Scotus, Divine Simplicity, and the Formal Distinction

Could The One contain The Many?

Not being a Scotus scholar, just someone who has profitably read some of his thought, I’ve always been something of an open agnostic about his formal distinction, particularly in relation to divine simplicity. My general impression—again, based on my admittedly limited understanding (mostly from reading thinkers like Ross and Ward)—has been that Scotus isn’t really saying anything all that different from Thomas, or at least not from those Thomists I find compelling.

Let Me Explain.

The doctrine of divine simplicity holds that there are no distinctions in God that amount to real ontological composition—no “parts,” as it were, from which God is “built up”.¹ (Divine simplicity, as my readers surely know, is the only account of ultimate explanations that I find compelling, so I’m pretty firmly committed to it—despite the many interesting and often difficult questions it raises!). The cliché formulation is that whatever is in God is God and that the divine attributes—power, goodness, love, intellection, etc.—are really identical, even if conceptually distinct.

I’ve suggested before that one of the best ways to make sense of divine simplicity—especially for avoiding coherence issues—is through the notion of a limit case instance. Simply put, a limit case is something toward which an ordered series converges but which is not itself a member of that series—think of absolute stillness in relation to decreasing speeds or a perfect circle in relation to polygons with an increasing number of sides. These limit cases represent that toward which a series is ordered, but they are not themselves members of the series.

What’s great about this understanding is that it helps clarify that there are at least two irreducible notions of similarity:

1. Similarity where things share certain properties in common.

2. Similarity between a limit case and the ordered series that approaches it.

This second kind of similarity, I suggest, provides a strong foundation for the doctrine of analogy, which in turn supports predication concerning the divine—helping to make sense of the claims of divine simplicity (see Barry Miller for more on this). After all, a limit case is neither exactly the same as the members of the ordered series nor entirely dissimilar, which is precisely the kind of relation needed for analogy to work.

Another useful implication of applying limit case instances, particularly in the context of divine simplicity, is this:

When we say that God’s power and knowledge are identical, we don’t mean that power and knowledge, as we commonly experience or understand them, are identical (clearly, something can have power without knowledge—think of a battery). Rather, we are saying that whatever the limit case instance of power is, is identical to whatever the limit case instance of knowledge is.

And not only do I see no reason to think this is untenable, I actually think there are good arguments—like those from Barry Miller—to think this is true, especially in conjunction with Thomistic cosmological reasoning (see here and here).

So where does Scotus’s formal distinction fit in?

Simply put, the formal distinction is supposed to allow for real plurality of sorts—different formalitates (or rationes)—without committing one to real ontological composition in God. The notion of formalitas or ratio is probably best understood along the lines of intelligible content, derivable (in God’s case) from a single, absolutely simple entity.

As Thomas Ward puts it:

“The formal distinction is supposed to be the sort of distinction which obtains in something that is one in number but many in ratio or formalitas.”

And he later continues:

“… the promise of the formal distinction is that it gives us a way to recognize genuine plurality in God, such as we need for an exemplarist theory of divine ideas, while preserving the underivative, uncausable, incorruptible unity of God—which is exactly what the doctrine of divine simplicity is meant to preserve.” (The Divine Ideas).

The obvious question, of course, is why these formal distinctions—perhaps best understood as aspects—are truly identical with God and thus not separable in any way (which would pose a problem for divine simplicity), especially since many of these attributes are clearly separable in creatures. Power and knowledge, for example, are distinct and separable (and often actually separated!) in the created realm. If that’s the case for creatures, why should they be inseparable within God?

This is where Scotists typically appeal to the mode of existence, distinguishing between the creaturely and divine, the bounded and unbounded, or the finite and infinite. But interestingly, this is essentially the same move Barry Miller makes when he describes God as the limit case instance of existence—something not individuated (or restricted) in the same way everything else is, possessing a uniquely unique (not a typo) mode of existence. That is, to be the limit case instance of existence, power, love, intellection, and so on is precisely to stand outside the ordered series of each of these things in their finite mode, as the infinite or unrestricted instance. And in that mode—as Miller argues—to be any one of them is to be all of them (i.e., the convergence of limit case instances of purely positive properties).

And this is where Scotus’s case connects rather nicely, I think, with what Thomists like Miller are saying, as he explicitly argues that to have any one of these attributes in the infinite mode is to necessarily have all of them. I won’t rehearse those arguments now—especially since variations of them are fairly common in contemporary literature (in fact, I deploy a few of them in my book when unpacking the divine attributes), even if they are often divorced from the broader metaphysical framework that makes them particularly compelling.²

But a quick example: infinite power implies infinite knowledge, because knowledge enhances power. A being with (purportedly) limitless power but no knowledge would, paradoxically, be limited in what it could produce, direct, or sustain. The same reasoning applies to the other divine attributes. Once these connections are in place, the case is ultimately this: once you’ve got the divine or infinite mode of existence, all the divine attributes come as a package deal.

My ultimate point? Maybe I’m being overly ecumenical—though I don’t think so, since whenever I put a Scotus and a Thomist in a room together, they tend to agree more than they disagree (something I’ve tested more than once; see below³). But I don’t just think that Scotus’s formal distinction is compatible with Thomistic divine simplicity—I actually think these views can clarify and even reinforce each other in important ways. More on that, hopefully, in the future.

Until then, a brief announcement.

Starting soon—possibly tomorrow—I’ll be publishing a series of articles introducing the school of existentialist Thomism. More specifically, what I’ll be sharing is actually an entire book that Gaven Kerr and I wrote together several years back, which unfortunately fell through with the publisher. Gaven has since given me his blessing to publish it here as a series of articles, and I think you’ll all enjoy it.

Stay tuned!

1. Notice that this is not the claim—as is very commonly misunderstood, even among professional philosophers—that there are no distinctions in God, period, or even that there are no real distinctions in God. Rather, the point is simply that there are no distinctions that would entail God having “parts” in the broadest ontological sense of the word.

2. For example, they often operate independently of an already developed metaphysics of the infinite and perfection—something both Aquinas and, especially, Scotus possess and can leverage to fully flesh out their case for the divine substance. Which they do!

3. My thought at the time of this interview—and still now—is that the Thomist collection of distinctions already accommodates the formal distinction and that these disputes are mostly, if not entirely, verbal.