doctrine that God has no physical or metaphysical complexity whatsoever, is not a doctrine designed to induce immediate philosophical acquiescence. There are severe questions about its coherence. And even if those questions can be answered satisfactorily in favour of the doctrine, there remains the question why anyone should accept it. Thomas V. Morris raises both sorts of questions about a version of the doctrine which I have put forward. In the following pages I shall (...) respond to what I take to be the most serious of Morris's objections. I shall argue that the doctrine survives Morris's onslaught, but that one observation of his points it in a direction I had hitherto not taken seriously. The bulk of Morris's paper raises questions of the first sort; perforce the bulk of my paper will also. I shall offer, at the end, a reason for thinking that neither of us is yet in a position to pronounce categorically on the second question. My remarks in this paper constitute an interim report on how I think things presently stand with divine simplicity. (shrink)

The paper surveys two contrasting views of first‐order analyses of classical theistic doctrines about the existence and nature of God. On the first view, first‐order logic provides methods for the adequate analysis of these doctrines, for example by construing ‘God’ as a singular term or as a monadic predicate, or by taking it to be a definite description. On the second view, such analyses are conceptually inadequate, at least when the doctrines in question are viewed against the background of classical (...) theism’s doctrine of divine simplicity, for first‐order analyses presuppose an ontological complexity on the part of the propositions which they analyze, which fits ill with this doctrine. (shrink)

Christian Platonism and Divine Simplicity remain the most commonly discussed views with respect to the way in which Christians ought to conceive of God’s nature and properties. In this essay, I suggest that we ought to consider seriously two versions of a quite different view, namely, what I call “the Nominalized Composite God View.” Both versions of the Nominalized Composite God View share two features: (1) they treat God as metaphysically composite, in opposition to Divine Simplicity, and (2) they deny (...) that God has God’s properties in virtue of instantiating abstractly existing universals, in opposition to Christian Platonism. (shrink)