Abstract

Dismissing epistemologies which object to the notion of an essential property, Plantinga argues that God indeed has a nature, but one evidently distinct from himself and not subject to his control. Plantinga contends that God’s nature cannot be identical with God himself since this would imply that God is a property and that any one of his properties is the same as all the rest. In rejecting the divine simplicity doctrine taught by certain traditional theists, e.g., Augustine and Aquinas, Plantinga examines the latter’s familiar defense of it and finds it unacceptable. He disputes the arguments for it based upon the denial of the composition in God of potency and act, substance and accidents, contending that such notions as potency and accident are applicable to God. Moreover, the objection that analogous thinking may somehow rescue this doctrine meets with the observation that such thinking harbors an agnosticism that works as well against the doctrine as it does in its favor.