The Flexibility of Divine Simplicity:

Aquinas, Scotus, Palamas

Mark K. Spencer

ABSTRACT: Contrary to many interpreters, I argue that Thomas Aquinas’s account of

divine simplicity is compatible with the accounts of divine simplicity given by John Duns
Scotus and Gregory Palamas. I synthesize their accounts of divine simplicity in a way that
can answer the standard objections to the doctrine of divine simplicity more effectively than
any of their individual accounts can. The three objections that I consider here are these: the
doctrine of divine simplicity is inconsistent with distinguishing divine attributes, with the
doctrine of the Trinity, and with the doctrine of divine freedom.

T HE DOCTRINE OF DIVINE SIMPLICITY is the view that God lacks com-

position. In his strong version of divine simplicity, Thomas Aquinas holds that
everything1 intrinsic to God is really identical to the divine nature. In this paper
I develop Aquinas’s account with two goals in view. First, I argue that, contrary
to what many of its supporters have thought,2 the Thomistic account of divine
simplicity can be integrated with other versions of this doctrine such as those of
the fourteenth-century Greek Orthodox theologian Gregory Palamas and the early
fourteenth-century Catholic theologian John Duns Scotus. They both hold that
divine simplicity is consistent with more-than-conceptual distinctions between the
divine nature and other things in God. A development of the logic of identity and
metaphysics of the transcendentals that underlies the Thomistic account of divine
simplicity reveals that it is a more flexible doctrine than has been thought by both
its supporters and its objectors, that is, that it is capable of accommodating various
kinds of distinctions in God.3 I do not focus so much on giving interpretations of
these thinkers’ texts as on showing that my synthesized version incorporates plau-
sible interpretations of their views.4
I also argue that an account of the doctrine of divine simplicity that synthesizes
the Thomistic view with the Scotist and Palamite approaches can respond more ef-
fectively to objections to the doctrine than can the traditional Thomistic approach.

1
Applied to God, “thing” covers divine attributes, persons, acts, and essence or nature.
2
For Thomist objections to Scotism, see John of St. Thomas, Cursus theologicus, d. 13, q. 28, a. 1
(Lugundus: Prost, 1642), 88–90; for scholastic objections to Palamism, see Dionysius Petavius, Opus de
theologicis dogmatibus (Venice, 1757), 95–102.
3
In Medieval Trinitarian Thought from Aquinas to Ockham (Cambridge UK: Cambridge Univ. Press,
2010), p. 100, Russell Friedman notes that the medieval notion of divine simplicity was an “elastic concept,
admitting of degrees.”
4
Given the importance of these thinkers’ views to Christian denominations like Catholicism and Eastern
Orthodoxy, achieving this goal could aid the efforts of ecumenism.

International Philosophical Quarterly  Vol. 57, No. 2, Issue 226 (June 2017) pp. 123–139
doi: 10.5840/ipq201731682
124 MARK K. SPENCER

Some contemporary defenses of divine simplicity have sought to be metaphysically-

neutral, for example, those that propose a semantic version of divine simplicity that
is compatible with multiple sorts of metaphysics.5 But I think that many objections
to divine simplicity target its underlying metaphysics, and so a defense of the doc-
trine requires working out a metaphysics on which these objections can be met.
I argue that synthesizing the Thomistic approach with the Scotistic and Palamite
accounts provides such a metaphysics. Admittedly, working this out will mean
that those unable to accept the resulting view of metaphysics will presumably be
unable to accept the resulting version of divine simplicity. But this is, I think, the
price that must be paid to provide a plausible response to the objections. In my
view, disagreements over divine simplicity are fundamentally disagreements over
the underlying metaphysics. My goal is not to convince all of those who object to
divine simplicity but to propose a metaphysics that is rooted in the metaphysics of
historical thinkers who have held divine simplicity as one that allows a cogent re-
sponse to the principal objections to this doctrine. Even for those who reject it and
the underlying metaphysical account, this exercise may be useful because it shows
what is at stake logically and metaphysically in the debate.
I first discuss the content of the Thomistic notion of divine simplicity and some
objections to it. I then consider the Scotist and Palamite notions as well as the con-
troversy between the proponents of these views and the Thomistic account. Finally,
I consider the logic and metaphysics that underlie the Thomistic account of divine
simplicity and propose a way in which it can be developed to accommodate non-
Thomistic versions of divine simplicity. I then show how this synthesized view can
meet the objections.

1. THE THOMISTIC ACCOUNT OF DIVINE SIMPLICITY

Aquinas holds that the doctrine of divine simplicity follows from the conclusions
of the five Ways, his arguments for God’s existence.6 These Ways show that there
is a being (whom we call “God”) that is pure actuality and that is causally and ex-
planatorily prior to all other things. Since the most perfect actuality on Aquinas’s
view is existence, God is a being that is identical to its existence—that is, God
essentially exists. All other beings exist by participation in God.7 A participates in
B with respect to F just in case B is essentially F, A has F just because B has F, F
5
E.g., Jeffrey Brower, “Making Sense of Divine Simplicity,” Faith and Philosophy 25 (2008): 3–30;
“Simplicity and Aseity” in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology, ed. Thomas Flint and Mike
Rea (Oxford UK: Oxford Univ. Press, 2009), on which the truthmaker for all predications involving God
is God; Brian Leftow, “Divine Simplicity,” Faith and Philosophy 23 (2006): 365–80, on which God is the
standard for all attributes applied to Him; Eleonore Stump, “The Nature of a Simple God,” Proceedings
of the ACPA 87 (2013): 40, and The God of the Bible and the God of the Philosophers (Milwaukee WI:
Marquette Univ. Press, 2016), on whose “quantum theology” we rightly refer to God as both abstract and
concrete but do not know what God is. I do not disagree with these views, but I think we can say more about
the underlying metaphysics of divine simplicity.
6
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, hereafter ST followed by part, question, and article number, I, q.
2, a. 3. The Thomistic idea of divine simplicity is summarized from ST I q. 3. Citations of Aquinas are from
www.corpusthomisticum.org (Navarre, Spain: Fundación Tomás de Aquino, 2016).
7
ST I q. 44, a. 1.
THE FLEXIBILITY OF DIVINE SIMPLICITY: AQUINAS, SCOTUS, PALAMAS 125

has been given to A, and A imperfectly imitates B in being F.8 Because he is pure
actuality, God lacks all passive potentiality and does not participate in or enter into
composition with anything. To have a passive potentiality is to be capable of tak-
ing on some perfection (that is, some actuality or actual way of existing) that one
does not essentially have. If God did have any potentiality or if God did participate
in another, then he would be explainable by what could actualize his potentiality,
by that in which he could participate, or by that larger whole of which he could
be a part. But each of these options would contradict the conclusion of the Ways.
Aquinas takes God’s lack of potentiality to be consistent with his being identical
to active potencies or powers, that is, capabilities to bring things about, so long as
these cannot give rise to a new actuality in God but only to new created actualities.
Since God cannot have potentiality or participation, he cannot have spatial or
temporal parts (since a whole participates in the perfections of its parts), matter
(since it is in potency to substantial form), accidents (since these are actualizations
of a substance), or a real distinction between his existence and essence (essence is
that in virtue of which something is of some kind, and it is, on Aquinas’s view, in
potency to existence, the supreme actuality). God cannot have intrinsic acts really
distinct from himself, such as acts of knowing or willing, since these are accidents.
For A to be really distinct from B is for A to be or have a distinct actuality or poten-
tiality from B, or for A and B to be relations opposed to one another in some way.
Any intelligible content that we ascribe to God is really identical to God. We can
distinguish contents in God conceptually or “virtually”—that is, we can distinguish
them inasmuch as we find properties in creatures and ascribe them to God in a more
excellent way, for their contents must be pre-contained in him in some way for him
to cause them in creatures.9 In this way we ascribe to God both terms referring to
him as a concrete subsistent thing (e.g., “a being” [id quod est], “a wise being”) and
terms referring to him as an abstract essence (e.g., “being” [esse], “wisdom”).10 But
we do not have access to what God is like in himself essentially, such that we could
know what a being is like that can be described rightly as abstract and concrete.
Aquinas thinks that God knows many objects, such as the divine ideas (that is,
all the ways in which he could be participated by creatures), but he knows them by
the same act by which he knows himself, an act identical to himself.11 Furthermore,
by his one act of willing himself God can freely bring creatures into existence as
participating `in him according to the content of one of his ideas. On Aquinas’s view,
simple being is compatible with intentional multiplicity (God’s one actuality can
have many intentional objects) and intentional variability: the content (but not the
being) of God’s acts could have been different than it is. This is to say that God’s
one act could have had different objects.

8
Aquinas, Expositio libri De ebdomadibus, lect. 2. See Gregory Doolan, Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as
Exemplar Causes (Washington DC: Catholic Univ. of America Press, 2008), pp. 195–212.
9
ST I, q. 13, a. 4.
10
ST I, q. 3, a. 3. See Stump, “Nature of a Simple God,” and William Vallicella, “Divine Simplicity: A
New Defense,” Faith and Philosophy 9 (1992): 508–25.
11
ST I q. 14.
126 MARK K. SPENCER

On the Thomistic account of divine simplicity, the Trinitarian persons are really
distinct from one another but really identical to the divine nature, attributes, and
acts. They are really distinct because the persons are opposed relations; for example,
the Father is the relation of begetting, and the Son is the relation of being begotten,
and no relations opposed to one another can be the same relation.12 In order to
defend the claim that the persons can be really distinct while all really identical to
one essence, Aquinas seems to deny the transitivity of real identity.13 This denial is
based on Aristotle’s distinction between relations and absolute beings: the former
has its being in reference to another, but the latter has its being in itself. Aquinas
draws from Aristotle an analogy, the road between Athens and Thebes. Absolutely,
the road is one thing, but relationally, there are two things: the road from Thebes to
Athens and the road from Athens to Thebes. These are not really identical to one
another since they are opposed relations, even though they are identical with the
one absolute reality (that is, the road considered absolutely). Properties attributed
to the absolute reality can be attributed to the relational ones, but properties attrib-
uted to one relational reality (e.g., being an uphill thing) would not in some cases
be attributed to the other, or to the absolute reality considered in abstraction from
the relations. Being related does not add any new actuality to an absolute being;
rather, it just adds reference to another.14 Similarly, the persons are identical to the
absolute reality that is the divine nature but really distinct from one another; they
do not add actualities to the divine nature, but just add reference to one another.15
Finally, Aquinas’s account of divine simplicity implies that God cannot enter
into real relations or composition with creatures in such a way that he would be a
part of a creature or dependent on any creature.16 In the beatific vision the blessed
will see and participate in God’s essence, but not so as to become essentially God
or to comprehend the essence’s infinitude.17 Still, God is present to creatures as the
cause of their being, as one in Whom they participate, and as known and loved by
rational creatures.18

2. OBJECTIONS TO THE THOMISTIC ACCOUNT

I now consider three objections to the Thomistic account of divine simplicity.19

The first is to the claim that all of God’s attributes are really identical to God. But
12
ST I q. 28, a. 3; q. 39, a. 1.
13
ST I q. 28, a. 3, ad 1.
14
Aquinas, In octo libros Physicorum, hereafter In Phys followed by book and lectio number, III, lect. 5.
15
ST I q. 28, a. 1; Aquinas, Scriptum super Sententiis, hereafter In Sent. followed by part, distinction,
question, and article number, I, d. 26, q. 2, a. 1; Mark Henninger, “Aquinas on the Ontological Status of
Relations,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 25 (1987): 498.
16
ST I, q. 3, a. 8.
17
Aquinas, In librum De divinis nominibus exposition, hereafter In DDN followed by book and lectio
number, II lect. 3, n. 158; cf. Doolan, Ideas, p. 212.
18
ST I q. 8, a. 3; q. 12, a. 7; q. 43, a. 1, 3, 4.
19
Criticisms along the lines of my objections are summarized at James Dolezal, God Without Parts (Eu-
gene OR: Pickwick, 2011), pp. 11–29, and defended in various forms by: Richard Gale, On the Nature and
Existence of God (Cambridge UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991), pp. 23–34; William Hasker, Metaphysics
and the Tri-personal God (Oxford UK: Oxford Univ. Press, 2013), pp. 55–61; Christopher Hughes, On a
THE FLEXIBILITY OF DIVINE SIMPLICITY: AQUINAS, SCOTUS, PALAMAS 127

distinct terms for identical things are substitutable for one another when naming
that thing. We can define “goodness” as “the property of being desirable” and “wis-
dom” as “having knowledge of the highest things.” But, given real identity, it seems
that we could swap these terms, thereby yielding the claims that God’s wisdom is
his property of being desirable and that wisdom is goodness. But these claims are
surely false, and the properties’ conceptual distinguishability does not allow us to
avoid this conclusion, which follows from their real identity. On the doctrine of
divine simplicity it seems that there is no basis for distinguishing properties, nor
do ascriptions of properties to God tell us anything informative about him. For if
God’s goodness is identical to God, then, by substitution, the claim “God is good-
ness” reduces to the tautological claim “God is God.”
The second objection is to the claim that the divine persons are really identical
to the divine nature. Distinguishing relations and absolute beings does not negate
the transitivity of real identity. If the Father and the Son are both really identi-
cal to the divine nature, then the Father is really identical to the Son. But that is
modalism, which is contrary to orthodox Trinitarian theology. A further objection
can be raised that on the doctrine of divine simplicity the persons are identical to
properties but properties are abstract, and that nothing abstract can act, love, or
know, as persons can. So, if the doctrine of divine simplicity is true, then God is
not personal, and certainly not tri-personal. This last objection could miss a key
commitment of Thomism: that properties are concrete individuals, accidents in-
hering in substances, or individualized natures belonging to substances, not Platonic
forms. But the objection can be re-framed to meet this observation: if the doctrine
of divine simplicity were true, then the divine persons would be identical to natures
or accidents; but then they still would not be personal, since natures and accidents
cannot act of themselves.
The third objection is to the claim that all divine acts are really identical to the
simple act that God is. If this were so, then God could not be free but must of
necessity will, cause, and know those creatures that he actually wills, causes, and
knows, for a simple actuality cannot vary, since variation, it is contended, implies
actualization of a potency.20 Aquinas’s view that God, by the one simple act that he
is, could have brought about effects other than those he did bring about, allows no
explanation for the variability in his effects. Variations in effects are normally ex-
plained by variations in causes, but it would seem that there can be no variations in
God on Aquinas’s view. If God is free, then God must cause through some act over
and above the pure act that he necessarily is; but then God will stand in potency to
those acts, and so be not simple. So if God is free, then he is not simple.

Complex Theory of a Simple God (Ithaca NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1989); William Mann, “Divine Sim-
plicity,” Religious Studies 18 (1982): 451–71; R. T. Mullins, “Simply Impossible: A Case Against Divine
Simplicity,” Journal of Reformed Theology 7 (2013): 181–203; Alvin Plantinga, Does God Have a Nature?
(Milwaukee WI: Marquette Univ. Press, 1980), p. 47; Jay Wesley Richards, The Untamed God (Downers
Grove IL: InterVarsity, 2003), pp. 223–40; Noël Saenz, “Against Divine Truthmaker Simplicity,” Faith and
Philosophy 31 (2014): 460–74.
20
A fortiori, it can be objected that a simple God cannot respond to creatures; see Mark K. Spencer,
“Divine Causality and Created Freedom,” Nova et Vetera 14 (2016): 375–419.
128 MARK K. SPENCER

3. THE SCOTISTIC ACCOUNT OF DIVINE SIMPLICITY

The account of divine simplicity held by Scotus (like that held by Palamas) provides
metaphysical resources for building responses to the objections to the Thomistic
account. Like Aquinas, Scotus holds that the divine attributes and persons are
really identical to the divine nature, and that the persons are really distinct from
one another. But on his view the attributes and persons are “formally distinct” from
the divine nature, and the attributes are formally distinct from one another.21 On
this view, there are “things” (formalities or intelligible contents) that, while really
identical or identical in being (i.e., not distinct beings, actualities, or potentialities)
are not identical in the strictest sense. We distinguish, for example, rationality and
animality in the one human form or actuality (the real principle in virtue of which
a human is a member of a kind) because they explain different effects of human
beings. But these are not two actualities, since then the human person would not
be actually unified. Nor is this a mere conceptual distinction. Rather, this distinc-
tion between rationality and animality is rooted in the intelligible structure of the
form, prior to our understanding, though these formalities are not independent parts
or principles out of which the form is composed. On Scotus’s view, A is the same
being as (or really identical to) B just in case A and B are the same being, or A and
B are (distinct or identical) formalities within a single being, or one is a being and
the other is a formality of that being. Identity is transitive when it is identity in the
strictest sense, that is, when things are formally identical, when they are the same
intelligible formality (or set of formalities). Identity in being is not necessarily
transitive, for it is not identity in the strictest sense.22
Scotus’s introduction of a new but plausible metaphysical category23 and his
consequent view that God’s attributes are formally distinct from one another24
yields his response to the first objection. Since they are distinct formalities, their
terms cannot be substituted for one another, and what belongs to one need not
belong to another. A multiplicity of formalities does not entail composition since
the relation between a form and its formalities does not involve potentiality or

21
Stephen Dumont, “Duns Scotus’ Parisian Question on the Formal Distinction,” Vivarium 43 (2005):
7–62; John Duns Scotus, Ordinatio, I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 4, n. 177, 192–93, 198–99 in Opera omnia (Vatican ed.,
1956), IV, 246, 261–62, 264–65; I, d. 13, q. un., n. 72, V, 103–04. See also Friedman, Medieval Trinitarian
Thought, p. 109; Richard Cross, John Duns Scotus on God (Aldershot UK: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 105–11.
22
Cross, God, pp. 236–40. Hasker, Tri-personal God, pp. 114–15 raises the example that Clark Kent is
really identical to Superman, so whatever is true of one is true of the other. But Aquinas’s version of the law
of transitivity of identity implausibly requires us to reject this: since Kent and Superman are conceptually
distinct, we cannot affirm of one what is affirmed of the other. Regardless of whether this is a plausible
criticism of Aquinas’s view, it is not a plausible critique of Scotus’s account. On the latter, everything said
of Kent can be said of Superman—not because they are “really” identical but because they have all and
only the same formalities (though give this one being its two names by reference to different formalities).
It is identity in formality, not identity in being or actuality, that is identity in the strict, transitive sense.
23
By “category” here I do not mean a category in the sense of the ten Aristotelian predicaments, but rather
any kind of being, principle, or other fundamental metaphysical “thing” (see n1).
24
Motivation for the view is found at Scotus, Ordinatio, I, d. 5, p. 2, q. un., n. 116, IV, 68; d. 8, p. 1, q.
4, n. 219–21, IV, 274–76; d. 13, q. un., n. 13, 19, V, 70, 73. See Cross, God, pp. 112–13, 234; Friedman,
Medieval Trinitarian Thought, p. 107.
THE FLEXIBILITY OF DIVINE SIMPLICITY: AQUINAS, SCOTUS, PALAMAS 129

participation. Scotus further argues that since all of God’s formalities are infinite
and since necessarily there can be only one actually infinite being, they must all
be one in being with him. His view also allows a response to the second objection.
The persons are really identical to, but formally distinct from, the divine essence
and divine essential properties. Since their real identity with one another would
only follow if they were formally identical, there is no logical objection to their real
distinction from one another. Furthermore, they would be precluded from being
genuinely personal and capable of action only if they were formally identical to
God’s property formalities. But they are not; rather, they also each have their own
person formalities.
Scotus, however, seems unable to respond fully to the third objection. He tries
to do so by introducing a distinction between an act’s “formal concept” (that in the
agent or knower in virtue of which they intend some object) and the act’s object
(that which is intended in an act).25 For example, in virtue of the same mental form
or concept, a human knower can consider an object as merely possible or as actu-
ally present. The experience changes just in virtue of something external to the
knower, without any change in form. So likewise, by one divine idea (which is
really identical to him but formally distinct from other attributes) God can know
possible and actual creatures. But while this externalist model might be plausible
for knowing, it is hard to see how it works for willing. Acts of will are generally
taken to be prior to their objects, and so there would need to be variation in God’s
acts of willing in order to explain variation in his effects, and this is not allowed by
the Scotistic notion of divine simplicity. Thus Scotus, like Aquinas, seems to fail
to meet the third objection.

4. THE PALAMITE ACCOUNT OF DIVINE SIMPLICITY

The second alternative version of divine simplicity is that of Gregory Palamas,26 who
posited three kinds of “things” in God on account of his desire to preserve both the
doctrine of divine simplicity and the view that God can freely interact with us.” As
with the Scotist notion, the solution offered to the objections to a strong conception
of divine simplicity is not to deny that God is simple but to introduce a new but
plausibly motivated metaphysical category. The first kind of “thing” that he posits
in God is God’s essence, what he fundamentally is, to which no creature can have
direct cognitive access, in which no creature can participate, and to which no name
directly applies.27 The essence is shared by the persons. It is that in which all divine
attributes, acts, and created effects are rooted (though it transcends all of these). It is

25
Scotus, Reportatio, 1A.39–40.1–3, n70, cited in Cross, God, p. 87.
26
Palamas’s view builds on earlier Greek versions of divine simplicity. See Andrew Radde-Gallwitz,
Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Transformation of Divine Simplicity (Oxford UK: Oxford
Univ. Press, 2009), pp. 221–24.
27
Palamas, 150 Texts (hereafter Capita), p. 106 in The Philokalia, v. 4, ed. G. E. H. Palmer et al. (London
UK: Faber and Faber, 1995), p. 394. John Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas, trans. George Lawrence
(Leighton-Buzzard: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974), p. 203. Palamas, The Triads, trans. Nicholas
Gendle (Mahwah NJ: Paulist Press,1983), I.3.23, p. 39.
130 MARK K. SPENCER

simple.28 Unlike Aquinas, who by “divine essence” means God’s being or actuality,
Palamas means what is imparticipable in God. Second, there are the persons, really
distinct from one another, having the essence and activities in common.29 Third, there
are God’s energeiai or activities—all the ways in which God reveals himself and can
be participated and named. As uncreated, they are distinct in some way from30 the
essence and yet inseparably united to it.31 They include God’s absolute attributes,
such as goodness, life, simplicity, and existence; each attribute is infinite, so that
God is (as on Scotus’s view) really identical to his attributes.32 They also include
God’s active powers, the divine logoi or ways that God is participable by creatures,
God’s glory, acts that God performs necessarily (such as self-knowledge), and acts
that he performs at some time (such as creation or divinization).33
Palamas can respond to the first and second objections in a way similar to
Scotus: the divine attributes and persons, though one in being with the essence, are
not identical to the essence in the strictest sense. But Palamas can also respond to
the third objection.34 On the Palamite approach, no creature can participate in the
divine essence, for that would be to be God by nature. But creatures can participate
in God according to attributes like existence and goodness, and God can act in and
with us.35 This requires, Palamas contends, prior to creaturely participation and
understanding, that there be activities by which God is participable and has chosen

28
Palamas calls simplicity and existence energeiai but also says that they revel the essence to be simple and
existing. Palamas, Dialogue between an Orthodox and a Barlaamite 17, trans. Rein Ferwerda (Binghamton
UK: Episteme, 1999), pp. 58–59; Capita 141 in Philokalia, v. 4, p. 412.
29
Capita 112, pp. 397–98; Dialogue 26, p. 66.
30
There is disagreement as to whether this is a real distinction. See Sébastian Guichardan, Le problème de
la simplicité divine en Orient et en Occident aux XIV et XV siècles (Lyon, 1933); John Romanides, “Notes
on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 6 (1960–61). For the
view that this is a formal distinction, see Jeffrey Finch, “Neo-Palamism” in Partakers in the Divine Nature,
ed. Michael Christensen and Jeffrey Wittung (Cranbury: Rosemont, 2007), p. 243; John Milbank, “Chris-
tianity and Platonism in East and West” in Divine Essence and Divine Energies, ed. C. Athanasopouls and
C. Schneider (Cambridge UK: Clarke, 2013), pp. 166–69. For the notion that it is a conceptual distinction
with foundation in reality, see John Demetracopolous, “Palamism Transformed” in Greeks, Latins, and
Intellectual History 1204–1500, ed. Martin Hinterberger and Christ Schabel (Leuven: Peeters, 2011). And
for the view that it is a distinction in sense, not reference, see N. N. Trakakis, “The Sense and Reference of
the Essence and Energies” in Divine Essence, ed. Athanasopouls, p. 225. I shall not adjudicate the interpre-
tive debate, but I think that the formal distinction is the best systematic way to understand the distinction.
31
Palamas, The Triads III.1.34, 89; Dialogue 5, 49; 14, 55–56; 40, 78–79. See Wilson, The Ground of
Union (Oxford UK: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999), p. 105.
32
Dialogue 50, p. 87.
33
Triads III.2.8–9, pp. 95–96; David Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West (Cambridge UK: Ccambridge
Univ. Press, 2004), pp. 172, 205–06, 239–42; Bradshaw, “The Divine Glory and Divine Energies,” Faith and
Philosophy 23 (2006): 279–98. There is a controversy between David Bradshaw and Antoine Levy (“Woes
of Originality” in Divine Essence, ed. Athanasopolous) as to whether the last group of acts begin and end,
or whether they are eternal acts intending temporal things. I do not offer a textual interpretation, but Brad-
shaw’s view. See “Divine Freedom: The Greek Fathers and the Modern Debate,” Philosophical Theology and
the Christian Tradition (CRVP, 2012), that they begin and end seems to me systematically most plausible.
34
Palamites can also strengthen the third objection to Aquinas, by arguing that on Aquinas’s view God
cannot genuinely present to creatures without real relations to them; see Bradshaw, Aristotle, pp. 257–62.
35
Capita 109–10, pp. 395–97; Dialogue 11, 53–54; 46, 84–85. cf. Wilson, Ground, p. 144; and Bradshaw,
Aristotle, p. 199.
THE FLEXIBILITY OF DIVINE SIMPLICITY: AQUINAS, SCOTUS, PALAMAS 131

to reveal himself.36 As ways in which he is participable, they are rooted in37 his es-
sence, and so they can be called his works and effects, or things “around” him.38
But Palamas insists that this is consistent with divine simplicity because the essence
is wholly present in each act, and this total presence would not be possible unless
it were simple. Something simple can be wholly present in many activities, while
something composite could only be partially present in each of its activities, since
a composite thing acts just through its parts.39 These claims are rooted in Palamas’s
view of what it is to be a being: to be a being necessarily involves having powers
and acts, and in order to have these, they must be distinct from that being’s essence
and one another.40
Palamas gives two analogies to elucidate this notion of an essence wholly present
in multiple acts without detriment to its simplicity. First, there are other simple things
besides God.41 As the simple human soul is entirely present in each of its powers,
so God’s simple essence is present in each of his acts.42 This can be motivated by
an appeal to experience as described in the phenomenology of Max Scheler. When
I see another act, I see that other person both revealed in that act and hidden be-
hind the act as not perfectly revealed by it. But in seeing another act, there are not
two things presented in my experience, the person and the act, but one: a person
revealed by an act, a person who “flows” (metaphorically speaking) into the act
without becoming anything other than that person.43 Likewise, God can “flow” into
his acts without those acts being additional actualities over and above what he is,
and without those acts being “made” of anything other than his own perfect, single,
simple being.44 For both Palamas and Aquinas, every being, just because it is a being,
manifests itself.45 Palamas’s energeiai are to the essence as that which manifests to
that which is manifested, not as accidents of the latter, but as the manifestation that
accompanies every being.46

36
Triads III.2.14, p. 110.
37
Being “rooted” does not imply participation or potentiality, but rather that there is a explanatory order
among the things in God, just because of what it is to be God.
38
Triads III.2.6, 9–10 at pp. 94, 97, following Gregory of Nyssa; see Bradshaw, Aristotle, pp. 170–72;
Meyendorff, Palamas, p. 214; Radde-Gallwitz, Basil, p. 223. Scotus, Ordinatio, I, d. 13, q. un., n72, (Vati-
can ed.: V, 103–04), following John Damascene, also says that the divine attributes are “around” the divine
essence, with which they are really identical, but in which they are formally founded: the essence (and the
Father) is infinite per se and in se and not from another, while the attributes (and the Son and Holy Spirit) are
per se and in se infinite, but in such a way that they have their infinity by being rooted in the divine essence.
39
Triads III.2.7, p. 96; Dialogue, pp. 52–53, 88–89.
40
Palamas, Dialogue 5, 49; pp. 30–31, 69–70; Capita 100–03 in Philokalia, v. 4, pp. 392–93.
41
However, simple creatures are not simple in every respect, since they participate in God.
42
Triads III.2.5, p. 93; Bradshaw, Aristotle, p. 240. Similarly, a universal can be wholly present in each
of its instances, without detriment or change to it qua universal; see Richard Cross, “Two Models of the
Trinity?” in The Heythrop Journal 43 (2002): 275. I am not endorsing Cross’s view that the divine essence
can be understood as a universal.
43
Max Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, trans. Manfred Frings and Roger
Funk (Evanston IL: Northwestern Press, 1973), pp. 388–91.
44
Dialogue 35, pp. 73–75; see Meyendorff, Palamas, p. 223.
45
Palamas, Triads III.1.14, 19–20, at pp. 75, 79; Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de veritate hereafter
DV followed by question and article number, q. 1, a. 1–2.
46
Capita 127, in Philokalia, v. 4, p. 406; Dialogue 24–25, 40, 52, 54 at pp. 64–65, 79, 88–90.
132 MARK K. SPENCER

In the second analogy, drawn from Dionysius, the sun, without detriment or change
to itself, makes itself present in its rays. Likewise, God makes his essence present
without detriment or change to it in the self-manifestation of the rays.47 Aquinas
also uses this image, but he likens God’s created effects to the rays.48 Palamas is
not opposed to that use of the image but argues that God’s self-manifestation is
not just his created effects but also God making himself manifest.49 Aquinas is
not opposed to that usage either, since he says that God indwells and is present to
creatures when he brings about his effects in them.50 If these analogies are at all
successful in motivating the claim that the essence-energeia distinction is compat-
ible with divine simplicity, then divine simplicity is compatible with God having
multiple, variable acts.

5. A SYNTHESIS AND A RESPONSE TO OBJECTIONS ONE AND TWO

We must now see how the Thomistic doctrine of divine simplicity can accommodate
the Scotistic and Palamite distinctions, and thereby have a more compelling answer
to the objections than the traditional Thomistic view. Most Thomists have objected
to the formal and essence-energeia distinctions, contending that divine simplicity
excludes all distinctions (aside from the real distinctions among the persons) in
God prior to our thinking. But I show in this section that the Thomistic account can
indeed take on board these distinctions and the Scotist and Palamite responses to the
objections. This is because the Thomistic concept follows from the conclusion of
the arguments for the existence of God, which yield a view of God as pure actuality
and the first being. Since, I argue, the formal and essence-energeia distinctions are
compatible with Aquinas’s view of what a being or act as such is (as elaborated in
Aquinas’s account of the properties of being as such51) they are compatible with
his account of divine simplicity.
On Aquinas’s view, upon encountering any being, the mind is automatically led
to conceptualize it in a number of ways. These are the “transcendentals,” the prop-
erties of being as such. When one encounters any being, one immediately grasps it
as a “being,” an actually existing thing, and as a “thing,” by which Aquinas means
that it is of some kind. Next, the mind grasps a being as “one” (undivided from
itself) and as “something” (distinct from others or part of a multitude). To be one
does not exclude being many but only excludes being divided or distinct from one-
self. Inasmuch as God is substantial, he is one. Inasmuch as he is three relational
persons, he is many. In this way he includes both the transcendentals “one” and
“something.”52 Some later Thomists contended that every being is both absolute and
47
Triads III.1.29, p. 84; Bradshaw, Aristotle, p. 210. We must assume medieval astrophysics for this
analogy to make sense.
48
ST I q. 9, a. 1.
49
Triads III.2.18, p. 102.
50
ST I q. 20, a. 2 ad 1; In IV DDN lect. 10.
51
DV q. 1, a. 1; q. 21, a. 1. See Jan Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The Case of
Thomas Aquinas (Leiden: Brill, 1996); Medieval Philosophy as Transcendental Thought: From Philip the
Chancellor (ca. 1225) to Francisco Suarez (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
52
ST I q. 30, a. 3 ad 2. See Quaestio disputata de spiritualibus creaturis a. 8, ad 15.
THE FLEXIBILITY OF DIVINE SIMPLICITY: AQUINAS, SCOTUS, PALAMAS 133

relational: to be a created, actually existing substance is to be both a substance with

an intrinsic nature and also to have relations of dependence on God and orienta-
tion to perform actions.53 These “transcendental relations” are not accidents, that
is, actualizations of the substance over and above its nature. They are intrinsic to
what it is be an existing substance. Nor are they parts of the substance since parts
are really distinct from and in potential to the whole, and these relations are, again,
intrinsic to what it is to be an actual whole substance. My relations of dependence
on God and orientation to perform act are not distinct beings from me, though the
concept of my absolute nature (rational animality) does not include the concept
of these relations. These relations also are not the same relations as one another.
This is, I contend, a case of Scotus’s formal distinction: my substance and intrinsic
relations are distinct, discoverable intellectual contents in me, not merely con-
ceptually distinct. Aquinas’s fundamental metaphysics seems to allow and even
call for (not to exclude) the formal distinction between a thing’s substance and its
relationality.
This allows the Scotist view of the Trinitarian persons to be imported into the
Thomistic approach (and with it, Scotus’s response to the second objection). Just as
I am one in being with some relations that are formally distinct from my substance,
so the Trinitarian relations are one in being with but formally distinct from the divine
essence. As we saw in considering the Scotistic notion, to be “one in being” is to
be really identical, but this is not identity in the strict, always transitive sense. My
intrinsic relations of dependence on God and orientation to act are not really distinct
from one another, but only formally distinct because they do not have opposed con-
tent. Rather, one of these relations aims at one term and the other at another term.
But the Trinitarian relations do have opposed content: each relation aims at another
relation, which in turn aims at the first relation. And so they are really distinct from
one another. The Trinitarian persons, on this view, are each strictly identical to a
relation and the essence, where the relation and the essence are identical in being
but formally distinct. Since the persons do not have all formalities in common, and
their distinct formalities are opposed relations, they are really distinct from one
another, though since they are one in being or absolute actuality with the divine
essence they are not distinct “parts” of God.
The formal distinction provides a grounding for the prima facie odd versions of
the law of transitivity of identity invoked by Aquinas and Scotus, which will now
be worked out more clearly.54 Generally, contemporary philosophers affirm the law
of transitivity of identity (“if A is identical to B and B is identical to C, then A is
identical to C”) and related laws for property attribution (“if A is identical to B,
53
See, e.g., John of St. Thomas, Cursus theologici in primam partem divi Thomae, v. 2 (Lugundi: Petrus
Prost, 1642), d. 18, q. 44, a. 2, n. 19–22; Cursus philosophicus, v. 1 (Paris: Vives, 1883), Logic pt. 2, q. 17,
a. 2, pp. 498–503; Mieczyław Krąpiec, I–Man: An Outline of Philosophical Anthropology, trans. Marie
Lescoe, Andrew Woznicki, Theresa Sandok et. al. (New Britain CT: Mariel Publications, 1983), pp. 239–51;
Metaphysics: An Outline of the History of Being, trans. Theresa Sandok (New York NY: Peter Lang, 1991),
pp. 16–19, 379–88, 452–63; and my own, “Created Persons Are Subsistent Relations,” Proceedings of the
ACPA (2015). There are hints in this direction by Aquinas at ST I q. 13, a. 7 ad 1; q. 45, a. 3 ad 3.
54
See my paper co-written with W. Matthews Grant, “Activity, Identity, and God,” Studia Neoaristotelica
12 (2015): 23–24.
134 MARK K. SPENCER

and B to C, then, for any property F belonging to A, F belongs to B and C”) and
for substitution of terms (“if A is identical to B, and B to C, then the terms ‘A,’ ‘B,’
and ‘C’ are substitutable for one another when ‘A,’ ‘B,’ and ‘C’ are used to refer
to the being to which ‘A,’ ‘B,’ and ‘C’ are identical”). But, given the structure of
being worked out here, and given that the laws of logic are meant to describe the
fundamental structure of being, the laws of logic require revision. The laws as stated
work if “is identical to” means “is the same formality as.” But some relational being
P can be identical in being though not in formality to an absolute being Q, which
is identical in being though not in formality to another relational being R.55 In that
case, it is correct to say that P is identical to R in being and that they are the same
absolute being. But it is incorrect to say that they are the same relational being or
formality, and so they are not identical in every respect or in the strictest sense, for
being itself, just as being, contains many formalities. P and R can have properties
not shared by one another or by Q considered just as absolute in formality. Terms
for Q can be substituted for P or R, so long as it is clear that we are discussing P or
R in their absolute being. But terms for the relational formalities of P and R cannot
be substituted for terms for Q. If P stands for Father, R for Son, and Q for the divine
essence, then we have a synthesized Thomistic-Scotistic response to objection two.56

55
The relation between relational and absolute formalities is not hylomorphic, nor one of constitution
since both of those involve act-potency relations, and so are not compatible with divine simplicity. Rather,
these relations and distinctions belong to the very structure of being or actuality itself. For quasi-hylomorphic
accounts of the Trinity, see the views of Henry of Ghent and Godfrey of Fontaines in Friedman, Medieval
Trinitarian Theology, p. 140. For constitution views of the Trinity, see Jeffrey Brower and Michael Rea,
“Material Constitution and the Trinity,” Faith and Philosophy 22 (2005): 57–76; Hasker, Tri-personal God,
pp. 238–45. Brower and Rea also propose a view somewhat similar to Aquinas’s view of identity: that there
is between the divine persons and the nature “numerical sameness without identity.”
56
Aquinas lays the foundation for rules like these at In I Sent., d. 19, q. 1, a. 1, ad 2; ST I q. 31, a. 4; see
John of St. Thomas, Cursus theologicus, d. 12, q. 27, a. 3, 26–30. All of this yields a version of the relative
identity account of the Trinity that has not, to my knowledge, appeared in contemporary literature. On the
relative identity account, it is possible for two things x and y and to both be F and G, where F and G are
kind sortal terms, but for x and y to be the same F but not the same G. For defenses of versions of this view
as applied to the Trinity, see Peter Van Inwagen, “And Yet They are Not Three Gods, But One God” in Phi-
losophy and the Christian Faith, ed. Thomas Morris (Notre Dame IN: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1988),
pp. 241–78; H. E. Baber, “The Trinity: Relative Identity Redux,” Faith and Philosophy 32 (2015): 161–71.
For a critique of versions of this view that deny that there is any absolute, non-sortally-relative identity see
Joseph Jedwab, “Against the Geachian Theory of the Trinity and Incarnation,” Faith and Philosophy 32
(2015): 125–45. For criticisms of relative identity views of the Trinity see William Hasker, Tri-Personal God,
pp. 123–38. My view is a relative identity view in that all identity is relative to absolute being, relational
being, or formality. But it differs from other versions of the relative identity view in that these are not kind
sortals, so my view does not involve sortally-relative identity. Rather, absolute being, relational being, and
formality are aspects of the transcendental structure of every being, and so the relative identity that I propose
is identity relativized to aspects of the basic transcendental structure of being, that is, to items that every
being has in itself. This view of identity differs from the view of Michael Rea in “Relative Identity and the
Doctrine of the Trinity,” Philosophia Christi 5 (2003): 441. He holds that being is the most general sortal.
While my view affirms Aquinas’s view (DV q. 1, a. 1) that nothing can be added to being from outside being,
it also affirms Scotus’s view that being has a (non-compositional) structure. It includes absolute, relative,
and formality aspects (where the relative and the absolute do not correspond to categories of being, such as
relation and substance). My view includes a version of absolute identity: x and y are the same absolutely
speaking just in case they are the same formalities.
THE FLEXIBILITY OF DIVINE SIMPLICITY: AQUINAS, SCOTUS, PALAMAS 135

While Aquinas allows that there can be multiple relations really identical to some
absolute being while really distinct from one another, he denies that there could be
multiple absolute beings really identical to some absolute being but really distinct
from one another.57 But this does not exclude the possibility that there are multiple
formalities really identical to some absolute being but formally distinct from one
another. Aquinas does not even consider the possibility of distinct formalities within
a single being or actuality. The logical laws worked out above, which are consistent
with the central claims of the Thomistic account of divine simplicity, are compatible
with formal distinctions among God’s attributes. Accordingly, the Scotist reply to
the first objection, and to the last part of the second objection, is available to the
Thomist. Nothing in what the Thomist is committed to regarding being or actuality
as such (and so nothing in what the Thomist is committed to regarding the first being
or pure actuality) excludes this solution. What will have to be revised in the Thomist
view is the claim that the divine attributes are only conceptually distinct; rather,
on this revised view, they are distinct formalities in the one actuality that God is.
Positing this kind of distinction is preferable to the traditional Thomist solution
not only because it allows a clear response to the first objection but also because it
allows for a clearer account of religious experiences in which God reveals just one
of his attributes.58 It has been objected that if God were simple in the manner of
traditional Thomistic divine simplicity, then God could only reveal himself in his
entirety. God could not reveal a single attribute of his (e.g., his justice or his glory)
since God does not literally have distinct attributes to reveal. Any revelation of God
(and any participation in God) would, as the Palamites have objected to Aquinas,59
be either a revelation of God in his entirety or a creaturely likeness of God. It is
further objected that there is a tension in Aquinas on this point. On the one hand,
Aquinas affirms that God can be genuinely present to and reveal himself to creatures
in different ways. On the other hand, Aquinas seems to hold that every revelation
of himself in this life (at least to us during our current embodied life) is a creature.
The problem can be solved if God’s attributes are formalities in himself, really
identical to him but formally distinct from other (that is, distinct) attributes prior
to our thinking about them. In that case any revelation of a divine attribute would
be a revelation both of God himself and just of the one formality that he chooses
to reveal.60 Even the beatific vision is not a comprehensive vision of God—that is,
not a vision of God that completely grasps his full infinitude. In Palamite terms, it
is not a vision of the divine essence directly but of some of his energeiai; in Scotist
terms, it is a vision of God through some formalities. But this vision, which is not
of the divine essence in the Palamite sense, is a vision of the divine essence in the
57
In III Phys lect. 12; ST I q. 30, a. 3
58
Examples are given and this objection raised (and rejected) at William Alston, Perceiving God (Ithaca
NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1991), pp. 61–63.
59
See the objections to Aquinas in Bradshaw, Aristotle.
60
The importance of accommodating these sorts of religious experience is recognized by the Thomist
Albert Farges, Mystical Phenomena, trans. S. P. Jacques (New York NY: Benzinger, 1926), pp. 289–90.
See also my “The Phenomenology and Metaphysics of Spiritual Perception: A Thomistic Framework,” New
Blackfriars 97 (2016): 677–92, for ways in which the Thomistic view is much closer to the Palamite account
of divinization than many Palamites have often thought.
136 MARK K. SPENCER

Thomistic sense—that is, it is to see the divine Being, which belongs to every di-
vine formality, and to see that Being not through a created species or concept but
in itself.61 The Palamite essence-energeia distinction is best understood, I think, at
least for those energeiai that are absolute attributes, as a formal distinction. (This
is not to say that this is what Palamas himself thought, but I think that it is the best
way of systematically understanding his distinction.) On the Palamite view, each
creature naturally shares in one of God’s energeiai: to be a creature of some kind is
to participate in God in some way. Aquinas too affirms that each creature participates
in God according to its kind. But this requires that God is first participable in vari-
ous ways.62 Whereas Aquinas thinks that these participabilities (or divine ideas) are
only conceptually distinct from God, it is more plausible to think of them as distinct
formalities or energeiai in God, distinct prior to our thinking, such that they are
ways that God in himself is participable, explanatorily prior to being participated.
God in turn can make himself present to creatures in distinct ways because he has
in himself these distinct ways that he can be participated.63 This is to take the Pala-
mite and Scotistic distinctions into Thomism, but, as we have seen, there is no bar
to doing this in Thomist metaphysics or logic.

6. A SYNTHESIS AND A RESPONSE TO OBJECTION THREE

Drawing on Scotism and Palamism can further help the Thomist respond to objection
three. On my revised view, God has formalities or energeia for each of the ways he
can be participated by creatures. But the transition from being participable in some
way to actually being participated cannot add any actuality to God. So a view must
be worked out on which God can both change in some respect, while remaining
simple and immutable in his Being when he knows and freely wills creatures. Since
God is pure actuality, God cannot have accidents or actualizations over and above
the actuality that he is. We must find a way to say that God can act in contingent
ways, but that these acts have no other being (indeed, are no other being) than the
one being that God is.64 On the Palamite approach, as we have seen, God’s acts
61
Thomists have opposed the notion of the formal distinction because it is closely connected by Scotus
to the claim that some predicates are said univocally of God and creatures. Palamites are sometimes un-
comfortable with the formal distinction because it seems to make the formalities in God to be thoroughly
intelligible to us, whereas the Palamite emphasizes that while we can know that certain energeiai are in
God, to perceive these energeiai directly requires a divinization that brings us to know in a way beyond our
own natural cognitive powers (Triads III.2.10, p. 107.) Cf. Lossky, Vision of God, pp. 115, 133. But none
of this follows from or is required by the claim that God’s attributes are formally distinct from one another.
Univocity does not necessarily follow (but neither is it excluded), because the contents found in God and
creatures need not be meant in the same sense: rather, the claim that God’s attributes are formally distinct
from one another is just the claim that there are formally distinct contents in God, which correspond at
least analogously to our concepts of similar contents in creatures. Complete intelligibility does not follow
for the same reasons. So there is no barrier from these objections to Thomists or Palamites accepting the
formal distinction.
62
Doolan, Ideas, p. 243.
63
See ST I q. 8, a. 3, ad 4; q. 43, a. 1; ST I-II q. 110, a. 1.
64
I seek to move further than the appeal to mystery regarding DS and divine freedom given by James
Dolezal, God Without Parts, p. 210, who insists on the sufficiency of pure actuality to account for anything
beyond itself, but contends that the identity between God’s simple actuality and freedom ad extra is be-
THE FLEXIBILITY OF DIVINE SIMPLICITY: AQUINAS, SCOTUS, PALAMAS 137

are one in being with the simple God. They are not necessary formalities of God’s
being but contingent acts. They are really identical to his being and “flow” from his
essence as he wills. These acts cannot be construed as formalities in God. If God’s
contingent acts of knowing and willing creatures in this world were formalities in
him, then the total set of formalities to which he is identical in this world would
differ from the total set of formalities to which he is identical in another possible
world. But then the God of this world could not exist in any other possible world.
And this is contrary to divine freedom, which requires that God could have done
otherwise than he did—that is, that the same simple God that exists in this world
could have existed in another possible world. If the Palamite claim that God has
contingent energeiai, whereby he wills, knows, or is present to creatures, is to be
brought into a revised Thomistic account of divine simplicity, thus solving the third
objection (an objection that the Scotist approach could not solve), then energeiai
must be construed otherwise than as formalities.
One way this could be done is by drawing on some claims of earlier Thomists65
on whose view an agent’s willing that there be some external reality involves four
factors. First, there is the agent’s free power of the will. Second, there is the actuality
A in the agent, in virtue of which the agent brings about some particular actuality
B participating in but really distinct from A. Third, there is the actuality B that
participates in actuality A. Fourth, there is the “termination” of A in B: in virtue of
the agent freely willing B, A takes on a new object or “terminus” and so changes
intentionally or with respect to what it aims at.
We human persons bring about free acts in ourselves in virtue of our substantial
actuality. As agent causes, we can, by immanent causation, without change in being
to our substance as such, bring immediately into existence new free acts of the will,
which are actualities that participate in our substance and terminate that substance in
a new way but are really distinct from that substance. These acts in turn bring about
effects entirely outside of us. Though our substance is terminated in a new way by
these acts, it is not thereby changed inasmuch as it is this substance. But then it is
not implausible, contrary to objection three, to think that a thing can act without
being changed in its being, for we agent causes act without being so changed.
Since all beings are participations in God and God always has all the actuality
possible to have in himself, God can, without change in being to himself, freely
cause there to be beings distinct from himself participating in him and terminating
his substance in new ways. God’s formalities as terminated by creatures just are
God’s contingent acts or energeiai, the ways that he is present to, knows, and wills
creatures. The distinction between God’s formalities as terminated by creatures and
God’s necessary formalities in themselves is not a formal distinction. Rather, it is a

yond our knowledge. I think that something can be said about it! I also seek to move further than Eleonore
Stump’s “quantum theology” in “Nature of a Simple God,” pp. 39–40, on which, since God is both rightly
called abstract and concrete, we cannot know what God is, and cannot know how a simple God can have
free acts, though we know that He can have them. I think that we can say more about how this occurs. For
an account of positions Thomists have held regarding God’s relation to his acts see Grant and Spencer,
“Activity, Identity, and God,” pp. 5–61.
65
See, e.g., John of St. Thomas, Cursus theologicus, d. 5, q. 19, a. 4–5, pp. 117–29.
138 MARK K. SPENCER

unique kind of distinction between an agent considered in itself and an agent-qua-

acting. God’s essence could exist without his acts. These acts have no other being
than his being, but they make no real or formal difference in his being. When God
acts towards creatures, all the real difference (that is, the difference in actuality or
being) is in the creature.66 God’s power of willing (which is one of his necessary
formalities) and his formalities whereby he is participable in various ways can be
terminated by creatures, that is, bring those creatures about, or bring about effects in
already existing creatures, or be shared in by creatures when creatures cooperate with
him. Likewise, God’s power of knowing (which is one of his necessary formalities)
and his formalities whereby he is participable can be terminated by creatures, and
he thereby knows those creatures in their actual, contingent, temporal existence.
In both cases, there is a change in God’s intentional act and conscious experience,
though not in his being.67 By making this distinction and by joining it to Palamas’s
idea of energeiai, Scotus’s externalist model of acting (whereby his view attempts
to respond to the third objection) can be salvaged. God has energeiai that are tem-
poral—that is, he has eternal formalities that are terminated by temporal creatures.
These energeiai add to God, in Thomistic parlance, a relation of reason—that is, a
relation that does not imply any dependence of God on his objects for his real being.
But this is consistent with the Palamite insistence that God, by these energeiai, is
intimately present to and acts in creatures, and so is, in Palamite parlance, really
related to them. The strangeness of calling these intimate relations “relations of
reason” has been noted by some Thomistically-influenced Jesuit philosophers. They
contend that God’s actions intending creatures are more robust than a creaturely
relation of reason, given that they make a difference to God’s experience, and are
ways that God actually makes himself present to us, without adding to his simple
being. They are intentional relations of God to creatures.68 The Palamite notion
of energeia, with its idea that God’s one simple Being can “flow” in intentional
acts fleshes out this idea of intentionally variable acts in the one simple God.69
There can be variations in an actual being without actualization, and these varia-
tions can explain that being’s effects, so long as nothing about the nature of that
being entails that actualization is required. An analysis of the notion of an inten-
66
For contemporary views similar to this see, e.g., Alexander R. Pruss, “On Two Problems of Divine
Simplicity” in Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, vol. 1, ed. Jonathan Kvanvig (Oxford UK: Oxford
Univ. Press, 2008), pp. 150–67; W. Matthews Grant, “Can a Libertarian Hold That Our Free Acts Are Caused
by God?” Faith and Philosophy 27 (2010): 22–44; and W. Matthews Grant, “Divine Simplicity, Contingent
Truths, and Extrinsic Models of Divine Knowing” Faith and Philosophy 29 (2012): 254–74.
67
Likewise, when we freely act, our substance does not change in its own intrinsic being, but it does
change in some respect: in its intentionality.
68
Pedro Da Fonseca, In libros metaphysicrum Aristotelis Stagirita, v2 (Frankfurt: Schanuuertteri, 1599),
ch. 8 Q. 5 s. 4–5, pp. 382–86; Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicae, d. 30 s. 9 n. 35–44; s. 14 n. 21, 26, 29;
W. Norris Clarke, Explorations in Metaphysics (Notre Dame IN: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1994), pp.
183–210. See Aquinas, ST I q. 8, a. 3; q. 20, a. 2, ad 1; I-II, q. 28, a. 1–3. See also Jacques Maritain, Degrees
of Knowledge, trans. Gerald Phelan (Notre Dame IN: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1995), pp. 274–78, 392–96.
69
In the context of the above discussion of relative identity, one further feature of the fundamental struc-
ture of being must be added: the intentional-act-qua-terminated. This is a metaphysical item distinct from
formalities and beings, which can be really identical (that is, identical in being or actuality) to some being,
but such that (unlike with its formalities) a being can gain or lose these acts without changing in its being.
THE FLEXIBILITY OF DIVINE SIMPLICITY: AQUINAS, SCOTUS, PALAMAS 139

tional act does not by itself imply actualization; it only implies actualization in an
imperfect being.
One more point will further motivate seeing the Palamite idea of God’s acts as
energeiai to be consistent with the Thomistic conception. On Palamism, to be is to
be self-manifesting and to have powers and acts distinct from one’s essence, whereby
one manifests oneself. The simpler a being is, the more transcendent that being is,
and the more it is able to make itself manifest. God’s free self-manifestation (or
glory) consists of his energeiai, whereby his simple Being is contingently manifested.
But Thomistic metaphysics of the transcendentals holds the same basic things: once
we understand that a being exists, is of some kind, is one, and is something, then
we reflect on the fact that we have been understanding being and we grasp that it is
intelligible or “true” and desirable (at least as a terminus of the desire for knowledge)
or “good.” But for a being to be intelligible, it must be self-manifesting, such that
it is capable of being understood. Furthermore, on Aquinas’s view, beings in the
primary sense of the term are substances or agents. As on Palamas’s view of being,
these have powers and acts. So, since God is a being, God on Aquinas’s view must
be true, good, self-manifesting, and have powers and acts. Each being manifests itself
as the kind of being that it is, so God too must have the kind of self-manifestation
typical of his kind. Since God is free in himself, his self-manifestation must likewise
be free. Following both Palamas and Aquinas, our notions of being and simplicity
should include, not exclude, acts of self-manifestation. For this reason, the Thomist
can, again, take on board the Palamite distinction between essence and energeia and
between what is necessary and contingent in God, thereby reconciling the notion
of divine simplicity and divine freedom.
If all these points are kept in mind, the distance between the Thomist, Scotist,
and Palamite views evaporates, and the Palamite response to the third objection
becomes the Thomist’s. We accordingly see again the flexibility of the Thomistic
account, such that it (suitably understood, modified, and elaborated) can be seen to
be able to accommodate many kinds of distinctions and acts in God, and so able to
respond to the objections that can be raised to it. Furthermore, the disagreements
among Christian denominations and intellectual schools that have been raised on
the basis of divine simplicity are hereby shown to be resolvable. There is nothing
in the underlying metaphysics or logic of these schools that excludes the others.70

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The writing of this paper was funded by a summer stipend in 2015 from the Classical Theism Project
administered by Tim Pawl and Gloria Frost at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN, and funded
by the John Templeton Project. Key ideas from this paper were presented in the context of comments on
William Hasker’s paper “Is Divine Simplicity a Mistake?” at the Classical Theism Workshop on July 31,
2015 at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul MN, and on Alex Pruss’s paper “Some Arguments for
Divine Simplicity” at the Classical Theism Workshop on July 22, 2016, both organized by Tim Pawl and
Gloria Frost. I am grateful to the organizers and participants at those workshops. I am also grateful to David
Bradshaw, Francis Feingold, Patrick Fisher, Paul Gavrilyuk, W. Matthews Grant, Matthew Levering, Elliot
Polsky, and Eleonore Stump for comments on earlier drafts of this paper.