On the Identity of God's Attributes
A common objection to divine simplicity is that it seems absurd to think that God's power is identical to His knowledge, which is identical to His essence, and so on. Surely, one might argue, these are obviously numerically distinct attributes! After all, power and knowledge are really distinct in our experience, so how could they possibly be identical in God?
We’ll return to this problem shortly.
In the meantime, Scotus proposed a solution with the concept of a formal distinction. In short, the idea is that such formally distinct items are:
Separately knowable,
Really different independently of our thought,
Inseparable, in that none can exist on its own independently of the others.
However, whatever one thinks of the formal distinction—and believe me, I have my concerns—it is unnecessary to make sense of divine simplicity. All we need is the notion of a limit-case instance. Consider an ordered series of polygons with an increasing number of sides. As the number of sides increases, the shape approaches a circle, but a circle itself is not a polygon. Thus, a circle bears some real similarity to the series but is also really different from (and transcends) the series. Notice: this similarity-in-difference is precisely the idea behind analogical talk about God. When we speak of God, we are really saying that something like power (as we experience it) is identical to something like knowledge (as we experience it). This clarification alone should be enough to dispel the ultimately misguided objection.
Nevertheless, I think we can go further. So, let’s go further.