The simplicity of God

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Dr Ott’s fundamentals of Catholic Dogma states that God is absolutley simple. Does this mean that God is simpler than nothing? Or does absolutley simple just mean that God lacks composition?
 
As I understand it, to say that God is simple is to say that God does not change. It does not mean that God is lacking in anything but rather that apart from what God is He is nothing other.
 
Pete said:
Dr Ott’s fundamentals of Catholic Dogma states that God is absolutley simple. Does this mean that God is simpler than nothing? Or does absolutley simple just mean that God lacks composition?
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You are right. It means that God is not composite in any sense. He is pure spirit, but not the way angels are. Angels, for example are composed of existence and essence. God’s existence and essence are the same: His essence is his existence. In all other things there is a real distinctions between what they are (essence) and that they are (existence). In corporeal beings, there is a further distinction between that by which it is what it is (form) and that of which it is what it is (matter).

Nothing is not simple. Nothingness has no attributes. Fight the tendency to reify (thingify, objectify) nothingness. This tendency is understandable, given that our minds have being as their object. We think in terms of being so we tend to think of nothing-ness as some kind of being, though it is not.

I encourage you to continue with Dr. Ott’s book. It is a great resource.
 
Nothing is the absence of anything, it has no ontological reality because it is the absence of ontological being. In the same way that cold is the absence of hot, evil is the absence of good, so nothing is the absence of something. We know by what it is not not by what it is.
 
bogeydogg said:
Nothing is the absence of anything, it has no ontological reality because it is the absence of ontological being. In the same way that cold is the absence of hot, evil is the absence of good, so nothing is the absence of something. We know by what it is not not by what it is.
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Does the “absence of anything” actually exist?
 
Pete said:
Dr Ott’s fundamentals of Catholic Dogma states that God is absolutley simple. Does this mean that God is simpler than nothing? Or does absolutley simple just mean that God lacks composition?
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God’s Absolute Simplicity means that God cannot be reduced in or to His charateristics. In order to aid explanation, we as humans can be loving, be intelligent, be powerful. But these elements are aspects of who we are; they are not *definitions *of who we are. We can be acting out of love, but not employing our intelligence, or any combination of those elements which constitute who and what we are. But we can be reduced to these elements, in that they are not necessary for our existence. If we suffer a brain injury, and our intellectual capacity is marred, we do not cease to be who we are. They are not the essential form of what makes us us. They are, as some philosophers would say, “advening forms”, in that they are not the substantial form of what it means to be you or me.

God, on the other hand is love, is omniscient, is omnipotent. All of these “characteristics” of God are a part of His substantial form. They are inseparable from God, and inseparable from each other. They actually are part of what it means to be God, and therefore He cannot be reduced to anything less than what He is.

It is this irreducibility that makes Him absolutely simple.
 
KBarn said:
You are right. It means that God is not composite in any sense. He is pure spirit, but not the way angels are. Angels, for example are composed of existence and essence. God’s existence and essence are the same: His essence is his existence. In all other things there is a real distinctions between what they are (essence) and that they are (existence). In corporeal beings, there is a further distinction between that by which it is what it is (form) and that of which it is what it is (matter).

Nothing is not simple. Nothingness has no attributes. Fight the tendency to reify (thingify, objectify) nothingness. This tendency is understandable, given that our minds have being as their object. We think in terms of being so we tend to think of nothing-ness as some kind of being, though it is not.

I encourage you to continue with Dr. Ott’s book. It is a great resource.
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Thanks.
 
I DK Dr. Ott’s book (title?), and the discussion seems sensible if a bit esoteric, rather than simple.

Is it fair to discuss this in the inverse using the old saw: the devil is in the details?

God is simple: He wants you to love unselfishly. Period. For those whose focus is still visceral (the seven deadly sins) rather than reasoning, even this simple principle might seem too esoteric.

For these, God has codified “love” with some specific detail (the Ten Commandments). Thereafter, humans (the Church) apply their reasoning to analyze the code instead of relying on the simple premise: love unselfishly. This yields complexity which should not be needed by the reasoning, but seems essential to the visceral.

The “object” of this “game” is to love unselfishly. Certain “goals” detail virtues to be espoused and seven deadly sins to be avoided. The devil obfuscates the objective (loving) by getting humans to focus on these “details” out of context, causing confusion and sin.

Is this inappropriate?
 
Yes but doesn’t the Prophet Hosea warn us that the people die from lack of knowledge while Solomon tells us to seek wisdom as precious metals and stones. Surely there is room to try and understand God in a more deep and truer sense.
 
bogeydogg said:
Yes but doesn’t the Prophet Hosea warn us that the people die from lack of knowledge while Solomon tells us to seek wisdom as precious metals and stones. Surely there is room to try and understand God in a more deep and truer sense.
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First, IMO wisdom is two steps above Knowledge (with understanding in between).

I fear that those who fail to seek knowledge, understanding and wisdom will wallow in the visceral (the seven deadly sins), and IMO it might be to them that the Ten Commandments — Matthew 19:21 — as well as the admonishments of Hosea and Solomon were directed.

Knowledge, understanding and wisdom are all good, but there is truth in the old saw that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. If knowledge were to be taken as wisdom might it not obscure the ultimate objective (to love)?

I like C.S. Lewis treatment of this in the Screwtape Letters.
 
It happens on occasion in my contemplations of God that He is nothing simply because He is everything. Whether or not the Big Bang ever occured it is the possibility of it that makes me ask what is the eternal God before that moment when the universe was filled with nothing.
 
What a thoughtful question! It strikes me that simplicity is here meant like the singularity that our universe once was. God is that which can be reduced no further. Physicists around the world continue to work on the mathemathical formula that defines everything, pulling all of known physics into one. A number of solutions have actually worked I’m told, but they are quite intricate and with long forumalations. And it seems that there are many of them, and they all do work. But no one is convinced that anyone has got it right. It is assumed that there will be a simple elegant solution, in line with the elegance of the universe and how it operates. This is how I see God, and I expect that his theory of everything will be just as simple and elegant.
 
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