Divine Simplicity Beyond Negative Theology — St Mary Magdalen School of Theology

Aug 19

Aug 19 Divine Simplicity Beyond Negative Theology

August 16th marks 14th anniversary of Barry Miller’s death. Miller was a philosopher and Marist priest, and our series on divine simplicity gives us a good opportunity to discuss his work. Fr Jonathan Jong tries to explain Miller’s quite difficult ideas on this topic.

The doctrine of divine simplicity is often described—including on this site—as the idea that God is not composed of parts, neither physical parts, nor metaphysical parts. Thus, God does not have arms and legs; nor is there distinction between God’s essence and existence, form and matter, act and potency. Most philosophical theologians are content—if not exactly satisfied—with this negative expression of the doctrine, as a means of guarding us against misspeaking about God.

One of the mavericks against this consensus was the Australian philosopher and Marist priest Barry Miller (1923-2006), whose work is less well known than perhaps it should be. Miller’s primary intellectual project was an ambitious one of going “from Existence to God”, undertaken in three parts from 1992 to 2004 (see Further Reading section below). Miller begins by bucking the trend in post-Kantian philosophy, defending the idea that existence is a real property; from here, he constructs a cosmological argument for God’s existence that does not rely on any “principle of sufficient reason” (a staple in such argument after Leibniz); finally, he develops a robust account of divine simplicity from the doctrine of creation established in the previous step. We will limit the present discussion to this final matter. This is not a defence of Miller’s work so much as a description of it, with occasional evaluative comments.

Miller’s analysis turns on a novel way of thinking about analogy, based on the distinction between a limit case and a limit simpliciter. Consider, for example, a series of circles of ever-decreasing radius. If there is such a thing, the limit simpliciter of such a series would be a circle with a very small radius indeed, approaching 0. But the limit case—and there certainly is such a thing here—is a “circle” whose radius = 0, which is of course not a circle at all, but a point. Or consider another—more controversial, but also more apt—example, of a series of regular polygons of increasingly many sides. The limit simplicter of such a series would be a polygon of very many sides, even an infinite number of sides apeirogon. But what if we were to go beyond an apeirogon: Miller contends that we would get a circle, the limit case of the series of n-sided regular polygons. In other words, the limit case of a series is that to which the series points, and not a member of the series itself. However, it may be sensible to speak analogically of limit cases in terms of the series that point to them. Armed with this concept of a limit case, Miller applies it to divine attributes.

Divine existence is the limit case of existence. But what is existence? Miller argues that existence is a real property of objects, but it is not a property in the usual sense. We usually think of properties as being “in” or “attached to” objects: like Post-It notes stuck to a wall or pins in a pin cushion. Miller wants to replace this metaphor for another one, using the example of a chunk of butter and its bound or surface. The bound of a chunk of butter individuates it from other chunks of butter: cut up a block of butter into chunks and we can see that what distinguishes one chunk from another is its surface and theirs. But—and this is the important insight gained with this metaphor—the bound of each chunk of butter is not anything in addition to the butter itself: it is actualised by the chunk of butter of which it is bound. Existence, Miller says somewhat counterintuitively, is like the butter, and the individual like the bound. An individual—say, Socrates—is actualised by his existence while individuating this chunk of existence from some other chunk of existence: an individual’s existence is what actualises it and is individuated by it. In Miller’s idiom, another way of saying “Socrates exists” (i.e., Socrates is actualised") is “Something socratizes [existence]”. So far, so cogent, but to apply his notion of a limit case, he needs existence to be a property that admits of degree, and it is not obvious that it is: after all, something either exists or it doesn’t.

This next step is perhaps Miller’s shakiest. He thinks that the metaphor of the bound allows him to order instances of existence into a series: we can do so by how bounded—that is, limited—they are. Some individuals severely limit their existence; others have, as it were, lower surface tension. (NB: This extension of the metaphor is mine, not his.) Even if this isn’t a case of equivocation, it is not clear what determines how bounded/limited some chunk of existence is. Without specifying how he constructs his Great Chain of Being, Miller asserts that “An amoeba would be a more constricting bound than a gazelle, which in turn would be more constricting than a human.” [1]

Let’s accept for sake of argument that individuals can be ordered by how much they bound (and therefore limit) their instances of existence. The limit case bound of existence would not bound its instances of existence at all, and therefore not be an individual in the same way that the limit case of the series of circles of ever-decreasing radius is not a circle. The limit case instance of existence would not be bound. That is, the limit case bound and limit case instance of existence amount to the same thing: unbounded existence. Recall that the bound is the individual, e.g., Socrates. So, we are saying that the “individual” here is the same as its existence: this is Miller’s version of the dictum that God is not distinct from God’s existence, i.e., God is subsistent existence.

God’s not been an individual—or, more clearly, God’s existence not being individuated—has a neat implication that solves one obvious problem with any Great Chain of Being thesis. The problem is that there might be many distinct criteria on which one might base the Great Chain, and this might produce very different series of individuals, each with their own limit case. But since the limit cases for all the series is not individuated, then they are not distinct from one another: they have to be the same unbounded “instance” of existence, which as we have seen is not an instance at all.

Once we see that this can be done with one property—albeit a peculiar one, existence—we can now do this with other, nonexistential, properties. Take power, for example, which is more obviously amenable to arranging in an ordered series than existence. Miller’s way of doing it is to refer to a cause’s reliance on something else to produce effects, the limit case for which is a cause that relies on nothing to produce its effects. [This is actually more mysterious than it first appears. To say that a cause relies on nothing to produce its effects entails that when it produces an effect in something it does so without acting on it, because to do so would to rely on it for said effect.] But to say that there is a limit case of power, and even that God’s power is the limit case of power is not yet to say that God is God’s power, which is what the doctrine of divine simplicity does say. To make this case, Miller has to bring in the Platonic idea that existence is power, as especially active or actual power as opposed to passive or potential power. Miller makes a similar move with knowledge, distinguishing between passive knowledge and active knowledge, the latter of which is knowing p by virtue of making p so. That is, knowledge is also analysed in terms of power. These analyses of existence, power, knowledge, and other attributes is doing quite a lot of heavy lifting alongside Miller’s notion of a limit case and his analogy of the bound. His version of the doctrine of divine simplicity requires all three moves to work.

I don’t know if they all do work, but if they don't, I suspect that it’s the more traditional notions—the Great Chain of Being, the analysis of existence as power, etc.—that fail Miller: the ideas original to him—the notion of a limit case, the bound analogy—are still promising ones that have not been subject to enough attention, critical or productive, by professional philosophers. Elmar Kremer has written the only book about Miller’s work, and Bill Vallicella has blogged about it: both are retired. I hope this work isn’t forgotten.