Divine Simplicity and Analogy: Clarifying Some Conundrums

Abstract

This paper defends a broadly Thomistic understanding of simplicity against a range of contemporary criticisms. Critics of divine simplicity argue that simplicity leads us to identify God with an abstract property and that it renders theological language semantically vacuous because divine simplicity cannot ground a plurality of true intrinsic predicates. I defuse these criticisms by employing some central Fregean distinctions – specifically, the distinctions between object and concept, predication and identification, and sense and reference. While these Fregean distinctions help to dissolve initial logical difficulties, they do not by themselves explain how theological predicates can have determinate content or truth-conditions. I therefore situate the relevant Fregean diagnostics within the Thomistic metaphysical framework of analogy. This framework supplies principled constraints on theological predication without reintroducing composition into God. I conclude by arguing that the Thomistic doctrine of analogy does not eliminate semantic openness but renders theological language sufficiently determinate for meaning and practice, grounding meaningful God-talk in both metaphysics and the formative practices of religious life.