Campus Location
Abilene Campus (Residential)
Date of Award
8-2019
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Committee Chair or Primary Advisor
Frederick Aquino
Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor
William J. Abraham
Third Committee Member or Committee Reader
Matthew Levering
Abstract
Proponents of the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity (DDS) have frequently argued that God must lack any temporal, physical, or metaphysical composition on the grounds that God’s existence would be dependent upon God’s parts. This avenue of discourse has been tried and trod so often that most detractors of DDS find it insufficient to demonstrate DDS. Additionally, objectors to DDS have often rejected the doctrine on the count of the heap of metaphysical (often Aristotelian or Neoplatonist) assumptions that one must make before one can even arrive at DDS. Within this essay I will offer an argument for DDS that is advanced on the grounds of neither (1) arguing that a composite God’s existence would be dependent upon its parts and must be rejected, nor (2) made with a host of controversial metaphysical assumptions. I will presuppose modest metaphysical commitments and argue for DDS on the grounds of creation ex nihilo. The heart of my argument will be to (1) advance a historically-informed conception of creation ex nihilo, and (2) deduce that from such a notion of creation ex nihilo, that a God who creates ex nihilo cannot be composite.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Juliano, Chance, "Divine Simplicity as a Necessary Condition for Affirming Creation Ex Nihilo" (2019). Digital Commons @ ACU, Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 160.
https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/etd/160